Sketch & Paint Watercolor One Day Workshop-December 13

  This event has finished

Snowy Winter Watercolor Greeting Cards

Join us Dec. 13, 2023 at 6:30pm PST

Ready to have a fun hour or two with other creatives painting watercolor? We had a great time last year so let’s do it again! Live online and interactive.

Join me from the comfort of your own home on Wednesday, Dec 13 at 6:30pm PST

Paint along, ask questions about watercolor materials, methods, etc. Get some unique tips and hacks from experienced artists.

Wednesday, December 13

6:30 PM – 8:30 PM PST

Live from Michele’s NW Studio via Zoom

All levels,  Ages 14 through adult

Tuition: $45 for a 2hr. class on Zoom, replays available 

Payable by Zelle, check 

Message me on my Instagram/Facebook or email me (michelec12@gmail.com) with YOUR NAME AND EMAIL to get access to our live interactive watercolor workshop on Zoom.

Sketching
What’s your favorite water soluble ink?

What’s next?

After I receive your tuition, name and email address, I will send you preliminary instructions and handouts.

I will send you the Zoom link a few days before each Wednesday, 6:30pm PST, (December 13 and/or January 3)

You will need:

A stable Wi-Fi connection 

A laptop with webcam, tablet or smart phone

Optional: AirPods, headset

About 5 minutes early each Wednesday, you may join the Zoom meeting. I will let you in from the waiting room. Make sure your video is on and your audio is off until you want to speak. Smile and wave to greet your art friends. Text where you’re from in the Chat.

For approximately the next two hours:

1. Enjoy the demonstrations by Michele
2. Paint along (have paper, paint, brushes and water ready)
3. Ask questions about watercolor
4. Try using a water brush. Pentel Japan Aquash Water-Brush set of 3 types   https://a.co/d/5NhBF0d

If you want to paint along you will need:

Two pieces of paper, one mixed media and one 140# CP watercolor 

Water soluble  Ink—either a fountain pen, dip pen, or office type pen

Watercolor paints and brushes (see #4 above)

Just use what you already have. Here are some options. 

My Instagram 

https://www.instagram.com/michelecooperart

My Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/ArtMicheleCooper

Can’t wait to see you soon !

New Prompts for EDiM

For those who wanted to know, here are this year’s daily prompts for EDiM 

Why not try out daily sketching for a week? Join the EDiM Facebook group and post your daily art!

Have fun with this!

Michele

UPDATE! Classes added to Seattle USk 10x10 Workshops

UPDATE!

The response has been phenomenal to our upcoming USk Seattle 10x10 Workshops! Thank you so much, sketchers!

All of our classes are full and registration requests keep coming. In response to that, we have added classes so that those on the extensive wait list will not miss out.

My original workshop runs from 9:00am-12:00 noon on May 20.

There is now an additional class the same day from 2:00-5:00pm at the same location.

More info on my class here. http://michelecooper.blogspot.com/2017/01/class-8-visual-journaling-sketching.html

I know that May seems a long way off, but the list for the second class is already starting to fill up. So please register as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

Materials list will be sent once your registration is confirmed.

Class 8 - Visual Journaling: Sketching a Montage - Michele Cooper

May 20, 2017

Location: Starbucks Roastery at Melrose and Pike

Two sessions:

A. 9:00am-12:00 noon

B. 2:00pm-5:00

Registration and more information on all the workshops

Seattle 10x10: Discovering Your City One Sketch At A Time

Workshop Announcement--Explore our city of Seattle

Urban sketching is a way to combine drawing and writing. We cultivate the ability to be in the moment while standing apart as an observer. Not only do we record our drawings, thoughts, and observations for ourselves, we then post them online to share with everyone. Our motto is "See the world one sketch at a time".

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Urban Sketchers, an unprecedented program of one day workshops is being offered in major cities worldwide. Each city will offer ten workshops by ten of the area's artist instructors.

I am honored to be among Seattle's USk instructors.

Come to Daniel Smith, Inc, in Seattle on Saturday, January 28, to meet all the instructors and a free preview.

11:00am to 1:30 pm

Join me on May 20 for my workshop on Visual Journaling, see details below

Registration and more information on all the workshops

Seattle 10x10: Discovering Your City One Sketch At A Time

Class 8 - Visual Journaling: Sketching a Montage - Michele Cooper

May 20, 2017

Two sessions:

A. 9:00am-12:00 noon

B. 2:00pm-5:00

Location: Starbucks Roastery at Melrose and Pike

Workshop Description
Sometimes the sketch location is more than a street view. It's often a collection of happenings; the sounds, the scents, the people, the weather and incidental details. There's much to explore: Melrose market, Starbucks Roastery building interior and exterior, Six Arms Pub, surrounding street views and signage. In this workshop you will learn how to combine drawing, writing, lettering and ephemera to capture your experience while on location.

