Winter updating--Online Classes

I'm resting my eyes from an overload of sparkle and enjoying the simple patterns of winter. I love how the leaf stains on the sidewalk collect the frost:

And the stages of rain drying in the streets:

I'm beginning my year end clean-up and direction setting by doing some updating on my blog. I am thrilled with all the online classes and workshops that keep popping up and decided to start a list of them in case others are interested. I have taken three online classes now and have found all of them to be excellent. Since teachers are not able to rely on charm and personal interaction so much online, they seem to put more energy into developing interesting exercises to keep people engaged. The online classes I've taken have had more depth than many of the "live" classes I've had.

Several years ago I took Susan Sorrel's "Developing your Personal Symbols" online class. She takes you through a series of exercises that have you look at objects around you, sketch them and abstract them to come up with symbols that are meaningful to you. She then teaches you how to incorporate those symbols into a series of small fabric pieces. It was a lot of fun, and I also ended up with symbols that I come back to over and over.

I also enjoyed LK Ludwig's "Point and Shoot Journalism" class, although I confess I didn't have time to finish all the exercises. I do have them stored for later and can do them at my own pace. She has fresh approaches for working with all the photos we have piled up in our libraries, as well as ideas for opening our eyes to take more.

I recently completed Stephanie Lee's online journaling class and recommend it for anyone who wants to do more writing. I've been keeping morning pages for about 15 years after reading "The Artist Way" for the first time, so I was a little concerned whether I would get much out of an online class at this point. Stephanie provided lots of new prompts to help push my journal writing in different directions, and her own writing and reflections are a joy to read.

Besides the online class list, I've also added a list of sites that I find full of useful information or instruction. And I'm just starting to update my favorite links as I catch up with my blog reading. You can find all of them in the side bar.

Please let me know of other online classes or instructional sites that I can add to my list.

Happy New Year to Everyone!