OK…so I was actually (who me?) spontaneous this summer and signed up for a www.Joggles.com class with Jane LaFazio, Sketchbooks and Watercolor on Location.  The idea is/was that you go OUT to sketch and sketch from the real thing, not a photo.  I am SO GLAD I did…I’m having a ball, so much so that (as I’ve mentioned before) I signed up for a second class.  This post is about the first class, and one of the early lessons.

So I dropped the son off to run at the high school (this was late summer), and treated myself to tea and sweet at a nearby spot.

Told the child I wanted /needed about an hour.  After dithering about what treat to get, I finally sat down at this table with LUSCIOUS basil.

I briefly considered including the basil in the sketch. I then realized I'd be there 'til midnight if I tried, and decided (who me?) to go simple. OK, to go not as complicated.

Then I finally began to sketch.

A close-up of the cup and tea bag. Don't you just LOVE the cup sleeve, from the Carrabassett Coffee company?

Here is the sketch, done first in pencil, then inked in with a Pitt pen.  Of course, 20 minutes after I arrived I get a call:  “Mom, it’s too hot to run!”  Me:  “remember I said I needed about an hour?”  Then, “you’ll have to wait for me for another half hour…find a shady spot to sit.”  Sigh.

Inked in....cup is too short and not tapered enough, but still OK.

SO…. I packed up my cup and supplies and the rest of the chocolate cake (slurp), and retrieved the child and headed home.  It actually was pretty warm.  Then I set things up at home.  The shadows/light were different, but close enough….

Adding color at home, on the dining table, lacking the usual clutter around my spot.

And the final sketch:

Not too bad for a beginner....the curve of the cup isn't quite off, and the tea bag looks like it is levitating a bit, but not too bad....

Considering I’m just starting with watercolor, I’m pretty happy.  I have discovered that having REAL watercolor paper makes a world of difference, and having little water in the brush makes it much easier to stay within the shapes and not bleed and make yucky stuff! FUN!

If, at some point in the future, I quit travel teaching, this is why:

Too much stuff....

That is one full-size suitcase, three roll-aboards (one for the laptop and projector, one for clothes, one for stuff to sell), a carry bag, two crates of teaching and class supplies, a case of books and pinnable panels for classroom display.  And many, Many, MANY pounds of STUFF.  Yes, my back hurts.  Yes, I bought a larger car so I would feel safe driving on the interstates to teaching jobs (I’ve driven from mid-coast Maine to as far as Knoxville, TN) since I prefer two days  on the road (each way) to one day in airports.  Yes, I bought a larger car so that I can FIT all this stuff in the car and still be able to see out the back.

So…tomorrow I leave for A Quilters’ Gathering in Nashua, NH.  Hope to see some of you there!

Well…. we’ve had a lovely, lingering, late autumn here.  Yesterday Eli, his Cross Country Coach, and a few teammates ran in the Rockland (Maine) 5K “Scare Me” run.  Eli’s “costume” was to wear the rugby shirt he bought in Australia this summer… it was nippy, about 39 degrees, but no wind down on the water.

At the start of the Rockland 5K race...Eli is in the middle of the photo in a light blue shirt with dark under-armor shirt sleeves showing--to the left of the guy in the red shirt who won, the woman in the white shirt who was fastest female, and behind middle-school teammate J.R. ( in jade, magenta, lime and blue--like her colors!)

Rockland Harbor from the Amalfi restaurant parking lot/boardwalk area. Had never been down this way before...beautiful! Looks like a nice spot for a special summer evening out.

Then my camera batteries died.  Eli–WOW!–came in sixth overall, fastest kid, and turned in a 19:40.  Whoooosh…that blur was our son running past!  The top finishers were a tank of a guy who runs an outdoor expedition company, Coach Morse (who ran a marathon last year), a woman who works for the tank, and a guy Coach Morse has been trying to beat for years (and finally did, by mere seconds).  Not bad for a 13 year old!

Then last night, when I took the dog out for before-bed walkies, snow!  He took his first bites of snow, and we went to bed.  This is what greeted us this morning!   Before Halloween!!!!!!

The beautiful maple...fortunately no broken branches, tho Eli just walked the dog and says we may have lost one of the old apple trees out back. The snow is heavy and wet. From the top of the car looks like about 6-7 inches, and still coming down.

And yes, neighbor Alex had already been up the driveway with the plow…. egads!

