Tea Time with Tracey

Today's post is dedicated to Tracey Fletcher King, a wonderful artist and storyteller who shares ups and downs of everyday life in beautiful color at her blog. I first learned about Tracey through Paint Party Friday and look forward to her lovely artwork and laugh-out-loud humor every time I visit her blog. In fact, I secretly wish that not only could I paint as well as her, but that I could also be even half as funny, (OK, even a quarter as funny would be nice).

Sadly, this year has been a challenging one for Tracey, as she is battling cancer. So today the Paint Party Friday community is having a virtual tea party in her honor. My contribution is a still life painting in acrylic that I started while taking Table Top Drawing and Painting with Diane Culhane and finished(?) earlier this week. I decided it would fit the tea party theme nicely and hopefully add a bit of cheer to the party! Something about painting in acrylic sets my inner critic in high gear, but I am determined to get better at it. I find that using color is not always so easy, nor is striking a balance between realism and whimsy as I was aiming for here.

Thank you for being such a wonderful inspiration to us all, Tracey! I hope that you enjoy the holiday season with your family, and that this coming year is full of renewed health and energy for you.

Thank you also to Kristin and Eva for continuing to host Paint Party Friday and provide the opportunity to share our art with such an amazingly supportive and inspiring group of artists.

A week of table top drawing and painting

Three Vases
colored pencil drawing on black paper

Do you ever set limits for yourself that you later realize are somewhat arbitrary and perhaps more than a little silly? I seem to be good at that one. Case in point -- for a long time, I've had the idea that I am not interested in still life drawing and painting. Maybe it's because I had to do so many still life drawings of boring subjects (cones, balls, cubes) in drawing classes long ago. Anyway, because I enjoyed Diane Culhane's Between Speech and Silence Class last summer, I couldn't resist signing up for her latest class, "Table Top Drawing and Painting."

We've been drawing what's on our dinner table in our sketch books, gathering up fun items to draw from around our homes and in general having a fantastic time with what I used to think was boring. I'm seeing more things around me every day to draw and paint.

This painting, done in acrylic on gessoed watercolor paper is giving me hope that I am making progress with acrylics. Diane is teaching us to glaze, using gel medium, leading to some beautiful transparency and luminosity.

I'll be sad for this class to come to an end, but thrilled with the new inspiration it's given me to have fun with drawing and painting the things around me in my everyday life.

Thanks for stopping by! I always appreciate your comments.