Opening Art Reception

You're Invited

Friday, August 2, from 5-7:30 p.m. I'm having a reception for my solo show

at the Carroll County Public Library.

It will be featuring my 30 paintings in 30 days I did in January.

Yea, I know.

After my last post,

how could I have gotten 30 paintings done in 30 days.

I don't know either, but I did it.

   I shouldn't own up to this,

but hey,

I bare my soul on here all the time.

Everyone knows I'm pretty much a goof ball.

I spent a lot of time designing post cards with pics of some of the paintings from the show,

I re-worked the wording about a dozen times,

I checked this,

looked at that,

checked the date to make sure I got it right,

because I've made that mistake once already,

and hit the order button to Vistaprint,

and waited patiently for my order.

Then my life sort of spun out of control with a few medical emergencies,

and when the postcards got here,

yes, I'd done it again,

I put the wrong date on them.

So if you get one of these invites,

please know, I really did try to make them look nice and professional,

but I can only be so good.

Forgive me, and come for the food.

Returning from the dark side

Returning From the Dark Side

I've been in quite the funk lately,

and am trying to work my way out and get back into the light.

I've never really thought of myself as fragile,

but,

a painting I did several weeks ago set me off

and I've had a hard time recovering. 

 

However,

I will not allow myself to stay here, because it's not real pleasant.

I've had several family medical issues to deal with,

but now it's time to quit crying in my, my, Oh I don't know what to say here

since I don't drink.

But it's time to get back on the horse and move on.

I've decided to try some other things to get my mojo back,

so here you go. . .

 

I've always been afraid of water colors,

so I bought myself this Chinese brush kit for Christmas.

I hadn't opened it up, so the other day when I couldn't bring myself to paint,

I got it out and opened it up and figured out what everything was

and read the book.

Isn't that little brush holder too cute.

 

 

So this is my orchid.

It's only using the ink.

That was pretty fun, rubbing the ink in this little pot and adding just a drop or two of water,

and then painting.

I felt freer with that brush and painting than at any other time.  

That was weird.

Next, I said to myself,

Self,

let's work on some drawing.

I love to paint beach scenes and I wanted to work on the values of this one photograph I have,

so, I did.

 It's hard to see here, but there are several waves coming in and then the foam on the beach.

This was an interesting exercise for me.

We grow all sorts of flowers, but my favorite are my 15 or so Star Gazer lily plants.

I've been a florist for years and I love flowers, but they are hard to paint,

so I thought I work on understanding how these flowers are put together,

botanically speaking.

I'm not unhappy with it.

Then the real test.

Could I, should I pick up a brush and paint something.

I played a little game with myself, and painted it on a piece of heavy paper.

That way, if I couldn't do it, I could tell myself, well it wasn't going to be a painting for sale,

or on your website or anything like that.

Mind games.

Always with the mind games.

 So this is what I painted.

We had a beautiful, I mean stunning sunset and I photographed it,

and had it up on my computer and my iPad while I worked.

I taped the paper down onto my dabble board,

layed it on my table, no easel,

and painted.

I painted quickly and tried to paint shapes.

I'm not unhappy with it.

It doesn't show well here,

but I love the gate and the fence.

Isn't that weird.

All that color in the sky and the reflection

and I like a gate and a fence.

Anyway,

that's part of how I'm getting out of my funk.

Come back tomorrow and see the other thing I'm doing.

 

Landscape Ladies

Landscape, Start to Finish

What is your process on a painting?

Here was our process for a landscape.

OK, it's really hot and humid here and I can't go outside for a long period of time.

But, we did go out and look at things to paint,

sketched things to paint,

and photographed what we would paint.

This was our final selection.

We're sketching

 

We're sketching

Katelyn is in the pink shirt 

and my granddaughter, America is the blond.

We're back in the studio and beginning to sketch in our paintings.

We're working on 6" x 6" canvas panels.

We're making some headway.

We won't get all the elements of our original sketch in today,

but we learned a lot in the process.

Katelyn putting in highlights on her trees.

She got in all the main elements of this painting and is doing a great job

following directions and using them in her own way.

 Katelyn and her finished painting.

Katelyn and America with their finished painting and the demo painting
I did to teach them how to do the landscape.

America and her finished painting.

Both girls seemed to have a good time completing their paintings. 

I think they did a really good job.

What do you all think?

 

Painting Shadows

In the Shadows

Understanding how color works is pretty big in the art world.

Making something look 3D involves shadows.

Shadows on the subject, under the subject and behind the subject.

Sometimes even inside the subject.

Today Katelyn explored how to mix color to create shadows.

 

We used the primary colors and then added the complement to each one to make shadows.

Then we did a value study of the shadow color we made.

She's really concentrating.

 

Next we did a quick study of an apple and the shadows on the edges

and a shadow underneath the apple.

I had arranged several budvases of the flowers we grow here on the farm,

and Katelyn selected this one to paint.

It's a clear glass vase, and the background is much more green than the light blue that shows up here.

You can see the shadows at the base of the vase and behind the flowers.

Katelyn signing her painting.

This little painting gave many hard lessons.

Green for one thing.  

Clear glass,

Flowers,

not to mention the shadows.

Lots of lessons we'll both be using the rest of our artistic careers.

Give Katelyn a shout out for everything she's learning.

Are You a Winner???

Are You the Lucky Winner?

During our recent Blog Carnival I offered three of my most popular notecards to one lucky person who left a comment on my blog.

 Hope your name was in there.

Today during my art class with my young student, Katelyn,

she drew a name out of the hat.

Can you see your name in there?

 Katelyn's pulling out the name.

Hope it's yours!

 

She's looking at the name!!!!

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!!

 Nelly at Art in My Attic is the lucky winner!

 

Nelly email me with your snail mail address at

slgraves6@gmail.com

and and I'll get these three out to you  ASAP.

Thanks to all for leaving a comment and hope you enjoyed to Blog Carnival.

I hear we'll be doing this again in the next 6 weeks or so.

Check it out and pass it around the next time we have the opportunity.

Brush Strokes

Brush Strokes and Temperature

Trying to explain things like temperature of color can be difficult.

But we can do hard things,

so we plunged ahead.

We started out working on brush strokes,

first with a calligraphy pen,

and next with several types of brushes.

Then we worked on a 5"x 7" painting of rocks.

Rocks were great for this exercise because you can see the rocks emerge in a few strokes and it's pretty exciting to see something almost magically appear.

Deciding where the light is coming from affects the dimension of the rocks

so we were able to work on both temperature and brush strokes 

in one small painting.

Here is Katelyn with her painting of rocks and grass.

Check out those rocks and the grasses we through in for a different type of brushstroke.

Katelyn's got it don't you think?

How about giving Katelyn a shout out.