30 Paintings - Day 26!

All month I have been managing to paint a few days ahead of my posting. This is good in one way: I haven't had to worry about not getting a painting done each day.  However, I  don't always remember what steps I went through to create some of the pieces.

#1091 - Golden Sunset - 5.5 x 8 acrylic on watercolour paper

I think that this piece was the other half of yesterday's painting "Rays" although it now bears no resemblance to what it was before. I know I used a lot of gesso to really create texture, then some pretty thick paint to cover any of the previous paint still showing. Using a palette knife I added the final touches. I don't know why, but when using the knife I often end up with a scene of trees and rocks - I have to get out of this rut!

Check Leslie's Blog to see some great art!

Thanks for visiting  - it is great to hear from you!

Lucky Demonstrations

Once again I was very lucky with my demonstrations for my students this week and completed a few paintings that worked very well.

#1010 - Yellow-rumped Warbler #2 - 5 x 7 watercolour

Ed wanted to work on a piece that had more detail and to have a more realistic painting. This piece involved using finer brushes and a nib pen for the smallest lines. Because of the detail Ed didn't get his painting finished during the class but he was doing a super job. I hope he brings his painting next time and I hope he will let me take a photo.

#1011 - A Quiet Place - 5 x 7 watercolour

"A Quiet Place" was a very lucky painting. A few weeks ago my student, Heather, and I worked on a scene from the Creston Valley. Heather had problems with a few elements of her piece so I grabbed a discarded piece of paper to show her how to make some corrections. The trees on the hill in the middle ground were painted first to demonstrate how to blend them together and set them down on the hill. Then, I quickly painted some evergreens to one side so I could show her how to lift the dark colour to make bushes in front of the trees. While she was making these adjustments on her painting, I just sort of doodled in the rest of the scene. I really liked the finished painting which is why I say it was lucky.

#1006 - Erickson Orchards - 7 x 10 watercolour

This is my painting of the valley scene that Heather and I were working on and you can see the locations that involved the demonstrations. Again, I hope to be able to get photos of her painting at her next lesson.

Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment.

30/30 January Challenge #30

Well, it is over and none too soon as I have run out of steam!

Today's painting was planned around another of the pre-cut mats I have.

#1008 - Chickadee in the Maple - 5 x 9 watercolour

Unfortunately, by the time I finished playing with colour, the pre-cut mat was all wrong. The tan mat just didn't work with the painting so, I painted it brown! I was rather surprised that it worked although the mat now almost looks like wood instead of paper.

I believe that tomorrow we are supposed to share a collage of our month's work and then the challenge will be complete. It has been great, seeing the work of old 'friends' like Sheila, Laurie,  Joan and Nelvia as well as finding some new artist friends to follow -  Cindy and Sharon to name a few. I look forward to seeing more posts from all of them as the year progresses and maybe, just maybe, trying to emulate their work.

Don't forget to check out the work by the many artists who joined Leslie's 30/30 Challenge and tune in tomorrow to see my collage.

No Photos Again!

I just can't seem to get my head around the need to take photos when I give a class. This afternoon I again spent some time with the TAPS people and the students from Wildflower. I was so busy talking and teaching that taking photos completely slipped my mind.

I can, however, show you the pieces I did to prepare for the 'class' and outline what was done.

When I first started teaching beginner art, I used the 'basic shapes' method to show people how to draw. People seem to get bogged down and I often heard things like 'I can't draw a circle' or 'I can't draw a straight line'. My response? "Can you print the alphabet?" Thus was born my version of "Alphabet Art".

Life on the Prairies

 Except for the rolling hills, everything in the above picture was drawn using these letters: H, L, B, V, O, T, A (with out the cross bar) and I.

Life in the Valley

For this picture I added a row of K's to make the mountains in the background. I also took an unfair advantage when drawing the barn because I couldn't think of a letter that would give me the right shape. For those of you shaking your head's, in some cases you need to turn the paper sideways to get the right effect.

Life in the City

Today I started by showing everyone how they could draw certain subjects - houses, trees, bushes, windows and doors. Once they all had the idea I invited them to draw a picture of where they grew up or the best place they ever lived and to share their stories with the group. I spent the rest of my time visiting, listening to their stories and offering suggestions of things to add to their drawings (it surprised me to see a few outhouses in some of the pictures- lol). Everyone seemed to have a great time and it was nice to bring back some memories to some of the seniors.

After seeing that some of the kids put stick figures in their drawings I added a few more letters to the lesson.

Not the best photo but I hope you get the idea. The boy starts with an H for his body, V's for the arms, O for the head, and W for the legs. The girl starts with an X and the rest is the same.

Of course, the letters get a bit distorted and the final result is tidied up but the basics are simply letters that we use everyday. I hope this encourages you to think up your own drawings based on the alphabet and if you do please share them!

