Tag Archives: painting

Stubborn Cherry Blossoms

DC is rightfully famous for our very special flowering cherry trees, “as a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan.” The world renowned collection bordering the Tidal Basin is packed with tourists every year in early spring. Check out the live webcam here.

And for me, it’s often the first plein aire painting session of the year. This year I was eager and organized by March 15, about the earliest we ever see them bloom. And, since I have an enthusiastic student who loves painting from the landscape, I was really ready to get out there. But the trees were not cooperating!

March 31st near the Capitol: usually warm and blooming by now

April 5: not blooming yet!!

That’s what they’re supposed to do, but for weeks the have clung to their tight little buds, shivering in the long cold spring.

But FINALLY! We achieved blossoms and the pink clouds opened up, and the people and the bees were overjoyed.

halleleuyah!

And we made art.

young artist at work

Neil’s painting

Patrise’s painting

Make Art, Celebrate Democracy!

It’s been called the biggest peaceful transfer of power on the planet. Today’s Inauguration celebration is the 57th such ceremony held by our young republic.For all the miseries and injustice from sea to shining sea, it’s a day to consider what we have as a nation.

 

In 2008 Artist Andrew Purchin took his easel and paints to the Mall and painted the scene ala plain aire. The experience inspired him to invite artists to join him this year.

Purchin said:

If every American made art of some kind for at least five minutes a day, Americans would become more reflective and innovative and our political climate would change for the better.

Keep an eye on his site at A Thousand Artists for the unfurling of American creativity!

Acrylic Painting: Almost Infinite Options

A Bigger Splash by David Hockney,
1967, acrylic painting.

I’m exploring acrylic painting again, after a hiatus of five or six years. In 2005 a bout with asthma found me attempting to replace oils with acrylics for my landscape painting – an experiment which frustrated me a great deal.

My plein aire work in oil-on-paper relies in part on the sinuous fluidity of oil itself, something I cannot recreate with acrylic mediums.

Fortunately, the asthma is gone, and I have returned to oil  painting the way I love to do it. With acrylics, I learned to avoid trying to make it do something it did not do well, to let the medium be itself.  Acrylic paints are, forgive the pun, amazingly plastic, as in malleable, changeable, flexible.

Recently, my students have been asking how acrylic and oil are different from the watercolor they have been working with. Since I teach a transparent approach to watercolour, I think the addition of opaque white into your palette is the first major change, and it can change everything!

This Artist Daily  post shows just a few distinct styles achieved with acrylic paint.

There are wonderful possibilities for collaging with acrylics, since the liquid mediums function well as both glue and varnish for paper and other items.

  • Acrylic adheres well to many sufaces and is very durable. Here’s a post about painting onto cardboard. Recycled art surface!
  • Newer mediums, extenders, gels, pastes and additives mean you can paint in watery films or heavy impasto, and everything in between.
  • I’ve even seen artists build rich layers of acrylic paint film onto glas, peel it off in strips and weave the strips into sculptural forms.

Got some acrylics? Get them out and try something new today. Here’s few ideas

  • Collage with pretty papers, old greeting cards, wall paper, fabric, ribbons, photos , movie tickets, torn up watercolours.
  • Paint ala prima onto scrap cardboard – a simple still life with beautiful fruits, painted juicy and bright.
  • scrape ridges of paint with a palette knife, putty knife, or even finger paint!

Have fun! Post your work in a comment!!

Art from Nature class starts March 29

Drawing & Painting from Nature

Traditional and Expressive techniques

Here’s a fun class to gain experience and develop technique in drawing and painting using nature as our subject matter. Working in a variety of drawing media and watercolours we will explore technique, composition and colour working from, and with, Nature.

The natural form has a an inherent rhythm whether it’s sky, sand, leaves, fur, flames. You can capture that rhythm in your drawing and painting, by tuning in to what we and all creation have in common. Your charcoal is burnt wood, your brush is animal hair, your paper is cotton fibre, your paint is ground earth. The art is in letting the natural ways of our materials interact with your natural curiousity about the world.

4th Annual Fantastic Fall Fangirl Frolic

I have always wanted to host a group of 12 or more in this house to see if it could be done. This year’s Fangirl’s weekend was the first time I ever pulled it off, and it couldnt have been better!

