New year, new blog posts!

Hello friends! I know I have been rather sporadic at keeping this blog updated, but I hope to do a better job going forward. All I am promising is that I am going to try to make at least one new post per month, maybe more if the inspiration hits. I think part of the problem is, I don't know who you are, so I really don't know who I am talking to! With this in mind, would you please take a moment to comment below this post and tell me a bit about yourself, if you are an artist and at what level, and what you would be interested in seeing me post here. I really want to talk about the kinds of things that you would find useful and informative, so thanks, in advance!

Last post, I mentioned that I have a brand spanking new website at http://sharonlynnwilliams.com. I hope you have had the chance to check it out, and hopefully subscribed to my newsletter. The newsletter contains new work that my subscribers get first dibs on, as well as news of exhibitions and classes, as well as any interesting art stories that I find on my travels on the net. If you didn't already, please go over there and do that. I will wait here for you!

You did that, right? Good, and thanks again. 

One thing that has been very interesting in my art life is that I have just formed a group for artists called 4C Artist's Network. The 4C relates to my mission statement to provide transformational content in the context of committed community -4 C's, get it? And it is also cool that when you read 4C, you might hear the word 'Foresee', which speaks to the intention of the group which is to help artists reach higher in their work and their business -you do know that artists run businesses, don't you? Especially if they want their work to be seen in the world. So the group is teaching all things art as well as all things business, with a little of the life of an artist thrown in. And don't forget the all important mindset issues. Who hasn't gone through the artist's cycle:

"I think this work is wonderful!", 

which leads to "maybe it isn't as good as I think it is",

which leads to "actually it sucks", 

which leads to "I am an imposter", 

to "maybe this isn't so bad", 

hopefully finally to end with "This work is wonderful!"

At least I hope we all end up in that place!

As a bonus for sticking with me for this long, I am sharing my latest work with you. 

This is called "Baby, It's Cold Outside!" and is 16x36" acrylic on gallery canvas. These little creatures keep my entertained all winter!

And its partner, "Take Out", also 16x36" acrylic on gallery canvas. I have been very fortunate when huge flocks of Bohemian Waxwings descend on my Mountain Ash tree each winter, stripping it bare in minutes.

See you next month!

Sharon

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Cast is off, so now it is time to PAINT!

           


Hello all! I hope this finds you happy, healthy, and enjoying summer! I can hardly understand where the last months have gone, it is all sort of 'in a fog'! But Q3 is on our doorstep and it is time to get back down to 'brass tacks' as my dear Mom would have said (what does that even mean anyway??)

So, in case I forgot to tell you, I had surgery on May 11 to remove a bone in my hand, as severe arthritis was causing me a LOT of trouble. Apparently, removing the bone that my thumb was having trouble moving against, is the permanent fix for this type of thing. And I am right in the majority who need it: female over 65 who uses her hands for her livelihood. After 5 weeks in a cast, I am now castless, and no doubt overusing my hand! But it is gardening season (my garden has never looked better!), and I have SO many paintings inside me to come out!

I did get to do a few paintings in the last while, learning how to do things with my left, very uncooperative hand. I did the above painting ("Wild Beauty", 12x12" acrylic and collage) with one brush in my left (non-dominant) hand, and another in my right, stuck into my cast, using both hands at once -kind of fun, as long as I wasn't expecting anything to turn out. But I am pleasantly surprised how this one turned out. It will be available at the newly opened Leighton Art Centre, as part of their Summer Salon. In the meantime, I have the 5 paintings below in the Clothesline Sale -click HERE to see the show.

Blessings!
Sharon

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On Being An Artist....

"Steppin' Out", 9x12" acrylic on paper
$150 unframed

Today I thought I would write a bit about my journey as an artist. I hope you will find it interesting and inspiring! I posted it some of it on my Facebook page, so some of you may have seen it there.

I have decided to go back to doing some figurative work, revisiting an idea I explored almost two decades ago. I have begun again to go to live model drawing, weekly since June, skipping the summer months, and boy was I ever rusty! I had never been taught how to draw the figure or portraits (even in art school), so my learning has been up to me. It is exhilarating, depressing and exhausting, but I know my efforts will pay off if I stick to it. The internet has become a fantastic tool to learn just about anything by, often at little cost compared to live workshops or classes, and learning to draw is right up there. 12 years ago when I began to work with the figure, there was hardly anything online (heck was there even internet back then :)?) Learning figure drawing from books is a very difficult way to learn for a visual learner like me!

While I was looking for great figure drawing lessons, I came across two videos that I think are valuable to watch, not just for artists, but for everyone. The first is found here, called "How NOT To Be An Artist". Pretty funny and right on. The other is a video on "How To Practice -Improve your Art Skills (or any skills) the Smart Way". Find it here. Please let me know what you think of these when you are finished watching them!

Now, I am pretty insecure showing anyone my efforts thus far, but hopefully will begin to do so more as I become more comfortable with the process. I am showing you one of my latest explorations above -done from a 2 minute sketch done on a painted background I had from an old Jane Davies class, and then painted. I love how the background shows through -I used to do something similar, but in an entirely different way. 

