What makes a good teacher?

 
We all watch Youtube videos and other lessons by professional art teachers nowadays. But what makes a teacher a GOOD teacher? In my opinion, a good teacher makes you want to fetch your pencil and paints after a few minutes while watching the video. For me, Toni Burt is a master doing this - I´m not able to watch one of her videos without grabbing my pencil and watercolours and follow her instructions. I especially love that my results always look like my own designs and not hers. I´d call this a teacher´s super power.

Sketchbook playing

 
I got out my watercolour sketchbook these days and found an old crow sketch that I decided to work over with watercolours.

Today I´ve been watching Tamara Laporte´s video on Sketchbook Revival 2023 and drew and painted this fox while watching. As I only used watercolours and pencils and didn´t work on it after the video, it has lots of mistakes, not enough white etc., but for such a quick sketch, I´m happy with the result.

Chicken Eggs

 
Once in a year, I´m having a fabulous afternoon and evening together with 3 of my best friends, painting Easter eggs and having fun with cake, beverages, music and political discussions. It´s one my highlights of each year, but usually I only paint two eggs. This year´s eggs show chickens as I´ve loved painting my chicken postcard recently. I have used watercolours and several pencils and markers here.

Peacock

For this week´s Sunday Postcard Art challenge themed "Peacock" I didn´t have any appropriate stamps, so I decided to draw one and paint it with watercolours.

Nevermore

 

You may have seen my last blog post, and trying some drawing again during the Life Book taster sessions has encouraged me to also draw my sample card for this week´s  Sunday Postcard Art challenge for that I´ve picked "Ravens and Crows" as my theme. 

If you know me a bit longer, you also know that I have LOTS of raven and crow stamps and have even hosted several raven themed ATC swaps myself. So it would have been easy to make something with them, but instead I started with a watercolour paper and sketched my raven head with a pencil. I added an eye from a Jane Davenport washi tape and painted my raven with watercolours, Then I chose more washi tape from Jane Davenport and AALL & Create for the background and painted the rest of the background. The raven was then enhanced with pencils and pens, and finally I added the VLVS "nevermore" stamp.

I´m pretty happy with my card and hope I´ll give drawing a try more often now, and I hope you´ll also like it and find it inspiring to make your own piece for this week´s challenge!

Life Book Taster Lessons

Today I started watching the Life Book Taster lessons that are free for two weeks on Tamara Laporte´s Willowing site. 

When I saw Toni Burt´s "Quirky Girl" lesson, I decided to draw while watching it, and the picture below shows the result. Then she started putting watercolour and gouache on it, and I went on and had so much fun emphasizing my sketch. In the end I really liked my quirky character and think I´ll even frame it ...

My first trial of sketching while watching the video lesson was for Tamara´s "Focus on Love" portrait, and I liked that my person looks totally different from her style. I´ve taken notes on her way of colouring and using mixed media on this and will go on when I have more time.

The Raven´s Song

I´ve just started my first online class at Ivy Newport´s online class portal, and of course it had to be "The Raven´s Song" by Natalie Eslick. These are my very first charcoal sketches, and I´m already amazed of how many shapes and hues can be found in an almost black in black image ... soooo much to learn, but it´s great fun!