Busy Bee

After a VERY long hiatus from my blog I finally have some new pictures to post! A lot has been happening here in Belmont-- on the art front I've been taking an adult ed watercolor class which has been great for getting me back into drawing and painting. It's been nice to have a group of people to sit and paint with each week, and to have a whole 3 hours to just sit and do nothing focus on being creative and learning new things.

Here's the one painting I've actually finished so far and my favorite from the class--painted from autumn leaves collected up at my parents camp.

 

Here's a peek at some of the others in progress-- each week we'd start a new painting but I rarely finished them in one sitting. Below is a cardinal, but he still needs a colored beak and some feet.

This one was from a lesson on how to paint water, but again, I'm still working on getting the water part finished as well as the sky and other details.

And here's a hollyhock that is almost finished as well--

We also messed around with various techniques to get interesting effects from the paint. Here's what happens when you drop alcohol onto wet watercolors:

Here's salt sprinkled on the paint:

Impressions made with bubble wrap:

And impressions made with plastic wrap:

You can also make scratches into the wet paper to create white accent lines-- I thought these gave this painting the appearance of a stand of trees ablaze with fall colors:

I'm also in the midst of the busy holiday craft show season, so I've been making lots of earrings and Aaron has been a helpful elf, spending his evenings tumbling and drilling glass for me out in the garage.  He scored and cut up a bunch of cathedral glass or stained glass (not sure what the appropriate name for it is) the other night and tumbled it--it turned out great and made some really nice recycled glass for my earrings. I'll post pictures of the new jewelry in the next day or so. Check out my "Upcoming Shows and Events" tab to see where I'll be in the coming weeks!