Here’s the deets: Colored Pencil Technique Janet Balboa
MON 10:00-11:30am $114 for 7 weeks; $65 for 4 weeks (1.5 hour class) Crystal Lake studio
Explore the magic of colored pencil! Each week begins with a short demonstration and technique practice, followed by guided time to apply what you’ve learned in a small, finished piece. This class is ideal for anyone eager to deepen their skills and experiment with color, layering, and texture.
Step by step class to expand your art skills with instructor demonstrations.
As its most elegant expression, our Moon Cycling facilitates a way to understand/experience ‘being with’. Being with… the span of our lives, long or short, birth to death- and the beauty and terror we are capable of holding/encompassing as human beings.
Being with our Experience, our lived experience of the events of our life as they occur to us…present, before thought, before our concept of :how: things ‘should’ be in order to maintain our often narrowly conditioned narratives and labels.
I am learning again and again to surrender into a darkness that holds not terror, but healing, a darkness that is ultimately the bearer of light-
It’s a surrender to the depths, in the depths, to that which is, that which holds me regardless of who I am, what I’ve achieved, how i am or the choices I make…unconditional….. ultimately, of course, we name it love. It is not romantic. It is a rough passage. A dark night.The descent is not for the faint of heart.Religious? Goddess? Spiritual? Christ? Pieta? Yes, yet just more labels.
Experientially, for me, IT is what is, and it holds with such grace and partnership that slowly I am unfurling. Allowing -this- IT – mysterious darkness bearing light- to be the Maypole I find myself joyously dancing around as my life is woven into such rich beauty around me.
Witnessing my moms passing is the wildest, scariest inconceivable leap into the unknown yet. (She is still here, but hanging by an ever more worn thread.) No one ever really prepared me for this one, this particular event. This is my Death Doulaness, the Death Cafe – allowing/creating an opening so I (which has become a WE) can be present with the darkness and learn to seed into it vastly- relying on the immanent- and eminent possibility -of life- to continue uninterrupted in its daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, rounds.Talking helps. Soothes. Normalizes. Allows the hard to be easy(er). Community. We do better together.
To me- every religious teaching hints at the embodied expereince of this leap of ‘faith’- The ancient Mysteries, Bohm’s implicate and explication order, every Labyrinth, Newgrange Spiral, Tarot Fool, Eschers’ discontinuity, Geb’s flip, Minoan Bull Leapers-, YingYang, the Resurrections – a whole world of countless motifs call to us across all humanity- all singing the same ancient song…dancing, because well, IT all ends and begins with Love- which is a passage. A movement. A twist, a leap. It allows us the womb and the tomb, the Pieta, who holds birth and death in her arms and says a vehement yes to both, not knowing how the hell it will unfold- but knowing it will, and she will be shaken, not stirred —– more powerful and present for the holding of opposites as they resolve themselves again and again in her arms.
a splendid venuecool toolsthe work at hand elegant set and settingpretty colors…shared experiences smilesmore smiles
So paint and sip…
A demo is done on a huge easel in front of the group- the whole process is led, step by step- and an example of finished Art Work is on display to the group as well. All the tools you need are on the table in front of you. Name tags get you on a First Name Basis… with the whole room pretty much. 🤣
(So, You come in, sit down, chill, order a 🍷glass of something, get to know the peeps around you, listen to the 🎵 live music, settle in. The venue helps:🐍Lou’s Lounge -after Eliza ‘Lou’ Ringling – snake-charming Ringling Sister to 🎪Ringling Brothers. The Ringlings are entagled with this place; The Dole – a historic mansion in Crystal Lake.
The idea: a bit of Surrender upfront to the process/flow of creating an art work. Something unknown and as yet unrealized by you. You see an end result – but yours may or may not come out like it. Certainly not exactly like it. There is room for experimenting, augmenting, and making different choices.
The Follow Along orients you nicely to the work at hand, and also opens up a group flow, a group dynamic, and a level of connection with The Room.
After enough time, determined by you, the artist, you will Get the Hang of It = some confidence in your hand and the tools it holds. You /It becomes rhythmic, understandable, and now, you begin to add your own embellishments, touches, wonderings.
Tonight is not about practice, but execution; the making of some thing….encompassing a jazz band, friends old and new, lively chatter, and *doing* something creative, some thing tangible, using your hands, your body, all your senses -surrounded by others sharing the same experience.
🔥That’s the magic for me. It’s not often we express ourselves creatively in large groups together. Yet this is a very human, very ancient, very nurturing experience to have.
So yes, ‘Paint and Sip’… but really so much more, so much more potential to be had with this model. So much good can be done by creating together for ‘fun’. For Joy.
It’s who we are. We were made to create- and doing it together is a luxury.
The Journey 