Diva Challenge: Half White/Half Black

Croon and Earth Rising



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Last Day in Joyce Hick's workshop

Finishing up my watercolor sketch...adding details and shadows.

We had such a good workshop and it was really special to have such a small class so we got to really spend quite a bit of time with our own projects, questions, and painting!  Lucky us.

Joyce will be back around September 15 in 2014 Dillman's season.  So if you are going to be around at the time...put a circle around that week!  

I get a week off now to hopefully get the cabin open...which I have had to put on the back burner.  And to prepare for Brenda Swenson's class that starts on June 2.  

Also headed over to Clearwater Camp on Saturday afternoon to look at the facilities and meet Ruth Igoe who is working with me to develop a wc class for the girls this season.  I am volunteering to teach a few sessions.  More on that later.

My first painting in Joyce's class

Joyce did a demo this morning and then after lunch we got to work off our photos and value study from the day before. This where Aunt Cile and her twin brother were born in Clinton, WI 95 years ago.

This is a "sketch". About 10 x 12 on Arches 140# cold press. Not finished..I am now putting in the road.

Joyce Hick's Demo Day 2

This is Joyce's demo painting...very fresh and light and sunny.  So much planning goes into these!  Fun to watch. We spent a lot of time working today on how to take a photo you have taken (even less that great ones) and re-make and re-plan and re-compose them into really solid designs. Her reference photo looks very little like this painting!   

In the afternoon we went up individually and had a conference with Joyce about the painting we will be working on tomorrow from our own photographs.  We composed it together and then she did demo of a possible value sketch for each of ours. (There are 8 of us in the class.)

Tomorrow we will re-do both of these and move into doing a "color study".  Mine is a WI farm scene.  I'll try to show the steps tomorrow.  This is HARD work, guys! I fall into bed around 9 pm exhausted.   

Fengle: Roy's Challenge

Fengle, Tipple, BTL Joos

I know, I know.  This is "supposed" to be a mono-tangle.  Sometimes I JUST can't do it.  Fengle just begs to join up with other tangles!  So I am outside the challenge today!  You will have to shoot me in the foot.  I have trouble with rules sometimes.

It'll be fun to see how others approach this.  I have seen some very pretty Fengles in the past so I know it is possible to do a mono with this. 

ABSOLUTELY pouring rain here in the north woods of WI today.  Buckets coming down.  Dark dark.  But no wind, thank heavens.  Prayers for all those in Oklahoma in the wake of the devastating storms there yesterday.  

Joyce Hicks WC workshop end of Day One

Here Joyce finishes a second demo for the first day of the Dillman's workshop.  These are all just "practice" paintings to start to get the "hang" of her approach to watercolor painting.  We painted two of these "practice" painting no with no references other than her demos.   

"Perfection is the enemy of great art" says Joyce.  Rather she wants us to work out our sketches and compositions and then put them aside to try to paint as much from "within" as possible and not be a slave to a photograph.  Although I have heard this many times, I think I am finally going to get this.  Joyce is taking us through the steps in that process slowly.  

Tomorrow she is going to work specifically on the photo to sketch process and then the sketch to the small color preliminary painting.  She says "the idea is more important than the object".  

www.jhicksfineart.com

Practicing the technique

This tiny practice sheet is a study in washes AND in using a palette knife on a semi-moist paper. The actual tree is simple "pressed" out with a small knife and then as the background dried other colors and vales were added.

We also did a floral study. The first day is a day of practicing Joyce's ideas and techniques. Tomorrow we will work on composition.




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Joyce Hicks Demo on Sunday May 19

Joyce Hicks

Joyce did this demo in about an hour.  (The drawing  was done ahead of time.) This was SO much fun to watch.  I love that she talks about her decisions all the time as she paints.  So helpful.

Joyce is from TX.  You can google her name and fine both a website and a blog.  Or you can go to my side bar on the right and find her there.

My class with her at Dillman's Resort starts at 9 am tomorrow morning. This is just 20 minutes from our north woods cabin.  How lucky is this?  

Needing a little ZEN!

Yale, St. John's Cross, Croon, Going Down, Cuke

Just a little relaxing Zentangle today as I "try" to put my studio back together again here in the north woods.  We arrived to a few piles of snow at the road corners (on May 18!!!).  This is a first for us!

And the spring melt, rain, freeze, melt, snow, rain, etc here in northern WI ended up leaving our annex with quite a bit of water on the floor.  (not the cabin, but our hobby area where Greg has his model trains and I have my studio.)  I lost some mat board and some sketching pads that got set too near the floor and wicked up water. Luckily most of my stuff is in plastic tubs or up on shelves. We had a lot of rugs to pull out sopping wet!  Fans going.  I have a heater going in my studio too to help dry things up.  

