Another online class...

I'm taking another on-line art class, "Artful Journaling:  Explorations" with Laure Ferlita.  We are to pick a theme and a signature color.  My theme is "Travel Memories" and my signature color is perylene red.  This color is suppose to be on each of our pages.  I chose travel memories because I have all these great photos from previous travels and would love to reminisce while creating art in a journal.

This week's challenge was to draw small and leave a lot of white space.  I was inspired to do this with a close-up photo of dragon statue I took in Thailand in 2004.  It's not a black and white photo, and I was thrilled to see a small patch of red on one of the eyes!  I decided to make this assignment my journal cover page.  My only critique is the lower half of the dragon face isn't as light as it is in the original picture, but I think it still works.

My Dragonfly page...

...while researching dragonflies in Washington State I discovered the dragonfly I was sketching was our state insect, the "Green Darner Dragonfly" and it's one of the largest and fastest-flying dragonflies. It had a gorgeous emerald green body!

Here's my final page...

Work in Progress...

This weeks theme for Jane's class is to get inspired by something from nature and to draw and paint it from many different perspectives.  A student in my science class brought me a dead and dried out dragonfly and this is my inspiration.  I also plan to use a dissecting scope to look at it close up and to draw images inspired by what I see.  Right now I've just drawn the dragonfly and decided to stop because I'm afraid I will get too carried away with detail in the wings.  I can do a wing close-up (it's like stained glass!) from my dissecting scope view.  We will see where this goes...

First page for Jane LaFazio's online "Sketching & Watercolor in a Mixed Media Journal" class...

This week's theme is "Everyday Objects" and when I saw my cat, Ollie, nosing around in his toy basket, I found my inspiration...

September Work - More practice from the "Ready To Paint Series"

More practice work from the "Ready To Paint Series - Watercolour Landscapes" by Terry Harrison.

These are a good practice for learning techniques.

Where has the time gone?

Can't believe I haven't posted since August!  School started 8/23 and it has consumed me.  Though I've done some watercolor painting exercises from a "Ready to Paint" book (I post copies later...) and my weekly intermediate watercolor class with Joyce Anderson just started back up two weeks ago.  Plus, I've signed up for another on-line class with Jane Lafazio through Joggles.com - "Sketching & Watercolor In A Mixed Media Journal"

I'm really looking forward to the online interacting with fellow students.  Images will soon follow this post!