Sunshine and Lollipops

Hi Everyone!

Last week I missed posting on here.  It was that kind of week. It's my husband's annual trip north to Saratoga Springs and the annual visit from my BFF.  BFF Bonnie was coming in town and there was prepping for the big week of art and some housekeeping to be done beforehand between working and getting hubby out the door.  If you know me, you know I'm a procrastinator, last minute kinda gal. But I got it done and was ready for some fun!

Bonnie was here when I arrived home from work on Wednesday afternoon, we caught up, did a little grocery shopping (no, I didn't get to the store beforehand) and I cooked us a nice dinner to start off the visit.  Unfortunately, I had to work on Thursday but that gave Bonnie a chance to rest up.

Let me give you a little back story: Bonnie and I love to paint with watercolors and when we get together we try to get out to paint, sketch and draw, (see our  blog: SketchyGirlz) but this year we decided to try acrylic painting.  I was recently inspired by a painting class where I used acrylics as my medium and shared the experience with Bonnie about the class, she naturally wanted to try acrylic painting.

Another back story: In January I had joined an online site Creative Bug that has loads of crafts (knitting, crochet, cooking, jewelry making, etc.) plus videos how-to's and classes.  You've got to check it out! Yes, it does involve a subscription to join but it is WELL WORTH the cost.  On this site is a class by famed artist Flora Bowley called Intuitive Painting which I really enjoyed and thought it would be the perfect art adventure for Bonnie and I to try when she came down for her annual visit.

Armed with video instruction we took a "walk about", taking photos for inspiration and then interpreted the images for the painting process.

 I will not spoil the process for you, but let's say it was WAY out of our comfort zones and took multiple times of viewing the videos to be able to paint in such an abstract way. Bonnie is a realistic painter and I am too pretty much, although I have a more intuitive paint style than her.  She likes to know what the END result is going to be, where I'm more of a go with the flow/intuitive painter. Nothing wrong with either style. Flora's process is very intuitive and somewhat abstract (at least for this lesson) in the fact that this process doesn't really involve a great deal of realism.

Suzy BEFORE: Half way thru process. 

With that said, we dove in and just tried to go with the flow, at times it was easy and at times it was downright hard.


Throughout the process when we would doubt our abilities, we just repeated Flora's mantra "we are awesome for trying this" and we would say out loud what we LIKED about our painting.

Bonnie BEFORE Half Way thru process

Half-way thru the process I think we both wanted to call it quits but we pressed on.  As you can see the half way point was mostly abstract and way out of our comfort zones.







It WAS fun and it WAS challenging and we both were pleased at the final product and we both said we would try it again and are planning another painting using this method.  

AFTER: Bonnie's Final Painting 

AFTER: Suzy's Final Painting

  So all in all, a very successful art adventure was had by the Sketchy Girlz.  Tell us what you think. We'd love to hear your comments. Oh and be nice!

Bee Creative!

Suzy