Need Some "Zen" In Your Life?!

Enjoy An Imaginary Visit To A Japanese Garden!

Stroll along the statues and koi pond.

Feel the gentle breezes sweeping cares and concerns away.

I hope you'll come and join me, Laure, for a wonderful visit....more class information can be found by clicking here. The class is now open for registration. 

It's Time For A Visit To Autumn's Garden!

 

Autumn has arrived and there's a chill in the air!!

Well, actually, I think maybe the humidity has just dropped as the high for today is suppose to reach 92º in Florida! Still, you can see and feel the changes....you just really have to be paying attention. Of course, many of you have really begun to feel the chill and see the changes.

And all this means it's time to start preparing for An Imaginary Visit to Autumn's Garden! This class is scheduled to begin on November 18th and run through December 16th. There will be one assignment each week.

For more information and to register for the class, please click here. If you're interested in registering, I suggest you not wait as this is one of the really popular classes over at Imaginary Trips!

New Fall Classes Starting At ImaginaryTrips.com!

Gosh, it seems odd to be writing Fall when it's still hotter than blazes outside! All the same, the new classes start next week over at ImaginaryTrips.com!

An Imaginary Trip to Paris will begin on Tuesday, September 6th. You can find more information by clicking here.

An Imaginary Trip to New Orleans will start on Monday, September 12th! It will be a whole lot of fun in that great city. Please click here for info on this trip!

Also starting on Monday, September 12th, is Artful Journaling: Foundations class! For more information on getting started with watercolor journaling, please click here!

Please let me know of any questions you may have.

Thanks!

Laure

A Secrt Garden Gate?

Secrt [Sic] Garden Door
M. Graham Watercolors
and Ink
3.5 x 8.5 inches

As we walked to the trolley each day in New Orleans, we passed this really cool doorway. It led to someone's backyard. There was a house, a garage and other structures back behind the doorway, but for my purposes, I chose to edited them out.

I've always been enchanted by the idea of a secret garden. Maybe it has something to do with Alice In Wonderland or Harry Potter's adventures.  Whatever it is, I seemed to be drawn to unusual doors and gates—they are a portal for my imagination.

The title "Secrt Garden Door" is a typo. My right brain was writing creating and it doesn't know how to spell. So I've decided you have to know the "proper" spelling of secret to gain into into my "secrt" garden! Who needs that extra "e" anyway?!

(And as a wise woman once shared with me...if you can't fix it, feature it!)

This was completed with M. Graham watercolors and ink in my NOLA sketchbook. If you're interested in joining me for a real adventure in New Orleans, please click HERE for information about NOLA Live!

For those of you who are interested in learning more about creating journal pages and using watercolors, Artful Journaling: Foundations and Explorations has been added back to the schedule over on ImaginaryTrips.com. Click HERE for more info on the journaling classes.

Happy Weekend, Y'all!

Christmas....In July?!

Yes! Christmas in July! Why? Because if you're like me, you have dreams of creating your own designs at Christmas time every year. You realize on the 18th of December that it's probably NOT going to happen. Again.

So this year, I decided to do a MINI Christmas In July class! You can find more information here. It's a 4 week class with a creative prompt each week as well as a video demo covering some aspect of making the artwork card-ready for the holidays.

Come and join the fun! Class starts tomorrow.

Interview #12--Meet Laure Ferlita!

I first "met" Laure Ferlita online...no big shock there...and the better I know her the more impressed I am at her creativity, drive, organization, talent and helpfulness! If you've taken one of her classes, you're lucky enough to know her even better.

This glorious piece is one of Laure's small watercolors--check her website for more!

Laure is an accomplished watercolorist living in sunny Florida with her best friend and husband, Chris, as well as a host of critters. She fell under the spell of painting watercolors at the age of 15, as she watched a woman painting a Macaw parrot at an art show. However, it was to be years before Laure actually started to paint.

