Back to AU, we will start from the classical Roman, skip through to Imre Reiner and whirl around lots of modern text designers to making our own letters on lots of papers, that will then get placed in a colorful book full of samples.

We will talk about composition of pages. Here are a couple of mine.

In the Sumptuous Sumi class we will work on surface design with this elegant black ink, and all the partners it shows off with, like acrylics, walnut ink and certain resists. We will work to music, like this,

Make abstract landscapes with sumi and water like this

Mostly we will make soft textured pages to use for books or collage like this.

The supply lists are very small, I am bringing most everything, including music and musical pieces to paint with (odd, what does that mean?)

Come on down. The venue is lovely, overlooking the mountains of Arizona. The folks are cheerful, there is free wine at 5, and I am doing a mini-journal meet on Wednesday in the lounge after class and before the night classes start.

Next week, Arizona. Be there.

If not, you might think about Valley Ridge in Wisconsin for my Labor Day Class and Picnic. More later.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Yesterday I waded through old portfolios and found drawings I had done, and actually took the time to ponder and enjoy them. One of my new proposals is a class called “Face the Facts”, which is about the “math” of making portraits. The average face is five eyes wide, did you know that? If you know the rules, it is far easier to draw faces than without these basics in your arsenal. Here are some of my faces.

The two in oils, bottom right and top left, are one hour portraits I did for a year with my very talented friend, Linda Churchill. We had our friends come over for happy hour, then sit for one hour while we painted their mugs. I present to you here Jan and Betty. The sleeping woman’s name I don’t remember, and the little cutie is my girl Sydney, when she was 11 months old, wearing her yellow flowered bathing suit with a stick-out skirt and matching floppy hat. She was a ripe peach of a girl, round and pink. I love this picture of her chubby cheeks.

There are about 20 rules I have learned about faces, and will share if I get to do this class anywhere. Hope so.

Off to see hubby’s band tonight with a room full of friends, then dive into the book tomorrow. My kids are at camp, it is weirdly quiet here and I am not used to that at all. Tomorrow I will work on my book and preparing for my class in Canada, which is going to be an aesthetically wonderful week. Join me!

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

My other class was just as lovely, Magical Midnight Stories, and was about surface design on black paper. We were so busy I did not get photos, but I do hope any of you that were there will email them to me and I will surely post them here.

It was a good time this year, and I have more photos of my rescued Saturday with Melly. We drew and strolled on the beach, all day.

Beach babe, Melly

The sky was perfectly blue.

Here is what Melly drew.

And here is the pier, where we interviewed the fishermen and learned about crabs. Well, I learned about crabs. Melly already knew.

We made it a good day, a really good day.

And I am off to my good day today, in the mountains with my family.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Join me from July 5-9 for a week of paints, books, stories, and all around arty goodness at Red Deer College in Alberta, Canada. I have heard nothing but great things about this place from friends like Jacqueline Sullivan and Paul Johnson who have taught there. We will have studio access all day and into the evening for five whole days, and that, my friends, is my idea of heaven. And flying there is easier than many place in the U.S. of A.

Paint, books and stories are my favorite ingredients for a sublime time. I will come prepared to teach many structures, and we will set the pace according to whoever shows up. Each participant will get a folder full of stuff to take home, including poetry, instructions for the techniques and structures, and other inspirational goodies.  Red Deer College, be there or be square!

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

My view at 40,000 feet.

Here is my day, yesterday.

Eastern Standard Time

6 am: Wake up, make coffee, prepare for class. Pack suitcases since I have to check out of the hotel before my class is over.

7:30 am: Breakfast in the lobby. Say goodbye to lots of friends who are leaving.

8:30: Go to assigned classroom, which is locked. Walk to other side of convention building to report this. Return to classroom, where students are now gathering around locked door. Wait.

8:45: Go back to report that no one has come to unlock room. Return to locked doorway, full of more students.

8:55: Door is unlocked. Rush in, unpack art supplies for class, hand out kit.

9:00: Start class, teach darling people until lunch.

12:00: Eat lunch and mentally review the rest of the day

1:30 pm:  Teach wonderful students my process, and hope they really like me, and my process.

4:30 pm: class ends. Pack up all supplies, which are now dispersed far and wide. Carla, dear friend, arrives to help. Thank you, Carla.

5:30 pm: call for taxi to go to Airport. Say goodbye to rest of friends in lobby.

5:45 pm: taxi arrives, takes me to airport. Arrive at airport and bags are too heavy. Rearrange contents on floor of airport until the weight is right. Hand over bags, head to gate.

7:00 pm: Head to city that is not in the direction of home state, but the only connection now available. Don’t sleep on plane.

