The McNay Art Museum

 We visited to the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio and really enjoyed the current special exhibit, Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism. We couldn't take photos inside the museum so all of these photos were taken in the court yard area of the McNay home which is now part of the museum. It's a beautiful old Spanish style mansion and the artistry was incredible inside and out.

La Fogata in San Antonio

Monday night while we were in San Antonio for Carlene Reeves' workshop we found 'the very best' Mexican Restaurant called La Fogata on Vance Jackson Road. The food and the atmosphere was great!

It was an open concept, the weather was perfect for eating 'almost' outside.

Here I am drinking a glass of tea and enjoying my meal.

This is Carla, my painting and traveling buddy. 

This is a photo of my partially eaten meal. It was chicken enchiladas in a mole sauce. It was the first time I had ever eaten mole sauce and it was wonderful! Carla and I both took a doggy bag and finished our meals the next night in the hotel room.

Carlene Reeves Workshop in San Antonio

Carla and I drove to San Antonio to take a 3 day painting workshop with Carlene Reeves at the Coppini in San Antonio, TX. I drove my new car, which I have named Monty, and we both had a great time! Carla decided to name her little Mini Cooper, Python. While we were driving down to San Antonio we also named her two harps, Felix and Victoria and the GPS is named Betsy. We are good at entertaining ourselves on a long trip, ha ha! We didn't realize it at the time but Betsy was an appropriate name for the GPS because thank goodness to Betsy we drove all the way to San Antonio without getting lost once.

 Day one of the workshop Carlene is painting a demo while the students watch intently. This workshop was on painting still life's. Carlene brought all the props for the setups and did a great job arranging them for us before class.

 Carlene's demo that is almost finished. She also painting one on day 2.

This is the Coppini where the workshop was held on the second floor where Carla is standing waving at the camera. This is a beautiful old building that was donated to the city of San Antonio by Mr. Coppini to use for art instruction.

 This shot is of the other side of the Coppini.

I took this photo of the limited parking space standing on the second floor landing. My little Monty fit just fine in the very small parking spots.

Here I am getting ready to think about painting on the first day of the workshop.

This is a photo of the painting and a pic of the still life that I painted on day 2 of the workshop. Each day I improved my skills and needed less help from Carlene who is a great instructor!

I painted this on the third day which was the last day of the workshop. I sure wanted to have at least one more day to paint with Carlene!

Gaye Sekula, who was the workshop coordinator for the Coppini and Carla hit it off great in the workshop. Carla found someone with a sense of humor that she could tease with.

This was taken on the last day of the class. Carlene is helping one of the students with her painting while the others watch to learn. We had such a great time and we both learned so much....now to find time to apply what we learned. Hey, Carla, when are you coming over to paint a still life with me?

2011 Mini Cooper S Clubman

I bought a new car this week! Well, actually I ordered it about 7 weeks ago and it just arrived from England. It's a 2011 Mini Cooper S Clubman and I absolutely LOVE to drive it!!! It's so much fun and it goes so fast...please pray that I don't get too many speeding tickets! I had been looking at buying a new car and really didn't intend to purchase a Mini Cooper but I made the mistake of driving one and it was downhill from there. I fell in love!

Quartz Mountain Workshop

I attended a plein aire workshop in Quartz Mountain this past Saturday. It was sponsored by the Oklahoma Art Guild and Rick McClure was the instructor. That morning he painted a demo for us and gave us loads of tips for painting outdoors. The above photo is of Rick working on his demo and the one below is the view he was painting.

After the demo we all found a spot and started painting. There were about 20 people in the class so we kept Rick busy making his rounds between us. Rick is a great teacher and we all had a great time.