Absolutely!

Last Saturday I was looking out onto the absolutely stunning San Francisco Bay with my absolutely good buddy and fellow artist Paul Bianchini. We were doing what we absolutely like to do best...sketching! The cold summer fog cleared out and we had absolutely warm sunshine on our backs ( I got a sunburn on my neck but who the hell cares, I was sketching!). Today, I got on the road to Concord, Calif. to see my friend and absolutely fabulous artist, Myrna Wacknov, and sat in on her portrait workshop at Gallery Concord. Being a workshop teacher myself, it is often educational to see how fellow workshop teachers do their thing. The gallery offers workshops by absolutely nationally known watercolor artists like Myrna, and, like her, I am now a member in absolutely good standing with the California Watercolor Association. Yes, indeed, it's been an absolutely good week, and both of these sketches reflect that fact. Click on them twice to enlarge. They were done on a cheap cold press watercolor sketch pad with an office pencil followed up with a fine tip Sharpie pen, followed up with a water soluble Tombow pen whose dabs of ink can be dissolved with a wet brush to make absolutely lovely, lovely value washes. I once wrote an article for American Artist Magazine about this absolutely wonderful sketching technique and will be conducting a workshop on it this Friday. That will be yet another joyful experience...absolutely, and may I add, for sure!!