I'm enjoying playing with watercolors without training wheels. I've never worked without putting some lines down first. Sometimes I get done and wish the composition were a little more balanced (there's no switching things around once the paint is down), but I think the energy and freshness are a good trade off. As I wrote yesterday, it's good to have these vacation spaces to experiment without feeling that a show is looming. I'm having tea on my worktable with a view of the mountains, listening to the radio, and playing with paint today. It's a good morning.

I've been trying to relax in my life lately and be a little bit less of a workaholic. I also think it's good for me to go through periods where I work quickly and loosely. Printmaking is so exacting that I can carry that tightnessback into my painting as well. I find that there’s a sweet spot at the center of the spectrum between too tight and being too sloppy, and what I tend to do is swing back and forth across that line, over correcting one way or the other in almost every piece. It’s the classic Goldilocks search for “just right.”

When I started watercolors, I was afraid of doing “little old lady” watercolors, and I felt that the presence of a strong line made them more sketchy and vibrant and energetic, as well as giving them a different feel from the old fashioned, very precise watercolors. I have mostly stayed with that style, though my lines have often gone from black pen to lighter inks to pencil. But O’Keefe’s simple and vibrant watercolors use no lines at all and simply sing. So after looking up that work of hers, I decided to try a few of my own. I can’t ever get as ascetic and spare and reduced as her gorgeous work. I’m simply too much of a detail painter. But it’s been freeing to use to lines and all and just play with paint. Here are the first four. It’s raining today, as it has been for most of my visit, this being Washington in the late fall. So I’m working from some photos I took on the one beautiful day I got to go out and take a gentle walk (while still fighting a cold). Perhaps if the weather breaks again and I feel better, I can do some on site painting as well.

writing and publishing a book but also how you order your creative life when that's the work that you do. Both books have given me a lot to think about this week. There's a picture of my basket of tools plus books below to celebrate the end of Hang Day.

Speaking of Inktober, I didn't get all of the sketches posted since it was such a busy month. Here's a roundup of some of the ones that slipped through the cracks.

It's been a busy show week here. My show got on the walls at Eclectic Eye and will be there until January 3rd, and we had a lovely opening thrown for us by the EE folks. I haven't had anyone throw me an opening where I didn't have to lug my own wine and snacks over in ages, with the one notable exception of Dixon a couple of years ago (which was such another category of exhibition that it almost doesn't count, but in an amazing sort of way). So it was a great evening. But with the framing and hanging and publicizing and tag making and all the other stuff you do around a show, I made very little art this past week. So it was marvelous to get out Saturday morning with the Memphis Urban Sketchers and just draw and see people.

I tend to get carried away and do a WHOLE WATERCOLOR PAGE most of the time in my sketchbook. I was feeling (maybe leftover from inktober) the urge to be a little more minimal and a little more line oriented this time, so I tried hard to restrain myself.

It was a misty, drizzly morning, and it felt a lot like sketching in Paris or Washington State. I spent a lot of it under my umbrella, balancing that as I sketched, and you can see how the rain drops caught me anyway in the last sketch. I was so impressed that we had a good group of folks coming out on such a morning.

I got to go sit in with Darel Snodgrass for a little bit of Memphis's npr pledge drive yesterday. I got to talk about why WKNO supports local artists in a way I've never heard anywhere else, and I also got to talk a little bit about the Skyward show hanging next week. I hung out for three different breaks during classical music, so of course I took the chance to do an #inktober sketch as well.

Here is a sneak preview of my Skyward show that opens next Friday night, November 3rd, from 6-8pm at Eclectic Eye (242 S. Cooper in Memphis). I'll have more than these, but I decided to put up the first batch on my website today.

I've been doing massive amounts of computer work the last few days, which is never as much fun as making art, but I did manage most of a new, small painting for the show next week as well. I've been working to get more serious about an email list. I've always collected them on my paper mailings lists at shows, but I have a printing press I'm in love with, so I haven't been that serious about using email. However, all of the book publishing/marketing emails I've been listening to lately (I'm thinking ahead to the Mr. Darcy book while I paint for the fall show) have really emphasized the importance of an email newsletter. So I've decided to join the 21st Century and dive in, at least occasionally, when I have shows or other important news.

If you'd like to receive an occasional newsletter, please sign up here:

for my upcoming show at Eclectic Eye in November, but I also enjoyed a good chance to do a print that has been dancing in my head and wanting to get out. It's still in progress, but the first full proof is below. Keep an eye on this space as I work on it and also get back to oils on paper. I've been giving myself a few quiet, slow days to recover from the craziness of last week, but each morning I've gotten up wanting to work on this print for a little while with my morning tea. That's how I know I'm living the life I've wanted to -- vacation is a chance to do more (if perhaps different) work that I love.

sketched her own bees and also a honeycomb design. One of the things I love about Melissa is that she doesn't do the same patterns or shapes over and over again. Everything is fresh. So this teacup is unique, and I love its old fashioned delicacy as well as the generous saucer I can use for my tea spoon or perhaps a cookie. I'm old fashioned in always wanting a saucer, since I use milk (that creamer is the tiny one I found in Paris this summer with a bird on it, and it's gorgeous) and want to stir in the milk and have somewhere to put my spoon. Tea is a ritual with me, a small bit of daily pause and happiness in the midst of my usual busy. I love everything about sitting and having a small pot of tea in the day somewhere.

I'm also trying to make the most of Inktober this year, which I'm usually too busy to really celebrate. I cleaned out a fountain pen I've had and put new grey ink in it that I've been wanting to try, and I also broke out a blue marker for the top sketch. I used markers a bunch several years ago and have gotten completely away from them in favor of watercolor, but they have their own fun, graphic feel, so I'm going to work on reclaiming a bit of marker work this month as well.