After a lengthy recovery from a car accident in her mid-20s, Laure decided to go in Graphic Design. As computers had not yet revolutionized the industry, Laure went to a trade school to learn to use an old-fashioned t-square, paste-up board, ruby acetate and a wax machine. (For those unfamiliar with those items, please use Google!)

Fast forward through 20+ years of design work for Fortune 500 companies to late 2007, when Laure learned her job was being outsourced. The opportunity to make a break from the bleak, gray cubicle walls presented itself 2 years earlier than she'd planned. Since Laure had been scheming and dreaming of an escape from Corporate America at the end of 2009 anyway, there was little doubt she was on her way out the door to another chance at an artistic life.

After some time off and the chance to get a read on her internal compass, Laure found herself with an unusual idea—the possibility to paint virtual locations without having to travel! After numerous conversations with artists, computer geeks, and friends, Laure decided to make a go of it. Loving travel, watercolors and journals, she couldn't think of anything much better than a life that combined the three and shortly afterwards, ImaginaryTrips.com was born. 

Imaginary Trips has met with uncommon success and continues to grow in leaps and bounds with trips and visits to more than a dozen different locations as well as the Artful Journaling series that helps artists get started with watercolor journaling. Now, 18 months later, the sibling company, ImaginaryTripsMadeReal.com has just launched with an inaugural trip to New Orleans in November 2011. These adventurous trips are designed to allow the artist to take their newly honed skills to actually paint live in the locations originally painted virtually.

She even makes garden gloves look beautiful...

 So let's get right on to the interview!

Q - How long have you kept a journal, and why did you start?  

A - Well, I've kept a written journal seen my late teens. It wasn't until about 5 years ago, when I saw some beautiful journal pages that incorporated both art and the written page, that I realized I was missing out on some fun! After just a few tries at combining art with my written thoughts, I was hooked!

Her skill with watercolors is astounding...

 

Q - You’re a wonderful watercolorist—did the journal come first, or after? 

A - I've been painting for 20 years. Journaling was a tough nut for me to crack....I have purchased dozens of beautiful journals throughout the years, each time thinking "This is the one! I'm going to fill this one!" However, those beautiful, pristine pages held me captive for the longest time. As a recovering perfectionist, I just knew I would mess them up! It wasn't until I made my own journals and started filling them, that I moved past the paralysis of the white page.

Q - How did you come up with the idea of imaginary trip journals?  (I’m using a bit in this chapter, which includes travel journals, and mentioning your classes.)  

A - Imaginary Trips came about because of conversation with a cyber friend. This friend asked me if I taught and I replied "no, not yet." She next told me she would soon be moving to Europe, and if I was interested, she would host me! I decided I needed to get busy with the teaching, except I couldn't find any local venues for my classes. So I decided to go virtual. After running the idea by several artists, friends, and a couple of computer geeks, Imaginary Trips was created! 

Q - How long have you been offering them?  

A - Imaginary Trips has been offering classes since September 2009. There is a full lineup of classes for the next six months now at ImaginaryTrips.com, with a few more still to come. A quick Christmas in July starts on July 7th and then in August, we're going to Italy, then Paris and the NOLA! 

Q - Do you do much actual travel?  

A - I used to have travel quite often when I worked in Corporate America. Most of 2009 and 2010 have been dedicated to getting Imaginary Trips up and running.

I will be getting in more travel now as I have just launched a new venture, Imaginary Trips Made Real! This new company gives artists the chance to paint on live location using the skills acquired in the online classes.

Once again, the new company has been met with great enthusiasm. The inaugural trip to New Orleans in November 2011 only has two spaces left! I am so excited to begin traveling again and in the company of other artists! If anyone is interested in more information on the trip, they can visit www.ImaginaryTripsMadeReal.com.

This is one of Laure's evolving kits--she tells me she's tweaked it and moved on to new supplies, but still considers this very workable.  You can click on it to see things more closely.

Q - How do you choose what art supplies to suggest? As if people were actually traveling?  What do you tell them to get?  

