Art by JPL

I am finally ready to post a recap of my painting challenge. I can't believe it's mid-October! We had family staying with us and we have a new puppy so my working life has been a little disrupted, but for good things! I had so much fun with this collection, Dreaming of Far Away Places. There are paintings inspired by Scotland, Australia, Mexico, and France. There are paintings inspired by dreams or imaginary landscapes. I hope you enjoy them! If you see one you want to reserv

I started a course in March called Abstractify by Tara Leaver. I've made my way through the first week and I am having a blast. I can feel a shift happening in the way I see things and I can't wait to apply this to a new series of paintings!! The course is all about pushing representational art further towards abstraction. What I love about it is that all the exercises start with a photo of something concrete. I have tried painting abstractly without a concrete starting point

I've been thinking recently about where ideas come from. I'm often asked about that as a visual artist and I don't always understand the answer myself! I have a lot of images that float around in my mind and I want to try to capture them when I paint. These are often landscapes, seascapes, and skies. I return to these subjects over and over again in a vain attempt to capture the beauty of nature. Sometimes these images come to me in my dreams! Like this one: If I sit down to

It's half-way through October and I'm still recovering from September! What a month. I completed 30 small watercolor paintings in 30 days and several of them have found new homes. I had a great time working in a new medium and really pushing myself to stay loose. Now that it's October I am working on some larger pieces and I'm getting ready to re-work or paint over some older pieces! Exciting!! Here, in no particular order, are my favorite paintings from September. If you're

When I decided to do another 30-day painting challenge I chose to switch mediums. I had never used watercolors before in any consistent way. Why would I do that to myself? Because they don't call it a challenge for nothing! And a challenge it has been. I'm not through it yet, I have 9 days left, but I have learned so much in the last few weeks. And daily painting is so good for me! The biggest lesson so far is how to loosen up. With watercolors, things happen that are out of

This month I am working on another 30-day challenge. To make it interesting I chose to switch to a new medium - watercolors! This has been fun and challenging so far. I'm getting used to not being able to fix things as easily and just go with the flow. Often I paint a few practice paintings first to get my jitters out and then things start happening. Here are the first 6 days. I'm posting them daily on instagram and facebook if you want to follow along! These aren't available

I completed my 30 day painting challenge. It did end up taking me longer than 30 days but life tends to get in the way sometimes! I had a ton of fun doing it and I definitely plan to do another challenge, maybe in the fall. I started out with seascapes, pivoted to flowers, floral landscapes, landscapes, went back to seascapes and ended with flowers. I'm so excited to have so much new work! I'm varnishing them now, and soon the best ones will end up in my online shop - $156/ea

After our lovely trip to Puerto Vallarta in April I tried my best to clear my May calendar to work on a 30-day painting challenge. It is now May 5th and after I finish this blog post I will be painting my 5th seascape! I have already learned a lot in 4 days and I'm having a blast. I've been posting sneak peak close-ups on instagram and facebook (@artbyjpl) and here you can see the first 4 together! When I'm finished with this challenge I will be posting them to the shop ($156

This week has been a busy one! I started a seascape last week but I made myself file my taxes before finishing it. Success! I even signed it. It usually takes me forever to decide if a painting is finished enough to sign but this one just came out and was done. No stress. I love that feeling! I also got new gorgeous business cards. I ordered them from Moo and they're very high quality. I couldn't love them more! Looking ahead I'm going to do a 30 day challenge of some kind. I

When I first started painting I really hated the idea of under-paintings. Why on earth would I want to paint the same thing more than once? What if I loved the first version?! Well folks, I'm a convert. There are still times when I over-work the top layers and you can't even see that I started with an under-painting. And there are times when I love the under-painting more than the finished product. But even when it goes badly, I sill think it's worth it to start with an under