Día de Los Muertos en Mexico

Hola, This weekend, I made my sketchbook for our trip to Mexico for Día de Los Muertos. Three of us from our Tuesday sketch group plan to create for two weeks in Oaxaca and Mexico City.
Check out Día de Bloglandia for more fun with Día de Los Muertos celebrations. For wonderful photos and information, Fran is writing a "Tales from Oaxaca" series about her 2007 trip.

Here's my calendar page to fill up while there with ephemera and handwriten journal entries.
Today, we sketched at the Lone Pine Cemetery, one of Portland's oldest pioneer cemeteries. The vibrant autumn colors filled the skyline with their beauty. Fall is one of my favorite seasons representing change and preparation for new beginnings.
In Mexico, I want to experiment and try out different drawing and watercolor styles and techniques- in other words PLAY.

I probably will not post again until the second week in November. Hasta luego!

Art and Soul 2008 Fond Memories

Art and Soul proved to be a great retreat this year. I enjoyed seeing friends and making new ones plus teaching and taking classes. In Judy Wise's class we learned how to stencil our family photographs. Here is a stencil I cut from a 1940's photo of my mother catching a large fish off the Florida coast. I sprayed the stencil on collaged paper, collaged cut-out swimsuit and fish on top and covered everything with bees wax for a rich, textured look.

Melissa Hackmann taught us how to make accordion books and use them for sketching.

Albie Smith helped us create fabulous decorated papers and this book with multi-colored pages.

Jacqueline Newbold demonstrated how she uses watercolor in her travel sketchbooks. I learned
new watercolor techniques and ideas for keeping a travel journal.

Flora Drawn and Collaged Nature Gathered Challenge

The layering of paint, collage and line drawings interests me lately. Here is my interpretation of our Nature Gathered flora challenge.