August 5th, Lynda at Picture Alaska Art Gallery in Homer arranged a wonderful show for me again.  The next two days I taught a workshop in Lynda's new frame/art supply store with fabulous teaching space.  They were a great group and they really did have fun!

August 26-28, Alaska State Parks hosted a weekend of art- focused events at Byers Lake in Denali State Park, not to be confused with Denali National Park.  42 Alaskan artists came and we had so much fun.  Nancy Angelini was my traveling partner for this adventure, along with my usual crew of Samantha, Eric, Rachel, and Natalie.  The first day a whole group of us(Becky Crawford, Nancy, Susan, Don and Cindy Kolstad, Marybee Kaufman, myself, did I miss anyone?) painted on the deck of the Princess Lodge.  McKinley hid behind clouds for most of this day so I went with the flow and painted the gorgeous clouds.

On Sunday McKinley was out in all of her splendor, no clouds for a good portion of the day.  A rare and wonderful treat.  I stood on the wall at one of the viewing turn-outs(beside the sign that said not to stand on the wall) and painted while bus after bus of entertaining tourists came through and shared the experience.  Hiding in the bushes behind the sign that said, "stay on the path" was Fairbanks watercolorist Vladimir Zhikhartsev.

 Nancy Angelini demonstrating a secret painting technique...

 Don Kolstad and Lt. Governor Treadwell enjoying the show of everyone's works at the end of the weekend.

September 2nd and 3rd, Homer, again, my brave traveling companion Nancy Angelini, and my crew Eric, Rachel, and Natalie.  We had such a fun whirlwind of a trip.  We left Friday morning, made it to Homer in time for Don Kolstad's reception at Picture Alaska, then headed for the harbor.  It was so windy there was a small craft advisory.  Nancy and I were getting really cold until a restaurant near us started piping music to us and the dancing warmed us right up.

 We intended to take some generous sailboat captains up on the invitation to ride along and get pictures of sailboats in the last Homer Yacht Club race of the season, but we had dinner plans and were told the "race" could take a lot longer than expected due to the lack of wind.

After the races, we went to Lynda's house for a seafood feast and then drove home, got in around 4am?!  Like I said, a whirlwind trip.

Scott Burdick and Susan Lyon Workshop

It's funny that my first blog post ever would be about something I've been working toward for years.  Not an end, but definitely a mile post.

Like most artists, I've been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember.  When I decided to pursue art seriously, one of the people I learned a great deal from was Scott Burdick.  I lived in rural Alaska so most of my education came from books and videos.  I designed a course of study for myself, seeking out excellent teacher/artists to study with during workshops and then spending the years in between honing the skills I had learned.

The pinnacle of my art education plan was to attend a workshop taught by Scott Burdick.  I can't even put into words how excited I was when the workshop they were offering was going to be taught not only by Scott, but Susan Lyon also!  I'd gone over the tutorials Susan had on her website, setting up my own version to try to learn the lessons she had generously offered.  I just hadn't heard much of her teaching workshops, Scott seemed to be the one doing more of that.  When I got the e-mail that both Susan and Scott would be teaching this 10 day workshop, I knew it was time to make it happen.  Then the real work began.

The workshop was worth every penny and every day of preparation.  I learned more than I had hoped, the teachers were excellent.  The thing that surprised me most about this workshop was not the wealth of knowledge attained, that I was expecting.  Scott and Susan are excellent artists and teachers.  The thing that most surprised me was how much I enjoyed the people I met in the workshop.  I went hoping to improve my ability to paint and came away with that and much more!

  

More to come later... :-)