Small Travel Break
I had a chance to travel to Pennsylvania for my childhood friend Gwenn’s engagement party (watch a cute video of her engagement story here). I haven’t been to visit for 10 years, so it was really nice to see a…
Carolyn A Pappas
Nature and Landscape Art
Tag flowers
One Year Ago Today: New Guinea Impatiens
This was a disjointed sketchbook page, as life got in the way as it often does. I remember going out into the back garden to sketch after a rough day at work due to short staffing. Midway through my drawing,…
Sketchy Sketches
Dismiss thoughts of ‘good, bad, right, wrong, success, failure’ – be spontaneous. -Josh Goldberg Even in my sketchbook, I tend to be very precise and make slow-going, detailed drawings. These two pages were exactly the opposite for a change. I…
Minimalist Art Supplies
A few weeks ago I came across this blog post about how to implement a minimalist strategy with art and crafts supplies. Some of the author’s opinions are a little extreme and I prefer high quality materials even for sketchbook…
Trying out new paints: Prima Marketing Watercolor Confections
Recently I got an email from a reader asking me what brand of watercolor paint I use. I generally use Winsor & Newton and M. Graham, but I recently purchased a new set of watercolors and spend the last few…
Butterflies!
Over Spring Break I delved into my reference photo archive and sketched some butterflies. I have a nice collection of photos, some from the butterfly conservatory and some from outside. I tried to identify the butterflies in the last two…
One Year Ago Today: Sketching a Dandelion
A look back to see what I was doing in my sketchbook one year ago. Even without all my annotations, I remember everything about that experience perfectly well!
Plans for 2017
Above are some pages from my sketchbook when I was thinking about time and time management. For 2017, my goals are simple. First and foremost, I plan to successfully complete my nursing program. Secondly, I want to find a way…
Selection of Pink Watercolor Flowers
Thanks to my membership at the botanic garden (and multiple visits over the summer), I now have a huge collection of snapshots of beautiful, showy, and unusual (to me) flowers to paint. Today I’m taking a look back at some…
Sketching at Magic Wings
Last weekend I visited Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory. I had last been there two years ago, so I was due for another visit. This time though, the timing was not ideal. It was a rainy Saturday and the place was…
Outdoor watercolor sketching on a greeting card
Lately I’ve been trying to expand my skills and get a bit out of my comfort zone. With that in mind, instead of sketching with pen outdoors as I usually do, I decided to paint in watercolor. There is so…
Tower Hill Botanic Garden
My mom, Cate and I visited Tower Hill Botanic Garden for the first time last week. What a treasure of a place! I can’t believe that I’ve never visited in over twenty years of living in Central Mass. There is…