This week was my week to paint a piece of art for our church's sermon series. We are reading, The Story by Max Lucado and Randy Frazee.  Each week Metro Church in Winter Springs has allowed any willing soul to create a piece of art to be the visual for the lesson. Not only that but we get to come on stage and talk about why The Lord led us to create our pieces of art! It has been so fun to see what people come up with. I truly appreciate the  gesture of letting go and letting people use their gifts and passions.

Through many ways this past week God has been directing me to see a theme. The message I got loud and clear was that I should plant my seeds and work life's goals and garden hard, yes, but there is more. The second part that I can easily fluff over is the part about waiting expectantly for him to water and bring the fruits. After all he does call himself The Gardener. I love that The Lord uses so many planting, cooking, gardening and fishing analogies. All things that I love ... My kind of guy. Now I just need to find some painting references in the bible. Here was my process ...

Today in our watercolor class we had a great time learning the Seven Principles of Design. We poured my vintage buttons out of their home (in an old mayo jar) and onto the table to experiment. We slid them around and then shared why we thought our arrangements communicated each of the principles. My favorite theory to teach is "balance". This principle is used in any beautiful and restful home decor, commercial interior, page layout, architectural building and of course paintings… the list goes on. Balance gives harmony and harmony makes things easy on the eyes!

After sliding all of those buttons around we painted one of our arrangements. I enjoyed painting so much with the students, that I decided to pair the watercolor with a quote about Mothers. Enjoy!

For a long time now one of my dearest older friends has been asking me to create a sign for her as a reminder of "the dash" that is between the dates on a tomb stone. I remember that poem written by Linda Ellis and created a little piece of visual artwork for her. Thought I would share the design process.

OK so that was a quick little tutorial. Feel free to connect with me if you have questions.

I was thrilled with the results of our recent still life project. Here my student's arranged groupings of items in a box to study the effects of using a single light source. We directed little lamps onto our "scenes". One of my advanced student's paintings had to be shared!