We've been talking about moving the porch furniture into the shed for winter. Clearly, we forgot. Didn't know that an open-weave hammock (far end) could become a snow-laden sheet!

The pine by the front/kitchen porch

And the view from the living room porch, toward the view. Over the year about half of the really old, rickety log fence (in the middle of the yard...why?) has fallen down. I'm guessing by next year it will be mostly a memory.

So it’s a perfect day to hole up in the studio. Paul fired up the woodstove (in the basement–whole house heat) for the first time, so I will be WARM.  Have to make postcards for a swap and select quilts to take for teaching in NH next week/weekend.  If any of you are in NH at A Quilters’ Gathering, come by and say hi!  And I’m giving a lecture on Sunday!

Point, Click, Quilt! is the title of Susan Brubaker Knapp’s wonderful book which is subtitled “Turn your Photos in to Fabulous Fabric Art.”  And this is a SERIOUSLY overdue review!  I received my copy of the book from Susan in July, just before heading out to teach in Nebraska.  I liked the book so much that I wanted to review it before I went, but felt I really needed to read the entire book closely first….then I got back and life happened!   So now that I have almost (but not quite) dug out from under the accumulated “life happening” stuff, I would like to recommend this book to you.  And offer the disclaimer that Susan is an internet friend and she asked me to have a piece in her book.  However, I’d say all these good things anyway!  Check below for information on winning a copy of this book!

Susan Brubaker Knapp's Point, Click, Quilt!

There are a lot of books out there these days about using your photography as the starting point for your art quilts.  Many of them, alas, make me think of “paint by numbers”–artworks that are slaving imitations of a photo without much thought–fortunately this book is all about thinking.  Susan’s book  begins by teaching you to THINK and to SEE–to improve your own photos so that the process of modifying them into textile art starts with a really good image from the get-go.  The Creativity and Learning to See section talks about one of my favorite things:   actually SEEING what is there, not what you think is there–about learning to really look at the elements of the composition (your photo’s composition) to make it a strong visual image. She covers the basics elements of design, including showing you how to crop a so-so photo into a much better composition, and how you can modify an existing photo to make a better composition in your quilt.

Learning to SEE!

Susan then goes on to “On a Mission:  Photography exercises to build your skills” which has five separate exercises, lavishly illustrated with Susan’s photos.  These exercises show how you can take what I call “reference” photos to put  into practice (and into your imagery) what you learned in the Creativity section.  These two sections are, for me, worth the entire price of the book and more!  They are JUST what you want from a book like this!

Table of Contents. Sorry the photo is a tad blurry...click to see larger.

The “Getting Started” chapter then shows you how to take your photo and turn it into a quilt pattern. Finally, there are sixteen projects, each using a different special technique.  These projects are good learning exercises for those new (and not so new) to art quilts.  Once you have begun to practice SEEING, and interpreting first Susan’s and then your own images in cloth, you’ll be ready to move on to creating your original art.

At the end is a gallery of quilts made from photos to give you an idea how contemporary quilt artists are using photographs to create art.  My quilt of Blue Buoys, made for a Coastal Quilters (local chapter of the Pine Tree Quilt Guild)  Challenge a while back, uses a very tight crop of some buoys in a photo by D. Pitcairn (used with permission) and faces a quilt of an adorable dog made by Pam George.

Blue Buoys (mine) on the left, Peanut by Pam George on the right. Click to view larger.

I’m happy to be able to recommend this book, and so thankful that Susan asked me to be a part of it!  You can order directly from Susan at her website.

LATE NEWS BULLETIN:  I wrote Susan to let her know this post would be going live today, and she said “OH!  I’d love to donate a copy of the book in a giveaway!”  So thank you Susan!  To be eligible to win a copy, please leave a comment below.  I’ll use a random number generator (may be my son!) to  select the winner.  I’d love it if you’d tell me which of Susan’s works you most like…she has a mind-boggling array of beautiful work here (her Gallery page) as well as in her series of six articles on thread sketching for Quilting Arts magazine.  PS:  Susan is heading to Quilt Market and Festival, so I’ll do the drawing on November 9th (after I’m back from teaching in NH, too).

I found it…the last photo of the page with the pitcher and eggs.  Someone in the online class commented that it looked like breakfast. Well, it did!  So I turned it into a journal page about a family favorite:  Waffles!  I’m fairly happy with the way it turned out:

The finished journal page, complete with recipe. Click for larger view.

Back soon with more fun stuff!