Well shut my mouth!

Here I went on a rant in my last post about artists who don’t post to their blogs regularly, and then I go off and leave you for 11 days! 
In the meantime, I have been very busy (by which I don’t mean to be making excuses, just preparing you for a long post).
Since my last post, CrazyLake Art Gallery held its opening reception for the Secret Palace, Secret Garden exhibit.  Two awards were given:  Best of Show (Representational) and Best of Show (Abstract).  My mosaic, If There Were a Garden… was awarded Best of Show (Representational)!  The judge was Gretchen Ten Eyck Hunt, winner of the Best of Show award for the  Art in Bloom exhibit in March.  See more about Gretchen and her artwork here.   
And I also discovered a wonderful concept called the Virtual Paint Out.  I ran across the blog of an artist from Kentucky who has organized this – by using Google Maps Street View, you can go anywhere in the world and find a charming scene to paint – the virtual version of painting en plein air!  He chooses the location, and then you go find a scene you want to paint by searching through the street view.  For the month of June the location is New Zealand (they aren’t usually that large an area).  I jumped on board (because I’m impulsive like that).  You can see the scene I chose on Google Maps street view here, and this is the finished watercolor:



7” x 10” watercolor on Arches paper



This is really such a wonderful idea – now there are no more excuses for not practing your plein air studies!  (Although I’m pretty sure I’ll come up with something.)

Technorati Tags: Virtual Paint Out,New Zealand,Secret Palace Secret Garden,If There Were a Garden,plein air