Tuesday morning at the hardware store

This scene caught my eye today: the back lot of the local hardware store on a busy morning. Trucks pulling in and out, dropping off loads of stuff or picking up orders; a tractor plowing the remnants of yesterday’s dump of snow; and some of the store workers loading up the blue dumpster. It was a busy scene full of all kinds of junk that I love to paint.

Fresh snow adds a lot to a complex scene like this. The layer of white helps to separate a series of dark surfaces like the wooden pallets and the piled tires. When I first saw the scene there was no one at the dumpster but as I snapped my reference photos, the two guys showed up. Lucky me.

I had planned to paint from my car but there were so many trucks crisscrossing in front of me that I decided to paint in studio. In the end, I’m glad I did because there were lots of small details in the scene that would have been hard to paint in the car. My surface was a quarter sheet of Saunders High White 140 lb paper, and I used a variety of blues and oranges to capture the muted winter light.

With lots of teaching trips ahead of me in 2026, I have been filling my palettes and taking stock of what I will bring with me. I just posted about it in my newsletter, and also updated my Art Materials page on my blog. Have a look here.

A brand-new course and a January sale!

I’m so excited to launch a fun, new online course today! In ​Sketching a Winter Garden in Watercolour​, I’ll share with you my newfound love for the quieter, less obvious beauty of end-of-season plants. There’s something especially rewarding about slowing down to appreciate their warm hues and fine delicacy—details that are so easily overlooked.

As with all my course launches, the special launch price for this new 3-hour course, ​Sketching a Winter Garden in Watercolour​, is $42 US or $59 CDN). (On February 1, the price goes up to $49 US or $69 CDN.) You can watch this course at your own pace, as often as you wish.

And a new feature I’m really excited about—with this new course (and eventually my whole course catalogue), you can turn on subtitles in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian. I know people have been asking for this for quite some time. Click here to learn more about the course.

Also this month…

For most of us, January is when we hit the “reset” button. That’s when we take stock and build healthier habits for the coming year. Such as setting aside more time to sketch and paint. More time to create. More time to slow down and appreciate the world around us. I hope some of my courses will inspire you to do exactly that.

Starting today and until midnight (ET), January 31, 2026, you can save 30% on my entire curriculum (excludes my newest course Sketching a Winter Garden in Watercolour and already discounted bundles). Normally priced at $49 US each ($69 CDN), my courses are now reduced to just $42 US ($59 CDN). To get your discount simply use the code BLOOM30 at checkout. Have a look at all the courses here.

Last sketch of 2025

After a really fun and very restful week with my family, I was happily back in my studio today, reunited with my palette and brushes. My subject was my Schlumbergera, commonly known as the Christmas cactus. I’ve been watching these flowers develop and burst open for many days, and it’s been on my mind to sketch them all week.

The painting that I am posting is the second version from today. The first one began with a pencil drawing, but a tight drawing could not properly express the explosion of pink that I had in front of me, and I never even made it to the paint stage. I set that sheet aside, picked up a sword liner brush and a new sheet of paper and drew directly with my brush. I started by painting the outlines of the blooms and then filled the spaces between them with outlines of the stem segments. When the outlines were mostly dry, I filled in the flowers and stems. For the flowers I used the pinkest pigments I have on my palette: Quinacridone Rose and Quinacridone Coral with a bit of Carmine for the darks.

I hope you are working on your last sketch of the year today too. For some of you it may already be 2026! Whatever page of the calendar you are on, I wish you a very creative and very joyful new year!

Happy holidays!

During this holiday season, I just wanted to thank you for following along here, for having a look at the sketches and especially for dropping me a line when you have the time. This all means so much to me.

I hope we get to sketch together online or somewhere in the world in 2026, and I hope the coming year will be filled with even more creativity, health, love and laughter. Happy holidays to you and yours.

Shari

Hyacinth in a jar

Last week a friend brought over an unusual and thoughtful gift — a hyacinth bulb in an hourglass-shaped jar. The instructions from the shop were to add water to just below the bulb, but not touching it. I did that, placed it on my kitchen window sill, and then waited and waited. I was watching for the tiny green leaf tip to grow taller out of the purple bulb.

But it turns out that I was looking for growth in the wrong place. I went away for a few days and when I returned the jar was full of long roots. Duh. Of course the roots would establish themselves first.

I’ve never grown a hyacinth in water before. Have you? Did it bloom? I am curious about this, and of course I’m waiting to draw it again when the leaves emerge.

I started this drawing way too late in the day, as the winter sun was descending. I drew quickly in the fading light, using the “Lofty” pencil in Procreate on my iPad.

A bag with four buckles

This bag has been hanging around our house forever, but as with many things, sometimes you see it differently when it gets moved. In the course of some recent closet reorganization, it came out of a dark corner into the light and I was reminded of how beautiful it is. It was purchased in Crete many years ago, and has followed us around from home to home. I tried first to paint it in watercolour but I couldn’t capture patina or the worn curves of the thick leather so I drew it in ink instead. I think this version has more solidity.

Plants and Flowers workshops update

This week’s bone-chilling cold weather has given me some time to finish up stuff in my studio. Here are the final versions of two pages that were started in November when I was teaching one-day workshops very close to my home in Hudson, Quebec.

I was so thrilled to be able to welcome students to Le Collectif’s bright studio space. I’ve been searching for a workshop venue close to home, and this studio is so inviting and warm, even on a dreary November day. I love the way we were able to group all the tables together so that everyone could share plants and flowers that they had brought in.

By the end of the day, most of us hadn’t quite finished our pages, but I took photos anyway. I was thrilled with the varied and beautiful results.

Now that I’ve found this great venue, I hope to host more workshops close to home. If you want to get on my notification list for upcoming events, just sign up here.