Here is one of my old figure paintings. The figure was done from a photo rather than from life, and that is NOT what I want to do now!

"Too Loose", 12x12" acrylic and collage, 2002

My favourite thing is to combine what I have already 'mastered' with the new thing -always a challenge that allows me to continue to grow as an artist. So I want to PAINT the figure as well -Oil, acrylic, collage, watercolour, pastel -media that I have learned to use, by putting in all the hours and hours of hard work described in the video above. Oh, and there is abstracted realism, which I find fascinating and WAY more difficult and visually interesting than pure realism IMHO.

Never satisfied with copying anything, I need to find my OWN way to express what I see and feel. Now that significantly ups the stakes, as not only do I need to learn HOW to do something, I need to learn how it looks MY way. Of course that means LOTS of work, trial and error, and the subsequent MOUNTAIN of failures. Not for the faint of ❤️.

I have the following quote stuck to my studio door that you may feel inspiring:

Wish me luck (and sanity).

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New Oil Floral and another SALE painting! by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Flowers and Oranges", oil on canvas, 16 x 20"
$1195.00 framed, free shipping and handling

It was a real joy to paint this floral on an extremely cold and snowy day. I think it captured some of the life and warmth that I was seeking. It was painted on a white, untoned canvas, which meant the colours really had a chance to sing, the only problem was that I had to chase out all those pesky bits of white that were left unpainted.

And now another CLEARANCE SALE painting:

"Roses Return", acrylic, 13 x 16" image size
framed in a contemporary black cube frame with a linen liner
original retail price $450, for a limited time now only $150 plus GST, shipping and handling

Roses Return was painted on a textured support. The roses were 'found' in the colourful washes, and allowed to break forth.
Enjoy!

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

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CLEARANCE SALE CONTINUES

"Cosmopolitan Jazz", 22 x 30" acrylic on watercolor paper mounted to board
Retail price $1250.00 -for a limited time now only $200 unframed plus shipping and handling

This is an acyrlic painting that began as a visually textured and rather chaotic surface. The shape of the grand piano began the search for the rest of the orchestra, who were found and brought out in time.

Enjoy!

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

"Twisted" -acrylic demonstration PART 3

Step 10: White paint was added to the snow once again, leaving some of the more neutral white to show in places.

Step 11: Light blue/violet was used where the snow on the boughs would be in the shade. My imaginary light source is coming from the upper left.

Step 12: More sky washes to increase depth and interest.

The final painting. Smaller branches were added, the light shadow patterns refined, more foliage added, the sun more pronounced and sky holes refined. I hope that you have enjoyed this demonstration as much as I did painting it!

Enjoy!

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

"Twisted" -acrylic demonstration PART 2

Step 5: an opaque muted blue/violet was placed over the foliage where the shadow of the snow on the branches would be, and on the ground.

Step 6: A warm opaque white was put on the top of the snow caught on the branches, remembering that some of the branches would be facing you, and that the snow would be caught on the lower, larger branches. Tree tips are springy which allows the wind to knock the snow off the tops of the trees in short order.

Step 7: The entire painting was glazed with a neutralized quinacridone burnt orange in order to bring the whole into colour harmony.

Step 8: The background is begun with opaque washes. This step allows you to go back to refine the shape of your tree. Don't forget the interior 'sky holes' -there have got to be places for the birds to fly through!

Step 9: Some blue green and blue violet washes are added on a reverse diagonal to the twist of the tree.
Stay tuned for one more post for the finishing stages.

"Twisted", acrylic demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Twisted", 11 x 15", textured acrylic on watercolour paper

I did this demonstration for my last mixed media class of the year. It features working on a textured ground, and building up of translucent layers of acrylics. See below and the next 2 posts for the process.
Step 1: I textured the paper with light moulding paste in the centre where the tree will be, trying to be random with the paste, and applying it with a palette knife. The outer edges have gesso and gel medium on them, which were then imprinted with the lid of the gel jar. Care was taken to make sure that the negative space between the tree and the edging was interesting. Remember: Shapes first!! After the texturing had dried and cured for a week, a quinacridone magenta wash was brushed over the surface and allowed to dry.

Step 2: A quinacridone gold transparent wash was then brushed over the surface in areas, and was wiped back in others. Here you can see how the different mediums take the paint differently. The gel is non-absorbent, the gesso semi-absorbent and the moulding paste very absorbent. This gives an interesting quality to the paint surface.


Step 3: Brushloads of green paint were applied with the brush flat to the surface so the paint would be deposited on the high places in a random way.

Step 4: Green folliage applied, along with some browns for the trunk.
See next post for more steps!

"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.

"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.

"Chain Lakes Summer ii", acrylic painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Chain Lakes Summer ii", acrylic painting, 12 x 16"
$695.00 framed, FREE S&H

I wanted to do an acrylic demo for my advanced watermedia students, so decided to reinterpret my plein air oil painting that I posted last Wednesday, October 13th. I really like using my own paintings as a reference for further works in other media, and have done this several times before on this blog. I began this painting with a transparent wash of orange to yellow covering the entire paper, and then worked with layers of transparent, translucent and opaque applications of acrylic on top. Acrylics -such freedom...

