Some of the most common complaints around style I hear from my students are:

•  I love to make art but I don’t have a style — I don’t see it.
• My style is a total mish-mosh — I’m all over the place!!
• I’m so stinking bored of my style — I just keep making the same thing over and over and over.  
• Style? Everything I create looks like my teachers.

As artists our style and voice is our magic sauce and what makes our art — our art. 

EVERY artist has a style. Even artists that started painting and drawing last week — you have a style too.

 But just like learning to paint and draw takes years of practice to develop, our artistic style and voice takes years to strengthen and become identifiable as well.

When you begin your journey an artist your style and voice is a pinch of salt. It’s there — it gives your piece it’s special somethin-somethin but it’s not the dominant flavor we notice right away.

Though with intention, practice, and time making loads and loads of BAD ART — your style starts to emerge, strengthen, and become the main ingredient that flavors whatever you touch.

For the last 25+ years, my mission as a teacher is to help artists identify, strengthen, and elevate their own unique style and voice.  Supporting and inspiring artists to paint like themselves is the meat-and-potatoes of every program I do.

So imagine the sizzle and pop that’s going to happen when we spend 10 delicious weeks deep-diving into our unique style and voice in Paint Wisdom Session | STYLE & VOICE.

Yesssss! It’s going to be good.

I’m ridiculously excited about this session and I made a short video sharing more of the juiciness you can expect in my next Paint Wisdom Session starting Wednesday, September 6th.

 Hit play on the baby below .

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS.

This is also the kind of goodness you can expect to learn and experience in my eCourse Night Vision.

As a reminder — there’s a pretty sweet Holiday Sale happening now through Monday, November 29th. All you have to do is enter promo code HolidaySALE at check-out to receive 30% off any and all of my eCourses.

CLICK HERE for more details.

This Self-Paced eCourse covers:

• Juicy techniques and applications to working with soft pastels.
• The principles of intuitive drawing, including a basic understanding of color theory and how it applies to pastels.
• Guidance on how to create a body of work with intention.
• Tips on how to foster and sustain a daily creative practice no matter how much time/energy/resources you have at hand.
• Eleven inspiring stories told by Connie via audio to inspire your drawings and help you build a cohesive body of work.
• Instruction on how to begin to identify and understand your unique visual language.
• An opportunity to embrace your inner critic and resistance with kindness.
• Ideas and support for expanding your body of work once you complete the eCourse.

Here’s a teeny-tiny peek into what you can expect to see….

CLICK HERE TO JOIN US!

I think that’s one of the main reasons why for the longest time I wasn’t a big fan of soft pastels. 

But ever since I started my Night Vision body of work in 2020 I’ve been gaga over them. 

Recently I noticed that the dust is to a minimum because of one important thing: I work slowly.

Soft pastels have this amazing way of helping me tap into a different part of my creativity that paint, oil pastels, ink, and many of the other materials I absolutely love just can’t do. 

All because I gotta slow-the-f-down to experience their magic.

You know me! When it comes to painting I’m all about layers.

There’s nothing more exciting to me than to smear paint all over something and move in an entirely new direction. I love that — can you hear me purring!?!

But with soft pastels you can’t play that same game or you’ll end up with mud cakes…or even worse…heaps and heaps of pastel dust.

With soft pastels you gotta lay a color down seductively and then smudge like you mean it.  

When you do so, you eliminate a huge amount of dust from flying everywhere because instead you are gently working it in and across your substrate.

Of course, if you’re sensitive to dust, by all means take care of YOU. Wearing a mask or choosing a pastel that’s a bit more harder like Faber Castell polychromos pastels will probably do the trick.

Though…if you’ve stayed away from soft pastels because the dust seems like too much of a hassle…I want to invite you to join the Slow-The-F-Down club and go gaga over soft pastels with me!  

Come join me and fellow smudgers in Night Vision — we start Friday.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

But then last year, when the world suddenly turned upside down, I decided to give them a try.

