Is anyone painting out there??

We have been quiet , haven't we!? Well I am sure most of you have been busy with Fathers Day activities, kids and grandkids out of school, classes etc. I want to encourage you to keep up with your sketching and journaling, do it for yourself. It is such good practice plus it puts you in touch with things happening in your life at this moment. You are capturing something forever! Take a minute and look back over your pages or just a page and I bet you will agree with me when I say, it takes you right back to that day or time. 

I have been so busy working in the yard, preparing for some quilt shows along with a couple of artshows that all seem to fall at the same time of year. It is a fun, busy time and I am enjoying every minute.

My pepper dish designs were not picked up, sadly. I would have loved to have dishes with my artwork on them! I hope in the future that will happen. For now its also been alot of hours in my yard, garden and picking fruit. My apricot tree ripened all at once and my peach tree is following suit. I lost two huge limbs of peaches as they could not hold the weight of the peaches although I did trim and thin, obviously not enough. After eating all we could of the apricots I decided that I would make Apricot Brandy instead of jam this year. I took the rest of my apricots and made the brandy, it is sitting in a dark, cool place for a few days or weeks until I strain and put into decorated jars as gifts at Christmas. Here is my page and recipe for my apricot jam. I may use this sketch as a gift tag for the finished gifts. There are so many wonderful ideas for your sketches!! I am posting the steps I did as a reminder for you as you paint.

I started by painting my jar and apricots loosely. Then I photographed this stage, incase I want to use as a tag or label later.

Now I taped the edge of the papter and loosely painted the background in soft greens and yellows, using the my favorite black velvet brush and did loose leaf shapes.

Next I did our leaf press trick after I blocked out a square to keep light for journaling. I also added some details to the jar and apricots. Not over working, keeping the whole page loose and fun.

The final page, well I might go around the recipe with a bit darker trim. I made it look stitched onto the background. I added some journaling around the outside edges and put the Apricot Brandy recipe in the box.

Ok let me see some fruit!!!

Your assignment until we meet again is to be recording some of the beautiful fruits you are enjoying this summer! It is such a glorious time of year with all the varieties of fruits available to us. Whether you are canning, grilling, putting them on ice cream, drinking them, lets share our love of color and fruit.