Enjoy!

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

Painting Mileage!

"Opabin's Glory", 8x10", plein air oil painting
SOLD

I did this plein air painting at Lake O'Hara 3 years ago, and just love it, so I have kept it in my collection. It has become the source material for several other paintings...

I was commissioned to do a large painting from the initial plein air one, so here is "Opabin's Glory" in a 20 x 24 studio oil on canvas. SOLD

"Opabin Imaginings", 12 x 16", acrylic on watercolour paper
SOLD 

The oil study has also provided fodder for some acrylic and watercolour paintings -heck if you have good shapes, you have a good painting! For variety, I did this one in fluid acrylics, using a limited palette of orange, yellow-green and violet, with a warm temperature dominance. I began in a watercolour fashion, and then added translucent and opaque accents.

"Opabin Imaginings ii", 12 x 16", acrylic on watercolour paper

I tried it again for a demo I did at a local art club. This time I changed the colour scheme to blue-green, orange, yellow-green & red-violet, keeping the temperature dominance to the cool side. I love using my own paintings to make new paintings from. While I cannot seem to play with colour to this extent outside, I sure have fun changing things up in the studio.

Enjoy!

More fun stuff from Bob's workshop

"All Fly Away", acrylic, 11.5 x 11.5"
Each day Bob had us begin with warm-up exercises, by having us "paint a verb/adverb" -words such as 'encapsulate' and 'excitement'. We had one minute to respond in black and white, just trying to make some marks on the paper that capture that feeling. These later became under paintings for layered paintings. I believe the word under this is 'to set free' -and the idea held through the next many versions of this painting. I was going after a cantilever composition, which is a new one for me.

"Curtain Call", acrylic, 11.5 x 11.5"
I have no idea what word was under this one, but my goal was to find some loose figures and let them tell a story. The 'flowers' in the orange figures arms was actually a skin I peeled off my mixing area and collaged on the painting. Too much fun!

By the way, this is my 300th post on this blog. Wow, it had been quite a ride. I want to thank all of you who look at this blog on a regular basis for all the support and encouragement you have been to me over the past 25 months, it has really kept me going.

Here's to the next 100 posts!

More Burridge workshop photos

This is Bob's final (for now) version of his pear that he is holding in yesterday's post. The new neutral background really made the pear pop.

This is the master and I in front of some of Bob's paintings. I took my paint shirt off, which doesn't have quite as much paint on it as Bob's -hubby just retired so I have a whole new raft of painting shirts :)
"The Red Umbrella", acquamedia, 16x16"
This is the painting that I did yesterday. I was inspired by Melissa's red umbrella as she and it were struggling to stay on land at the Leighton Centre's clothesline sale. I was doing a demo under a tent roof and she was coming out to see if we needed anything during the storm that temporarily blew in-sweet girl. I used one of Bob's goof-proof colour schemes for it, which is a new take off on an old theme. Blue was the dominant colour, red the focal point colour, and yellow and violet as the spice colours. You can read more about Bob's ideas and subscribe to his great newsletter on his website.

I will post more of what I did at the workshop tomorrow. Now I need to get a good night's sleep before teaching my last class of the year tomorrow.

Enjoy!

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.

"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.

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.

Mixed Media demonstration -part 2

Here I am still at the make shapes and values stage. I have added a thin very dark glaze of acrylic, and while it is still wet, I spritz some rubbing alcohol with my handy Chloraseptic bottle (gives spotty spray rather than a fine mist). The rubbing alcohol pushes the dark glaze aside, revealing donut shapes of the lighter under glaze. I also stamped into this glaze with a dry stamp. I have also eliminated any distracting white shapes near the edges of the paper with transparent glazes.

Now I am working upright sometimes, so that I can get back and see what is happenind -trying to remember to get the big shapes right. I have glazed over various parts of the painting with transparent glazes of colour to give a wonderful glow and to link areas together, thereby creating larger shapes. You can still see some of my chalk outlines, which I have now changed since I first put them on. I am trying to play with the illusion of depth, making some of the boxes appear to be in front of others. It's fun to play with depth in an abstract painting, and to flatten the perspective in a realistic one!

Here I have removed the chalk outlines. This is it for the darks, for right now anyway. Up to now I have only been working with transparent layers.

This is the way it was left at the end of class. While working on it I have rotated it around many times and worked in that new orientation for a while, trying to keep my options open. Bad to fall in love too early! At this stage I have begun to add opaque lights into the painting. I am still just using the colours I began with, only this time they are added to gesso (my easy white) to make opaque layers. I have put some on translucently (thined with a bit of water) so that I could do my alcohol trick(see the light blue shape on the upper right edge) -repetition with variation, the key to a successful painting. Light against dark/dark against light. I applied some of the opaques through stencils to create new interesting textures. I really hated to leave it at this stage as I felt it was really beginning to come together. I will try to work on it this week to bring it to a finish -or maybe I will wait and do that so the class can watch next Monday. And thanks to Lindsay for providing the photos :)

Stay tuned for part 3... to come!