October Blog 10/30/2024

The Teachers’ Workshop is over. It is 5 ½ days including lunch (so no one is off schedule). Two people had allergies, making it far more challenging.  However, we got to everything except my posing, (so they could teach how to do people easily.) Guess what!  Me posing in ghastly outfits is actually in PBS Season Four!  I have never been willing to do that hideous outfit for a PBS series, but it’s so good for learning, I had to include it. It’s totally embarrassing, but it works. 
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Here’s how the fundraising for Season Four of Pocket Sketching on PBS is going. We are at $12,000 of $30,000 with $18,000 to go.  Thanks for your help!  I think you’ll love Season Four!
 
Each person who contributes $100.00 to WGVU (a 501©3 not-for-profit) receives 5 of my sketches to correct (my Fix ‘Ems), a link to my new video on how to fix them and a tax credit at the end of the year. If you send $200.00 or more, you receive 10 sketches. (There’s no upper limit, but 10 sketches to fix is a lot!)  Here’s a suggestion from “The Teachers.”  You get together 5 friends at $20.00 each and one person sends it in, gets the tax credit, the 5 sketches and the link. Then you get together to correct them as a group.  ​

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DONATE HERE

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I could not get to sending out my 'Fix Em's' to you during the Teachers' Workshop: simply exhausted every evening after we had dinner together (fun socializing)! I'll be mailing out your sketches and the link today.

Coming up with great tips is not always easy, basically because I don’t get to talk with you to see what you want. Please send a suggestion: something that’s a problem for which I might have a solution.  You’re welcome to send me a scan of the results. Margie Beckett is the first person to send me her corrected sketch. Look at the difference! (And send me yours!) This is a terrific exercise!  The problem is almost always contrast of value, color or focal point (or any combination).  By doing the correcting, you will see how important contrast, color and focal point are - and how to fix ‘em!

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The Teachers group gave me this tip. When you sketch clumps of flowers, the flowers are clumps - not individual flowers. (Remember, you are capable of focusing on any pinpoint). The object here is the clump. The minute you switch to an individual flower, you take the focal point to that one flower, not the total effect. Here are three sketches: One has individual flowers (took forever to do). And two sketches with flowers in clumps as you see them (far faster and effective).

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As long as I am hounding you to help fund PBS Season Four, I'll be sending you tips. Next time my tip will be on how to get things done if you are a proscrastinator or have ADHD like me.

Speaking of what works, I like to be incognito. I love teaching Pocket Sketching because it's such a breakthrough for so many people. It's meditative. It's artistic. It's creative. So many things. And I like to stay totally under the radar.

This morning I was finally able to go for a hike in my favorite place for 28 years. No roads. No cars. No houses. No cactus. It has been possible to discreetly 'take a whiz' in heavy cover. Today, for the first time ever, a person recognized me from the PBS series and simply hung out. I couldn't get away! Is this what happens to Carol Burnett? New experience.

Happy Sketching! Happy Escape!!!
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