This is a painting course for intermediate and advanced students, although adventurous beginners with some drawing and watercolor experience are welcome. Each day will begin with a demonstration by Joan Brady and end with a showing of all of the artists’ sketchbooks (all students will receive their own sketchbook on the morning of the first day). Joan and the class will select areas and subjects to sketch and paint as a group (mostly outdoors, weather permitting) so there will be some walking and exploring involved. Spending no more than twenty to thirty minutes per sketch, students will capture what they see and feel – the actual subject, the larger scene and the energy experienced – filling some of the page, the whole page, or spilling out across both pages. Wherever the brush takes them, essentially. These sketches, ideally, will be intensely focused studies of objects that are frequently overlooked in everyday life – they will not be, nor are they intended to be, finished works of art. They will be to the artist who makes them what notes are to an author… something that may or may not, in time, evolve into a more fully realized piece of art. In Joan Brady’s eyes, a sketchbook stands on its own – as a journal, a travel sketchbook or, perhaps, as a visual memoir – telling an unfolding story, page by page. By the end of this class, each student will have created just such a book of their own.