During this workshop you will learn:

• four basic layouts for composing the page
• easy lettering tricks for headlines and narrative
• how to make simple figures in just six brushstrokes 
• how to combine multiple sketches with narrative and turn your observations into reportage. 

You will use/practice/refine these new skills in guided exercises on location.

Instructor will bring several examples of her sketchbooks in a variety of formats for inspiration and reference.

Transportation to Workshop Location: 

Melrose and Pike, Starbucks Roastery

Our location is the lively Melrose neighborhood on Capital Hill, just a 4 minute walk from Seattle Central College or 5 minutes on foot from the Washington State Convention Center.

For those visiting from out of town, you can easily get there on foot or by car, bus, uber or taxi. Check out this trip from Pike Place Market to the Starbucks Reserve Roastery - 1124 Pike St, Seattle, WA,  on @rome2rio: https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Pike-Place-Market/1124-Pike-St-Seattle-WA

Lunch Break Sketching-What's for Dessert?

Join us and find out what's for dessert!

Plein Air at Waimanalo

Are all beaches the same? Although a few things were different, like the 77 degree weather, the surfers, the ironwood trees and the soft, deep, caramel colored sand; the beach in Waimanalo reminded me a bit of home in the Pacific NW. People walked along the shore, passing the impromptu structures hand built on beaches the world over. I sketched a similar one of these structures at home recently for my Inktober series. Most familiar, however, was the wonderful experience of spending the morning painting with some local friends.

"Captain Howie" performs a beach wedding. Website

I interrupted my initial sketch to follow a wedding couple down the beach and to sketch them at a distance as they conferred with a local officiant known as Capt. Howie. See my last photo below to view his home, known locally as "the Hobbit House". Another couple were having their wedding photos taken on the other end of the beach. See photo collage below.

After a morning of painting and sketching, watercolorists and oil painters shared a delicious lunch in perfect compatibility. Great conversation, hospitality and a serenade on the ukulele rounded out the day. Many thanks for everything, Adrienne and Lawrence. It was lovely. 

Happy painters after a morning on the beach and delicious lunch with our hosts, Adrienne and Lawrence. Photo: (left to right) Me, Adrienne, Mark Brown, John Dixon and (in front) Spencer Chang.

See a brief news clip about the "Hobbit House". http://youtu.be/sUQqLPPEmgs

We walked past it on our way to go painting at the beach.

2015 Best Nine on Instagram

According to the number of "likes" on my Instagram feed, these are the top nine for 2015.

What are your favorites?

I don't know if it's just because they are more recent, but I like the beach "snowman" and the "butterfly" a lot. The butterfly page has 9,746 hits on Flickr with 93 likes so far and has been "Explored". Visit my Flickr Photostream.Here

Every Day in May

Tomorrow is May 1, 2015 and I have a challenge for you: Join sketchers, artists and people just like you in making a commitment to drawing something every day for a month. Here's more: (zoom to read larger)

I plan to do this and post the day's sketch on my blog each day. I may also join the Flickr group and put mine on Instagram as well. If you like, come back to this post to find out the prompt for the day you're working on. Don't worry if you miss a day, just catch up when you can.
This is going to be fun!

PS. I can't wait to see what your favorite food is! If it was Homer Simpson, I would already know. :)

Sunday's Twelve Hour Cold Remedy

Last Sunday, we started out at the beach in Lanikai and ended up eating ice cream in Haleiwa. Monday I realized that I had caught a nasty cold from my little granddaughter. They say that a cold lasts about a week without treatment, with treatment about 7 days. I wasn't so sure about that at 3:30 this morning.

With the national flu map lit up in red from coast to coast, I called the nurse line at our doctor's office on Friday to see if my symptoms warranted going in to the clinic. I was assured that I didn't have the flu, but a bad cold with congestion and got some good advice on how to alleviate my symptoms. The results are good, but not enough to allow me to go out sketching with the USk Seattle group today. :(

12 hours at the end of a nasty cold.

So I sketched what I saw on the kitchen countertop from my vantage point on the couch in the family room. This helped distract me from the depressing first three quarters of the Seahawks game. By the final score at around 3:30 pm I was feeling a whole lot better! The home team won in overtime and they're going to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row!

I just had to celebrate with a giant cupcake decorated with the team colors and "twelfth man" frosted numbers. Suddenly I realized that my color scheme had subliminaly evolved into the team colors, too!

Vast improvement on many fronts in just twelve hours. What a great way to "cure" the common cold!

