Tuesday

Fishing for the final compostition!

This painting has had more lives than Carter has little liver pills! I thought this was the final painting, but the more I looked at it, the less satisfied I became. Ah, the danger of holding onto a painting too long...

So I had another go at it. I thought that the light pastel opaque areas were too stark, so I glazed over most of the painting with a wash of Quin. Gold. Then played back into it. Thought it was done, but alas, when I saw it as a bitty thumbnail on my camera, I realized it was just too busy...

"Resonances", acrylic, 16 x 20"
SOLD

So I went back into it yet again! This time I brought back some of the light opaques I liked the first time around, and then glazed over other areas to quieten them down. I also felt it worked better turned around 180 degrees -sometimes working abstractly works like that. It is still a bit busy, but my paintings tend to be like that -products of a busy mind...

Enjoy!

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

Sunday

"Friends?", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Friends?", watercolour painting on Yupo paper, 12 x 16"
$425.00 framed; FREE S&H

So here you see what I did with my Yupo plate left over after making my 2 prints. I found some interesting figures in a magazine, covered them in masking tape, cut them out and used them as masks so I could brayer more colour and texture onto the Yupo. The figures remain the colour and value they were from the previous printings. Pretty cool eh?

Enjoy!

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

Saturday

Monoprinting Madness!

In my Monday mixed media class, we have been playing around making watercolour monoprints using Yupo paper as the printing plate. It makes a great plate as it needs no preparation at all -just paint away on it. The above image is my first print off my plate (I had a photo of the plate before printing, but I lost it!). I have not done anything yet to the print -this is the way it looked right after being pulled. See any possibilities?

To make the plate, I began by applying tube watercolour in blue and yellow (with an equal amount of gum arabic/glycerine solution -you don't want runny paint here) with a 4" brayer to the Yupo. I textured this in a variety of ways, adding paint with stamps and also removing colour with dampened lace or stamps and lifting with a dry kleenex, and then I brayered on some more colour, covering that new white space. Any time you want to remove paint to get back to white paper it is a breeze -you just lift it off with a wet brush. I applied some opaque paint on top of all that, again with a brayer, and lifted through some of the resulting layers.

When you make a plate, think of it like a sandwich -the stuff at the very top of the plate will print first, and then successive layers will print if you print a ghost. More about that in a minute...You have to remember that whatever is on the bottom of the Yupo will end up being on top in the final image (unless you have lots of layers as I did, then the middle might end up being on top!). You never really know what you will end up with!

This is the plate on the right and the above print on the left, so you can see how much paint is left on the plate after printing. I had several layers of paint and texturing on the plate, and it is cool to see the differences between the two images -really look and see the differences! The first print only took off the top layer, so the plate looks very different now than the print. So, I decided to print the plate again without adding any more paint to it. This is called a ghost print.


Here is the plate on the right and the ghost print on the left. You can see the value of the original print in the top left corner. Again, look at the difference between the two. The plate still looks pretty cool, so I played with that some more, but you'll have to wait for tomorrow's post to see it!

So now the question is -what to do with the two prints? Glad you asked! I love going back into these prints with watercolor and prismacolor pencil crayons. Haven't done this to these prints yet, but here is one that I did do:

"Endpapers for a Dream", mixed media, 18 x 10" (sold)

Monoprinting with watercolors is a fun and very creative way to make art. If you want to know more, just let me know and I will go into it in more detail.

Enjoy!

Friday

"Fall Stroll", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Fall Stroll", watercolour painting, 7 x 11"
$110 archivally matted, FREE S&H

I did this little painting demonstration for my morning watercolour class, as we were studying how to put incidental people into our landscapes. These people are really tiny! I painted wet in wet around them, leaving them white until the end.

I have just finished updating my entire website, complete with my teaching and workshop schedules. New images are to be found in all categories as well. I hope you will check it out.

Enjoy!

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

Thursday

On the cover!!

Yahoo! I just received notice that the latest issue of the online art magazine "Canadian Brushstrokes" is up. When I went to the link, low and behold, there I was on the cover- well, not me but my painting. You can see the magazine HERE. I have had a painting in the magazine before, but never first, and never on the cover. I am SO thrilled! The magazine subscription is FREE, so check it out.

You know, it seems that whenever I get discouraged with my art, God sends along something beautiful like this, to confirm to me that I am doing what I am called to do. I am so very thankful!

(this is me painting at Lake O'Hara in September)

Sunday

'Blob' Crowds!


We have just begun a figurative unit in my Wednesday watermedia classes, so I thought I would post an exercise I gave them, in case you wanted to try it out yourselves. We began the unit with incidental figures -the figures that populate a landscape to give it a sense of scale or to make it feel 'lived in'. There are a few great videos online on how to paint these little characters here and here. We began by just painting silhouettes of people doing things, then progressed to dressing them. Then it was time to group them together so that they didn't look so isolated from each other and self-important.

I made a multi-coloured blob with watercolour on small pieces of leftover watercolour paper. These are about 4 x 5" in size. Then the chore was to find a crowd of people in all that colour! I lifted areas of colour, added legs and costumes, did lots of negative painting and then found more people in that. The first photo shows a less refined stage of the process, so you can get the idea (I hope!). Sometimes I just have fun beginning a painting just this way, with a doodle, finding the characters and then building them a stage on which to tell their story. Sometimes it works out great, sometimes not so great, but it is always a fun adventure!

