Painting and Profiterole

I hope these photos speak for themselves

Day 6

Today, we saw an amazing ruin of a Cathar fortress, visited a village known for it's book shops and bookmaking workshop, plus tasted new food and shopped a bit. I believe a good time was had by all.

Day 5

You may be able to tell from the group photo that everyone seems to be relaxing and absorbing the French culture. We visited the walled city of Carcassone today and explored the castle fortress. The view of the cascade is from the window of my room.

Getting the Hang of Posting with My IPhone

Least you think my posts contain many mistakes due to my consumption of French wine, please realize the mistakes are due to me learning how to blog post with my IPhone. My only over indulgence might be in the French bakeries or patisserie as they are called in France.

Day 4

Painting in the local cafe, building in the town of Revel and latest fashion in French eyewear.

Visit to A Local's Cottage

Today Eileen and I were fortunate to take our group to the neighbor village of Soreze to visit the authentically restored cottage which the home of Glenda Barnhart. Glenda adores cottages and makes incredible dollhouse size reproductions of them. She is a fascinating world traveler and wonderful person.

Day 3 In The Land of Shutters, Windows, Bicycles and Flea Markets

This morning we went to the weekly flea market in Belesera. A good time was had by all and I learned I have some very talented shopping artists in this group of students. We drove home with a car filled with old doll clothing, vintage teapots, French country kitchen utensils and many other fabulous finds. We found lots of wonderful scenery to photograph and paint too.

More from Day 2

So this afternoon we had our painting lesson on the patio. In the twilight we had a lovely chat with the artist and owner of La Cascade where she talked about her latest artwork inspired by subject matter from the French countryside

Day 2 Shopping at the farmers market

Saturday there is a farmer's market in the neighboring village of Revel. We marveled at the charming architecture and forced ourselves to shop a bit.

First Day of School

Today we traveled from Toulouse to the little town of Durfort where we will be hanging out enjoying the French culture and painting journal style. Cleo from Austrailian found these beautiful roses in the market and we had lunch on the sunny terrace and had our first painting lesson this afternoon. We also discovered that 6€ French champagne is very good. I think it was a very good first day

Watercolor Workshop Beginning Tomorrow

Tonight I am sharpening my paintbrushes, laying out my back to school artist's smock and thinking about how to provide a successful watercolor learning experience for my 6 students coming from all over the U.S and Austraila. Even though I am not an iPhone genius (so says my teenage daughter), I will be posting photos and notes daily for those of you who want to share our experience painting in the French countryside. If you want to pinpoint our location on the map, we are in south central France and the closest city to Durfort on the map is Revel.

Watercolor Paintings on Vintage French Postcards...

While wandering through old dusty bookstores and the Sunday Flea markets in France, I started buying old postcards, mostly because my friends were buying them and I liked the old fashioned handwriting on them. I really didn't have much of an idea of what to do with these postcards except look at them periodically and remind myself of the memories of my trip. Then the other day, after trying out some paintings on the pages of old books, I started looking around my studio for other interesting things to paint on. At that point, the dogs nervously left the room.

I tried copying the postcards on different types of paper and then painted some simple trees on them. It was a little tricky as the ink bled a bit but all and all I was quite pleased with how they came out and can't wait to paint some more.

Where Do You Find the Time To Paint?

Yesterday, the lights went out for several hours all over southern California and some parts of Arizona. Once the sun went down, I sat between 2 candles and a flashlight and read. I was fortunate to be home when the power went out and not stuck in a car or an elevator. I felt rather like Abe Lincoln reading by candlelight in his log cabin. Abe got a lot accomplished in his life and yesterday in the darkened house I reflected on how he did it all. I think its because he did not have a computer with access to the internet. I spend a lot of time on my computer. Do you? I am going to try in the coming weeks to catch myself, when I am kind of meandering around the internet and could be spending that same time painting. Hopefully you will see more paintings posted here soon,with all the extra time I have. Do any of you have this problem? Let me know if you have a way to create time to paint.....

Spring 2012 Workshop to Take Place in Provence

Got Watercolor Wanderlust and want to go globetrotting with me? The Spring 2012 Watercolor Workshop location has been chosen based on requests from my students. Its official, we are going to the lovely region of Provence in Southern France for a workshop May 3-10, 2012. This is the area that has inspired artists for ages. Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and Van Gogh all loved this area, so we should adore it too and find lots to paint and sketch there. We will stay in a lovely village in a restored farmhouse and paint and sketch in our own studio there as well as in their gardens. We will also take day trips and explore nearby hill top villages and market towns. We will shop for antiques and ephemera as well as local produce and linens. We will have our breakfasts and dinners prepared by a gourmet chef with local ingredients and of course if you like, you can sip local wines. The cost for one week's workshop will be $2,350.00 + your share of our groups rental car. Airfare, lunches and shoe purchases are not included in the tour price. For more info contact me at rabjsl@pacbell.net A deposit of $500. will hold your spot as this is a small group tour and spaces are limited. Ask for this trip for your holiday, mother's day, father's day and anniversary gift and start buying generic toilet paper right now so you can save the money to come along.

If You're Short on Time and You Want to Sketch, Try Carrying This Sketchbook Around....

This sketchbook made by Global Art and called "The Handbook", was a gift from my husband for Mother's Day 2009. When he asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate Mother's Day that year, I think he was expecting me to name a restaurant I wanted to lunch at. Instead, I told him I wanted him to accompany me to the new art shop in town and buy me whatever I wanted. Being a nice guy, he agreed. So I picked out this sketchbook and a few pens and wondered if I would really use it often. I have a drawer filled with unfinished sketchbooks....Now, as you can see there are only a few empty pages left. Soon I will begin another. One wonders if this sketchbook has some kind of magic in its pages, but I don't think so. I think the reason I was able to complete this sketchbook was because I gave myself permission to not make every page perfect, and I liked the size and type of paper in the books. I highly recommend this sketchbook.

Here is a less then perfect watercolor of a pot of geraniums that were on the ledge of a local restaurant where we were dining. I had to get over my fear of painting in public restaurants, but that wasn't hard. The only thing I suggest is not to wipe your brush on the cloth napkins.

This page was painted last weekend at the beach when some friends and I sat down on the sand to sketch and paint. The bird in the left corner obligingly posed for me until I got his shape and colors right. So I encourage to find a small size sketchbook today and go out and make less then perfect paintings and sketches...let me know how it works for you, if you can't figure out how to comment on this blog, then email me at rabjsl@pacbell.net