So, Lillian Kennedy, my teacher, mentor and friend from when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, has started a new blog called Weekly Art Lesson. Every week there is another gem of a theme and believe me, these are pearls of wisdom! Also, Lillian, being the penultimate lovely personality that she is, has a style and wit that is engrossing and spot on with her new YouTube videos which accompany many of her posts.

After watching and participating in these weekly art lessons, I decided to tackle one of the projects from her most recent post with two friends of mine. We paint together and have become friends. We met in an open studio painting class given by Amanda Layre, link -just click on the name. Amanda’s class allowed us to paint and get to know each other enough that we decided to paint outside of class as well. As we moved on from class to class, the one thing that didn’t change was that we painted together whenever we could. That usually turned out to be on Thursdays.

So we got together to paint and decided to work on the Weekly Art Lesson from Lillian’s online lesson. How fun it was to see the varied styles and interpretations of the same reference! We each made it our own, we used our own knowledge, experience and joy in creating a good representation in a few hours. Were they finished? No. Were they masterpieces, probably not. But they were respectable for an exercise that flexed our creative muscles and gave us a great few hours. The music was good, the company was good and here’s what we did:

Photo Reference:

Shelley’s Drawing:

Libby’s Painting:

Ilene’s Painting:

Am I happy with how mine turned out? No but it’s not finished, it would be unnatural for me to like my art while I’m in process…. that’s like an oxymoron. But what I am happy about is that we got together, we painted, and we got to see our art on Lillian’s Weekly Art Lesson.

When I lived in Boulder and went to Lillian’s class regularly, that class evolved into Club Tuesday, a group of artists who came to know each other and became more than just a class. We were led by a nurturing mentor who inspired us and we offered encouragement and support for each other.

To that end we decided to name ourselves. Club Tuesday was already taken and besides, we usually painted on Thursday. Club Thursday didn’t thrill anyone. Then it came to me like a jolt of java. Broads with Brushes. We loved it and it was born.

We sent our paintings to Lillian and now they’re on her website. WE were so excited that we decided that Broads with Brushes might be able to exhibit as such. We’ll have to wait and see how that plays out but in the meantime, Broads With Brushes has a name, a place, an identity and it’s really nice to have friends to paint with!