Drawing, Planning, Creating

 The first drawing of the year. 

I didn't say it had to be good  -  I just said I have to keep 

that pen moving.

I've been hibernating

and it really felt good, but enough is enough.  I've been de-cluttering, cleaning, and rearranging my studio space.  Now I'm ready to start painting again, and I feel like doing some acrylics.

We have all of our Christmas things put away  -  some kind of a record for the Careys.  Because we live here in Winter Wonderland, no one takes down their Christmas decorations until as late as February.  Christmas trees stay up until at least 12th Night, and wreaths don't come down until Valentine's Day.  But this year, just like my hibernation  -  I'm done.  Moving on.

I hope you had a great holiday, and you're rarin' to get into the new year with plans and goals for drawing, painting, creating!  What are your creative plans  -  we want to know.

My Desk

Cozying Up For Winter

Spellcheck says there is no such thing as "cozying", but we know there is, don't we? Especially those of us who live in Northern Michigan.

A couple of months ago, I moved a lot of my art supplies into this desk. I wanted it useful and colorful. It makes me happy every time I come in the room, or see it from the back door. I left the file a little larger than I usually do, so if you want to click on the photograph to enlarge it so you can take a closer look, go ahead.

I spent most of the day clearing up a couple of projects so I can move on to whatever is next. I have lots of things that could be next, it's just a matter of deciding where to start. Maybe I should put all my plans and ideas in a jar, pull one out and work on it until it is finished and . . . Okay. It's clear to me now. WORK ON IT UNTIL IT IS FINISHED.

In Progress

Grace Cathedral Garden Painting in Progress

I'm working on this from a journal sketch I did in California. I have a lot of students asked what the process is from sketchbook to watercolor paper. There are various ways to do it - one is, of course, to just draw it again, but that never works for me. Because I was pretty happy with the composition of the journal watercolor sketch, I simply traced the important shapes onto a piece of tracing paper, scanned it, enlarged it to the size of the wc paper, and printed it out (a copy shop will do this for you too), then traced it onto the watercolor paper.
Before I started to paint, I worked out all the light, dark, and middle values on the enlarged sketch. It is very easy to trace a sketch onto wc paper at a window or on a lightbox. The watercolor paper is much more transparent than you might guess.

Okay, here I go. I'm still working on that to-do list (they aren't supposed to END, are they!?) and we're having guests for dinner tonight. I am trying a maple glaze on chicken breasts - we'll see how that goes.