I spent most of this last week doing a complete overhaul of all the images on my website, and updating all my class and workshop information. Hope you like it, it was a huge undertaking. Don't ask me why I don't do it more often!!

Thursday

"Take Another Look", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Take Another Look", watercolour painting, 11 x 14"
$225.00 archivally matted, FREE S&H

This is another watercolour I did during my class's venture into abstraction. After making the painting, which had a strong cruciform design, I thought the result was good, but not WOW. So I decided to impose a frame-on-frame compostition on top of the cruciform. I did this by using the theory of 'counter-change', which has a shape that changes from dark against light in one area to light against dark in another. I did this by lifting the paint in areas and painting darker in others. The end result makes you 'take another look', hence the title.

Enjoy!

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

Wednesday

"Poppy Surprise", mixed media painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

I was going through my stash of paintings getting ready to make my submissions to the upcoming Calyx and FCA art shows, and realized that I had neglected to post this one. It is one of the demos that I did at the collage workshop I taught for the Calgary Sketch Club a few weeks ago. It began with a drawing in Sharpie marker on gator board, of a scene from one of my sketchbooks. I love working that way as I am really free to interpret it.

After painting small pieces of different kinds of papers into a collage palette before me, I began to 'rip and stick' the pieces onto the board without too much disgression. I didn't try to stay inside the lines, as you can see. Some of them will remain visible in the early stages to serve as a guide, but it becomes intuitive after the first layers.

After the board was covered, I then began to paint back into it with acrylics to loosely define the flowers and folliage. The process is sort of like this: rip, stick, paint, rip, stick, paint, etc until it is done.

"Poppy Surprise", mixed media painting, 9x9"
SOLD

Enjoy!

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

Sunday

"Mountain Patterns", watercolor painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Mountain Patterns", watercolor painting, 11 x 15"
SOLD

This is another experiment into abstraction with my advanced class. This was a totally new departure for me, quite a shock actually, and I think I really like it! It is based on a photo I took while driving through the Kananaskis Mountains -I liked the shapes and values but the photo was just filled with greys and greens. What fun to paint it like I wish it really was.

Enjoy!

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

Thursday

"Back On The Elbow", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Back On The Elbow", watercolour painting, 11.5 x 9"
SOLD

This is a revisit of a subject that painted over 10 years ago. In my watermedia classes, we are on a unit of abstracting subject matter. I chose to simplify and angularize the shapes to make the image more abstract, as well as playing with the application of colour. I think it turned out kind of neat.

I am thrilled to once again be chosen to exhibit in this spring's Calyx event. I have to get my list in by Wednesday so I am really scrambling to get my paintings framed and ready. Somehow, I prefer them just all sitting on the shelf in my studio, making them is the fun part, but one does have to buy more supplies and frames...

Enjoy!

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

Monday

Mixed Media painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

This is an in-progress painting that I was working on for my mixed media class. It began with some collage elements, many of which are no longer visible, but you can still see some text papers and a nude figure which was from an old nudie postcard I bought at a flee market in Italy. Then acrylics are put on top, more collage, more paint, etc. I am not sure what else I will do to this, but I don't think it is 'there' yet. Any suggestions?

Enjoy!

Thursday

"Flower Girl", acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Flower Girl", acrylic painting, 12 x 16"
SOLD 

This painting began as a way to use up the leftover paint on my palette after 3 different painting sessions. It was looking kind of interesting, so I decided to pursue it to see what it could become. The cruciform shape began to look like the body of a woman in a kimono, so I gave her a head and then saw that she was holding a pot of flowers. Colours in the lower right and upper left quickly became flowers, and voila, flower girl.

I wanted to let you know that I will be teaching "Introduction to Mixed Media Painting" at Series in Red Deer this summer from July 26 to 30th. You can see the full colour brochure at the link above.

Enjoy!

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

Tuesday

"The Mentor:, mixed media painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"The Mentor", mixed media painting, 15 x 22"

I progressed this painting over a couple of weeks for my mixed media class. Such an adventure, as it always is when working from chaos. It began with a failed start that I began to collage pieces of coloured magazine papers to. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the start, and it has come a long way since then. The figures appeared so I went with that thought. As it went along, I began to think about mentoring -how we sit at the feet of a master, hungry to learn all they have to teach us. The vessel shape symbolized the well of knowledge, the text representing notes taken so the nuggets don't get lost. I have sat at the feet of several wonderful mentors, including Virginia Cobb, Carla O'Connor, Gerald Brommer and George James, to name a few of my most favorites. Now I have others who are learning from me. And so the cycle continues...

Enjoy!

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

Monday

"On Opabin Plateau", oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"On Opabin Plateau", oil painting, 12x9"
SOLD

I am getting ready for my solo show in May, so I went through my plein air paintings from the summer to see what I had. I had done a couple of paintings at Lake O'Hara which 'didn't cut it', so I thought I would go back into them to see if I could bring them up to my vision. I am very happy with how this one turned out, as it has the exact feeling of being there at that moment. It was late in the afternoon up on Opabin Plateau, and the sun was creating incredible light and dark patterns on the mountains and the foreground was all lit up.

Enjoy!

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