This summer, Scott and I took two classes. The first one was colored pencils and this is the best of my practice results. The rest looked like a kindergartener reject.

The top pear is the photograph and the bottom pear is my version of it. I felt like I was finally getting my head wrapped around how to use colored pencils and the blender, which, by the way, was my favorite thing learned in this class. While I am glad I took this course, I have decided that colored pencils are not for me. It was a bucket-list item for me, and I have it checked off.

The second class, though, I absolutely loved!!! It was clay sculpture. I started with coil building and created this:

It’s wonky and the lid doesn’t fit it very well, but this gnome house is delightfully organic and I love it to no end. The father and son gnomes who live here think it’s perfect, and that’s good enough for me.

The second gnome house I made was slab built, and this one came out much better.

The lid is the second floor, which overhangs the first floor on purpose, just like medieval houses did. There’s a secret hidey-hole in the ceiling of the second floor for special bits of junk the gnome family might collect. There are four of this family, and the wife is the daughter of the old man who lives next door. Sometimes that feels a little close for her taste, but what can one do, really?

The last builds are this dog and chicken house for the two families to share.

I would be happy to take this class over and over just to be able to build gnome houses. Another bucket-list item.