Touring the British Isles on the Queen Mary 2

David and I have returned from a tour of the British Isles aboard the Queen Mary 2! We have made Transatlantic crossings on this amazing ship in the past.  This voyage, we circled the UK, from Southampton England, past Wales, over the top of Scotland and back to Southampton.

The first stop on our journey was Cobh, Ireland, port city for Cork.  Kindly, local folks heard that our famous ocean liner would be pulling into the dock, and they came to see her.  We struck up a conversation with one of those locals, a red-haired, blue-eyed woman named Ann, who recommended that we visit Fota House, a restored home built in 1700 with working Victorian gardens and an arboretum. 

Along the dock & train tracks, we saw a mural celebrating local butterflies, right next to a lovely pollinator garden. I love how public art turns plain buildings into uplifting spaces!

We took a short train ride to Fota House, and walked through the grounds, finding this Victorian greenhouse.

I made a quick watercolor sketch of the gorgeous lilies I found inside.

The picturesque building was full of flowering plants like this scented geranium.

We also toured the arboretum, where I marveled at ancient, massive trees like this one. Many of the trees were planted in the 1800s.

I admired rose bushes like the one that bore these fruits.

If you'd like to learn more about Fota House and its history, check out their website here:

https://fotahouse.com/

If you find this inspiring, I hope you'll create art from these photos.

Happy Creating!

Discover New Possibilities with Color Swatching!

I have been reading a wonderful book on the power of watercolor sketching to bring you joy & liven up your art practice.

One of the first activities author Jen Russell-Smith outlines is making a color chart.  She recommends it as a way to fill the first blank page in a sketch journal.

I had a small travel set of Winsor & Newton watercolors I had gotten while on board the Queen Mary 2 last summer.  I wanted to test this little travel palette out, so I created a grid of squares using a waterproof, black pen, and then put a dot of each color across the top and down the left side of the grid.  

I also filled in each pure color in the diagonal where the color meets up with itself from the top and the left side.

I mixed every color with every other color as they met up on the grid.  

A surprisingly useful bunch of colors resulted!  For instance, when I mixed Sap Green and Chinese White, I discovered the color I've been seeking to paint the silvery green foliage of Autumn Olive bushes.

And, did you know that when you mix  Pthalo Green and Burnt Sienna, you get a lovely deep forest green?  I discovered these colors and more!

At the bottom of the page, I tested out 8 of my 12 colors, painting a concentrated swatch at the top, then watering down each color towards the bottom.

Watercolors look different in the pan than they do after they dry on the paper, so this swatching page will come in handy as I paint and sketch with this travel kit.  It's amazing to me the amount and variety of colors I can create from this tiny, 2 1/2" by 5" kit.

Get to know the potential in your watercolor palette with this great swatching project!