At last! She paints! Paul watched Sophie for HOURS this past weekend so that I could do artwork and spend time at the library. We agreed that I would have one evening a week ("more than that!" Paul says) to just do artwork without Sophie. It's a good thing. So I tried my hand at a little collage (a new picture of FTG, much more on that later) and a new watercolour technique from this book: You paint an area with water only, but just as detailed as if you had paint on your brush. Then you load up your brush with color and drop it on the wet part and tilt your page around until it gets in every last nook and cranny. It's really cool -- the paint only goes on the wet part, it doesn't run onto the rest of your picture. (Note: the areas around it should be dry, otherwise the color will bleed.) The more colors you add, the neater it is. I also combined this exercise with a gesture-drawing one and one where you use different elements on your painting -- dropping rubbing alcohol into watercolour soaks up the color in bubble-shapes. Fun! Not sure if it's a fantastic piece of art, but it was a learning piece of art. And it was something else... the final page in my watercolour sketchbook. Good thing I bought two! It took me a two and a half years to use up this book. I'm sure hoping the second one gets used much more than that. Email, shmemail. My email isn't working. So if you've written to me recently and are wondering why I haven't responded, that's why. (As opposed to the too-busy-to-even-wash-my-hair-darnit reason that it usually is.)