To see progress on my watercolor practices, scroll down and click “previous entries” at the bottom of each page.

This is an apple green apple gourd with a Fall-color ribbon. It also has a layer of gold polish over it to give it “surface-depth”. (That sounds mutually exclusive!)

This gourd goilded and is adorned with an old-fashioned rose applique.

Here is another apple gourd adorned with plaid ribbon. This one is Navy Blue and Red.

I love the idea of an apple tied with a ribbon to give to a favorite teacher. For this one I used bright red and hunter green. One photo is taken under incandescent light , the other is lighted by a cool-light bulb. Most of our apple gourds are about 7 to 8 inches in diameter.

This is one of the first efforts Tony tackled with his scroll saw.

Here are a few more of Tony’s boxes.

Time to showcase some more of Tony’s exquisite wood pieces. He loves working with cedar, oak, walnut, and cherry. Much of his wood is from Phil Etienne’s Timber Harvest in St. Croix, IN. He also has a few pieces that are enhanced with some exotic woods, like purple heartwood, and some unusual woods such as Kentucky Coffee. The boxes shown here are all scroll-saw designs that he cuts lovingly by hand with his Hawk scroll-saw. Usually he stains first, except for the cedar pieces, and coats them all with multiple layers of beeswax. This gives them a beautiful lustre.

This is a watercolor practice that I copied from a book by Judy Morris called “Watercolor Basics: Light”. This exercise is about reflected light, and the importance of shadows. This past Fall, the kids in the Two Red Chairs children’s class did this exercise and the results were outstanding. The stucco-like texture was achieved by using table salt. I really loved painting this charming composition titled “Fly Home”!

This is the flower painting that I was working on awhile back, with some great help from Terry Armstrong, an awesome artist (and great guy), whose studio is right here in Northern Indiana. This flower composition is an exercise from the same book by Moyer that I mentioned earlier (”Light Up Your Watercolors Layer by Layer”). She is all about layering. I still have several steps to go, before completing this lovely lotus blossom. I wouldn’t even say that it’s half-finished.