A Morning Collection - July 14, 2026

🩵 This Painting Started It All!

The enthusiasm for painting hit me in 1986, when I was twenty-one. I was in New York for my cousin's wedding, and my boyfriend — now my husband — and I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There I saw an intriguing watercolor: Prendergast's Umbrellas in the Rain. Oh, all the beautiful shapes of color! Looking at it just made me happy — so happy that I bought the poster in the gift shop and hung it in my room for my senior year of college.

As it turns out, I needed one more credit for my Communications major, so with my Prendergast painting in mind, I took a watercolor class. After graduating with my decidedly non-artistic degree, I kept taking art classes — in South Florida, in England, and in Chicago, where I studied with watercolorist Jim Wisnowski for four years before moving back to Florida.

All those beautiful shapes of color that stopped me in 1986 were the elements doing their quiet work — and it's exactly what I teach now!

📗 From My Bookshelf

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - a must-have on every artist's bookshelf.

Students of this book show dramatic improvement in drawing skills after only a few days of Betty Edward's instruction.

Why? People have actually studied this book to find out. Students learned to:

see edges (line)

see spaces (negative shapes)

see relationships (of one line to another)

see values

The elements of art! (now you know WHY I love it)

My favorite exercise in this book is the upside-down drawing of Stravinsky by Picasso. It brilliantly shuts down that pesky left brain and shows what can happen when you really do draw only what you see.

I tested this exercise with my elementary school students using a coloring book drawing of the Mona Lisa.

✨ "The question is not what you look at, but what you see." 
— Henry David Thoreau✨