"Fuschias", oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Fuchsias", oil painting, 19 x 19"

I painting this painting to cheer me up in all this cold rainy weather we have been having. I kind of made up the background leaves and flowers, but it does the trick -it hangs right beside my computer and it brightens up my day.

I would like to show you larger images of two of my advanced students work, that I think are really exceptional. The above painting of irises is by Rex Beanland. You can see all the work he did in preparation for this painting on his blog. Please read through it, it is a great learning experience. If you click on each of the photos, you can see them larger.

An this is done by Leila Chan. I had Leila as a beginner student several years ago, and due to her great work ethic and commitment to putting on the brush miles, she has really progressed and is really beginning to loosen up and trust the process. This painting is a milestone for her, as she had to make up all the wonderful colours in these white glads. Well done you two!

Enjoy!

"Pathway Through The Trees", oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Pathway Through The Trees", oil painting, 20 x 10"

I did this painting in the studio, based on my invitation piece for my show, which sold on opening night. I was kind of sad to see it go, but now I have this new big one.


Along the theme of showing off my fabulous students work, these are the final paintings from my advanced watermedia students. I am amazed by the progress that every single one of them made this year. I am part of the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA) and at the last show jury, 14 of the 55 paintings that were accepted were by previous students of mine. I got three in as well, so I would say we made a pretty good show of things.

Enjoy!

"Leighton Trees ii", plein air oil painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Leighton Trees ii", plein air oil, 9 x 12"
$595.00 framed; FREE S&H

This is the painting that I did at the Leighton Centre's Annual Clothesline Show and Sale -you know -the night that the storms blew in, creating such sights as the girl with the red umbrella from my previous post! Needless to say, the lighting conditions were changing every few minutes, so this painting kind of evolved out what I thought were the best of the spectacle. Hope you like it!
Now I am a proud Mama! I just finished the last of my full year classes for this year, so I thought I would share some of my amazing students work with you. This is the last project from my beginners to experienced beginners class. Pretty impressive eh?

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!

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!

Watercolour demonstration continued

Here I have completed the lower buds and stem from the upper iris. I decided not to go with my original plan for the leaves, but chose instead to keep the 'to the right' balance of the painting and added some leaves to the right side. These were made the same way as the first leaf, just using different colour mixtures. I lifted out the lights on the leaf while the wash was still damp. I like the resulting negative spaces better this way, plus I got to break into the space on the right between the two flowers.

This is a close-up of the completed top flower. In the shadow areas I had fun with warm and cool deep darks, puddling them in with juicy paint. It is nice to paint shadows full of colour. I also added some cast and form shadows on the flower itself.

This is a closeup of the lower flower. I added some light and shadow patterns to the front fall to make it more interesting. The last thing I did to the flowers was to add a very dilute yellow wash to the white of the petals, so you could feel the sunshine on them.

"Iris For Katherine", watercolour, 6 x 16"
SOLD 

This is the final painting, with all the pencil marks erased. I am very pleased that I was able to capture this beauty cleanly and oozing with colour. One of my students even bought it! Such a bonus.

This is the photo that I used as my reference. You can see that I took a lot of liberties with the negative shapes -they were just too equal in the photo to garner much interest. I also like my colour much better!

I hope you enjoyed this demonstration. Next week is my last watercolour class of the year, which is kind of bitter sweet. I will miss the students and their tremendous growth, many of them have become close friends. However, I will be glad to have only my own painting to plan for. I am happy to have done this little painting, as I am really excited about continuing to paint in watercolour.

New Watercolour Demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

I began a new demonstration for my morning class today. This is from a photo of some Iris I had -forgot to post the original photo, but will do so tomorrow with the completed painting. This is the sketch I made (I know it is hard to see, but it is important!) My intention with this painting is to leave the background as white paper, which puts a lot of pressure on those white negative spaces, so designing them carefully was of utmost importance. I took great care to have all the negative as well as positive shapes interesting and varied, and planned the spacing very carefully. Notice how the large leaf curls back in to point to the focal flower? That was no mistake or happy accident! I have put an X on the negative areas so I wouldn't get confused while painting.

