A Maine Storyboard

Just thinking about favorite places in Maine.

At this moment in the background of my mind 

I am hearing the Beatles: 

"Love, Love, Love..."

Hmm...What to do with this? 

Is it a storyboard for some paintings? 

A storyboard for a little book?

Might I add text & turn it into a graphic novel of sorts? 

Hmmm....

Portland Farmer's Market with Maine College of Art

 I spent a day in my beloved old home city of Portland, 

at the downtown Farmer's Market, 

sketching with a Maine College of Art Workshop. 

Above, not the original, as the raw sketch was 

too full of fast, scribbly lines. 

 Also a sketch from the sketch. 

Sketching with a class gave me the bravado to plunk myself 

& my little stool down in the midst of a sea of 

moving people, colors, & sounds. 

What a great way to slow down & to focus 

on one subject at a time.

If anyone was peeking over my shoulder, I didn't notice. 

This is the actual on-location, raw sketch.

Our Lady of Victories, is the monument in Monument Square,      

created to commemorate lives lost during the Civil War. 

Every Wednesday she looks down on the market below. 

I was looking up at her while eating at a sidewalk café table 

on the edge of the sidewalk.

Also on the edge of the sidewalk was Myron 

playing blues harmonica & singing lyrics, 

some traditional, some invented on the spot. 

He played well to the young children

& made them dance. He made me laugh. 

That's a foot operated tambourine!

My New FWB: Favorite Watercolor Book

I'm been making little gifts of dried lavender that I got 

from the local Glendarragh farm & the shop in Camden. 

Purple, violet, plum, lavender, 

periwinkle, mauve magenta 

& crimson hues are calling to me. 

Over the years so many 

of my young girl art students 

chose them as favorite palettes, 

& not just on Valentine's Day.

Such beautiful palettes in Mimi Robinson's book,

Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor. 

Influenced by Josef Alber's work showing color relationships,

 & realizing how much she enjoyed painting color tests before painting subjects, she started using palettes 
in & of themselves as a form of visual journaling. 

 The  book is meant to be instructional, 

but it is beautiful in its own right between her photos, 

the palettes & her representational paintings.

So many watercolor books have overlapping information, 

so I rarely buy them anymore. 

But this book is unique & a pleasant addition to my collection.