Last week, I had my 4 artist friends over again for a little late summer garden painting session. We were missing one, Vicki Wilson, because she just wasn’t able to make it. It seems that’s how it goes, even with just four of us in our group. People lead busy lives.

We did however have a great time catching up over lunch. When I say catching up it’s because one of our members, Sandy Dodd, had been gallivanting all over the west with her husband Allen. They traveled here and there and camped in Wyoming and Washington. Sandy took her painting stuff and was able to produce a few nice paintings out of it. All while sleeping in a tent! (no thanks)

I’m pretty impressed, because I don’t get much of anything done when I’m on vacation let alone actual finished paintings. Though it’s gotten easier as my son has gotten older (he’s now 14!), a mom’s job seems it’s never done. Of course she went childless, hers are grown and gone. From my experience though, having a husband is like having a large child sometimes so there’s that.

Lori Rivera, the youngest of our bunch, is homeschooling this school year due to the damn virus. So we try to work around her schedule. She showed up just in time as I pulled the chicken off the grill. We eat pretty good at these get togethers of ours.

I’ve talked about our group before (4 Artist Friends) and I’ve posted when we had a garden painting session before (see here). But I’ll refresh your memory. I met all of these girls at a Lunch and Learn at Stac Gallery (which has since shut down, sadly). We just hit it off, don’t you love it when that happens?

The gallery was having a Lunch and Learn a couple times a month and we’d see each other there. But when it shut down of course that all ended. A little time went by, almost a year I think, so we decided to start getting together for lunch. Just this year actually is when it all started.

We’d meet at a little restaurant called Lin’s Asian Food and chat. Sometimes, it was Penny Lane Coffee Shop. We all enjoyed it so much that we’ve made it a routine and decided to make it a little more formal by adding in the painting or learning sessions. And occasionally the garden painting session as they’ve been known to be called. It won’t be long and the weather will not be cooperating for this activity.

We’re all professional artists and run our own art biz. So it’s helpful to get with other artists to talk shop and share business ideas and tips. We all have a different style, but we are all painters. We all sell our work online and now we’re getting into teaching. Me included.

I’m putting together a course for a beginner who wants to try their hand at painting. It’s in it’s early stages but I’m trying to move it along. I’ve even taken a course to teach me how to teach a course. Money well spent. My course will be online, but I have taught in person before. I taught a homeschooling co-op a few years back. That was a lot of fun. It was for kids from K-12. My online course will be aimed at adults, though.

I’ll be talking more about it in the near future. If you have any thoughts on me teaching a course, I’d love to hear them. Any ideas or things you would like to learn about. Do you know the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know”? I kinda think that is the premise of my first online class. I’ll be teaching basics to start.

Well stay tuned to see this painting finished. I have more to do to it. It probably has more of a chance of getting finished than my last garden painting does, at least in the near future. Oh, I’ll pull out the other one and work on it too probably. If you’re interested in my online course, let me know. Bye for now.

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⬅︎ General Asahel Stone

Learn more about me on the ‘About’ page under the additional links menu. I’m an artist – a painter mostly and an avid gardener. I paint a variety of subjects including birds, koi fish, my gardens, ponds and flowers as well as anything having to do with nature especially trees and tropical scenes. I also enjoy painting abstracts and have started created more and more of them. My most favorite thing to try to achieve in my painting is is mystery and telling mystical stories.

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