Thursday Art Date: Stencil Art, BIG Post This Week and a House Update Too!

Hello Friends! 😊

Welcome to Thursday's Art Date, today our theme is Stencil Art. I decided to turn Bugs Bunny into a stencil for this week's theme, I love how he turned out!

I had some fun colouring with my Sharpies! I dropped by the site Just Color and downloaded/printed this stencil - it reminded me a lot of Jack! That site has hundreds of free downloadable stencils for colouring. Without mentioning the obvious, life is stressful these days...add buying a house and moving to that equation...colouring is very relaxing, you should try it! Jenn, that would be a great (free) way to get the grands into art!!

What did you create this week? Please share your art and check out the link widget below to see more Stencil Art artwork!

Speaking of my baby Jack...he's recovering from a sprain. He slipped on the ice outside and the poor thing injured his hip. This is the same injury he had a few years back that kept him from walking for nearly a month. This time it wasn't so bad, he should be back to normal very soon. The plus is I get to spoil him even more and mother him unbearably! 😊

We opened up the last Jarlsberg cheese that I made in January. Look at those eyes! It's such a delicious cheese!

I had a delicious success making Baked Jelly Donuts!!!

I've been meaning to post this photo...we've been seeing a flock of wild turkeys in the backyard for a few weeks now. There are 5 of them and they just hang out back there, walking back and forth. We've noticed that they venture out of the woods into the yard on rainy days, pretty cool to see them!

Stencil Art Watercolour (2018)

Where I take my art classes for anyone interested:

Last week, Andrea asked me where I was taking my art courses. Since so many of us are staying at home these days I thought I'd share this in case anyone is interested. At the end of December, I did belong to a "virtual" online art school for a few months, but had a very devastating 😩 critique from the professor there who was pretty insensitive and flippant when I asked "did I do anything right?". It was my Caribou that he critiqued. I was publicly (by recorded video on that art school's site) told that it was "flat", "messy" and "not well thought out"...there was no "movement" and that I needed a "lot" more practice to "get it right". Oh and to boot? He critiqued it on my birthday! After a few days of balling my eyes out and contemplating my talent, I shook it off and canceled my membership. I'm actually very happy in hindsight that this happened because I realized that this particular virtual art school was bleeding me financially because of the "necessary" and very expensive supplies the teacher required for each class. I won't advertise him on my blog, but if anyone wants a cautionary warning, I'll let you know by email the name of the school. You can send me a message via the Contact Form on my sidebar.

So I ventured more into the site Patreon. It's a site where you can subscribe (or become a patron) to many artistic channels. There are a lot of very talented artists on there who offer recorded real-time tutorials, live classes and even one-on-one classes. These are the Patreon artists that I support and from whom I take classes:

Will from Unmask Art: He does coloured pencil and pastel tutorials and live lessons twice a week. I pay $5 a month and have access not only to his current classes, but dozens if not more of the past ones. He also has a great You Tube Channel with lots of free videos. He's such a nice guy and he has a wealth of art knowledge, no question is a silly one with him. I never knew I could create such wonderful art from coloured pencils...you guys have seen my Aging Face, this was one of his live coloured pencil classes; and my Candles was one of his live pastel classes. This is by far my favourite channel.

Kirsty from Kirsty Partridge Art: She does charcoal, watercolour, graphite, coloured pencil, mixed media...she is a delight to listen to and her tutorials are extremely easy to follow. She has so many free You Tube videos. I pay $5 a month for her Patreon channel and again, I have access to her new classes and all of her old ones. She has no live lessons, but her recorded ones are amazing. It was because of Kirsty's channel that I started charcoal drawings, my first was her tutorial, The Elephant. I really love Kirsty's style and the way she shows you how to create art SIMPLY and without expensive materials.

I also follow Steve from The Mind of Watercolor's You Tube Channel. He offers SO MUCH free content about watercolour. I also support his Patreon channel for $1 a month to help him continue to offer great videos. He's taught me so much about watercolour, which has really improved my technique and opened up my creative style when it comes to "loose" watercolour painting. And he has a great sense of humour.


One note about Patreon: it is excruciatingly slow to load at times, and I mean "pull out your hair" excruciating....but once you're on and if you're patient, it's a delight. I have yet to discover more artists on there!

House Update: As most of you know, Alex and I bought our house. We live in Quebec, the house is in New Brunswick. What bad timing for us. Due to new provincial regulations, we can't travel from province to province without self-quarantining for 2 weeks. I was going to travel to New Brunswick to sign the deed on March 31st, stay a few days at the new house then come home. Though there really isn't any legal way to enforce this new regulation, I wanted to comply. After much discussion and research on their part, my NB lawyers deemed it perfectly legal to sign the deed by video call. Alex took this photo, that's me, very seriously signing papers while on a video call with my lawyer. I just thought that it was so neat that we could do it all virtually! As you can see, we are already well into packing up. I'm just wondering how our move next month will be affected, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. We are moving ourselves with a Uhaul...maybe it won't be so bad considering we don't have to rely on a moving company.

I've decided to link to Paint Party Friday this week in hopes that I can get back into the swing of things!!

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Not quite Easter eggs, but here is a photo of a robin's nest that we found in our lilac tree last year. It was fun watching them hatch and seeing the babes learn how to fly!

April 9th: Next Thursday's theme is Easter. Click on the link for ideas and inspiration! Remember it's all about creating. You can showcase your paintings, drawings, photography, sculpting, baking, poetry...whatever you like! 🎨

Thursday Art Date With Rain. Click on the link for a description of the art date as well as a list of upcoming themes. 

Don't forget to add the URL link to your post (not your blog) to the link gadget below to share your wonderful creations! The link gadget expires Sunday at noon (EST).

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