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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"Afternoon Tea", new oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Afternoon Tea", 12x12" oil on panel
$575 beautifully framed

I painted this from a still life I set up. The teapot gave me great grief, but I am happy with it now. Sometime that's just how it goes. There is a bit of glare in the darks in this photo, sorry.

I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Easter -He is RISEN!!

Enjoy!
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"A Seat For Beauty", new oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"A Seat For Beauty", 9x12" oil on panel
$495 beautifully framed

I know I have been derelict in my duty to post, but I do have a good excuse this time. I came down with shingles a week ago and it really knocked me out. I am happy to say that I caught it early and was put on antiviral meds, plus I was directed to a new cream that has done wonders on the healing of the rashes. I am now on the mend, and hope to make more of an effort to post. Not that you aren't already inundated with things to see online, but I hope I can bring some beauty into your lives with my paintngs.

I am taking an online class with the wonderful Dreama Tolle Perry, and our assignment for this week was a blue chair in France with geraniums growing from it. Well, it turns out that I was right there in that place taking photos with Dreama as part of my France workshop in 2014. So I chose to paint from my own photo, which is quite different from the one the class painted. If you can possibly swing it, I HIGHLY recommend taking Dreama's online course which will open again in September. I have taken 13 days painting with Dreama in person, and I must say that this course is an even better experience than the live workshops. You get to see everything she does close up, but more than that, Dreama has opened up her heart by adding so much more besides painting, going into attitude, perseverance and painting with JOY. Go to her website and take a look.

Enjoy!
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"Need A Ride?" oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Need A Ride?", 12 x 12" studio oil painting on gessoed Arches oil paper
$300 unframed (please note: Price only in effect until painting is framed)
Please click here to purchase

Dreama recently published her take on this scene that we shared at the lavender farm, but honestly I had done this before I saw hers! Good thing too, as I might have been swayed to make mine more like hers :) I think we were all struck by the beauty of this, so it wouldn't surprise me to see it painted by everyone on the trip!
Enjoy!
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Painting France With Dreama, by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Breakfast Light", 9 x 12" plein air oil in Arches Huile Paper

$250 unframed 

This is my first oil painting from France. I am here with 17 other wonderful blissful women, doing our thing in the south west of France. We are staying at Le Vieux Couvent in the Lot Valley, with the fabulous Dreama Tolle Perry (if you don't know her work you definitely should check out her website). We have been to a different tiny medieval village each day, doing watercolour sketching and taking way too many photos. The highlight of today was our visit to a lavender farm followed by an amazing chocolate eclair from the boulangerie. I will try to post some of my sketches in the days to come, but the internet is extremely slow here, I can't promise anything.

In the meantime, enjoy!

"Iris Explosion", oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Iris Explosion", 8 x 10" oil, $395 framed
click here to purchase

I was having some fun playing with transparent, translucent and opaque paint in this one. I really wanted to see if I could capture the glow of the flowers in the sunlight, without the use of strong light and shadow. It was really fun to do.

Enjoy!

To purchase this painting, commission your own painting or contact me to do a workshop in your area, please email me at williamsdotsharonatshawdotca (insert characters for the dot and at!)

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Plein Air Rockies 2011 -Day #5 Recap

"Big Thompson River", 11 x 14", plein air oil

 I fell in love with the light in this scene and the 'S' in the river so decided to give it a go. There used to be a fly fisherman in it, but I took him out as I thought it needlessly complicated things. I think this was my favorite painting of the trip, and I entered it in the competition.

"Prickly Poppies", 4 x 6", plein air oil, SOLD

We were given a very tiny panel to paint to enter into the miniature competition. I found these wonderful poppies, that had the stems and leaves of our native thistle. I had never seen them before, so of course I had to paint them. Unfortunately it was quite windy this day, and it was a real challenge to capture the tissue thin petals as they cavorted around in the breezes.

"Still Standing", 9 x 12", plein air oil

I first saw these wonderfully gnarled trees near the very top of the pass on our first day in RMNP, and finally got a sunny day that wasn't too windy to paint them. You can tell that they had been scoured by the wind for many years, bleaching their trunks to white.