A - When I first started to learn to sketch on location, I would haul half the studio with me (whether I was going to my own backyard, the beach, the mountains or another country)! I quickly learned that less really is more—all that stuff gets h-e-a-v-y! I also began to realize it seemed to come down to a few choice tools I used over and over. I didn't need the vast majority of the stuff I was dragging around! One of the things that helped greatly with this was realizing that I was going to sketch, or to capture the essence of a place rather than a finished painting created on location. By identifying the activity as sketching or plein-air painting, I could then  sort out the equipment I needed for my adventure. 

For someone new to sketching, I suggest using the same sketching tools over and over again whether they're going to the backyard, around the block or to the other side of the world—a basic palette, journal and a few well chosen tools like a waterbrush, mechanical pencil, white eraser, etc., permanent black pen and a white gel ink pen. Learn the capabilities of those tools by pushing them to see what they can and cannot do. Test each item thoroughly to see if it has enough value to stay in the kit. If you don't use a tool, why haul it around with you?

You can see Laure's strong design background in many of her journal pages.

As I've identified things that I needed on location, I've added in those items. An example of this is a clear wax crayon to use as a resist. It's great for saving highlights and simple shapes like clouds. This saved me from trying to mask, reclaim or lift the highlights through scrubbing or scratching! Keeping your equipment to a minimum and knowing your tools intimately is one key to being successful sketching on location—whether it's virtual or in the real world!

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And a personal note to me from Laure, which I'm including because she appreciates our fellow journal keepers: 

Kate, I would like to take a moment and say thanks to you for this fantastic book and the opportunity to help people realize the fun there is in journaling, whether on location or at the kitchen table. I am so very proud to part of this book as well as humbled to be in the company of so many fabulous artists!  I know you feel strongly about journaling. In the last five years, I've come to share those feelings as well. I simply can't imagine not keeping a journal. Again, thanks for including me and a tip of the hat to you for creating such a FANTASTIC book, the group blog, Facebook group and resources to help any artist get started or re-engaged with journaling!

-----------------

Thanks much, Laure, it's my pleasure, and I'm delighted to share you and your work with everyone!


Again, don't miss Laure's website: 
http://www.laureferlita.com/LaureFerlita/Home.html

Or her blog:
http://paintedthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/


Or her wonderful classes! http://www.imaginarytrips.com/ImaginaryTrips/Welcome.html

Video: Using One Pen in Place of Three!

When I find a tool this good, to replace several...I just have to tell everyone!

Disclaimer, I nor ImaginaryTrips.com have any association or affiliation with Duke Pens. Please purchase and try at your own risk.

It's Time To Celebrate Spring!

Not only is Spring finally getting underway, the Spring Schedule for Imaginary Trips has been posted!

We'll be going on "An Imaginary Visit to the Garden!" starting Thursday, April 14th and the Artful Journaling classes, Foundations and Explorations are starting on Tuesday, April 19th!

Come and join me, Laure Ferlita in the fun! For more information, you can visit the links above or visit the i•Trav•e•logue here.

Day Pretties

Watercolor, Ink and Stamps
3.5 x 8.5 inches
Handbook Watercolor
Sketchbook

Have you ever created a page and it seemed lacking, like something was missing? Maybe it didn't have the oomph you thought it would have or it just looked unfinished?

This page was suppose to sizzle with all that fun, bold yellow pigment, but when I finished (before I added any background) it just didn't have it.

The most obvious fix seemed to be to add a background, but what? I had just created a page with amaryllis (here) and used text as the background and I didn't want to repeat myself. I let the sketchbook sit open on my desk so that I could see it each time I walked by.

Finally, I decided to go with stripes to help emphasis the long stems. As Kate says, "meh." I didn't much like the stripes. So out came the black pen and then I added black stripes. Still didn't like it.

Leaving the book open and continuing to study it, I had about decided it was going to have to live as it was. A little later, I was prowling around in my study on the hunt for an unrelated item when I stumbled across some stamps......and a light bulb came on.

I retrieved my sketchbook and went to work. I used tracing paper as a "shield" and stamped the background. In a few places, I drew in the stamp shape rather than try to cut a shield.

