My field trip this week came between the torrents of rain and dark clouds.  On a quiet night when Seth was away for work, I took a drive to a local gem I've mentioned before on the blog.  When we were dating Seth and I used to drive through these woods on our way to other places in the Fall when the leaves turn golden.  I remember thinking how great it would be to live closer to these magical woods, to visit more often, to walk among the tall trees whenever I want.  And now, I do!  I am so blessed!

There's also this great little room inside the Nature Center where you can sit and identify all the different birds they attract with feeders.  That's where I plan to go next- once the rain lets up.  (The sky is thundering and hissing as I write this!)  I'd love to just sit in the bird viewing room and draw birds all morning long.  They'd be my live models.  :)

There is always plenty to do in the studio though.  Have I mentioned my October gallery show coming up?  I can't wait to be able to share my new series of oil paintings with you.  One of Seth's good friends has made me two 5x4' canvas frames!  Can you believe it?  I'm so excited to be painting that large again.  Well, excited and intimidated in equal measure...

I'll be on Instagram posting updates if you're interested.  Follow me, and I'll follow you back!

Happy Friday to you.

we be blazin

I really thought it would have been much cooler at 6am when Corrie and I first started setting up the tent for the Lincoln Park art festival this past Saturday.  But no.  We were blazin.  And not in the sense that we were wearing our favorite blazers (eh hem JTB), but more in the sense of sweating through our clothes.  Blessedly enough for us, the temp dropped dramatically in the afternoon and the weekend turned out to be so beautiful!  

Is it Tuesday already?  I think yesterday was a blur...perhaps it was my nap that lasted entirely too long?  So tired from the weekend.

But I have some very exciting things coming down the road that I'm eager to share with you!  Oh and if I met you this weekend at the art festival, I'm so glad you landed here!  There were some pretty amazing people in Lincoln Park (what up Ty and Trace?) and some funny ones like Bob and John (if only I had an hour to sit and tell you THAT story).  And custom portraits!  People be loving those.  I'll be contacting you all soon, I promise.  It's on the list.  Somewhere...

But before I go and start checking things off my seriously ridiculous list of things to do before this next show, I wanted to announce that my originals are all back up in the shop for a few days.  Happy browsing!

My last Art Festival of the season

Back to Galena we went!

This time it was an Art Festival in the vineyards.

My last one!  Phew, I'm glad to be done for the season...these shows are a lot of work. 

Hopefully from now on you'll be seeing new paintings as well as pictures of my adventures.

Here's a few from the weekend with a video at the bottom...

 

Corrie is the best assistant!  I'm lucky to have a friend like her.

Where did this dog come from?  We think he lives among the grapes...

Yes to the bagpipes.  Maybe not so much to the skirts...

I chugged that entire bottle of wine.  CHUGGED it.  Easy.

Cutesy pose. ;)

The show was complete with a grapestomp and a horse-drawn hayrack ride around the vineyard.  How cute is that?