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Category: Watercolor

A Peak Inside my Watercolor Art Journal, Italy and Croatia

A Peak Inside my Watercolor Art Journal, Italy and Croatia

Traveling to new and unusual places gives me the opportunity to paint in my watercolor art journal. I am always on the lookout for some fun and creative ideas. Sometimes I sit in little alleyways to paint on location, and sometimes I finish my paintings in my journals in the evenings with a glass of wine. The painting of the little church below is of a Church that my husband and I hike to while on a recent boat trip to 3 islands near Dubrovnik, Croatia, This lovely Church was built over 1,000 years ago!  It had a tiny door.  I  guess people were smaller back then.   If you are interested in painting with me and learning about keeping a watercolor journal,  I am teaching four different classes at the Seattle Create art retreat  There are several seats still available in each class.

Looking for Inspiration

Looking for Inspiration

Hi Guys, I am in Maine, in the fog, enjoying family vacation and the beautiful scenery.  The fog has rolled in and it has been pouring down rain.  So it is a good day to play board games and catch up on computer stuff.  I have been organizing my upcoming fun classes at Art Unraveled starting in just 1 week!  Here are a few photos I wanted to share with you.  I love traveling to new places and getting inspiration for fun watercolor paintings.  What kinds of things do you take photos of for painting inspiration?  Please share what inspires you…
I hope you are all enjoying your summer!

The Treasure Hunt Continues

The Treasure Hunt Continues

The Artful Gathering Online Art Retreat Treasure Hunt continues.  Every week you can collect new words from the teachers blogs.  Grand Prize = one free tuition!  One lucky winner will win my book!

NOTE:  You will have to be registered to have access to the site.  The registration fee is $5 and will give you access to preview all the classes.

Here is a Fun Warm-up Exercise

Here is a Fun Warm-up Exercise

Here is the post that I did for this month’s Sketchbook challenge.
Warm and cool colors are something that I think about all the time in my painting and enjoy playing warm colors against cool colors to create vibrate and dynamic watercolors.  Here is a fun exercise that you could do with warm colors or cool colors – your choice!  I did mine with warm colors.  You will need your watercolor paints, watercolor brushes and a Gold Leaf Pen for this exercise.
Start by drawing big shapes in your journal with the gold leaf pen.  I drew my initials JN.  Make sure you go off the page here and there.

 Then add smaller shapes within your large initials.

 Pick a color scheme warm or cool.  I chose a warm palette so I painted all my shapes with yellows, oranges, reds and combinations of these colors. The gold leaf pen lines will act as a resist to the paint.

This is my final page in my watercolor journal

Check out my Daniel Smith Watercolor Kit for great deal on watercolor paints.  If you are just getting started, this is the kit for you!  
Happy Colorful New Year – It’s a Beautiful Day!

Happy Colorful New Year – It’s a Beautiful Day!

“Your success and happiness lies in you.  Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”  Helen Keller

Today is my birthday and the beginning of a new year!  I feel blessed in many ways.  I am so happy that I made the decision 14 years ago to quit my secure job as a lab technician to stay at home and pursue art.  I was scared, lonely and I had no idea what I was doing but I just knew that I had to draw, paint, mix gooey colorful messes and create.   I have made so many wonderful new friends.  Artists are the best!

Catching up in my Journal with Stencils

Catching up in my Journal with Stencils

I have been finishing a few pages in my Provence journal that I started during my recent trip to France.  My friend, Pam Carriker’s has a brand new line of art stencils and I took one with me to France to see how I could use it to enhance some of my journal pages.  Her stencils are quite fabulous and some of them deal with drawing faces.  We met for dinner not too long ago and had a wonderful time talking about art and sharing ideas.  She generously gave me one of her stencils that she knew I would love – the  Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Stencil.  I wanted to share some of my journal pages where I used her stencil.

Here you can see I used it behind the pitcher.


I used several stencils as the background for this page about Vaison-la-Romaine.  You can see where I used Pam’s stencil on the lower left. 

I used Pam’s stencil to make this color wheel painting.

We are both teaching with Artful Gathering Online Art Retreat.  The second session starts on July 16, 2013.  If you have ever been interested in drawing faces, you will love Pam’s workshop, Still Pursuing Portraits.  My workshop, The Good, the Bad and the Beauty of Color is – well- you guessed it – all about color!  Be sure to check out all the creative and fun workshops available at Artful Gathering Online Art Retreat!

Finally here is the other side of the journal page – my painting from the day we spent at Vaison-la-Romaine….
New Article for the Cloth, Paper Scissors Magazine

New Article for the Cloth, Paper Scissors Magazine

The box is packed and ready to ship.  Sample postcards are carefully wrapped and example art supplies are in their separate zip-locked baggie.  I even put in some Hershey’s kisses for the editors.  My article, Painted Postcards is ready to go and will be published in the Cloth, Paper Scissors magazine – March/April 2013 issue.  It took longer than expected to create all the samples required for the article but it was so much fun to do.  I hope you will read the article when it is published next year!

More Photos from Irvine- Create & Beautiful Art!

More Photos from Irvine- Create & Beautiful Art!

Here are some photos from my classes at CREATE, Irvine, 2012.  We learned about color, adding dimension with value, colorful shadows and how to paint along our journey.  Thank you all for a fabulous time!

First time painter EVER!  Shelley”s pear painting using
the color wheel to pick her colors – Way to Go Shelley! 

Jeannie getting into her supplies
Beautiful glowing colors on Flip, Flaps & Fold-out Tag

Beverly’s Juicy Pear & Color Chart

Jeannine’s pears turned out as colorful as her t-shirt!

Using stencils in new ways….

Mother- Daughter Team

Cool art supplies

More art supplies

Fun!

Love using that colorwheel!

Thank you all for a great Create!

Thank you all for a great Create!

I had such an amazingly fun and creative time at CREATE 2012
I just wanted to send out a huge colorful hug to all the students that attended my classes.  How fun to have Sally & Lori attend my watercolor classes again after meeting them in my class at Art & Soul Retreat several years ago!  Jeannine – I love my new Hello Kitty tin!  It is a welcome addition to my traveling watercolor palette collection.  Cindy and the other ladies from Texas you have a way of keeping us all smiling.  Rosanne & Shelly it was fun to be a part of your new watercolor journey.
Over all I wanted to share with everyone that CREATE, Irvine proved to be a friendly, colorful and creative place.  For those of you that asked me to come back next year – you will have to wait for 2 years as I will be teaching in Provence next May.  
I do love all your suggestions and encouragement for me to teach online art classes.  Thank you Pam Carriker for giving me advice on how to set up an online class.  I will be exploring my options and let you know what happens!
I was lucky enough to treat myself to a class with the fabulous and colorful Joanne Sharpe in her fun Magical Marker Mystery Tour.  I feel rejuvenated and exhausted all bundled together. 
I hope our paths will cross again!
Colorful hugs! 

Jacqueline