Saturday

"Winter Tulips", oil painting from life by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Winter Tulips", oil painting, 6x6"
This is my first attempt at those flowers I bought yesterday. These ones came in a pot; that way I figured I would get several tries at them before they died. This was really hard! Again I had them set up next to my window, so had only l hour maximum. Lots of reflected light and cast shadows, plus the translucency of the petals, with the back petals showing through. I have never done a tulip painting in oil from life before -a photo makes things much easier. I didn't exactly nail it this time, but think it is kind of nice anyway.

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

Friday

"Should We Follow?", oil painting from life

"Should We Follow?", 6x8", oil on board
SOLD  
 
I set these pears up on my kitchen table with the sun coming in through the big windows, figuring that I only had 1 hour to get it before the shadows changed too much. I am finding it really difficult to take good photos of wet oils inside my studio, however you get the gist of things.
This was really fun to do, so I went out and bought tulips and daffodils to paint over the weekend while my DH is away on his ski trip.

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

Wednesday

"Light Loves Colour", studio oil painting

"Light Loves Colour", 6x6" oil on board
SOLD

I had some paint left on my palette after hitting "Summit Lake" one more time (it's never over until it's over!) so thought I would try a still life from some photo references I had. Each of these elements are from different photos, so I kind of made it up -would have really liked to have seen the actual bottom of that brown bottle! It was fun to imagine what the reflected light would have looked like if they had been together. I haven't done any still life since Carol's workshop, but think I will try to set up some still life staging gizmo in the studio, at least until the weather cooperates for plein air.
I am having a battle with myself over originality -it seems like everyone and his brother are painting small still lives, so I really don't feel the need to add to the pile. However, it does sharpen your observation and alla prima (= in one sitting) oil painting, so it is useful. I just have to find MY way of doing it that will set it apart from all the others...

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

Friday

Studio Oil painting -finished?

"Summit Lake Revisited", oil on canvas, 18 x 24"
I spent a few hours today getting this painting this far. I think it may be finished -what do you think? I believe I captured the essence of the original plein air painting- you can see it here. I loved the originals snow reflections, but I like this mountain better. I took some advice I found on the net to just use larger brushes when trying to work up a larger studio oil from a plein air painting -I think that was very good advice!

I also received my first blog award -at least the first one that I didn't have to jump through hoops to receive :) -from my friend and wonderful artist and writer Veronica Funk. She gave it to me with no strings attached (bless her) but on further research I see that I am supposed to direct you to 12 other artists' blogs that I love. Now I do have a very limited number of artists that this blog is linked to, which you can see on the right side of my blog, so I will endeavor to chose some new ones (these aren't in any order!) I just went through my favorites and pulled out some that I haven't been to in awhile -big mistake time-wise, but fun none the less.
1. Ingrid Christenson -loose oil painter and friend
2. Jane Rosemont - a wonderful photographer and long distance friend
3. Marc Hanson -a great plein air painter and very giving teacher -check him out to learn tons
4. Crystal Neubauer -neat 3D and mixed media stuff
5. Dominik Modlinski -this is his website, he is my plein air hero traveling to very remote areas to paint
6. Martha Lever -I took an online calligra-fun workshop from Martha, and she was in my digital manipulations class too -does fun work with journals and text
7. Annelein Beukenkamp -fabulous watercolours
8. Plein Air Artists -a ning group I just found -too many great artists here to list separately, but check out the site (that's where I read the suggestion about upsizing a PA ptg)
9. Marie Fox -oil painter -paints with a number of other fantastic artists who are linked on her site
10. And this is the last one (have to get back to painting) Elizabeth Golden -mixed media artist with lots of free give-away vintage images
Wow, that was a very eclectic grouping wasn't it.

Enjoy!

To purchase a painting, or commission your own painting, please email me.

Thursday

Back again!

I am back from visiting my kids in Ontario for a week. I now have 3 of my 4 children living in my home province, and I miss them all like crazy. When I got back I received an email from my cyberfriend and fellow artist Carol Nelson, which contained this amazing painting she did of me from my bio photo. Carol has embarked on an incredible journey, committing herself to doing 100 portraits in 100 days, and posting them on her blog. I hope you will check out her site -she does geologic abstracts and florals mostly, so this project has been a real learning experience for her. Setting up AND maintaining a blog really pushes one to excel in painting -now I had better get back to my own easel!

Monday

Mixed Media Demonstration -cont.

Ok, so after I had gotten to the last step of the mixed media demo from Jan 27th, I spent several hours playing with it, trying to make it work, but it was going from bad to worse! I got frustrated with it and decided to gesso it over and give it another try -kind of a catharsis. I put 2 layers of gesso on it and then a layer of gloss medium to seal the surface. Then I thought I would stamp into the gesso with my large, dry stamp, and behold the gesso was not quite dry so it left a cool imprint in it. You can see above where the stamp actually grazed into the underlying color a bit (the shine is the gloss medium, so you can see where it got removed with my stamp)

So I was re-energized to begin again and see how the new imprints would take the paint. I used the same colours as before (Quin gold, Quin crimson and Ultramarine blue) and popped them in and mixed them around. You can see how the gesso takes the paint differently(it is semi-absorbant) than the gloss medium (non-absorbant); as well, the paint kind of settled into the indentations. I did a little more stamping as well at this stage, mostly with the small spiral stamp.

Next I took a viewfinder design and began to block out some of the shapes with darker paint. At this point I could see the suggestion of where a figure could be (the breast shape on center right side and a butt-cheek and legs in the lower part of the painting. I had no idea where the head would be or what her upper torso was doing. I spent another several hours trying to get her to work -but alas, that wasn't working out either. So desperation hit yet again (heavy sigh) and I took my rubbing alcohol and poured it all over the painting and took my wet sandpaper and scrubbed at the mess until all I had was a ghost of the former paint. This left a very cool texture again, because I had applied the gesso layers with a foam roller, which left a bumpy texture, so the paint lifted off the high bits and remained in the valleys. If you zoom into the painting below, you can see some of that texture.

This time I took and put in some more dark passages, and decided to keep it abstract-no more figure finding for me right now! I painted through a stencil in varying ways to keep the texture moving from the lower right to the upper left -light against dark and then dark against light. Repetition with variation, remember? Then I began to add different colour opaques to it, breaking up shapes and joining others. I was once again having fun!

More dark pattern to link the the elements of the painting together. I think this is the final painting -at least for now!

Moral of this lesson: It's never over 'til it's over -gotta love acrylics...

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

New Studio Oil Painting

I know I have been a bad blogger as I haven't posted in a whole week or more -but life has been wonderfully busy. I haven't been painting much lately, and that has been in acrylics. However, I thought I would post an oil that I started this weekend. It is a 18x24" canvas done from my plein air painting "Summit Lake", painted this year at Waterton Provincial Park. When I do oils in my studio, which is not often, I love to work from a plein air study in conjunction with photos to make the larger work. Trying to keep the looseness and spontaneity is the hard part here. As you can see I am working on a red-orange toned board, the same colour as most of my plein air work is done on. This is pretty much just past the block-in stage. I am leaving the water and reflections for now as they have to be done wet-on-wet in one go. That is where the painting will either make it or fail -so I am a little anxious about it :)

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.