2016 Day 26

I really goofed today. Last week I invited a friend to visit today so that we could paint together and I completely forgot! Bob and I were in the crawl space under the living room so we were deaf to anything happening up stairs. Fortunately, Bob stuck his head out and happened to hear the doorbell. So, we finished up our chore while my friend sat on the stairs and talked to us. Then we crawled out, cleaned up, had lunch and then Linda and I spent the rest of the afternoon PAINTING!

A lot can be accomplished in 3 hours of uninterrupted painting so I am now ahead of the game! Here is today's piece.

In the Spotlight

This is a redo of a painting I did a number of years ago and I have no idea what I used for a reference. My first piece was done in watercolors but this is acrylic.

Shortly after we moved to the country, we heard some strange noises in the evening so we went to investigate. Just armed with flash-lights, we wandered around looking and, half-way up one of the trees near the deck, this is what we saw. We still have a raccoon hanging around as he likes the sunflower seeds the birds drop but we usually only see his tracks in the snow.

"In the Spotlight" is acrylic on a 5 x 8 plastic canvas paper.

Four more days to go!

2016 Day 22

I am really happy with today's painting - it all just seemed to flow. I love it when that happens!

Fall Reflections

I use a modified stay-wet palette and a pretty limited number of paints, so I am often 'using-up' whatever is there. Today I was finishing some Thalo green and getting some interesting colors by mixing in ultramarine, burnt sienna and alizarin crimson.

"Fall Reflections" is a 5 x 7 acrylic on a gallery wrap stretched canvas.

Don't forget to check out Leslie's blog to see some of the wonderful art shared in the 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge - http://30paintingsin30days.weebly.com/blog

2016 Day 17

Well I managed to do something with the second painting I started yesterday. It isn't wonderful but I think it turned out okay considering it was a bit of a mess.

Silent Forest

Before Christmas I bought a bunch of small acrylic 'Folk Art' paints from a box of items donated to the Art Club. Yesterday I decided to try them out. This painting started out with Plum, Rose and White. The intent was for a flowing abstract like the green piece I did, but what I got was purple mud. I sprayed, blotted, sprayed again - nothing seemed to help. Finally I decided to just paint over the whole mess, so I grabbed a deep purple and slathered it on, then scrapped away with my palette knife. Once the whole thing was dry I added some white and a little bit of blue and ended up with Silent Forest. The painting is a 6 x 10 acrylic on mat board.

To enjoy a wide variety of art check out the other artists in the 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge - http://30paintingsin30days.weebly.com/blog

2016 Day 3

I wonder how many of us doing this challenge feel like we should have our heads examined. What was I thinking? I am writing this in between fixing dinner and I am afraid that I am going to burn the rice or have something boil over because I get caught up and forget what else I am doing. See? Crazy!

At any rate, I did manage to get a piece done for today's post. Another challenge participant gave me the idea when I read her blog for Day 1 - http://nelviasworkshopchallenges.blogspot.ca/

Three in a Row

 "Three in a Row" is a 6 x 8 acrylic on a gallery wrap canvas. It was painted using a palette knife - oops! I just caught the rice - I think I had best leave this until after dinner - lol.

.........Time lapse.........

As I was saying, I used a palette knife, some left over paint and white gesso. The canvas had been painted black so I was able to scratch out the back ground trees and some of the branches. Although this painting has some things that are frowned upon (like straight lines and an object smack in the center) I am quite happy with it.

I hope tomorrow's piece works as well!

A New Year - A New 30 Paintings Challenge

I really hadn't planned to enter Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge this January but I just couldn't help myself. My first thought was to do a series of small acrylic pieces but, due to my continued interest in Quilling, I think I will work in both media over the month.

Here is my painting for Day #1.

Copper Beech Tree

"Copper Beech Tree" is acrylic on a home-made 5 x 7 x 3/4" canvas board. The painting is based on a photo of a tree in my yard.

To see some of the contributions by other artists go to Leslie's page; http://30paintingsin30days.weebly.com/blog

See you tomorrow!

September Challenge Day 26

This piece was a bit more complicated than most of the cards I have done this month. The small size made it even more difficult but I think it turned out okay.

A Working Wharf

The distant trees and bushes are all done with parallel lines which I think helps to give depth to the picture. My hand got pretty tired doing all those small lines so I ended up jumping around instead of just working from top to bottom.

Sometimes I work free hand but this card was drawn in pencil first. It is very hard to correct a mistake in pen & ink so one needs to plan ahead.

Four more day to go!

September Challenge Day 15

Today's card was a bit more difficult as I was doing trees. I often find that all my trees end up looking the same except for size and I wanted these to look a bit different.

Wind Warped

I wanted these trees to look like they survive on a barren slope where the wind blows fiercely down the hill making life a challenge for everything.

