Have you ever felt like you were being pulled in two directions...

I hate that I haven't had time to do any of what I feel are good quality posts...I'm sorry!  These last two weeks have been so hectic!  On Sunday the 11th, one of my dogs, Delilah, wandered too far from home and went missing.  I've been torn between having hope and stressing over it!  The NYSATA conference lightened my mood a bit, but when I came back, I had those worried feelings all over again!  Then, four of my students told me on Monday that they had seen her at the school that is about 4-5 miles away from my home, over the weekend.  My husband and I have spent every daylight hour we have away from work driving around, calling for her, and passing out flyers door to door!

Now, we have to drive the four hours to Buffalo to go home for Thanksgiving, which is stressing me out even more!  Now that I know she is still around, no one has taken her or shot her (hunters up here aren't that nice when it comes to their deer...), I don't want to go home for Thanksgiving!  But, my mom just had a major surgery, so I have to! :-/ To be pulled in both directions...and know you should go home to visit, but to know your dog won't go to anyone but you is so hard!

To at least make this post be relevant to art in some way, I will share the painting my private lesson student finished last night during one of our lessons...she wanted to start working on watercolor paints, which is by far, not my strong point! A few years back, I purchased some watercolor books with techniques and step by step directions, so we pulled those out, looked through them, and chose a picture to try and replicate.

In a previous lesson, I had her tape down little squares and I had her do about 12 of the various watercolor techniques (wet on wet wash, wet on dry wash, dry brush, glaze, graded wash, tissue paper, lifting off, rubbing alcohol, salt, saran wrap, etc.), so we talked about how the picture in the book was made using some of those techniques.

Here is my student's artwork...she is currently in 4th grade.

And here is the picture we based it off of...Blogger won't let me rotate it!