9:05 pm: Arrive in Atlanta. Connecting flight is delayed, and gate changes three times. Wander the entire airport keeping up with this. Finally leave Atlanta at 11:05 EST.

Mountain Standard Time

12:15 am MST (2:15 am EST) Arrive in Denver, not having slept on entirely full plane. Take train to baggage claim. Drag 50lb bags to bus stop outside. Take bus to remote parking. Load up car.

12:30 am: Leave airport. Get on toll road to Boulder.

1:00 am: Get off toll road for gas. Wander around to find a gas station open at that hour.

1:15 am: Back on toll road. Finally arrive home.

1:30 am: The house is locked tight. Remember that my son has my key, inside the house, for reasons I cannot remember.  Try all windows and doors. Cannot find Hide-a-key. Ring doorbell. No one answers.

1:45 am: Out of ideas. Cell phone dead. Consider sleeping in the car. Start pounding on front door, which resonates quite loudly through entire neighborhood.

1:47 am: Entire family appears at door. Put them all back to bed.

2 am (4am EST): Get in bed.

Wide awake.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Rosalba’s drawing, inspired by a poem by William Stafford

This last weekend I taught a Painted Storybooks class at Denver University. I love teaching there, partly because it is an old, brick college campus that feels earthy, rich and academic, and mostly because I just love the crowd that shows up. This class was no exception.

The weekend was filled to the brim, with this class, out-of-town relatives, soccer and family stuff. I did not see my kids much, which is unusual for me. On Sunday night I got home at 9:15. Sam came down the stairs in his jammies and said

“Hello Cupcake. I’ve been waiting for you, like a sweet cherry pie.”

The boy has talent for this. He is irresistible, with the chocolate eyes and sweet talk.

Back to painting class. Rosalba was there too, my right-hand woman, without whom I would suffer enormously. Can’t even bear to think about that. She is getting more and more her own artistic voice, a painterly style that she has invented.

Here is the work that was done this weekend by Pam, Rosalba, Michelle, Kim, Carol, Nancy (who turned from cyber friend to live human for me finally) and Marguerite. Thank you all for coming. It was a small class, the smallest I have ever had, but chock full of energy and creativity.

Some of the techniques we used are similar to what I will be teaching at Art & Soul in Virginia in the Magical Midnight Stories class. That class is about surface design on black paper. The paper is rich and velvety, and would make a dashing background for an Elvis portrait. I grew up in Southern California, and spent lots of time over the years in Tijuana, where black velvet painting reined. Elvis, bullfights, sad-eyed children and cats. I loved them, hanging on the canvas walls of the street galleries. And I loved the zonkies. A zonky is a burro, painted up like a zebra that pulls a cart you can sit in and get your photo taken, wearing a huge sombrero that says “Tijuana” on the brim.  This is something all of us should do with a few of our closest friends, and just after a couple of shots of tequila.

I am glad I took the time to remember my early influences today. Who knew I would be so imprinted by Velvet Elvis. Come by Art and Soul and you can be too.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die,

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams go,

Life is a barren field,

Frozen with snow.

This is the kind of work we will be doing this weekend at Denver University, and next month art Art & Soul in the class Magical Midnight Stories. We will also make a very simple 2 minute book structure that looks far more complex than it is. Lots of surface design techniques, and lots of fun!

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Here is one of the books we will make. It is called the “Temple Box of Dreams”.

dream images

Temple Box of Dreams

Not too many supplies and lots of fun. It is always a great crowd at DU and the only place I teach where men show up, in multiples, which I like very much. Two days of creative fun, and I bring the tea!

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Spontaneous Deconstructed Journal page by Kyrrha

Wax rubbings page and an octopus by Kyrrha

We found some great places for wax rubbings, and everyone worked really hard. I was nervous about the Iron Chef Event that night, and the whole class was like a cheerleading squad. Thank you, thank you!  For a great view of what happened that night, head on over to my new friend Liesel Lund’s blog and see.

I would love to see more pages from anyone in the class, and am thankful to have Kyrrha to show off to you! Here is her 3 Letter Words project.

Last but not least is a tiny slideshow of the brilliant Jesse Reno, some shenanigans in Dorm 203, The Festal Virgin and Prep Party (we had about 60 people come and go) and a few of my classes. Thanks to all who showed up. It was a leap of faith for a new teacher, and it was so, so appreciated.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

This is a sample of the "Make a Scene" class I am teaching at Art & Soul in Portland

This is my favorite paragraph from another book, written by T.H. White

The Once and Future King

Spoken by Merlin to the young King Arthur, who apparently was feeling like I am feeling today.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” —pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, then you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.