I'm the tall one. Bailey the Leonberger on the right

The weather cooperated beautifully and allowed for luches on the deck, a bonfire circle, great riverside dog walks and plein aire painting.

Team Cook and Team Cleanup did an amazing job keeping everyone well fed and watered all weekend. The final count was 12 overnighters, two day trippers, four dogs and one cat. We only needed 2 air mattresses!

Ari the Italian Hound of Love and her human

What did we do? Laugh, hug, tell stories, gossip, share creative ideas, write, draw, cook, wash dishes, sweep, play with pets, walk in the splendid fall weather, laugh more, hug more, dance around the fire, eat marshmallows toasted to charcoal perfection.

fanartists hard at work

It couldn’t have been better. Thank you everyone for making this event truly the Fantastic Fall Fangirl’s Frolic.Save the Date: October 19-21, 2012

Goldfinch and sunflower

Here’s a painting recently completed for my neighbors, to celebrate their 1st Anniversary.

The painting was purchased and a fundraising auction earlier this year, and I worked with them to create a bird painting that had special meaning.

Both K and her husband S live in close contact with the natural world. They keep chickens, raise award winning garlic, grow most of their own produce. S teaches organic gardening. They plant these flowers especially for the goldfinches and enjoy watching them from their porch.

Both of them love to watch the goldfinches, especially in late summer when the flowerheads on sunflower, coneflower and rudbekia are ripe for the snacking. The goldfinch is at its brightest plumage, too. Now that the air is cooler, the finches have lost their brilliant colour and are greying down for winter.

It was a pleasure to make a painting like this while watching these birds each day in the garden. I hope K & S enjoy it in their home as much as I did making it for them.

art from Mountain Retreat

SKETCHES

My week on the Rapidan River allowed much time for contemplation via drawing and painting.

One notable feature of the landscape there is the many dead hemlock trees. The area we stayed was formerly a grove of massive Hemlocks which were all killed in the 90s by an invasive insect.  Now you will see the skeletons of these trees standing ghostly, or mostly fallen giants. The standing trees are like white bleached bones, while the fallen trunks have a warm sienna colour.

Fallen Hemlock - brush pen

Rapidan riffle - brush, pen and watercolour

Rapidan rocks and logs

Mill Prong stream - H2O soluble graphite

WATERCOLOURS

Glee on a rock - watercolour

The Source - watercolour

 

OIL ON PANEL – unfinished

Rapidan River - plein-aire oil on canvas panel

 

another chapter comes to an end

When the film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, opens July 15, yet another chapter of the Harry Potter phenomenon will come to a close. Just before the final book was published in 2007 I discovered an entire world of HP fans online, including lots of fan artists and writers creating fanwork in great abundance.

The desire for more of JK Rowling’s amazing world drove many of us to generate stories and images to sustain us between the books. I jumped in to the fun, experimenting with digital art, learning from my (much younger!) new friends, rekindling an interest in drawing the human form.

Portrait has always been my weakest skill, and I have been tested, mightily, trying to render beloved characters. Here are a few of my fan artworks from the Harry Potter universe:

Maiden, Mother & Crone

This painting was made for the 2009 HP Crossover Challenge, and my prompt wasShakespeare’s Macbeth. All the art I found for Shakespeare’s 3 witches were negative portrayals of witches as ugly hags, so I chose to paint the Good Witches as the Triple Goddess, and as representatives of Air, Fire and Earth (Baby Teddy and his dragon are Water)

Last Kiss

I painted this for the 2008 Lily Evans/Severus Snape gift exchange. I chose a moment implied, but not written, in the text, where Severus Snape says farewell to his childhood love, as he leaves to join Voldemort’s Death Eaters, and Lily marries James Potter. Snape holds an Aspohodel lily in his hand, significant in potion-making.

Thanks, Dad

Here’s a pastel drawing made for a fanfiction story, Light Between the Cracks and it’s sequel,  where Snape maintained a secret muggle family, along with all of his other secrets! His eldest daughter is of course presented with a Hogwarts letter when she comes of age, revealing who her father really was. Here she is, a successful Ravenclaw student, having visited her father in portrait form for some advice.