Bloom True & Be Bold...

This weekend I went to California to take the "Bloom True" class
with Flora Bowley. The 2 day workshop was hosted by the
fabulous Jenny Doh at her brand new location in Santa Ana,
California. She is lining up more fabulous art classes!!

What a wonderful experience this was, 17
women all learning how to be brave and be true and let go in their
painting. Flora started the day off by getting us all together and we
all shared what brought us there and what we wanted to get out
of the class.
After a little stretching and breathing we got to watch her demo
how to start out on our paintings. Throughout the day we did
various exercises on our canvases and had several other
demonstrations. It was a wonderful process and over the first day
our pieces changed dramatically.

Here is Flora working on her piece, this changed quite a lot over
the course of the weekend. She used this piece for all of her
demonstrations and even used it to show us how to fix what we
thought were mistakes, at one point she made everyone gasp
in horror as she put a huge splash of green paint over the face!

Here is how her piece ended up, well I think this is the final piece
but honestly I wasn't very good at taking photos as I was so
immersed in the painting process. It was a good feeling to be
so involved in the painting :)

Now this is a picture of one of my canvases, (we worked on 2),
after a couple of layers had been added to it. I had a very hard
time letting go at first but on the 2nd day of the class I was bold
and let go of the part of the painting I liked the most.
This was the wonderful thing that I got from the class, to be
bold and let go, to trust it would be ok and it was only paint!

This is how that canvas ended up, a totally different thing for me,
my friend Michelle who took this class with me was surprised at
how it turned out. I usually go with blues, greens and a dash of
purple in any of my art work, also doing an organic kind of shape
is unusual for me. I am still working on my 2nd canvas and I
know I will be able to make it into something wonderful.

Thanks Flora for a wonderful experience. I really appreciate
all of the help and advice you gave during the class. It is so 

great to take a class with a small group as we got a lot of

one on one advice and made some new art friends.