Loving Summertime

There are lots of things I love about summer here.  It's not as crowded because the winter residents have left for the most part and, Glory Hallelujah!, school is out and all that neighborhood traffic is gone until mid August.  Living smack dab in the middle of a triangle where the elementary, high, and middle schools form it's angles has its drawbacks between 7 and 9 in the morning and almost every hour on the half hour in the afternoon has some major drawbacks.

But most of all, it's a nice change of pace in my volunteer activities.  Especially this year as I have promised myself and my husband that I am going to take more time for myself and both of us are spending more time with each other.  He loves it when I spend time in my studio -- and so do I.  I find it relaxing and energizing at the same time.  Because I really need to get back into my painting, I enrolled in a 6-week watercolor class at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center.  It is a unique class taught by artist, Taylor Ikin, who is teaching watercolor painting on non-porous substrates, Yupo and Terraskin.  Both are papers made from recycled products.  Yupo is like a plastic and Terraskin is made from rock.

Both of which have presented me challenges and I figured I needed expert help.

Taylor is wonderful.  She's happy, flexible, talented (extremely), and so much fun.  My classmates are happy, flexible, also talented and a barrel of fun.  Tuesdays are my new favorite day of the week. I'm not very good at it yet, but here is my first attempt.

I am finishing up my second painting this weekend and I already like it a lot better.  I'll put it in my next post.

In addition to this class, I am also doing an online class with artist Sheryl Williams who is teaching through a series of videos.  That started today and I can work it at my own pace.  I worked on that a good portion of today and really enjoyed the exercises that demonstrate how the inks flow and meld with other colors.  I did the following:

Applied in Drops

Just drops of three colors, watermelon, citrus and sailboat blue and a few drops of blending solution.

I tried a different set of colors for the next exercise:  Bottle, Rust and Denim

Applied in Streams

I have mixed feelings about that color combo.  I will probably use it again but with a different application technique.

Next up -- Circles.  This was like applying in drops, but you touch the tip of the ink bottle to the Yupo paper to make circles as opposed to drops which spread differently on the surface.

I went back to the first set of colors which I really, really like.  I also added a couple of blending solution "circles" which lightened it in several places.

But my favorite and the most fun?  Applying a drop of color and then blowing on it with a drinking straw. Loved this exercise.  Fun to watch the the different shapes and colors that formed.

Drops blown with a drinking straw:

I truly love that last one.  Same 3 colors but so many new colors that formed as the inks melded.

It will end up on some one's birthday, get well, or thinking of you card some day.

That was Week One, Lesson 2.  I just did a color chart in Lesson 3.  Looking forward to learning more in Lesson 4 tonight.

This summer is mine.  All mine.  And time with Butch (#40 coming up soon.) Except for my Fridays in the library.  But that's for me, too.  A few happy hours in one of my favorite places with some of my favorite people.  ;-)