There are things I will do differently next time, but I really had fun with the process and evolution of this piece. Sometimes, we have to get outside of "normal" solutions and reach for something new to make a page successful!

The Art of Collage (Designing the Page)

Imaginary Trips' Parisian Cafe Collage

Hi, there! I'm Laure Ferlita. I'm so excited to be one of the artists in Kate's book. (Thanks, Kate!) I host Imaginary Trips, and we often work on collaging bits and pieces of art into a cohesive whole. Designing a collage page can be a fun way of combining several quick vignettes from a holiday/vacation, a walk around the neighborhood or simply different days of the week.

Even on Imaginary Trips, you don't always get a great seat at the cafe or perhaps your view is blocked. Other times, you may be moving so quickly that all you have time for is to snap a picture and promise yourself you'll paint it later. You arrive home to open all your images only to find that what you thought was going to be a super shot didn't translate into such a great photo after all.

It's quite fun as well as a challenge to weave unrelated elements together to tell a new story! By using brief moments wisely and/or utilizing the "good" parts of photo images from a holiday, we can often come up with an interesting journaled page. It may only have meaning to us, or it may be entertaining for the viewer, depending on our goal for the page.

The image above is a collaged page that combines elements from 4 images in and around Paris. Together, they appear to tell a "story" of a bored bistro waiter and a cat near a Metro sign when in fact the waiter was very busy, the cat was no where to be found and the bistro sign was on the other side of the city!

Some of the guidelines I use to create a collage page:

• Use like colors even if they are not in the actual place or image you’re adding to your journal. In the example, the colors repeat in the red signs as well as the waiter and sign post. The cat and the wall are similar in color too.
• Ff you’re working from photos, remember, this is your artistic journal you’re working in—it doesn’t have to look like the photo! Interpret the image as you remember it!
• Repeat similar shapes where possible. The rectangle of the Metro sign and Bistro sign echo each other. The long pole of the Metro sign and length of the waiter repeat each other.
• Keep the time of day consistent (day or night). The greens of the trees in the background of the Metro sign give you the impression of daylight as does the light around the waiter.
• Keep strong directional light consistent (cast shadows). 
• Remember to play and have fun—these are guidelines and not rules!

There are several ways to approach a collaged journal page. You can wait until you're home from vacation and pull bits and parts from various photos, you can start a page and let it develop on its own as you travel around, or create a "theme" for the page. Look for unusual signage, people wearing hats, animals you see, flowers, birds, windows, etc. The ideas are endless!

I hope this will inspire you to try your hand at building a few collaged journal pages! For more tips, please download a pdf on collaging here.

A lifesaver of a fantasy journal!

Hi all--as I'm sure you know, journals don't HAVE to be serious.  It's wonderful to record our travels, study nature, deal with life's challenges, but you can just kick back and have FUN, too.

Many of you have already seen this set on my Flickr, but it's a little accordion journal I made up to help me get through a particularly rough patch a couple of years ago.  It helped my husband, too!  We needed badly to escape family problems and stresses when his mother was in the last stages of dementia, and although we couldn't REALLY escape, this little, silly journal with its cartoonish, colorful images brought us a laugh more than once.  Try it!

We had an imaginary truck, an imaginary cat named Jax (my REAL ones don't care for travel thank you very much!), and all the time and sunsets in the world...

Yes, it DOES remind me of Rolling Homes: Handmade Houses on Wheels, a book I've always just loved.  Turns out Joseph did too, we'd both bought it back in the late 70's, long before we ever met...

(One of these images made the cover of Sketchbook Confidential, too!  I had fun, AND stayed sane.  Relatively...)


Correspondent Roz Stendahl created International Fake Journal Month, when you are encouraged to make a journal on anything you like--travel to somewhere you've never been, be someone you'll never be, whatever you like!  Read more about it here.

And of course our own Laure Ferlita created the popular Imaginary Trips classes, which everyone raves about!  I'd love to take on myself...more on these SOON!