Today is only the half-way point of the challenge although I feel like I have been at it for longer than that. Who knows what the next few weeks will bring!

September Challenge Day 9

I was just wishing that this challenge was happening in October when I expect to have more time!

Here is today's pen & ink card.

The Park Bench card

Now, I need to do some yard work, make some goodies for the art show, get some of my other cards packaged, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks for stopping by!

September Challenge Day 2

To help me get back in the groove of doing Pen & Ink, I have been using some books by Claudia Nice for ideas and reference. A number of my cards are based on her drawings.

Aged Cedar card

I find that it takes some time to get back the flow of a different medium when you have not done it for a while. Also, 'seeing' colored things in black and white can be difficult.

Practice, practice, practice!

Display Challenges

A few years ago I took a workshop on "Painting on fabric with Dyes". The instructor was a local artist, Eileen Gidman. ( - http://eileengidman.blogspot.ca/) 
As with all workshops, I had a great time, learned some things and managed to create a number of reasonably decent pieces.

Garden Favorite

My problem was - What do I do with them now? I am not a quilter like Eileen and most of the pieces where the wrong size or shape to make a pillow, so the pieces just sat around.

Recently I decided that I had to do something with these fabric paintings!

 For Garden Favorite I added a border and painted Morning Glories using acrylic paint and fabric medium. Then, I made a pillow using a piece of green fabric for the back.

The colors aren't an exact match but it looks pretty good I think.

Flower Basket

I attached the two larger dye paintings to stretched canvases so they could be hung - gallery wrapped so no frame is needed.

Poplars in Fall

I think this will increase the chances of these pieces being sold because they will actually be seen now that they are hanging on the wall and displayed on the bed.

I had a challenge with how to hang another painting recently. It was a 4 x 6 acrylic on canvas board. Of course, I didn't have a fame that it would fit and it sat on a shelf for a few months before I figured out what to do with it.

Blue Flame

Although the background looks a little purple in the photo it actually matches the painting very well and the red frame really finishes the whole thing.

Although I have a very busy month ahead of me I decided to enter Leslie Saeta's upcoming 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge for the month of September. Check it out here -  http://30paintingsin30days.weebly.com/ 

I hope you will follow along with my progress during the month as I work to improve my skills with pen & ink.

Painting Day #2

Last week my friend Linda came over again so we could paint together. When we painted in March, Linda supplied the subject; this time I did. I found a tutorial in an old Watercolor Magic magazine - 'The Elegance of Untouched Paper' by Tony van Hasselt and we both were keen to try the vignette idea.

It doesn't seem to matter that we work from the same instructions when we follow a tutorial -  we always end up with very different paintings.

Linda's Painting

Linda chose to loosely copy the subject from the tutorial while I chose a different building.

My Painting - The Old Red Barn

  Most of the elements are the same in both paintings; a barn type building, a silo, a crooked fence, a few trees and bushes and, of course, the same palette of colors. But, our approaches are quite different. Linda often uses a layering effect with blended washes on top of dried washes while I mostly use wet-in-wet techniques. We did try to follow the guidelines in the tutorial but I am not sure how good a job we did.

Here is a synopsis of the vignette guidelines:
-Between 30 and 40 % of the paper should be untouched
-The painted area should touch the edge in 3 or 4 places but not in a sustained way.
 -The untouched areas should have and interesting, interlocking shape - not proportional or equal
-Hard edges should dominate ( I think Linda was more successful with this aspect than I)

We had just started thinking about doing a second painting when I realized that I needed to start dinner so Linda went ahead and painted a second piece.

Linda's Tree Silhouettes

I think our total painting time that day was about 2 1/2 hours. Between eating lunch, visiting, checking out new home improvements, doing dinner and just talking about our lives we don't have a lot of time before Linda is on the road back home.

It doesn't matter how short or how long the time is, painting with a friend is great and well worthwhile.

Summer of Color #3

My first reaction on learning this week's colors was 'How on earth will I do this'. I just couldn't get my head around 2 purples and a yellow; I felt that I had never worked in those colors before.

Anyway, I went off to my studio and started my assignment. I began working on a card because until the pieces are glued they are just a number of separate elements that can be used for other things if they don't work together.

I used one of my home-made stamps and my own painted papers for the flowers and the quilling. Okay, not bad, but I just wasn't satisfied!

I glanced at some reference photos that are lying on my table to be used in another painting and thought, "oh no, that will not look good in purples and yellow'. BUT I decided to try it anyway.

Sun Shadowed 5 x 7 unframed watercolor

All right that worked out okay, AND before I had worked 5 minutes I realized that I had painted this color combination before - more than once! The colors are, of course, compliments and so work together quite well.

I often work wet-in-wet and I wondered what would happen using that approach. Would I end up with a muddy gray mess?

