Today is my son Bens birthday. I have drawn him quite a bit and his dogs even more. And of course his adopted hometown Atlanta.
Hanging out at Little Five Points. 
Going to Weddings! 
Binge watching Netflix!
Waiting for breakfast. 
Video game player. 
The Broken Arm
LIvie his Pitt bull 
And Bear the stray that showed up on his porch. 
Bear
LIvie
Bear
Ttyl Party time.
Margaret xoxoxox
I don’t know about you but I can’t take enough classes with Charles and Judy Reid. I highly recommend them.
Did I say I own all of his books but one and several videos?!!
Brenda and Christine Again! – Charles Reid class
And evidently I can’t draw Brenda the Blonde- enough either.
The third time in Charles class.
Brenda and Rebecca – Peggy Habets class
. I have drawn her at least FIVE times because she stands and watches the teacher paint and she’s handy to draw. Some turnout better than others.
Oops way too dark.
I usually draw her pretty well but sometimes thempainting goes astray like in this one. Too dark.
But the sketch was great.
One more Brenda in Ted Nuttalls class May 2016.
Christine in Ted Nuttalls class May 2016.
Margaret whose going to paint raisin and Harley if I can quit watching the Keepers today on Netflix’s. Riveting show. Highly recommend.
Xoxoxo
Spent a great afternoon yesterday at the Morris Art Museum in downtown Augusta on Riverwalk with some of my favorite painter friends – the members of Al Byers Advanced Painting Class. Interesting listening to their comments and to Als who as a professor and a New Yorker always has an opinion which he will readily share!🤗
I thought I would take you on a virtual field trip to the Morris with us. It was one of the first museums to deal only in Southern art.
When you enter via the stairs the first thing you see are the water colors of Aiden Lassell Ripley (1896-1969.). Ripley caught the South in the early 1900s in a series of watercolors and prints that line the hall at the top of the stairs.
His bio says “He was attracted by the interplay between the solidity of buildings and the patterns of light and shadow they created, interspersed with people, the snap of a clean sheet drying on a clothesline, and the shape of trees and bushes.” An early urbansketcher!
These are large full sheet watercolors 22×30″. They have great light and shadows. The Picnic above is perhaps my favorite.
Remember he was painting these fifty – 100 years ago. There’s a certain timelessness to them. They could still be found throughout the south if we only bother to look. Oddly I am sure we could as Urban Sketchers find some of these places and paint them still. Probably a lot more battered but still standing.
He was getting out and painting the south long before Urbansketching was a thought in Gabes head.
St. James Church Tallahassee Florida
Love the glowing white in this one. He does glowing whites so well.
Southern Shack
I know these still litter the southern landscape.
Springtime – Southern Church
There’s is one of these not a mile from where I sit on Hopewell Church Road in McCormick County SC however there’s no great tree with Spanish moss and I never see people there. Is it abandoned. No idea.
Cabin in Georgia
Obviously many of these were done along the southern coast because the Spanish moss does not grow farther north in the south just along the coast. 
Planters in the Field
Perhaps my least favorite. The figures are stiff and it’s too dark. Great handling of the trees, woods, and that evening sky.
Unexpected Point, Florence SC
I love the light in this painting. It just glows with fall light raking across the horses and riders, glinting off the broom straw and buildings.
You can still see these broom sedge fields with tall pines and rickety old buildings slowly crumbling to the ground. And yes they still hunt for quail and dove in the south.
Ttyl Margaret xoxoxo off for another busy day.
Happy Easter everyone. 
Raisin Carter. The chief instigator of all her friends showing up at Peggis class aka Leader of the Pack. I had fun stamping her name. I think she was a little tired from all the fun we had in Charlotte. We wore her out!!
Julie whose taking Charles Reid’s class in May at Cheap Joes with me. Wish I had taken a photo of her interesting basketball player that she was working on.
The ink sketches. Sometimes you should just leave them ink. I wasn’t using my normal skin tones of Quin coral and Quin gold. I used Quin rose and yellow ochre. So the paintings are a little dark. 
They were painted with Quin rose, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, mineral violet, and pyrrole red. Oh and sepia for a dark brown.
Ink pen Lamy Safari filled with Carbon Platinum Black ink in a strathmore mixed media 500 journal. Love their crispy paper. Just wish they would lie flat like the Stillman and Birns do.
Happy Easter. Margaret hanging out with the grandkids who are on sugar overload xoxox
Spent yesterday hitting the art stores and taking photographs for possible future paintings at Ponce City Market.
It’s a HUGE rehabbed old Sears building on Ponce de Leon near the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. Whoever designed it kept much of the funkiness of the old building keeping the floors and the huge support columns and the ibeams in the floors.
The two panoramas give a 360 degree view of the space which is jammed packed with the smells of the 20 plus upscale chef run restaurants that allow you and your friends many delicious choices of food which you eat in the open areas.
Outside eating area is a huge interesting place called the Shed which is an enormous concrete beam structure surrounded by restaurants ok one side and stores on the other. I think it’s new construction but not sure. I really need to sit down and draw it becAuse it’s wonderful to look at.
Sunday there is an art market in the shed. Going to check that out tomorrow but since it’s Easter thinking it’s not open.
Keep taking photos of a few places that just appeal to my eye. This Caribbean food place El Super Pan is just delightfully funky with its purple lit metal overhang. Someplace I have an unpainted sketch of this place.