My DYI Sketchcrawl Along the King Kam Hwy-Part 1

With two little granddaughters to enjoy and lots of shopping trips the past week or two, my correspondence with painting friends at home near Seattle and here on Oahu has been sadly neglected. Aloha, guys, I know the holidays are a busy time for you as well. Hope we get a chance to sketch together in Hawaii before I return to the freezing weather back home.

Meanwhile, my son who does not claim to be an artist, took me on our own independent South Pacific Sketchcrawl yesterday. ( Is it a crawl if you drive from spot to spot?) I'll post more pages tomorrow, but for now:

I sketched in my Stillman and Birn Beta while Matt used a stylus and an app on his smart phone. 

The wind farms and shrimp farm aquaculture exist along the same stretch of the King Kamehameha Highway along the North Shore of Oahu. The wind farms are on hilltops and the shrimp stands sell their garlicky, buttery wares on the right hand roadside on your way to the famous North Shore surfing beaches. 

We caught our first sketch at Kahuku Wind Farm. A wide turnout with an unused approach to another facility provided us with plenty of parking room to get the right angle and sketch from the cool air conditioned leather seats in the car. Luxury! Zoom to read more notes on my journal page. 

We have always pulled over at Giovanni's, unable to resist the promise of the intense flavor of fresh hot shrimp swimming in garlic and butter, piled on top of "two scoop rice". This time we parked on the shoulder about 500 yards ahead of the parking lot at Fumi's. Their shrimp are cooked whole, heads and all and don't seem to have as much garlic as other stands. Each stand has a covered area with picnic tables where customers can enjoy their hot, fresh shrimp. We were there for the sketching this time, however. The scene was a colorist's dream, with a powder blue shack next to a bright yellow van, overlapping an orange tour bus. Then cosmic forces somehow took over and the two vehicles drove off before I could sketch them. Whyyyyyyy! It never fails.....look at something long enough and it will move! Just for that I recorded the flat tire on the pickup/road sign.

Part Two coming up tomorrow!

Sketching, Snacking and Chasing Birds in the Park

Three days of activities with Leila. 

There are lots of things to do at the South Pacific Studio with two sweet little girls to keep up with. This two page spread is about Leila, our five year old granddaughter.  Trust me when I say that we are both sketching nearly every day. There is barely enough time to post our adventures before we are off on another one. These sketches are from Dec 14, 17 and 19. 

We don't have a scanner here so pardon the perspective and focus of handheld iPhone photos. 

Black and White

Perfect! After "Black Friday" comes "White Saturday"!

Not everyone in our area has this, but I saw snow coming down late last night. I hoped there would be a white surprise for everyone when we woke up. Here is what it was like outside the studio this morning at 8:30 a.m.

We still have family staying here with us, but if I can grab a few minutes, I will post any sketches I do on my Instagram. 

Wet roads

It's amazing how much more one sees while sketching on location rather than by just trusting the camera and working from photos at home. During the time it took to do the sketch, a deer emerged from the woods and crossed right in front of me. The school bus got away before I had time to get my camera, and quite a few cars came up and down the hill in each direction.

There's something cozy about painting in the rain. In the car , of course!

Life in the rearview mirror

Micron Pen/WC Wash

Both metaphorically and literally, I was sitting in the ferry line looking back on my day at Cloudstone Sculpture Park.

Clinton Dock Ticket Booth

I still felt like actually sketching instead of serious plein air painting and decided to use materials at hand.  There was the boarding ticket for the ferry which I had just received, and my handy extra pen from my purse on the seat next to me. While waiting for the ferry, I quickly sketched the ticket booth while looking at it through my rear view mirror. Once I got home, I added a few light washes of watercolor.

Looking back...............

Portal Tomb at Carrowmore 7.28.99

Fifteen years ago, I participated in an international cultural exchange between Women Painters of Washington and women painters in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Between the two exhibits, we had time to tour the land and paint on location. I stood under a tree at the Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, and painted this view (above) of a tomb and the distant view of Maeve's tomb.

Work in progress on Friday at Cloudstone. 8.1.2014

 I spent a lot of time reminiscing about my trip to Ireland, while working on my sketch (above) at the Cloudstone Sculpture Park on Whidbey Island yesterday.

Conway with the Anacortes Sketchers

Had a  great day with The Anacortes Sketchers today, since I was free to leave the studio. It seems gnomes are frightened of hedgehogs and I have boot brushes shaped like hedgehogs at the back and front steps to my house. Ha!

So no more gnomes! Hedgehogs are cute, though, huh?

Here's my sketch for the day. Click to zoom. 

Landscape accessories

Sometimes as I'm scouting for possible subject matter, I'll look back through my rear view mirror and discover a little jewel. It's nothing significant other than a few landscape accessories. But the interplay of light/dark and warm/cool is enough to satisfy me.