You will have to bear with these photos -the lighting in the classroom wasn't the best. I began the painting with the large leaf, just to get my flow and establish the bright colours I wanted to exist in the painting. I rubbed out the pencil line before making the leaf by double loading my 1" flat brush (azo yellow on one edge and a mixed green of phalo blue and yellow on the other) and twisting my brush to make the leaf. I was lucky and got a neat end for the leaf. Then I widened the leaf and painted around the end of the lower iris petal, and then I puddled some mixed violet into the shadow side. This is to move the colour of the (yet to be) purple iris into the foliage, ensuring colour unity. Next I prewet the iris fall and tipped in a variety of violets to the edge and let the colour soften towards the white middle. I puddled some yellow-orange into the inside edges while it was wet. I also scraped some veins into the wet wash. Note that I did each of the falls separately so I had the most amount of time to play with the wet washes. If you click on the photos, you will see them larger.


Next I painted the iris petals, again using different mixes of bright (ultra. blue & quin. rose) and dull (phalo blue and scarlet lake) violets in differing values to give variety to the colour. One of the biggest mistakes I see learners make is to paint an entire flower with only l tube of paint -even with varying the values, the colour just isn't dynamic enough to hold the viewers interest. I will later come into this wash to add some cast shadows, but this is as far as I can go with wet paint. My rule of thumb is to do as much with colour and value in the first wet wash as this ensures a luminous result.

I lifted out some lights out of the damp wash on the top flower, which you can see here. That is also easier to do while the wash is just drying. Then I tackled the lower flower, which I have made to nestle around the base of an adjacent bud. I painted it the same way as the first flower, except I didn't scrape veins -I wanted the more detail in my focal flower. I did vary the way I used the colour though, so they would be different. When the first washes were dry, I popped in the cast shadow from that bud, using a rich mix of differing violets. I painted the base of the bud by puddling in mixtures of azo yellow, phalo blue, gamboge and scarlet lake. The top of the bud is in shadow, so I left that part for later, as I want the cast shadow edge to be crisp.

You will have to wait until tomorrow for the rest of this lesson I am afraid -blogger has a limit on the number of photos per post, so I have divided the pics up into two days.

Enjoy!

"Irises", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Irises", watercolour, 22 x 30"

This is the full sheet watercolour that I did from my B&W value sketch presented in the last blog post. It was fun but challenging to work on such a large scale. It was painted with the board at about a 60 degree angle so the colour would move, allowing the pure colours to mix on their own and remain vibrant.I used a 2" flat and a number 20 round to apply the paint. The green shape reminded me of a fence, so I helped that illusion along a little. I initially had made the lower bud too large, so I masked it and lifted to reduce the size. I also added a leaf to break up the lower half of the painting.

Enjoy!

New Demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

I snapped these lovely Irises last year, and thought that they would make a good subject for a painting. The light and shadow patterns are super, but the composition needs some imagining. Perfect fodder for the floral unit my advanced watermedia class is doing.

We have covered value studies before, but this time I had them paint, rather than draw them. Each person was to cover their support with a middle gray. Then they were to put in the white gouache and black paint to develop the composition, moving back and forth until a satisfactory composition is found. It is a great exercise that forces you to ensure that values are linked, and puts more pressure on the design than on the objects in the design. You can see I took a lot of liberties with the photo. The tricky part is to only keep to 3 values, so parts of the flower that are in middle value would be the same middle gray as the background, creating a linkage from the flower to the ground. Very different way to use your brain.

Then we did colour studies from our black and whites. To be successful at this part, you have to remember the other biggies: contrasts of saturation (bright against dull) and colour temperatures (warm against cool), as well as use of complementary colours. After the chosen colours are blocked in with hard edges, as in the B&W, some edges are chosen to be softened to create transitions between value shapes. You can have some of the different values in the larger value shapes, as long as the shape remains dominantly the value you have chosen. These studies are only 4x6", so there isn't a lot of room to play around! It is fun to then work from the B&W to make the painting any colour you chose -another way to get past using the photo as a direct reference, allowing your creativity to come into play. We then painted 22x30" works from the two studies. I will post mine tomorrow.

Enjoy!