Calendar Season

Recently, I bought a weekly 2010 planner, and I noticed that

January is "International Creativity Month"!

I decided that makes it the perfect time to offer the first of my two day hand-painting workshops of 2010.

Over the years, I've been working extensively with oils, acrylics, pencils and dry pastels on my images. Before I consider an image "done", I almost always take it to the easel and look at it for a while....waiting to hear from the image itself, if it needs anything more. Sometimes I leave them alone, but rarely. I love to involve my hands in my artwork. Every image is different. Some, I just embellish with a few delicate strokes, while others get heavily painted over every inch. If you've always wanted to try hand-coloring your photographs, and are interested in the workshop, check my website soon for registration details. The first workshop of the year will take place Sat & Sun, January 30 & 31, 2010, here on Salt Spring Island

Fall is calendar season.... I just received a box of 2010 wall calendars I worked on for Sellers Publishing, with images of Venice, Paris and Tuscany. The original images are each 11x11 inches, on fine art paper, hand embellished with pastel and pencil.

The finished calendars look really nice. I packaged one of them up right away, to mail to a friend who was walking in Florence with me when I took one of the photos. It will be a fun surprise for her. Each image, in fact, holds a personal memory, and transports me back to those moments and places.

2010 will be the sixth consecutive year producing images of Europe for Sellers Publishing. As a result, I have accumulated hundreds of finished originals! Someday soon, I will post some of my favorites from the collection in gallery links on my blog. Stay tuned...