 You will have to wait for the rest of the recap (only 2 more painting days to go) and the finale, as I am off to paint at my most favorite place in the whole world I think, stunning Lake O'Hara , for the next four days. I know, lucky me! You can see the results of 2 other previous trips here, here, here and Sept to Oct 2008 blog posts. I will post the results of this trip after I finish with the competition report.

Enjoy!

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

This is how the left corner of the painting looked when I stopped at the last post. I focused here so you could see the before and after.

I cut a mask using a heavy piece of plastic (the kind from boxes) and scissors. I cut around the large petal in the front of the flower. Then with a damp soft silk sponge, I gently lifted the colour from the petal, blotting with a dry kleenex before lifting up the plastic. I could have lifted all the way back to white if I wanted, without harming the paper, this way.

You can see that the front petal now stands out nicely in front of the back petals.

This time, I cut a mask from some 'watercolour washout tape' with an exacto knife. The tape is heavier than regular packing tape and has less stick so it is less likely to damage the paper when it is removed. Packing tape will work however, you just need to be a bit more careful with the knife not to score the paper. For some reason you can tell when you have gone through the washout tape and it doesn't damage the paper. I lifted with the soft sponge the same way.

"My Poppies", watercolour, 6.5 x 10.5"

This is the final painting. You can compare this with the end of the last post to see the results of the lifting. Because the paint is put on in a juicy way without rubbing the paint into the paper, it is easy to lift back. This lifting not only sets petals in better approximation to the others, the lifted petal takes on a velvety translucent texture, just what you want a petal to look like. I also lifted out the bud in the centre with a mask, and then put a light yellow-green wash over it. Voila, a bud that looks like it is behind the flower.

Enjoy!

New Watercolour Demonstration

We are into a floral unit in my Wednesday morning watercolour class. This is a demo I did to show the students how to begin with a dark yet lively background wash, before putting in the flower colours. This is especially important for white or light coloured flowers, because the tendency is to make the petals too dark in the beginning, when painting them against the white of the paper. The dark washes remain lively if painted with very juicy paint, changing the colours every few strokes using a 1" flat brush. As shown in the above photo, I chose a large, but defined negative shape to begin with, puddling in the colour. While that wash was still wet, I softened some of the edges with a clean, slightly damp brush. This ensures that the flowers will not look cut-out and pasted on the background.

I continued in this same way, painting in all the negative spaces, softening their edges before moving on to the next shape. I puddled some orange into the dark wash to give the hint of other flowers in the background.

Then I began putting the first washes into the poppies, moving around to let some areas dry before coming back in with further washes to they wouldn't bleed together. I tried to use a variety of reds, yellows and violets to keep the colour interesting. The colour near the middles of the flowers is warm, and then it cools as it moves away from the centre. It is important to paint from a puddle of rich colour so that it will stay wet long enough to be able to puddle other colours into it.

Now all the orangey reds are in. I have left some white space that I will come into later with some lighter yellows and peaches.

Now all the white paper has been covered up, and this is the end of this stage of the painting. Notice how the original softening of the edges remain, making the flowers blend a bit with the background. Stay tuned next week for the exciting (I hope!) conclusion, where I will be demonstrating lifting out -something that I believe is very important to get the look of translucency of the petals.

Enjoy!

"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.

Another New Step by Step Watercolour Demo

This is another flower demo in watercolours, done in the same style as the one I posted yesterday. This one was done for my Wed. morning class and the flower is Cosmos.
Step 1: begin with the main flower shapes on dry paper. Remember to puddle the colour and let them mix together on their own. For this step I used combinations of Azo Yellow, Gamboge Hue, Quinacridone Rose, Scarlet Lake and Ultramarine Blue (all M Graham watercolours, except the Scarlet Lake which is Winsor Newton).
Step 2: begin to puddle in colours for the background, making sure to puddle in some of the flower colour. Keep this stage fairly light at this point. When you cut around the flowers, you can soften the interactions with the flower edges in places. This is still done on dry paper using juicy wet paint.
Step 3: finish the first layer on the background. I splashed some water droplets into the damp background washes to make some blossoms for texture. At this point, the background has 'caught up' to the foreground, so it is now time to go back into the main flowers to pull them up from the background.
Step 4: The main flowers now have more colour and detail than the background. Make sure not to cover up all of the original washes on the flowers to keep the colour bright.
Step 5: Go back into the background and begin painting both negatively and positively to form the middle ground elements of flowers and leaves. To do this I used darker combinations of Azo Yellow, Phalo blue and Ultramarine blue as well as some of the previous flower colours on the found flowers.
Step 6: Continue to paint in the background to increase complexity. At this point mark making becomes very important, as I merely painted in the suggestion of things that will read as folliage. I let the blue cross the painting in a diagonal from upper right to lower left to counteract the diagonal of the flowers which move from upper left to lower right.
"Cosmos", 7 x 11", watercolour -A bit more tweeking of colour, shape and value and the painting is complete.
Enjoy!