I found the gentle way you can push color around and fade one shade into another so absolutely soothing and grounding. 

Each night, before turning into bed, I grabbed my pastels and a package of baby wipes (for keeping my fingers clean!) and smudged away.

Within a couple weeks I filled an entire handmade journal with soft, ethereal drawings and Night Vision was born.

My pastel affair didn’t stop when the journal was complete. Instead I started to smudge larger and expand onto paper almost as tall as me.

Working with soft pastels shifted my creative practice in ways I could have never predicted.

For decades, I’ve been devoted to oil pastels.  They are one of my absolute favorite and must have materials still. But now soft pastels play an important role in my creativity as well.

Soft pastels are a different animal than oil pastels . That’s what I like about them.

Soft pastels force you to slow down and enjoy the pure act of applying color and creating marks in a completely different way than oil pastels or paint does. It feels more magical to watch a figure or shape emerge from a dusty, field of color.

And don’t even get me started about how delicious it is to get your fingers into the mix — smudging and blending the pastels into complete hazy oblivion! It’s so dang good!

I’m excited to announce that registration for my new Night Vision eCourse is now open!

It is with great joy that I invite you to join me in Night Vision where together we’ll make a body of eleven pastels drawings.  But before we dive in, I will teach you the ins-and-outs of using these little magic sticks of color.  

In Night Vision we’ll geek-out over the different type of soft pastels that are available and the mysterious ways they respond to different papers, techniques, and ways to apply them.

Before we start kicking out intuitive drawings, I want you feeling like a soft pastel rock star.  We’ll even go into some basic color theory, so you’re not making muddy messes.

Night Vision officially starts Friday, March 19th.  

Register between now and March 15th and receive a $30 discount, plus I have a couple juicy modules up and waiting for you in the Night Vision classroom as well.

Then, starting Friday, March 19th Night Vision will be a self-paced eCourse — meaning you’ll have access to all the content at once for you to work through at a pace that fits your creative rhythm and lifestyle. And YES! All videos, audios, PDFs, and content is yours to keep and return to again-and-again.  There’s also a private Night Vision classroom to receive support and share with your peers.

Plus, to shake things up I will be doing a live Zoom call on Wednesday, April 7th at 10 AM PST with a demo and time for Q&A for all Night Vision students.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.

This year, the show has expanded each time that my design team has had to create more than one page to hold all the art in one place without crashing my site.

Being that the work we do in Painting The Feminine is extremely personal and intimate, it is so moving to me that so many women volunteer to bravely step forward and share their work.

So, please join me in celebrating these talented, wise artists in the Painting The Feminine Fall Student Show.

CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE
CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO

Over 300 artists joined the 21 SECRETS teaching team and together, we’ve inspired thousands of creatives worldwide, making 21 SECRETS a trusted resource for inspiration, learning and artistic growth.

In 2019 after the 21st edition of 21 SECRETS launched, I decided to call it quits.  It was time to welcome in new ideas, new programs, and even a new collective that’s brewing for 2021.

Now until December 31st we are wishing 21 SECRETS its final farewell with a retirement sale!

All 21 SECRETS editions are now 50% off!

This is the last and final time you will be able to purchase these amazing programs that are yours to keep!

CLICK HERE FOR ALL SIX EDITIONS.

Happy Painting!

He was in-and-out of the hospital frequently and it felt like we spent more time in doctors’ offices than we did at home.

Not only was I a new mom, but unexpectedly I became the breadwinner of our family on an art business that was only a few tender years old and a caretaker as well.

During that challenging phase of my life, time, energy, and sleep were in short supply. 

Though I had one thing that was my saving grace: grocery shopping.

No matter what my week looked like, I fought tooth-and-nail to do the grocery shopping all by my lonesome.  

I didn’t care if I had to hire a babysitter. The rule was that grocery shopping was done by me and me alone.

