Whispering Colors

SPRING

The sun is warm and vibrant on my skin today…

strong shadows delight the eye.

There is no color…yet.

But I can hear the colors whispering

in the ground and in the branches.

The sun is tickling them.

 

I sat out on our front stoop this weekend for just a few minutes of peace and quiet.  Sun on one’s face is a delicious feeling.  Strong shadows are evidence that the sun is out in full force.  My tingling skin made me think of how the trees, bulbs, and bushes that bloom must feel this time of year…a stirring or tickling them into a full-on laugh…eventually.

Can’t wait to see nature’s laughter in a few weeks!!

Try This…

Before going on a trip, say to the beach with your daughter for her 16th birthday, or to Asheville for a weekend getaway, or just to errands around town, try this!

Paint with watercolor on your sketchbook papers BEFORE HAND.  Have no thought as to what you’ll eventually draw there.  Just use colors you love, smoosh them around on the page, splatter them, use a bit of white gouache if you want and let dry.  Take your sketchbook and just a drawing implement (pen or pencil, marker, what-have-you) or two.  Then, when the notion strikes, draw ON TOP OF what you painted.  You’ll love how the abstracty painting underneath works in with your drawing without you even having to make that happen!  It’s SO COOL!  Then, when you get home, you can deepen the colors a bit in places, or add a few more splashes here and there, or not.

Both of these were done in this manner.  And on this page here.  Pretty neato, huh?

**Nearing the end of my Handbook Journal, begun a loong time ago.

***Come to my workshop on the 3rd of March and I’ll show you how to do this, plus many other ideas for celebrating your life visually in a journal!

Bonjour!

Pop next door for a visit to my new blog introducing Genevieve and her world!

Would LOVE to see you there!

 

Come Draw With Me!

Celebrate Your Life!
A Visual Journaling Workshop
led by Jennifer Edwards

Thursday March 3, 2-4 PM
$12 members/ $15 non-members
Not a member? Join Now!

This workshop if for NON artists as well as artists.

A shout out to everybody:

I’m teaching a workshop titled “Celebrate Your Life!” at Associated Artists of Winston-Salem on March 3rd from 2-4 in the afternoon.  This workshop is designed for artists and NON-artists alike who are interested in chronicling and celebrating their lives in a sketchbook.  CLICK HERE for more info and to sign up!  The cost is a mere $15 for non-members of AAWS or $12 for members.  Nor do you have to bring tons of supplies…just your interest and a desire to play!  I’ll give you loads of resources for inspiration, introduce you to a variety of ways to go about visually representing your life….from paper collage, to paints and wordplay, to sketching and drawing AND combining them all!  From extremely simple to quite complex, the choice is yours as to how you “keep” your sketch journal.  NO RULES…only IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS!

Come join me for a couple of hours Celebrating Your Life!

Somethin’s Comin’…

…Somethin’ Good!  I’m tickled pink as a pig in slop (as they say!) creating a new blog to introduce a friend of mine.  This is a sneak peak of her.

Be on the look-out!

Remember These?

Yes! These are the broccoli bushes, er…cupcake bushes, er…collaged mushrooms?  Well, here’s a Bic pen version to add to all the others…

I think there’s five all total now.  Puffball bushes was another one:)

Fruits & Flowers

Recent drawrings.  (yes, I know.  I spelled it that way on purpose.) 

Light + Lines =

Delight!

Le Visiteur

My drawing table sits right in front of a large window overlooking a portion of our back deck.  The deck has several bird feeders for all the wonderful visitors we have year round.  I think this is a slate-colored junco .  He was quite beautiful and visited only briefly…I actually had to draw him from memory since he was gone by the time I grabbed my sketchbook.

I love birds.  Love their cuteness, their colors, their songs, their seemingly care-free-ness.  This past weekend, in Asheville, I was captivated by a particular artist’s work which included birds in just about every painting.  Check out Sarah Faulkner’s work here.  You’ll be glad you did!

A Day for Color

Perusing all the UNfinished sketchbooks, I decided to pick up a favorite and see if I could finish it.  Why I ever stopped drawing in it eludes me…I think it has more to do with my creative ADD, flitting from one “ooh, let me try that!” to another, than it does any dissatisfaction with the sketchbook itself.  This is a Handbook Journal in my favorite square size.  It’s a teensy bit tiny for me, but I remember enjoying it two summers ago, filling the pages with pen drawings that I watercolored over, and sprinkled a few paper collage images here and there.  Just last week I picked it up again to fill its remaining pages.

It was a chilly day…no outdoor sketching for me.  So my “landscape” was my new livingroom and the red furniture I promised to show you in color.  I’ve had a smidge of an itch to knit lately.  But every time I pull something out to begin, I stuff it away in favor of drawing…JUST GOTTA DRAW!

This bunny sits atop our armoire-tv-media-center in the living room.  I crocheted her a couple of years ago and love the wonky shapes.  I also have a thing for how the watercolor looks on this paper:  it’s quite different than other papers, both cheaper white papers and proper watercolor papers.  It retains the flowy look of watercolor and allows you to layer the colors one on top of the other, but once it dries, it has a soft, almost “old” look about it.  Perhaps it’s the cream color of the Handbook Journal paper, or maybe it’s the absorbent rag content, I’m not sure.  It does ruffle some, but I even like that about it…adds to the aged look of the watercolored pages.  Nice.