Last week was a challenge. No doubt about it. Art making, art classes - and family commitments, errands - and to make the week really hectic - regular work. I'm mentally and creatively exhausted today. I did have an interesting weekend in a 3-day workshop with Barry Rafuse - a master of the abstract. I had no idea that painting an abstract was anything more than slapping down some colourful paint. Not at all - it's just as difficult, perhaps more so, than creating any other kind of art piece. Design, composition, focal point - all are key and make the piece work. The frustrating part was that I didn't come home with anything that I felt happy about. But... here's what happened.
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Last Thursday, I attended the Art Gallery's life drawing session - no instruction. The first few drawings were gestures - not much to show there. I struggled to find a way to capture the image, usually trying to draw the entire body. Lucky for me, my friend (and unofficial mentor) Wendy was there, working right beside me and I watched how she approached the drawing. You'll see the huge difference in my work! More work on values - and then some practice with creating hard and soft lines in watercolour. Doesn't look like much but it took several hours. How time flies by! I awoke, full of excitement and wanting to get to my studio to try out the ideas I had read about. First off, I dragged in a large table and set it up in the basement right under the north facing windows and set up all my watercolour materials. Lovely! Then I set out a drop cloth on the floor so I could use that area for drying stuff or working on large canvases on the floor. Then, I dragged out a couple of large canvases from many years ago. Now that I have created some space, I can work on those too. Then I got down to work.... watercolour class homework - several paintings in different values; underpainting as set out in my book.
I played around a bit more with the yellow tulips prior to my watercolour class - and in class Gail gave me some tips. A muted colour will recede into the background and a purer colour (which I used) will fight with to come forward. So, the violet background was fighting with the yellow tulips. Mute the violet by adding the complementary - yellow. I'll give that a try.
Yesterday I headed to 1021 Ellis Gallery/studio in Kelowna for a 'measuring' class - learning to triangulated points in an image in order to get the relationship between those points correct. We drew our own hand, then a seated model - it was hard but getting better by the end of 3 hours. And last night I was reading one of my watercolour books - and the information was starting to make sense. Some great ideas for starting a painting. I'll post my experiments later - but I had trouble getting to sleep - I couldn't wait to get up and get at it!! I spent Sunday afternoon trying to paint, with watercolour, the yellow tulips. In a nice, loose style. Without over-working it. Keeping it lively and light. What an exercise in frustration. The tulips are too large in relation to the picture frame and in particular, the vase. It's over-worked. It's not loose - it's contrived. I was not happy - and I'll try again today.
I took this photo last fall while walking the neighbourhood. Beautiful morning and the fog made everything look mystical - even the country road. In yesterday's acrylic class, Gabrielle suggested I paint it - to challenge myself! So, here's the source photo and the first layer of paint.
What a great weekend - Christmas with family who couldn't make it in December and... a fabulous course in colour composition. Two full days of great information and lots of hands on experience. This workshop was with Gerry Marchand and I highly recommend it. I had already done lots of colour wheel work in my acrylics and watercolours course that I am taking but this workshop connected a bunch of dots for me. I always thought I was to paint the colours I saw or thought I saw. This is true... and, now I can look at a subject and think of it in terms of colour harmonies. Do I want to interpret the subject in a monochromatic palette, complementary palette and so on. And now I know how to make a palette to work with and how to modify it. I was soooo excited.
I chose yellow as my main colour, made my colour chord and palette and painted two 'master pieces"!! I'm still looking for a looser style and less of a 'cut out' effect. Wow! I'm done. Exhausted in fact. This morning I did my acrylic homework assignment - a still life on a canvas or canvas board. I used the board - and found that the texture of the canvas completely changed the experience of painting. Last week, we worked on watercolour paper. The ground I used really 'grabbed' and was much darker than I would have liked, and I think I would have been happier with a different colour. At the end, after all the flowers were painted, I changed the background colour. I'm ok with the result but find the colours muddy and it lacks that free, loose style that I really like. I'm going to paint the flowers again - perhaps in watercolour? This afternoon, I worked with my printmaking assignment - particularly with the Gelli plates. I found it hard to get a solid black background with the foam plate but had fun playing with the different techniques. At the end, I used the Gelli plate to make 12 impressions on the same sheet of paper - and then started playing with the roller, brushes, etc. Again, I think it got overworked and dark. Lost its 'life'. Last Saturday I went to Kelowna for a life drawing class - no instruction. I took my usual charcoal and conte and also brought my Oriental pens, brushes and ink. Here's the results.
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