Now…if you knew me personally, you would know I’m not a shopper. Unlike my husband, son, and mother, I didn’t get the shopping gene. It’s just not my jam.

Now-a-days especially I dodge going shopping at every cost.

But not then.  Nope. Nada. Noway.

And you want to know why?

The parking lot.

I lived for that grocery store parking lot.

The grocery store parking lot became my make-shift studio for almost a year.

You should have seen me. I was magnificent. I would rush through the grocery store as if I had just won a thousand dollar shopping spree and I only had two minutes to fill my cart.

Then, I would throw everything in the trunk of my car, take a long exhale, and sketch.

Sometimes I’d use watercolor. Sometimes ink. Sometimes oil pastels.

But those 20-25 minutes before I’d had to make my way home again — back to my responsibilities and new roles I had to navigate — those 20 minutes kept me alive and kicking.

Those 20 minutes were gold.

This past week and a half I’ve found myself in a similar predicament. 

Well, thankfully no-one is sick and I don’t have a newborn to attend to.

Instead, I’ve been on what I call “freight train mode” as I poured all my focus into the last final steps of launching my Painting The Feminine eCourse on my brand new teaching platform.

Even though I’ve been loving every second of it (OMG! I can’t wait to show you more!). I still feel a tad out-of-sorts if my fingers don’t touch art supplies in some form or fashion everyday.

So right before turning off the light to go to bed, I’ve been doing a tiny oil pastel drawing in my  5×5  Handbook Journal.

Oh how these tiny little diddys make me so very happy. So much so that I decided to share a few of them here with you. 

The thing I find is that a little bit of art can go a long way.

There’s something magical and healing about moving color around.  I find making lines, especially in black, soothes my whole body, mind, and soul.  

Interestingly, I ran my very first Painting The Feminine eCourse during that very challenging year I speak about here.  

Painting The Feminine is rooted in the belief that our creative practice is a necessary form of nourishment, sustenance, and joy.  And yes — sometimes in our lives we need to fight for it or whip up make-shift studios in grocery store parking lots or hire a babysitter once a week.  

But it’s important. It’s necessary. 

I’ll dare to even say that now-a-days it’s even crucial to our own mental wellbeing.

So today I just wanted to softly remind you: Making art can be (and should be) easy.  Don’t overthink it.  Don’t overdo it. Don’t make it hard on yourself.

A little bit of art will go a long way.

I promise.

And….if you want extra support and encouragement, come join me in my last “live” session of Painting The Feminine ever. 

We start on Monday — but my new teaching platform is up and running and there’s a module waiting for you to dive into immediately after you sign up.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO & TO REGISTER

To my great surprise I have received hundreds of questions.  Many of them were around what kind of supplies do I use and recommend.

So yesterday, as I was getting things up and running for my Painting The Feminine eCourse that starts on Monday, September 28th I realized that the video I made for my suggested supply list includes all of my absolute favorite supplies I use almost daily!

Because so many of you asked for it — I thought I’d share this video with you as well.

In the video below you will find my thoughts on:

• choosing the perfect art journal
• my all-time-favorite paint
• my paintbrush ménage à trois
• oil pastels (oh how I love oil pastels)
• water-soluble graphite goodness
• palettes and paint rags
• the collage ephemera that I can’t get enough of
• adhesive I keep on hand
• my current and last studio log

For linky-dinks to all of the supplies I share in the video simply check-out the Painting The Feminine Suggested Supply List RIGHT HERE.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PAINTING THE FEMININE

It’s devastating. For us, we live almost 1000 miles away and still we are feeling the daunting impact of this tragedy.

My heart and prayers are with the souls who are experiencing such horror and loss right now. My heart aches deeply for the communities and ecosystems that are disappearing in front of our eyes.

When I look online and see skies of bright orange, exhausted firefighters curled on the pavement sleeping, and lines of cars with walls of fire raging behind them — I feel despair and even disbelief.

The grief I carry is becoming thicker and thicker each day and so I have to…I need to…I paint.