The classroom is dense with information. Allow me to bring some of it out and highlight it for you. Here is how to utilize my lessons. The 4 Core Lessons Felicia has broken down the methods she used to evolve her own skill and shares them with you while offering presence and encouraging guidance. You will get access to one lesson per month. Practice each lesson until you perfect it. Get help from Felicia in Critique Club. 1. Step by Step Drawing - (Lesson 1) 2. Big Picture Quicksketch- (Lesson 2) 3. Step by Step Portrait Painting (Lesson 3) 4. Still Life Painting - Milk and Water (Lesson 4) These four lessons are the foundation of how Felicia taught herself to paint well. Repeat each of these lessons until you perfect* them. Follow along with, and master the steps until the process is second nature. - Lesson 1 - you want to perfect* likeness (shapes), value, and edge. - Lesson 2 - you want to perfect* your shapes, and color/value choices. - Lesson 3 - you want to perfect* likeness (shapes), value, color and edge. - Lesson 4 - finally, you will learn to strategize your approach within Felicia's step by step method for the added complexity of the still life lesson. You may vary your subject as you repeat these exercises. - Paint from life. - Paint self portraits or have someone pose for you. - Paint master copies. Let the variety in your subject keep you engaged as you commit to the strict process until you master it. After developing these processes Felicia utilized them unwaveringly for approximately 5 years -until they offered no more challenge. She then began to explore new processes or the abandonment of processes altogether . * Perfect doesn't mean that you make an exact copy of Felicia's demo unless that is your chosen goal. You must eventually decide for yourself how much realism you wish to portray with the mastery of these fundamentals. Precision can be found in any aesthetic. Perfect is when you are thoroughly satisfied with your efforts and don't need to be told by anyone else if it's enough. It may take time before you know where that line is. Until then... enjoy the study and the structure of Felicia's lessons and her guidance in Critique Club meetings.

Im not quite sure we have enough members to make lives a fit for this membership yet... I'm going to try a few and see. This is my commission I was working on so I just told you all about it. I think group painting lives could be nice, just an hour or so where we all paint together. What are your thoughts? As always ideas welcome.

Basically the apex of my existence thus far. Hope it’s ok to share here, I am immensely, immensely proud (and immensely, immensely exhausted!). I have big feelings I can’t name and I can’t stop crying! Even this last year has been inordinately challenging and to still have achieved this is taking a lot of processing. (My phone’s camera likes to be “helpful” so the temperatures are all over, but I hope you can get the gist of it.)

I'll have to make new ones. I have so much fun with these. 😃

It's been a while, and a tough road to feel secure enough to apply for some types of opportunities - like the Macdowell Colony Residency, Headlands Grant here in the Bay Area, or The Pollack Krasner grant. I've been trying to flesh out how I support this career, using all the opportunities available. First I had to break beliefs I'd created to keep me safe, limiting beliefs... to do this. I used to say "I'm independent and that's what's great about me", and that's true as long as it doesn’t become a shield protecting me from getting what I need. The help that wasn't available earlier in life when I had no knowledge or skill to ask for it. We survive- but we must not identify so strongly with our survival skills that they hinder us when we no longer need them. Im seeing a story of a man alone in the wilderness for twenty years... imagine the skills and tools he develops. One day survival is easy but he's lonely... he goes to town. That's gonna be an adjustment!! You hear someone approaching... probably don't assume it's a bear. Something like that. Who else is applying? What are you experiencing? Ps. Robyn I did take your advice and apply for some smaller opportunities. Great idea, thank you.