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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Robert Burridge Workshop -FUN!

I have spent yesterday, today and will spend tomorrow (God willing...) at an absolutely hilarious and extremely fantastic workshop with Robert Burridge. This guy is a laugh and a half, as well as being an amazing artist and a very sharing and caring teacher. I am learning TONS, not only about how to be a better artist, but also how to be a better teacher. I love his quote "Your students don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care."
By the way, this painting only had a short life looking like this. I will post the next stage tomorrow if I remember -will it be the final one? Bob says "A painting is never finished -it just stops at interesting places". Well said.

And, this is Bob's demo painting that I am now the proud owner of :) He began this painting by doing a black and white with spot lighting (dark against light followed by dark against light). Next he glazed it with transparent colour and it just glowed. Not to leave well enough alone, and just to see "what would happen if...", which is MY favorite line, he went in with juicy opaque acrylic and it was wow. Then he popped in some opera into the shadow side and it went WOW. Can't wait for tomorrow!

New Mixed Media demonstration -part 1

This is the end of the first step of the demo that I did on Monday for my Mixed media class. The objective was to make a 'start' using fluid acrylics, stamps and stencils, and then working our way to a finished abstract painting. I began this painting by squeezing Quin Gold, Quin Crimson and Ultramarine blue from the bottles in squirts around the gloss medium coated Aquarius paper, then squirts of Acrylic Glazing Liquid were added on top. Then a scraper was used to squeegie this around the page a bit to make some wonderful stained areas-these are the brilliant colour areas. Very cool as you get very unexpected patterns. The excess was then scraped off, drawn through and played with. Dry stamps were pressed into the wet paint areas to lift the paint, paint was added to stamps and stamped for a positive image, and a rubber shapper was used to draw lines back to the white of the coated paper. Sure enough, we have chaos here, but I have lots of textures and colours to work with.

Here I am hard at work -remember to wash off your scraper between scrapings or else you will end up with mud. I save most of the scrapped paint to use as darks later on. This stage is all about texture and colour.

While the first stage is still wet, I go back with my scraper and begin to define some geometric shapes. I am looking to get a flow between organic shapes in the foreground and geometric shapes in the background.

At this stage I have drawn some shapes with white chalk to suggest a direction I might like to go in. Of course, all this is subject to change as you shall see. I begin to place in some darks to define some of the geometric shapes. I also lift with some rubbing alcohol to get some white paper back. That is the beauty of working on a sealed surface! This stage is all about adding shape and value to the colour and texture we got on step one.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2!

Another attempt at plein air acrylics

"Elbow River Bank Shadows", plein air acrylic, 12 x 9"
This is my second attempt at painting outside with acrylics. This time I used a gessoed board as a support which was a lot less absorbent than the watercolour paper was, which allowed me to layer on the paint better, and to blend a bit as well. It also took the heavier, impasto paint better. I think the untreated paper support just sucked too much of the moisture out of the paint. I love my stay-wet palette -it keeps the paint wet for days and the mixtures will stay wet longer so that you can use that mixture again. I miss the blending possible with the oils, as well as its creamy textures, especially in the light areas, but it was a real joy to pop in the darks right over the lights when needed. It allows moving back and forth between values SO much easier, and prevents some of the mud that can happen when indecisive in oils. I will have to practice my brushwork!
Enjoy!