staci swider ...artist : Fantasy House Portraits, Irvine edition

Seriously, I need to get a grip on my distractions! I'm like some 15 year old trying to do homework with the television on and the remote on the coffee table...And a stack of unread magazines...And a cup of Yerba tea...And the painting commission someone still hasn't completed that keeps whispering in the middle of the night...And the pretty birds that just flew across the lake...

Oh wait. That really is me, give or take a couple of 30+ years.

Needless to say, moving and unpacking and renovating, and an 80# lab puppy, all are conspiring against me to keep me from writing! Lawd, now I'm distracted again. What was I writing about? I do this a lot.

Must

Focus

one of my original samples.

Houses. Fantasy House Portraits class. On Thursday in Irvine, a couple of weeks ago now, I taught the house portrait painting class. This was the first time I taught this class to this many people all at the same time. I think it went well, although, to be honest, some people could have used more time and I think moving forward I am going to provide smaller boards for people to use. I've been using 16x20 and 14x18 but I'm dropping that down to 12x16 for the future. And next year I'm tweaking the class a bit further by making it all about cottages and using 12x12 boards. I think that by narrowing the scope a bit it will help people focus beforehand and will allow everyone to finish up in plenty of time.

Here are a couple of student pieces. I think you'll agree that they did a bang up job. Several people emailed me after class to tell me how much their husbands enjoyed the finished paintings but weren't looking forward to the new "honey do" lists inspired by the artwork.