Roz Stendahl's workshop!

Don't forget, Roz's free Strathmore journaling workshop starts May 1!  I think you need to go here first, to register:  http://www.strathmoreartist.com/vjworkshop2011.html

As noted, she has a workshop blog, HERE, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

See you there!.

Journaling at a Favorite Golf Tournament

Golf courses are one of my favorite places to sketch. Every year that we can, my husband and I attend The Heritage, a PGA tournament that takes place at the Harbour Town Golf Links in Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island, SC.

On practice days, I will make a quick watercolor sketch and then have the tour players autograph the page. The most 'artsy' signatures that decorated my pages this year were Jesper Parnevik's and Ian Poulter's. They really got into it :)

Once the tournament officially begins, I park myself in one spot and pick a view that sparks my interest.  Most of the time, Rob and I like to sit at the intersections of holes 2,3,6 and 7. It gives Rob two green and two tee boxes to watch close up action.  Day one and two sketches are here.

Day three, we set up our chairs near the green of #14. The view between holes 13 and 14 is one of the prettiest around. The landscape is lush and every year I fall in love with the three Live Oaks that separate the golf holes.

After about an hour at this location we decided it would be better if we moved back to our favorite spot on the front nine so we could see the last half of the players come through.  One very large challenge..... I only had the basics of this scene laid in.  Luckily, I had my iPod with me. In between groups of players, I photographed my piece and took a shot of the view.  I so love that with a flick of your fingers you can enlarge the image on the screen.  Between this image and my memory, I was able to almost finish this piece.  I had to wait to get home to add the people on the bleachers.... I got a bit carried away with the green paint and forgot to leave white paper at the top of the bleachers. Thank goodness for gouache :) Nothing like opaque paint to save the day!

Enrique Flores!

Hi all!  Our good friend and blog correspondent Enrique Flores, whom you read all about in Interview #9, HERE, has started a wonderful new group blog called Cuadernistas.  It's a group of friends who do marvelous sketches, on the spot.

Enrique says he's encouraging art without words, since language can be a barrier on an international blog like this...don't miss it!  I've bookmarked it, and I know you'll want to, too.

My Free Online Journaling Workshop Is Almost Here!

If you haven't already heard, I've got a 4-part visual journaling workshop coming up over at Strathmore (using their new line of journals). It's free. I did this little video for fun last night to promote it.

If the embedded video doesn't play you can see the promo here. I hope you'll join me in May.

Watch for Interview #10--Nina Johansson!

Next up is our good friend Nina Johansson, from Stockholm, Sweden!

Nina does beautiful work in her journals and explores watercolors, landscapes and complex textures in her paintings; she had a highly successful show recently. Wish I could have gone to Sweden to see it!

We were delighted to have her work as part of the Artist's Journal Workshop--I know you'll enjoy the interview.

Nina works in ink and watercolor, mostly, seeing beauty in everything--and helping us to see it too.  Always stretching and growing, she graciously shares her explorations with new tools, mediums and approaches.  Most recently, Nina created a stir about Noodler's new Flex pen--so much so that they're out of stock and many of us are waiting anxiously for a new shipment!

A correspondent on the international Urban Sketchers blog, Nina will be teaching at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Lisbon this summer.  Check out the link for more information.

A recent trip to Barcelona is documented on her blog with such charm and detail we feel as if we'd been there with her.


As she says on her website/blog, "I draw. I also teach art, design, computer graphics, web design and a few other things. Life is good."

Watch for interview #10, coming soon!

Blast from the Past...

You know what they say about "If you remember the 70s you must not have been there?"  Well, I THOUGHT I remembered pretty well, but recently I came across my old farm journal, from our "back to the land" days...and reread it all over the course of a week or so.

I'd mis-remembered some things, glossed over others I'm pretty sure I remember all too well, and had forgotten how hard I worked at painting and trying to find a good gallery; I had forgotten how many shows I'd entered, and how many ups and downs there were, including having the one painting that sold in a one-woman show, stolen.  (I DO remember I'm still wary of the gallery scene!)

There are people whose faces I can't put with their names, and those whom I will never forget, including my dear friend Alice Monnig, and Paul Unger, one of the finest men I ever met--an old farmer with more natural culture and goodness than many far more educated.

I recorded friends and family, and our disastrous proliferation of cats and dogs--good times and bad.

It was a difficult, exhausting, beautiful, satisfying, frustrating, magical, frightening, wonderful time...I recorded garden triumphs and disasters, the mountains of work, our disastrous finances, the dozens and dozens of paintings, our chickens, geese, goats and rabbits, the droughts and blizzards and floods, tender springs and bountiful harvests.  I wrote out garden plans and expenses.  The birth of two of my godchildren is in the book, and the death of my father.  

The journal goes from 1971 through 1975--I don't know why I didn't keep it up, because we didn't leave till 1977--I wish I had that record, too.

I did very little art in the farm journal...this was still when I kept a separate sketchbook, a ledger, and a lines yellow pad with notes for articles...here you can see sketches on the back pages of designs for doors and shutters for our old log cabin farm house.  There are a few other small marginal sketches, but that's all...

And as you can see, I've been journaling a very long time.  I'm glad I kept this old journal and those that followed--our move to town, gardens here, my time as a church secretary and seeker...though I still am the latter.  I'm glad I re-read it, too.

For My Eye Doctor

After going through a "rough bit" along the road of life my vision is still improving. I've been trying to visually document my progress for my opthaneurologist as I go along. It's one thing to tell someone how I see things and another to show them an illustration. So. . . I did two illustrations --both views of my bedroom, the first how I think it would look with normal vision, and the second one trying to show how the graininess that I see actually looks when I see things. Please note that, joyously, the view out my window into the natural light is almost normal. I can see the branches against the sky and the bark on the trees. I'm wrestling with artificial light, but, slowly, that is improving also. It's been three years since I went nearly blind from bilateral optic nerve atrophy, and I'm grateful every day for the progress I've made. I hope somehow my illustrations will help someone or their families or doctors through a nightmarish time.