What a past couple of weeks it has been. We went from our daughter's graduation party to the joy of art camp to a family vacation in Colorado. I've spent the last couple of weeks getting caught up on housework and just catching my breath.

Now that my head is back above water, I've bobbed back down into painting an underwater scene. Inspired by my boys fly fishing in Colorado, I decided to learn about and paint what they caught ... a brown trout. We Florida folks are much more acquainted with bass and blue gill, but the running streams of the mountains had such a beautiful allure to them. This trip, I decided not to pack my paints (which is unusual for me). Normally, I enjoy painting as part of a relaxing vacation experience, but I think it was part exhaustion and part just wanting to focus on family time that lead me to leave them at home. Even though I didn't paint or draw a thing, my head was swimming with all of the inspiration we saw. The mountains and fir trees, the deer, moose and cliffs. Simply stunning!

My husband, Daniel and I, find that the anticipation of a vacation can be just as exhilarating as the event itself. Most years, our family makes a little countdown calendar when we are about a month away from a vacation. We sit around the table with Crayola scented or Mr. Sketch smelly markers and each of us draws a numbered page to be torn off. They look a mess and sometimes a page is as simple as the decorated day's number, but it's fun making the countdown calendar and throwing the sheets away each day in anticipation of the vacation.

Learning to paint has been such a treasure, and I love to share the joy of it through instruction. It is not enough to just show the outcome. We learn so much through the process pics. In fact, this is a wonderful movement that I fully support and embrace. Entire Instagram hashtags are dedicated to it. Check out #doitfortheprocess, and #showyourwork after you follow #caryndahm : ) .

All of this processing has me thinking about what my classes will look like for the fall. Through much prayer and thought, I've decided to embrace video chat technology for at least the next 8 weeks. Rather than, typing out instructions and pre-recording video clips, I'll be teaching via Zoom. This will give us the consistency of meeting each week and allow students to ask questions and interact while I paint. You'll have the option of painting along or simply sipping something, chatting with us and watching me demonstrate.

Being a part of weekly art classes and online forums serves multiple purposes:

• Gives you the gift of time and mental space set aside to create.
• Gets us back in community with one another.
• Inspires you to work more on your creative pursuits (whatever they are.)
  
• Refreshes you mentally and spiritually.
  
• Provides accountability (because it is so easy to prioritize other things.)
• Helps me to learn and practice as I teach.
• Provides feedback on our in-process drawings and paintings.
  (i.e. something is wrong, but I can't tell what it is : )

While I prefer to teach from my home studio, the beauty in this is you don’t have to pack up art supplies and can sip whatever you want from the comfort of your own home. 

I've also loved incorporating a class FaceBook group! It made for a simple place to post drawings and get in - process art pics for feedback. It is fun to see other people's process pics because sometimes the best parts of life are happening in the anticipation, in the waiting and in the unexpected things that happen throughout the process.

You can read about the upcoming class start dates, times and pricing here.

I've kept it no secret that I'm Italian and I generally love Italian desserts. It's the lemon and orange zest that hooks me! When my friend, Kate, saw me post about a cannoli cake, she said she wanted to try the recipe. Knowing that Kate's a great baker, I was all for her baking it. Truth be told, I'm too much of an experimentalist to follow a recipe. Turns out, Kate experiments too, but she knows what parts not to mess with and how to make her well-thought-out changes. I'm more of the type who thinks, "I like eggs, why not add more?" I know, baking is all science. I got my only D in high school chemistry.

It was so delicious! Moist and fluffy, with hints of orange. I think it tasted way better then a cannoli! We truly enjoyed the cake and the company!

I'm looking forward to the joy of getting back to being able to do these things!

Needless to say, it took a lot longer for me to complete my end of the deal, but that time has finally come! Since I've been teaching perspective to my online watercolor class, and because it was time for our still-life class to paint food, I decided to paint Kate's cannoli cake as our subject.

We started by sketching the cake plate in perspective and first drawing a cube. Perspective tends to trip people up, so we dove into it to get it mastered. We then created ellipses within the cube for our cake stand and layered cake.  Since everyone knows that delicious cake needs coffee, milk or hot tea to wash it down, I included a beverage in this still-life as well. Understanding perspective takes a lot of the discomfort out of trying to draw scenes with multiple or complicated shapes.

I used liquid mask to preserve some whites around the rim of the cup, highlights in the tea and the tea bag string.

I decided on my background colors and enjoyed layering them. I let the colors intermingle.

The chocolate chips are so much fun to paint! I have a little tutorial image on how to paint them on an older blog post here.

Here is the final painting above. I'm giving this original to Kate to commemorate our fun day and to thank her for sharing her gift with us. Pretty soon, I'll be posting a special page on my website with my original watercolor paintings for sale. Many are 11X14", 8x10" and 16X20", so if you've got a wall that needs something special on it, keep an eye out for this new place to shop!
Note: the prints will remain on my Etsy page.

Hope this post inspires you to bake something yummy. In case you are interested in trying it for yourself, here is a similar recipe to the one that chef Kate used. Her special modifications were to use plenty of navel orange zest, a "cinnamon plus" seasoning blend and buying the best, high quality Mascarpone cheese you can find. Enjoy!

If you're considering getting an illustrated custom family recipe of your own, have a look at some of these examples and get in touch with me.