And my favorite golden dragon Chinese restaurant. I have painted this twice. Love that dragon.
This couple sat down inches from me at the same table Aron f one of the columns between me and the object of my attention. The golden dragon column. Yes there were other tables to sit at but no they had to block my view. Irritated with the self involved duo I snapped their photo and immortalized the French Fry couple.
Here’s the sketch I had been doing.
I love going upstairs and taking photos of the first floor over the railing.
That’s how I snapped the photo for this painting called Looking Down which was recently juried into the Anderson Center for the Arts Show which is considered a coup in South Carolina.
One of the appeals of Ponce city Market besides the delicious food are the masses of people and the odd interesting architectural elements like the large yellow and black arrow in the upper right.
I think you could find a life time of paintings on the environs of PCM aka Ponce City Market. Something about this one. The two guys one big one little trudging off across the light from the doors.
Sooner or later I will get a food pic of this bar. Maybe on my big camera not my phone. I have two hundred or so photos there.
A trip to PCM is not complete without drooling over the delicious candy shop
And my personal favorite the St Germain a PArisian themed patisserie loaded with all things Parisian – macaroons, breads, small crispy meringues, real marshmallows and cases of decadent gorgeous goodies.
Trying to resist the lure of PCM today a Sketchers paradise but there are eggs to dye and Easter prep to be done.
Ttyl
Margaret loving Atlanta even when it took me an hour and 15 min to drive 4 miles from Trader Joe’s to the house. Xoxoxo
I drew Peggy several times during class. This was the last time and looks the most like her. Fourth time the charm. She was hard to draw with a long thin nose and a tiny face.
The nose kept overpowering her tiny face when I drew her. This was the first try. And then I painted her too dark so I scrubbed her a little to lighten her up. I did have fun stamping her name and embellishing the page with a watercolor pencil.
Go round three. Nose still too big. Eeekkk. The hair is a combo of thalo and sepia.
Number four. TOO Dark!!!’ What the heck.
Better. But the face was too wide and not oval enough. I could make it narrower by adding hair.
I painted on my class sketches most of the day. Guess it’s time to do those color studies.
Margaret xoxoxo whose having a painting day.
Every Sunday I watch CBS SUnday Morning. My fav bits on it are the partsabout artists or singers people stuff. And this show is crammed with them. Alex was on this am talking about his 45 impersonations. Hard to resist sketching him. He morphed into 45. The mans definitely making me political!!
The background was Quin gold but not enough contrast w the head. Like the orange one better. After all he is the Orange One”
Have always loved Willie and meant to just draw him. He just popped onto the page. What’s not to love about an 84 year old who says “we woke up and we are still not dead!”??
Think they are done. Maybe. Trying to resist the urge to scribble on them in the background with a soft dark pencils. So many quotable quotes from them both.
Painted on 280# Arches Cold Press with Ted Nuttalls transparent palette plus cerulean, hematite and cheap Joes Andrews Turquoise. Pen pentel brush pen.
Ttyl Going to try my hand at horses today.
Margaret taking a walk in the park today too.
Love the Chinese dresses Foxy wore at Dr Sketchys Wednesday. Gorgeous fabrics and they fit her like a glove. Classic Chinese dresses probably from her home in Taiwan.
This is my favorite sketch I think though the next one is nice too.
Both 11×14″ Super Aquabee tablet. Noodler Konrad WN colors in a whiskey painter box with a Cotman travel box full of Daniel Smith quinacridones. I used a gold Wink of Stella marker to sparkle these.
This was a challenge to add origami elements. I have folded thousands of those cranes and a few of the frogs. As a kid I loved doing origami since the first kit I received for Christmas. I think she’s slightly out of proportion. Head to big. Legs a tad too short but I like her anyway. A lot to draw and paint in 20 minutes!!
After several disastrous sketches I knew I could handle our beautiful Asian model when I did this watercolor in ten minutes or so.
All sketches are 11×14 in a Super Aquabee tablet. Love that paper. Painted with my whisky painter box loaded with WN and Daniel Smith Quin coral and an old Cotman palette loaded with every quinacridone I own plus thalo blue and green black and white gouache. Painted with a pentel waterbrush.
These are all two minute sketches.
Some of these will probably be altered. 
And most are pretty awful. 
As in EEEKKK I Don’t feel good and I can’t draw a thing tonite. This one was the worst.
Better. I decided to give up my go to Dr Sketchys pen the Pentel Brush pen and use a Noodler Konrad. Life improved. I always think it’s interesting how a change of pen can improve your drawing skills when they aren’t going well.
Next We had a challenge to turn her into a fox. Evidently her stage name is Foxy. As some of you know I like to draw chickens. Follow them around at Key West to draw them or sit and watch them and sketch them. Never thought chickens could be so much fun but they are.
Really like the sketchiness of her body and legs in this one.
Ttyl another busy day. Haircut picking up paintings and back to aiken for a reception for a friends show.
Margaret xoxoxo
Painting the Farmhaus people 
And a few of my tv sketches. Really liking the background colors. A lot different than my usual cerulean. Sometimes it pays to get outta the box you are in.
Painted with Ted Nuttalls transparent palette.
Book club tonite. If you haven’t read When Breathe Becomes Air by Paul Kalanathi do. Don’t know when a book has made me cry more. So poignant. Wonderful book.
Book club tonite. Off I go. Xoxoxo Margaret.
Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art 