Purple Mists

 As you can see, I added another shade of purple just to make a change. I wet the paper, threw on my three colors (in no particular pattern) and left it to dry. I really liked the end result - no gray mess - but added some misty trees to give it a more finished look.



So, there are my results for week #3 of the SOC. What will she have for us next week?

If you want to know more about this challenge go to http://www.twinkletwinklelikeastar.blogspot.ca/2015/06/the-summer-of-color-5-week-three.html

Summer of Color #2

The second week of the Summer of Color got off to a much better start - I got the color choice on Monday so I had lots of time to plan. Here is what I came up with:

The Protector

Sticking with the fantasy theme, I decided on a Unicorn. The painting is a 7 x 10 unframed watercolor with acrylic ink.

The colors for this week were 2 pinks and an orange. After looking at other people's work from last week and a few from this week, I judged that it was permitted to use ink and that it wouldn't be classed in the color selection. Many people use stamps, words and sometimes drawings, so I thought it would be OK to draw a scene in ink.

I had my sketch done quite quickly but spent a few days deciding on an ink color. Some of the inks I used where not water-proof and the effects when I added the watercolor paint are interesting.

Solitary Fir

On Mountain Slopes

I did four examples  - little 5 x 7 sketches - and it is a good thing that only two turned out to be worth framing because I painted on both sides of the paper. I should know better as you never know when something is going to turn out; even if you are just playing. Here are the reverse paintings:

This last piece helped me decide to use the blue ink. If I had used the brown ink it would have been more in keeping with the colors I was supposed to use, as diluted it was very orangy but I liked the contrast the blue provided.

I can't wait to see what next week brings - On With the Challenge!

Experimenting and Learning

I think most artists continue to experiment and learn throughout their careers. Whether one is a professional with long years of work behind them or a relative beginner, it is important to work at keeping your art fresh.

I am lucky in that way because my art students often ask to paint something that I have never painted before so while I am teaching, I am also learning. A few years ago, Teresa wanted to paint an Elk - antlers and all. She had her own photo to work from and I grabbed one off the internet. I had painted deer before but always in the distance so little detail was needed. For this picture, although I had no interest in photo-realism, I needed to put fuzz on the antlers and have a pretty decent looking face.

Big Boy 10 x 14 acrylic on paper

Recently my newest student, Jean, wanted to try a butterfly. She looked through my meagre butterfly reference material and chose a picture that left me somewhat aghast. "How was I going to teach her this? She has had about 12 lessons and this is pretty complicated"

This is a photo of a photo in an old Northlight Magazine, so the image isn't great BUT this is what Jean wanted to paint! It is "Peacock Sunning on Stones" by Sarais B. Crawshaw.

So I prepared a couple of watercolor canvases and some masking tape masques for the butterfly. We transferred the image on to the paper and applied the masques then we set about trying different ways to paint the rocks. Of course, we used a separate piece of paper: we tried salt, sea sponges, splatter with both screen and fingers - nothing seemed to be working. Finally I decided to try dry brush and it seem to work the best.

Before we could progress to our prepared canvases, Jean decided that she really didn't want to do this picture after all and she would look for another reference.

However my interest was caught! Could I reproduce this picture? I don't normally copy another artist's work but this presented a real challenge and I couldn't resist.

Peacock Butterfly 8 x 10 watercolor

I am pretty happy with the way this painting turned out and I am glad I did it because I learned a lot.

Now comes the thorny question - can I sell this painting? I am not likely to compete in the same market as Sarais B. Crawshaw but even if I credit her on the back of my painting it doesn't strike me as ethical. This question has come up a number of times in the Art Club I belong to but the answers have always been split. What is your take on this question?

DAY 3 - Retroactive

I am DONE! Thirty pieces of art done in 30 days! I think I will take a few days off after this - no, wait - I have Art Club on Wednesday so I guess I will only take one day off.

I decided to finish with the style that I have spent so much time on lately, so here is another Oriental Style painting.

Flowering Peach

Flowering Peach is a 7 x 10 watercolor on crinkled Masa paper. Once again the water is the difficult part of this style and using the crinkled paper added to the challenge. This paper is a bit thicker than normal rice paper so more water can be used which is good as it works better with the texturing. But I had to be careful not to use too much water - it is all a balancing act!

I hope everyone has a great week! Think Spring!

DAY 1 - Retroactive!

I said I would do it and I will even if I have to paint and blog into the evening!

Just after I finished doing my collage for the challenge, my husband decided we should go to Cranbrook for the day. So I ended up doing my painting after dinner.

Red Sky at Night

This is just a small piece because my time was limited so it is pretty basic. I do this type of painting often to just play with colors and let the water take control for the background then add some silhouettes. 

Red Sky at Night is a 3 1/2 x 5 unframed watercolor on 140 cold press paper.

Check in tomorrow to see DAY 2 - Retroactive