Let me know in the comments or on social media, what kind of cakes you like to bake best.

I'm bringing out one of  our favorite crafts from art camp, the plushy pillow. It's a great one because more than anything, it gives you a chance to do 3 important things:

In art camp, we created this project using pre-cut felt squares. However, in light of the coronavirus quarantine, I thought it best to keep it simple and use household objects. Who needs extra trips to the store or packages to consider sanitizing? Our modified version uses things that you may have on hand, such as old T-shirts for the fabric. My son, Tre, had a few "old faithful" T-shirts, or as Seinfeld called them, "golden boy."

The next step that I took was to have the kids measure in 3 to 4 inches on all sides. I was glad to remind him how to use a ruler : ). I helped by drawing a box in the middle using chalk, but a marker could work as well. This provides for a "cut line" that the fringes get cut up to.

Lastly, Tre sewed on the button. I explained to him to start underneath the button and go upward. He could either criss-cross to form an "X" or go from the top to the bottom hole to create 2 parallel lines like an "11" shape. He opted for the criss-cross method (shown below)

It ended up small and cuddly because we were using a shirt from Tre's pre-school days, but the bigger the shirt... the bigger the pillow.

Here are a couple of photos I want to share from this project at Camp Create. The kids learned so much sewing on the buttons in 2018. We had them pick their own colors of felt to mix and match with the different buttons. For  camp, they sewed on little pockets as well.

Special thanks to our campers who won the poster contest last summer during our weeks of art camp. Their art helped to create the front of our flyer for this year. Thank you for your creativity; Rylee, Hayden, Inese, Tre, Tristan and Lily.

We are aware that your plans for this summer are most likely in limbo. As of now, we are hopeful to proceed with our dates of June 15th - 19th or June 22nd - 26th as planned. However, if things do not rebound as quickly as anticipated, we will take one of two actions:

1. Reschedule the camp for later in the summer (possibly July or August)
2. If complete cancellation is necessary, we will take our cue from the airlines and create a credit system where your paid art camp tuition from this summer will be applied forward to one of next summer’s art camp weeks.

At this time, we are still keeping our registration open, so feel free to register without paying (and pay right before camp starts) if you’d like to reserve your child’s spot without having the financial commitment. To do so, just fill in the registration form and hit, "continue", but do not proceed through the payment portion. Your registration and spot will be saved.

If you are signed up for the newsletter, we will let you know if any plans change.  We sincerely hope that we will be able to enjoy the fun and creative activities we have planned with your children in June! 

Let us know how the project goes by tagging us on Facebook or on Instagram at: #campcreateartcamp. You can find and follow it here.

While I usually have students in my home studio to paint together, I've long wanted to be able to offer classes online for people out of town who have requested it. This odd state of staying at home has forced me to finally make it happen!

Each week, I'll create a page on my website full of examples, notes and information. I’ll also post a video(s) of me teaching the content.

What I'm most excited about is that I'm creating an online forum to help us stay connected with one another, get feedback as we work through the painting, and hold each other accountable. Hopefully, this will keep us actually getting our paints wet each week ! ; )

I use my talented, artful assistant, Holli, and my daughter, Mia, weekly (and sometimes daily) to get feedback on current projects. It is invaluable to have other eyes on our work!

I’ll also continue to utilize a Pinterest board and add fresh pins weekly that relate to the content we are studying. Even if you are not yet ready to dive into a class, feel free to follow me on Pinterest.

This next 8-week series will cover the main aspects of painting a still-life.
We will discuss the following:

• Arranging your objects
• Composition of your painting
• Basic perspective
• What to put in the background
• Highlights on hard and soft surfaces
• Painting glass and refracted light
• How to paint different lighting scenarios
  (windows, light bulbs, sunlight)
  
• Creating visual balance
  
• Fun classes on water-coloring florals and food.

Though my favorite medium is watercolors and that is what I'll be using in my examples, the art theories and skills taught in this particular series can be applicable to oils and acrylics as well!

This past week’s lesson is a free extra bonus lesson. The cost is $180 for 8 weeks. Once the course is over, you can choose to renew or discontinue the class. In other words, there is no commitment.  If interested, you can register here.

It may help to have a look at the this past week's free bonus lesson. It's like tasting a free sample. This class covers the basic art theory of how to compose a still life.

*Note: The free class includes videos of me teaching, but does not include videos of me actually painting. Future classes will have both.

I'm looking forward to staying connected with students both old and new in this way. As always, I welcome your feedback on what you'd like to explore.

If you have friends that you'd like to connect with by sharing an online painting class, copy, paste and send them this link to register: http://www.caryndahm.com/classregistration.html

-The human spirit is incredible. We long for community and connectedness and when we can't have it, well ... we're going to make a way!

Last night someone who loves our family "quarantined us" by putting this sign on our door along with a jar of colorful m&ms. We were so happy to have the treat after just having ate pizza and watching a movie. Tre has been putting a hurtin on that candy! I admit I'm doing my part to put on the "quarantine fifteen"

In an effort to further spread the joy, I scanned the sign, cleaned it up, purchased a corona virus graphic (so that it's copyright free) and made a  printable version here for download. 

You can also click on the image above to download the printable .pdf file.
A new window should open up.

Have fun spreading the joy to those you love and making the best of a tough situation!
- Caryn