ink and watercolour sketches continued

"Gallardia", ink and watercolour, 6 x 4"
Third out of 4 demo sketches for Sedgewick. This is also from a photograph, very quick and very loose.
Enjoy!

Lilies and Delphiniums

Lilies and Delphiniums, plein air oil painting, 8 x 10"
I did this yesterday in my garden, which is so lovely at this time of year. All the work planting flowers with contrasting colours is really paying off. I haven't painted my garden 'en plein aire' very often, but everytime I have, it has been a real joy. Usually I see work to do, but sometimes I just sit amazed at the beauty and feel the urge to get out my paints and express it.
Enjoy!

"Indian Paintbrush" -plein air oil painting

"Indian Paintbrush", plein air oil painting, 12 x 9"

This is a second painting that I did while at my cottage. It was a scene that just peeked out from the trees along the river that leads out of our lake. It was truly a communion with nature as I sat alone beneath the trees in the shade on that hot sunny day.

Enjoy!

Red Tulips -sketch

watercolour and ink, 4 x 6"

This is a second sketch done for my class yesterday. These are quick (maximum of about 20 minutes) sketches done with the ink outline preceeding the watercolour washes. Quite fun and very fast and friendly.

I am about to board the Celebrity Mercury cruise ship for a one week cruise to Alaska with my Mom. We are really looking forward to it. I have taken my paints (watercolours and oils) and as long as the airport doesn't confiscate them, I plan to paint on board. I will try to post my efforts if possible during the week, but am not sure that I will be able to. So if you don't see this post being updatted this week, I will post everything when I get back on the 23rd.

Bon Voyage!

Martagon Lillies

watercolour, 10 x 14" image
I did this lively painting from a photo that I took at Reader Rock Gardens last year. I just love the way the vibrant flowers nod in the breeze.
Enjoy!

Poppies Again

watercolour, 7 x 11" image
Can't get enough of the great colour that poppies provide. Too bad the illegal narcotic industry has given them such a bad name. I have almost got my studio back to functional again and will post photos soon.
Enjoy!

Summer Light

ink and watercolour sketch, 4 x 6"
This is another of the sketches I made at the workshop. The photo reference didn't have this indication of light, but I wanted it there!
My studio is dry now, all that remains is to move everything back in and unpack it all again...yuck. With all the rain we have been having, it would have been nice to be working in it.
Enjoy!

Iris Garden

watercolour 11 x 14" image

I am just loving this loose watercolour floral kick that I am on at the moment. It is really touching my heart and filling my spirit-I can feel the movement of the flowers in the breeze, just the way God made them.
Enjoy!

If you would like to purchase this painting or any others on this site, please email me!

Did you know you can email this post to a friend? Just click the envelope with the arrow!

Leighton Centre Art Show Demos

Returning Home, 11x14" watercolour

Poppy Garden; 11x14", watercolour

These are the two demonstration paintings I did at the Leighton Centre Clothesline show and sale today. I got there at 1pm and the weather began to turn cloudy and windy, but no rain thank goodness. These were each done in about 1 1/4 hrs, mostly because tons of people came up to me to talk about the painting process, which made focussing a bit difficult. But I was very encouraged because the loose style just made people want to go home and paint -there is nothing better than that for a teacher! The wind made it interesting as the paint was drying unpredicably -just adds to the fun and energy. I tried to capitalize on the bleed backs and balloons as much as possible. As I look at the work now, I think I did pretty good given the circumstances.

Enjoy!