"Winter Pathway", plein air oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Winter Pathway", plein air oil painting, 8 x 6"
$350 framed, FREE S&H

This is the last painting from my plein air day last week. It is the pathway leading down to the river at Voiter's Flats, and just moments after I finished it, a couple of cross country skiiers slid on by and I missed the opportunity to catch their red coats flashing by. Next time...

By the way, there are 1o spots left for international women artists to participate in a show in Ontario honoring International Women's Day. Each artist will produce a 24 x 24" painting that will be hung in a gallery and a book will be made of all the art produced. Some of the proceeds go to Haitian relief. They need to know in the next 36 hours, so if you are interested, please see their blog for more information.


Enjoy!

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

"Fish Creek Rock Band", plein air oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Fish Creek Rock Band", plein air oil painting, 8 x 10"
$495 framed, FREE S&H

This is my second painting from Friday at Voiter's Flats. Just noticed that the title sounds like a singing group -the colour and texture sure were singing that day!! Can't wait for the next sunny, warm day when I am not working.

Enjoy!

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

"Frozen Creek", plein air oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Frozen Creek", plein air oil painting, 8 x 10"
$495 framed, FREE S&H

I have made a decision to try to get outside to paint as often as possible this winter, and on Friday it was a balmy +1C and the sun was shining -what more could I ask for? I went down to Fish Creek Provincial Park at Voiter's Flats and did three paintings, with my painting buddy Jan keeping me company (he did 4 paintings, but forgot his box of acrylic paints, so he had to use my oils. I keep trying to get him to convert to oils and I think this day might have helped :) Everything is so different in the winter, from the colour of the light to the wonderful bounced light in the snow shadows -so much to learn to see.

Enjoy!

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

"Wooded Places", mixed media painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Wooded Places", mixed media painting, 12 x 12"
SOLD

I haven't done a collage painting for such a long time, and it was SO fun to do. I paint and decorate all my own collage papers, and the paintings begin with a random smattering of them. Then I look and look to the painting to tell me the direction to take. This one began easily as the two main trees were suggested in the paper, and off I went painting, covering up, repainting, simplifying and then making busy again until the whole thing began to form a cohesive unit. It would be neat to have several of the exact same starts to see the different paintings they would become.

Enjoy!

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

"Rundle Ridge Spring iv, acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Rundle Ridge Spring iv, acrylic painting on 300lb watercolour paper, 11 x 15"
$425 framed, FREE S&H

Here is another go in the painting series posted last week, based on my plein air oil painting. This time I have kept the colour scheme of "Rundle Ridge Spring ii", but this time I have used the acrylics transparently, translucently and opaquely. It is really neat to see this beside the totally transparent painting -the mountains look more weighty and the sky is very atmospheric. I began the painting with a yellow/yellow-orange underwash over all the paper. When that was dry I layered translucent blue washes over the sky, lifted some clouds and then floated in some white. The yellow underpainting is visible beneath the varying opacities of the sky giving a very cool look to the sky. The mountains were painted opaquely at the tops, moving to a more translucent at the bottoms. The trees were done transparently and the water had the same translucent washes as the sky. This is a very neat way of working -I am hooked :)

Enjoy!

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

"Early Winter Colour", plein air oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Early Winter Colour", plein air oil painting, 9 x 9"
$495 framed, free s&h

This is my very last plein air oil painting before the snow began to fall here in Calgary, and is another time when the abstract patterns of the landscape was my focus. We had an amazingly long fall with warm weather stretching well into November, although the leaves fell by the middle of October. Now we are under about 8" of snow, and anyone who is able to do so is staying home and off the roads which have become skating rinks. Can't wait to get out painting again when the sun begins to shine off of all this white.

Enjoy!

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

"Rundle Ridge Spring #3", acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Rundle Ridge Spring #3", acrylic painting, 8 x 11"
$110 matted, FREE S&H

This is another go at the painting posted on Tuesday. This time I decided to change up the colour to one of my favorite tertiary palettes -yellow-green, red-orange and blue-violet. The acrylics were used totally transparently in a watercolour manner, only a few tree trunks were added opaquely. Totally different feeling in this one - I love seeing what I can do with an image to get more out of it!!

Enjoy!

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

"All The Leaves Are Gone", plein air oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"All The Leaves Are Gone", plein air oil painting, 8 x 10"
$495 frames, FREE S&H

This is one of my latest plein air paintings, done at nearby Fish Creek Provincial Park. The huge park provides many different views of the creek and neighboring landscapes. I kept singing the Mama's and Papa's song "California Dreamin" while painting, and although that is about a winter landscape, it seemed appropriate for this last warm late fall day.

Enjoy!

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

"Rundle Ridge Spring ii", acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Rundle Ridge Spring ii", acrylic painting, 8 x 11"
$110 matted in double archival mats, FREE S&H

In my mixed media class we are learning how to use fluid acrylics in some of their many possible ways. This week, we looked at using them in a watercolour fashion: transparently. The benefit of using the fluids really pays off this way -the paint dries just as nicely as it looks while it is wet (no dulling as with watercolours) and you can use all of your watercolour techniques with the exception of lifting dry paint. Lifting while wet as well as puddling colour together works exactly the same way, but the end result is gloriously brilliant colour. This painting was done from a plein air oil painting I did this spring -see below. I tried to keep the colour the same, but for the acrylic I only used 3 colours for the entire painting: darilyde yellow, ultramarine blue and quin. crimson.


"Rundle Ridge Spring", plein air oil painting, 8 x 10"
$495 framed, FREE S&H

This is the photo of the location that I did the plein air painting from. It is wonderful to interpret a scene en plein air, and then use that study for future paintings. I think I will continue on with this painting, to see what else I can get from it!

Enjoy!

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

"Reinterpreting The Old Man", acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Reinterpreting The Old Man", acrylic painting, 12 x 16"
$695 framed, FREE S&H

This week I did a demo for a local art group focusing on the use of fluid acrylics -my favorite kind! I used my value study for "The Old Man River" -the same one that I painted in my Watercolour Workshop DVD. I used a tertiary triad of red-orange, yellow-green and red-violet, and decided to keep to a warm dominance. It certainly is HOT, but it makes me smile :) I primarily used the paint transparently, like watercolour, but added some opaque and translucent notes at the end.

Just for reference, below is the painting from the DVD, done in watercolour. I changed the sky in the new painting, because it just wanted to be like that!! Like I always say, plan the best you can, but then be prepared for the painting to take you in new directions.

Enjoy!

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

"Bouquet iii", acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Bouquet iii", acrylic painting, 12 x 16"

This is a step-by-step demo I did with my mixed media class and my advanced watermedia class. It is a 'Sharon' take on a Bob Burridge class exercise. It was a good way to demonstrate the flexibility of acrylics. The painting was begun by splattering dots of yellow, pink and blue on watercolour paper. After this dried, we drew the vase and table shape and then glazed the table with an orange made from the yellow and pink. The vase had a translucent veil of light blue floated on and then the stems in the water were painted wet on wet. Next an opaque of blue and white was made (no water in the paint) and the flower shapes were painted negatively. Lastly the flowers and leaves were suggested in a random way with transparents and opaques. This great exercise showed the three ways acrylics can be used; transparently as glazes and washes, translucently in thin watery opaque washes and opaquely with thicker paint, as well as stressing negative painting.

Enjoy!

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