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There is a lovely antebellum house on top of a hill just outside the town of Round Top, that has been made into an elegant B&B, The Belle of Round Top. The owner, Debby, is a doll and she graciously invited my workshop it paint as long as we wanted on her property. What a View!

The goal of the Workshop was to introduce the artists to the delights and challenges of capturing the scene in a few hours. To facilitate this we worked on values. This can be accomplished if you arrange your pallet into value families simplified to Light, Medium, and Dark. Even though the color changes the value is what holds the painting together so think in terms of Value, not just color. In the painting above, the value of the sky is the same value as the stripe of Indian Paint Brush clumps at the bottom of the painting. The trees are the darkest value and the pale center stripes of grasses and flowers in the middle are the same value, which leaves the focal, (the roof of the house) to be the lightest value. Using just a few values, (3 to no more than 5) further strengthens the composition.

How long has it been since you have seen Fireflies? Growing up in Ft. Worth they were a fixture of warm summer nights playing in the dark with my sisters. The soft murmur of our parents talking in the background made us feel safe, as we darted under the trees to catch them in jars. These days, in a few places you can still see them, like in the Texas Hill Country. Our good friends have a ranch West of Ingram, Texas and it has been a place of artistic inspiration. There is a pond off the back patio of their house, and years ago I took our children out there to catch fireflies as well. However, the painting of this scene is also partly a dream, half real and half imagined. Like memories, places do not have to be exact to be imprinted on our brains. It's more important to get the essence of the experience, don't you think?

Some paintings are easier to resolve than others, and this one has been a challenge! I kept struggling with the reflections...too much and it was too busy, not enough and I lost the mystery. Hopefully it is finished but like most works of art, it can always be open for improvement sometime down the road. That is why I seldom put a final coat of varnish on my paintings. Retouch varnish works great for at least 5 years anyway.

Today is the funeral for a dear friend, Lana Lowry Hadlock, who was one of those people that lit up the room. And no wonder, she was beautiful, smart, with a quick wit, and a wonderful laugh. Lana had that unique ability to make you feel you were the most important person in the room, but one of her most endearing qualities, Empathy, had a dark side. When her beloved husband, Frank, developed cancer she became sick right along with him. After he died, we were afraid she would never recover, but she had a quality no one counted on, Courage. That Courage, Faith in God,and help from family and many close friends, enabled her to recover her health and serenity. How fitting that she should meet her maker on Easter week. We, However; Miss HER!