Louise Fletcher's 2023 Find Your Joy Course

Wrap-up week has arrived for Louise Fletcher's 2023 Find Your Joy course. This is my second year of study with Louise and it has been as enriching, in different ways, as last year.

I've done a lot of work in the class. Strike that! Actually, I've done a lot of PLAY in the class. Playing is the perfect way to discover one's buried areas of delight without judgement by unabashedly breaking out favorite, old, new and unused tools, paint, pencils and pens, crayons, watercolor, markers, stencils, pastels -- you name it - and using them to create on a substrate of one's choosing (paper, canvas, wood panel, fabric, etc.). The most important part is allowing the platy to be what it is, to be open to what it has to teach (especially if one doesn't like it), identifying the parts you like that prompt new explorations, and detaching from result--because it's all about the process.

That said, these are some of my favorite efforts, from the many exercises, since mid September.

Some of the things I've learned I enjoy include the following among others.

*Working with a larger-size palette knife and Rigger brush as tools in applying paint.
*Applying a first thin layer of paint as a source of light that the additional paint layers don't cover.
*Using the green that results when black and yellow are mixed.
*Doing free-form line-making in a random and fast manner.
*Aiming for depth in the work, and if, by chance, illusion occurs - all the better.

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Cay Denise

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