My 7 Favorite Painting Projects, Supplies & Creative Habits this Summer

This summer has flown by. I judge the end of summer when all the kids go back to school.

We still have several weeks of summer weather left, but we're all about to leave the relaxed pace of the season behind as we finish up the day trips and vacations and lazy weekends and relaxing by the pool.

So what did I create this summer?

When I was a little girl, my imagination took me to all the places I longed to go to, regardless of physical limitations.

 

I realized my imagination – and my paints – could help me "travel" to places I long to go to but are not possible right now. Paris has been on my mind quite a bit.

So in June, I painted a lot of Parisian scenes in June: the Eiffel Tower, flower markets, café scenes and city architecture.

From that imagination deep dive, there is a new course on the workshop page (for free) called "A View of Paris" inspired by past trips, browsing through books and Pinterest.

There are four categories of flowers I ended up focusing on:

1- Groups of flowers like in the flower markets in Paris
2- Gladiolus
3- Lavender
4- Summer Wildflowers

Gladiolus have been in my sight for some time, but they never grabbed me like they did this summer. Maybe it was the tips the florist gave me for helping them thrive or it is their robust view of life, but these flowers captured my heart this summer.

Lavender captured me as well. I'm not sure why lavender pulled me in so strongly this summer. Maybe it was the "lavender days" festival in Apple Hill this summer or perhaps the connection to Paris, but one painting turned into many!

 

Below is one of the videos of creating lavender. It's not too late to paint a bunch of these calming, vibrant bunches of flowers. :)

In the past, I've used many paintbrushes in various shapes and sizes.

A few months ago, I shifted, using round-tip brushes nearly exclusively.

The size 7 is my favorite, but I'll bounce back to a size 2 or a size 14 for details or for large washes. There are several paintings where I only use the 7 and it's worked well.

Earlier this summer, I wrote about adding some margin time at least one night a week – no social things, no working (I do a lot of The Creative Season work at night), no day job late meetings, no phone ... for about one to two hours every Tuesday evening.

During that time, I worked on embroidering dishtowels, my favorite summer creative thing #7.
The result: I have a stock of really pretty embroidered dish towels for Christmas gifts this year.

There was a general sense of malaise that came over me like a cloud this summer (shared a bit about it in this post) and the sluggishness was not going away. I felt weary, but not tired, and couldn't figure out why.

Probably this is common with all that we've been through in the last several months. There is weariness from so many months of fighting battles on a lot of fronts! (You too, yes?)

 

There was a significant change that came out of the blue earlier in the year. The results - of which I didn't have any control - spiraled out of control for several monhts. I think my ability to "handle" things is not as great as I thought. 

 

Still, we move forward. 

Taking time to retreat, even for a few hours each week has helped and I'm grateful for that.

So many things!

I'm excited to share the details of a new course coming out: Praying & Painting through Psalm 23.

This is a completely new endeavor for me. I am not a bible teacher, but I do love the word of God, and studying it and going deep into small sections for many years has been the joy of my life. More to come on that very, very soon!

New cards and stickers coming out. More to come on this too!

Sunflowers. I think sunflowers are the perfect segue way between summer and fall. They are the signal...at least to me that summer is going, and autumn is coming.

 

I'm going to be painting more of these, stay tuned! New video coming out on the YouTube Channel very soon.

All. Things. Autumn.

Pumpkins, boots, pumpkin spice lattes, baking (it's been too hot to turn on the oven), falling leaves, the change of colors. I'm so excited!

What has your summer looked like? What did you paint or create? How did you rest?

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