Love the Valentino Fall/Winter 2015-16 collection!  And Hailey Clauson gives this dress so much movement and flow!

One of my favorite inspirations is back: Urban Zen!  This awesome white jacket is so amazing, I love it!!  It looks fantastic on Nana Keita, a beautiful model who is a regular at Urban Zen, and I can see why.

Check out their brilliant designs, their great choices of rich fabric textures and colors, the great proportions of the clothes in all their collections!  Donna Karan has a genius vision, no doubt about it.

Not to mention all the amazing work the Urban Zen Foundation does in giving back to so many communities, in other countries and right here at home.  

This was so much fun to sketch at the park!  

Reese Witherspoon is always just flawless, but she is especially so in a stunning pair of Tiffany earrings, I gotta say!  So lady-like, down to earth and always with a great sense of humor.  Love her!

We remember.

'Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love' ... Beautiful Valentino hearts mini!  Love the print and the quote, just beautiful!

Having fun imagining what my friend Megan's wedding is going to be like.  So excited, can't wait!  

A couple of weeks ago my friend Natalie and I had the awesome experience of painting from a live model at the Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra as part of The Drawing Club.  The club focuses on weekly painting and drawing from a live model based on a different theme each week - this time the theme was Dr. Who.

This was my first time painting live!  And it was a nerve-racking experience, as I am usually just naturally focused so much on getting the 'likeness' down ... I guess it's something I like a lot and aspire to do as a general rule when I paint, and it's something that drives me.  Which is probably why I usually enjoy very detailed work.  But sometimes it's nice to just let go, speed things up and see what comes out, and to just trust the process.  This was definitely a freeing experience, and something I look forward to doing again.  Keeping it to a limited color palette helped a lot with becoming more relaxed and focusing on the feel of it more than on details, too.  It was so much fun!  It really made me want to practice more of this quick gestural painting and to get out of my comfort zone more.

Thanks for the awesome idea, Natalie!  Can't wait until we do this again :-))

She's looking so fab in her glamorous summer hat and piled on jewelry!

I painted the pink in the hat with a vibrant dye made for silk fabrics, which made for a nice complement to the watercolors  ... so naturally, this hat must be all silk :-)

She can never have enough bracelets

In-progress, alongside my inspiration.

She wanted to run out and smell the blooms so badly, she just couldn't wait to take the curlers out of her hair!

It was so much fun to paint this at the park, enjoying nature on a beautiful summer day!