Driving Around the French Countryside

We spent a day driving through the Southwest part of France coming across some very beautiful towns and sites.  This area of France is known for pâté de foie gras.  We saw geese throughout the countryside.  We even saw statues devoted to geese in the town of Sarlat.

A page from my watercolor journal

A page from Helen's watercolor journal

The Fun Continues

Helen and I continue our journey to Sarlat, beautifully well preserved medieval town in the southwest of France.  It is an area rich with history and delicious food.  Think fois gras! (more about this in my next blog post) Since it started to rain, we found a comfortable cafe and painted in our journals and made some postcards to send to family and friends back home.  Here is the view from our cozy cafe:

Here is the postcard I painted while enjoying a warm cup of French coffee:

If you would like to join me on a painting holiday, please check out my upcoming trip to Orvieto, Italy!

More Fun with Fun!

Next on our journey, Helen, our friend, Agnes and I went to Spain for happy hour.  Agnes drove us to the tiny French border town, Hendaye, deep in Basque country.  Here we caught a ferry for 5 euros that took us on a very short ride into Spain.  We arrived in time to walk around the charming town of Fonterrabia, complete with cobble stone streets and a beautiful church at the top of a hill.  As the sun set, we drank sangria in the old town square, painting in our journals.  I loved all the different colored doors in the old town square.  I also loved that we could buy a drink of sangria and the bar didn't mind that we took it out into the square where we were sitting, drinking and painting and enjoying the church bells ringing as the setting sunlight glowed in the town square.

Mixing Fun with Fun

Helen and I traveled to France, Spain and Portugal to paint and do a bike tour.  We took our watercolor art journals along with us and found fun places to relax and paint.  One of our first stops was Saint Jean-du-Luz, a cute fishing village in the southwestern part of France.  This area is known for it's Basque influence, sea food and beautiful, sandy beaches.  We painted postcards to send home to family and friends.

Postcards from Saint Jean-du-Luz

Helen's postcard of boats in the port.

Pinterest

Keeping a Watercolor Travel Journal

 Part of the joy of traveling to new places is to take some time to paint in my watercolor art journal.  This is my first time visiting Lisbon, Portugal.  I am enjoying walking around this colorful city  Here is a page in my journal of the cute trolley car.  This is what I love to do - paint plein air!

Fun Ideas for your Watercolor ART Journal, Part 3

I am always looking for fun, unique ways to add to my watercolor art journals.  While I travel, I always pick up brochures, free maps, coasters, wine labels...  Then I add them to my journal pages.  I also paint little paintings of what I see along my journey.  These all create a lasting memory more precious than any photo album.

Try these ideas!

· Doodle or create Zentangles.

· Connect your writing and glued items with lines, dots and squiggles.

· Collect and add business cards, tickets, postages stamps, cut out words and photos from brochures, wine labels, paper money and postcards from your travels.

Fun Ideas for your Watercolor ART Journal, Part 2

Here are some more ideas for how to add interest, color and creativity to your watercolor art journal.  These are some of the things that I will do to the back of the page in my journal.

· Pre-paint with a light watercolor wash of cobalt blue, permanent rose and transparent

       yellow watercolor paints for a colorful journaling background.

· Journal your thoughts and about the area you are visiting.  Be sure to include the date.

· Journal about the area, weather, new friends and events.

· Using an archival glue stick or matte medium, glue collected vacation ephemera to your journal pages.  Overlap and connect object.

· Paint the page with black gesso before adding things.  Use white gel pens on this page.

Paint a collection - here I did a study of barns and buildings 

Fun Ideas for your Watercolor Art Journal

Everyone loves a fun art journal!  I thought I would share some of my ideas about how I add to my watercolor art journals to make them interesting, creative and fun.  I started keeping art journals in 1991 and along the way I have accumulated many ways to mix watercolor painting with mixed media.
I encourage you to share your ideas too in the comment section!  Thanks, Jacqueline

· Paint a watercolor painting.

· Give the painting a title.

· Draw a line around the painting following the edges of the painting.

· Ink all the value changes in the painting with a permanent ink pen.

· Write about the time, place, location and people you meet along the bottom and/or edges of the page.

· Paint on another piece of watercolor paper or different type of paper and glue it on the page.

· Make a frame with artist tape.  Paint a colorful wash of watercolors.  When dry, pull it off and use this area to add thoughts.

Art Unraveled 2015, Phoenix, Arizona

I always loved the words of the Girl Scout song, Friends.  "Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other gold."  This is my second year teaching at Art Unraveled and I am making new friends as well as catching up with old friends.  Art retreats rejuvenate my soul!  Everyone is so creative and full of inspiring ideas.  If you need a shot of creativity, this is the place to be.

I met Kristin in my Seattle CREATE art journaling classes.  She shared with me her journal that she put together on a resent trip.  It makes me feel so wonderful to see how she implimented the ideas from the class into a beautiful travel journal.  I wanted to share a few pages of her watercolor art journal with you :)

Success!

Check out my YouTube of this beautiful caterpillar going through it's metamorphosis!

Playing in my Journals

I have been enjoying getting organized for my upcoming classes at the Art Unraveled in Phoenix and playing around with some of the techniques that I will be teaching.
Summer Vacation Art Journal - filled
Watercolor Art Journal: Supplementing and Complimenting - 2 seats left
The Wonderful World of Color - 4 seats left

Look at these fun journal pages!  Here is what we are going to do with black gesso.

Moving On

As of today, three of the caterpillars have gone on to become chrysalises.  I was lucky enough to watch one go from the hanging "J" formation to becoming a chrysalis.  She began to contract and expand, pushing from the inside out.  It looked painful and this part lasted for awhile.  But once the skin parted and began to shed from the bottom up, it took just seconds to transform into a gorgeous lime-green new creation complete with beads of gold.  At this time the caterpillar actually turns into a liquid mass and totally transforms miraculously into a different being.

Hanging in a "J" formation

Skin shedding for the last time

Freshly formed chrysalis

Beautiful gold trim

 The other seven continue to eat, explore their surroundings, disappear for awhile (just to get me into a panic, I am sure) and even climb on the walls of the house before returning to the milkweed.  One of them is giant! 

A big one!

Moving Out

Down to 10 caterpillars :(
But they are healthy and big :)!
They are mostly the ones that I raised in my kitchen window on plants.  I cultivated these plants to give away and increase the population of milkweed in the area.  They have eaten most of the leaves off of these young plants so I moved the caterpillars outdoors to the milkweed patch.  They are getting so big!   They move up and down the five foot tall plants with ease.  Any day they should be moving on to the next big adventure in their young lives. 

Monarch Update

Between the outside caterpillars and the ones that I brought into the house, I have found 20!  Someone mentioned that they were probably hiding and now that they are growing and getting bigger, they are easier to spot.  I put grocery netted bags with a drawstring over a few of the plants that have caterpillars to keep spiders, birds and other harmful prey away.  So far they are working!