In betwixt all this I am trying to get all my materials ready for the Joyce Hicks workshop that starts on Monday morning at 9 am!!  We will be busy all Sunday with church and then with an open house at Dillman's with art demos and a dinner there to meet the artists.  Fun.  But no time to pack up art!  I may order the box lunch for the first day so I don't have to bother with that Monday morning. All in all I NEEDED a little Zen today!  

Diva Challenge: Kuke

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Zentangle on the Go

Sindoo, Tadpoles, Quare, Schway


I am still "on the way" traveling from Florida to northern, WI but when I have a little moment over coffee, I still like to keep up with the new tangles as they come through.

Right now I am in se WI and will be heading the last 300 miles north on Thursday.



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Framed Watercolors

It is fun to see one's paintings framed!
A friend invited me over to to see them.
Thank you, Ann!


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Watercolor travel journal

Sketching in LA at a beautiful plantation. This is a double page watercolor.





One of those most perfect days!


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On the road again

Well, time to hit the road. As we travel I have my sketching materials and camera at the ready. BUT now I also have a small "kit" in which I keep my Zentangle stuff.


I found this nice little pack at a garage sale ( of course). Just right for some tiles, some pens, pencils, stumps, and my reference book of tangles. This is my first opportunity to try it out.

We leave in a few hours heading north to Destin, FL to visit a friend there tonight. More adventures to follow so stay tunedL



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Play with Schway

Schway, Adente, Tippel, Laces (v)

Marie's new tangle Schway is amazing.  Couldn't wait to try it out.  It's one of those double vision things where you are either looking at the dark arrows or the light arrows and your eyes keep flicking back and forth.  I can wait to see what Margaret Bremner does with THIS!  

We are almost "on the road".  One more day.  I'll be putting the iMac computer "to bed" tomorrow afternoon.  It goes with us to WI and Greg packs the car the night before.  I'll be on the iPad then for 10 days.  Thank heavens for iPads.  They are better than sliced bread!!!  

The weather reports for northern WI continue to be absolutely awful...ice, snow, cold.  I think we are going to "skip spring" up there this year.  People are sending me photos and one friend had to use snowshoes to get from her car to the front door of her summer place!  We are going to drive VERY slowly north.  

The up and down of it is nuts.  28 for a high one day and then 72 the next.  The birds and insects must be SO confused.  Notice the Schway arrrows are pointing SOUTH, not north!  Hahahaha.  

Roy's Nzeppel Zentangle Mono Tangle

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The Diva's Blind String Challenge

The way this works is that you draw your dots and border as normal.
But then the string is drawn with your eyes closed.



Eureka, Tidings, Dansk, Sand Swirl, Verve, Jetties


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Zentangle for Wednesday

I am publishing from my iPad today.
I can't get quite the detail as I can with scanning on my iMac.
But it will do.

I worked on 4x6 card for this one.
Yew-Dee, Jemz, Striping, Warts and Wobbles, Hibred.


We are on the packing count down now....4 days and counting until we leave our warm and cozy Fl home and head toward a very iffy looking cold and wet northern WI. One would wonder why. My hubby is itchy for the old lake side cabin of his childhood. And I am excited to be taking Joyce Hick's wc class starting May 19! Here's hoping the ice is off the lake by the time we arrive on May 16!



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Roy's Challenge: Monotangle Phicops

3.5" tile

There are some tangles that I just do not resonate with and Phicops is one of them.  I find that if I put it in with other tangles I "can" make it work.  But I rarely choose it with so many ones that I love.  But I like the challenge of TRYING to use in different ways. Sometimes I re-discover that after all, it is a nice tangle.  

I remembered that some showed how to make Phicops into a kind of "pinecone" shape which seemed kind of interesting and a made a little sketch of it.  So I thought I'd use that for a starting point.  I think this could have been a nice tile IF I could have used other tangles with it.  But as is, I am not at all happy with it.  I don't think it's a good choice for a monotangle as there are just not enough variations.  But I will look at what others come up with and I will probably be surprised. 

Happy Birthday to Ben

4 x 6"  Paradox, Twile, Knightsbridge, Hollibaugh, Yew-dee, Tidings, Widgets, Tipple

It's time for my grandson Ben to have a 14th birthday!  I'll get to see him on May 11 in s.e. WI on our way north to our cabin.  So I will get to hand him this card myself!!!  

Double celebration of Mother's Day AND a birthday!

Ben is our fencer!  Great kid!!!!