Bits of Sante Fe

I'm back home from Santa Fe, New Mexico with tons of images to share. We had a fantastic mixed media retreat with some amazing women!
Santa Fe has always held a visual overload of colors and textures to me. I've traveled there many, many times for gallery receptions over the years. This time I had more extra hours to tour through the galleries and museums.......

Happy Trails Ahead

Off to Santa Fe, New Mexico tomorrow for our Tesoro del Corazon Retreat! Here is a sneak peak at our project. This is a polymer clay tile I made for my sampler. I'll be stitching over the weekend to finish it up!

These images are from a recent plein air afternoon with friends on the Cougar trail at the north end of Daley Ranch in Escondido, CA. 

Late afternoon light on Denna's painting

 my painting 

and Donna's painting....

Helen's new article for Cloth Paper Scissors!

True Story! My art amiga Laurie Mika sat down to paint and this is what happened! 

Here's Laurie's post from FB......

"serious irony!!! Sat down to relax and brought out my little Jane (Jane LaFazio) kit of watercolor supplies to finish up the little masa watercolor technique that Helen just showed us yesterday....and while waiting for it to dry, I decided to peruse my unread copy of CPS....and turn open the magazine and landed right on this article about masa paper watercolor painting by Helen ! How ironic is that!!!"

You can buy this March April issue right now at Barnes Noble,  other book stores and mixed Media shops, or online at  Cloth Paper Scissors

Yippee!! 

Hiking Santa Rosa and Daley Ranch

I've been hiking the trails at Santa Rosa Plateau and Daley Ranch with friends this winter. You know, our Southern California Winter is not like Kansas ......

Santa Rosa Plateau looking east beyond the Adobe on the Adobe loop trail about 4 miles rt

North Daley Ranch  Cougar Ridge, Englemann Oak, Bobcat trails 3.7 miles rt

same view looking west

today's hike with Madeline, Daley Ranch at Cougar Ridge  3.7 miles rt

Demo Snippets

Hola!
I've taken some snippets of my latest demos for you to see. These demos were  featured in my classes at Escondido Adult School, Fallbrook School of the Arts and Palomar College. If you live locally in North San Diego County, CA join up for the next quarter or semester! All of my classes are listed here.

And don't forget to take a look at my workshops....Santa Fe, New Mexico, Irvine, Chicago, New Jersey, Three Rivers, CA...here I come!

and by the way....I'm demoing for Temecula Art League tomorrow evening....5:30 to 8:00pm

 Memories of Kansas

 Baby owl on agave plate

 line drawing collage

 Aloe

 white flower with colored pencil

 non local  color

 white flower with negative painting

Mr. Chicken with blooms

Kansas Vellum Monotype Tutorial

Just returned from Kansas where I spend a wonderful week with my husband. Kansas held some interesting and surprising  sites for me. Walking in the snow, learning how to layer to stay warm, learning how to walk without slipping on ice, starting our old Honda with key "issues", finding many old treasures at antique stores (which will now have to be shipped by my hubby).........

I had time to create a mini Vellum Monotype overlay tutorial for you....enjoy!

 I started out with a Watercolor Monotype that I had created some months ago called "Flight of the Hummingbird" My friend Jane LaFazio inspired me to play with the vellum overlay idea...here is her tutorial 

 This is a sheet of Vellum. I bought a ream of it locally at Kelly Paper. You can find Vellum at most Stationary websites too. I used a felt typed Sharpie Stylo  marker pen to trace out shapes from the monotype. The next step is to color the shapes with colored pencils. 

Here's a look at the tracing process....note how I repeated the shapes in a different pattern than the original monotype.  

 More shapes traced in different areas....

 The finished overlay....the left side curly red shapes took off on it's own! Doodling often does that to you!

Santa Barbara Holiday

My family spend part of the holidays in a magnificent home in north Santa Barbara, CA. There was laughter, singing, playing pool (yes, there was a pool table in the kitchen) in the gigantic kitchen, painting with my niece, just hanging out with everyone.....

 watercolor view from the dining room

 winter leaves at the SB botanical garden

 view from our front yard

Rattlesnake Canyon trail hike....wonderful views! 

 manzanita blossom 

 Rattlesnake canyon hike at the creek

 Boulder at the botanical garden... unbelievable colors!

 Brother John, Sister in law Angela, Niece Alex and Nephew Ben ....my 

New Zealand Family came for a visit

My brother's layout of yummy veggies for dinner 

Ready for the grill.....Tuna  from my friend Ron. He caught it off the shores of Baja, Mexico....so good! 

Agave Light Tutorial #2

Happy Holidays Everyone! 

So....here are the next steps in my 22" x 30" painting called "Agave Light" The reference photos were taken a couple of years ago in my town at a country stop sign intersection. There was a row of giant agaves with beautiful bougainvillea  blossoms intertwined throughout the big grey green leaves. Great cast shadows were abundant.  A must paint situation. This is acculally the second large painting I've completed of this same corner of agaves. My friend Carolyn owns the first one in the series! 

 I painted the negative spaces with greens, blues and then ...at the right moment...dropped in some reds in the middle section. The bougainvillea blossoms were painted as individual shapes of dropped in color. 

and here you can see the  almost  finished bougainvillea blossoms 

  I also darkened the right side vertical cast shadow on the agave leaf. It wasn't showing enough contrast before.....

 On this side I used more yellow in the dropped in color blossom area along with the pinks. 

 I decided to leave more lost edges on this side to show off more of the yellow succulent blossoms.

And here it is...finished!