Printing on a plate- Art Saturday

Second Saturday of each month we get together with other artists to create different projects. This week we tried some monoprints. A monoprint is a unique one time print.We started with acrylic plates and brayered on ink and added stencils or marks.

Simone has a printing press in her garage she calls "Presslee"  so that's were we met this week.

Putting the plate in ready to print. We had to wet the paper first before we put it on top.

It was fun to meet some new people that came. Everyone had a different idea for their print.

Here are some of the results.

This was mine.

Can you find me in the pic?
We all had a great time. Thanks so much Sabyl and Simone for all your hard work planning and setting up for everyone!!

The Art of Brugge

Stadhuis. Built in the 14^th and restored in the 19^th, the town hall has a beautiful façade.

Hudson Gardens at the Bikers Cafe

Linette and I headed over to Hudson Gardens to paint some flowers. We wanted to bike after so we left our bikes at the bikers cafe at one end of the gardens.   We parked on Santa fe in the parking lot of OnStar Cable near Littleton Blvd . we brought our easels and decided to do watercolor this time. Here I sketched the flowers in pencil.

Drinking our coffee and tea before we got started.

Linette's finished masterpiece.

The bike cafe is right off the bike trail in the background.

We werent impressed with the flowers here. We both expected to find much more. Next time its the Botanic Gardens.

My finished painting

Biking and Painting at Highline Canal

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This is the beautiful idyllic scene we had always wanted to paint. For several years my friend Nancy and I would bike along the Highline Canal in Denver and thought one day we would paint this view. The purple mountains topped with snow are difficult to see but there.

The highline canal bike trail is lined with expensive gorgeous homes shaded and a lovely ride. It is near the southglenn Mall where we parked and headed north on the trail.  We invited Linette, a fellow teacher and avid biker (notice her cool shirt) to come with us for our journey. The ride in was 4.6 miles until we got to the spot.  We set up our easels and started sketching in the scene with our charcoal.

It was fun as different people walked by and looked at our painting.  We think the barn in front used to be an old school. The door was open today and we peered in. Seems as there is some restoration going on with it and part of it used to be used  as a chicken coop.

Here is the three of us set up at work. It was fun to mix our colors and to put down the underpainting for the details I was planning on top.  I put in the sky and green behind the houses and then put in the solid color of the houses and roof. I did not finish but hope to this summer. I found out the brushes we had at school did not do the job for detail but were fine for the background getting the color down.

As you can see each painter chose a different view as their main subject.

Here is Nancy loaded down with her  finished painting ready for the ride back.  We had a great time and hope to try the Hudson Gardens  for our next "en plain air" painting project

The paintings we started. Each one had a different viewpoint. But we all included those mountains.

Denver Chalk Art Weekend