Cherries!

Paint a Cherry, Eat a Cherry   Oil   8 x 8  SOLD

This is the demo piece I painted from life during this Summer's TD Art Gallery Paint In. Several people passing by or stopping to watch, commented on my ability to refrain from popping a cherry in my mouth as I painted. It was the standing joke of the day, so I felt the name should reflect the humor.

I've just taken down my solo show in the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant, and hung another downstairs at the Marina Coffee House. It's such a busy, fun location and with our wonderful Autumn weather, a great place to sit outside in the sunshine and enjoy the view.

The Oak Bay Artists Society has a group show that I'm participating in, at the Community Arts Council Gallery, at Cedar Hill Recreation Center. If you live in the area, drop by and enjoy the shows! You may even find something you'd love to take home with you!

Cherries!

AGGV Summer Small Works Show 2014

Available through the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Available through the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

I'm so pleased to announce that these two paintings Red Grapes and Silver, and More Fiesta have been juried into the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's Summer Small Works Show. If you are in the area this a great opportunity to add art to your home. The show has been beautifully curated, and the opening reception is this Friday, July 11th from 5 - 7 pm. Many of the artists will be attendance. I hope you'll be able to join us!

If you are interested in either of these paintings you can contact the AGGV by clicking here.

AGGV Summer Small Works Show 2014

Radishes - Still Life

A Bunch of Hotties II   Oil  8 x 8   SOLD

This is a commission that I recently completed. My client loves vibrant saturated colours so I placed the radishes on a green striped cloth to make the colours pop. The cloth added that sunny summer feeling and she was very pleased with the feel and the vibrancy of her painting. Which was a relief, because commissions can be a bit stressful, even when they are small... :-)

Radishes - Still Life

Marrakech

Marrakech   Oil   8 x 10

Marrakech is another new piece being present at the TD Art Gallery Paint In in Victoria BC on July 20th. This piece came together after a visit to my favourite consignment store, where I found on one trip the brass coffee urn and on another the handwoven textile. I added the fruit and focused on softening edges to create some mystery to the piece. 

A blogging friend Kathrine Thomas just posted about how paintings look in original form as opposed to photos and now also online. I can honestly say that this painting looks way better in the original form. I photographed it several times, but the figs kept coming out bright purple. They are darker and more subdued in person. Although I use Photoshop Elements  to crop and resize for the web, I don't know who to colour correct. I'm taking a workshop in the Fall on how to properly photograph paintings, and I'm really looking forward to it! 

Marrakech

Tanya Bone Workshop

I was recently in Vancouver for a weekend workshop with the extremely talented Tanya Bone. It was a fabulously inspiring weekend and Tanya was a very attentive and giving instructor. If you ever have a chance to take a class from her I would highly recommend it. She specializes in still life and was teaching how to paint in a painterly manner. I learned so much about edges and brushstrokes. I have a tons of tips and techniques to now try to put into practice.

Tanya likes to be up close and personal with her set up. She spends a lot of time getting her set up and the lighting just right before she begins. 

One of the things I found the most difficult but that is definitely one of the beautiful aspects in Tanya's paintings, is the loose textured background she does, suggesting foliage and different light patterns. She paints it with a fan brush and transparent colours. Watching her it seems like it would be easy but I felt like I'd never painted before. I wiped my canvas so many times! Other participants were on their second and third painting and I was still wiping!

Here is a detail of the beginnings of the vessel she was demonstrating. She also demonstrated painting the gold edge on the vessel which again was a build up of layers on transparent paint until she got to final layer which was the highlight mixed with white. It was magic!

Tea and Tonic  8 x 10

I went home and spent a two sessions slowly working through the techniques she taught and ended with this first attempt at a more painterly style. It is SO HARD to paint loosely like this! I'm going to keep working on small pieces trying to blend my style of painting with the techniques I've learned from Tanya, and hope to create my own painterly style. 

Tanya Bone Workshop

Mandarin - Painting Step by Step

I have a favourite consignment store for finding the best props for my still lifes. This Asian inspired  set up is compliments of that store. The large red and gold plate and the gorgeous vase came together  perfectly with the bowl of mandarins and the floral branches from my garden.  I loved the simplicity of the set up and the way the round shape of the plate enveloped the pieces bringing a sense of serenity to the setting. The bowl was blue and white but I changed the colour to work with the other pieces.  

The block in stage, positioning the shapes and starting to define the values, although they aren't very defined in this photo.

I reached this point with the painting and then went to see a movie. When I came back I took one look at the painting and knew the center of the plate was not working the with rest of the painting. The center is actually convex, and when I painted it accordingly to how I saw it, the center appeared like a mystical orb, floating in the painting. It was all I looked at. So I scraped it off and painted it as a flat base to the plate, which was a great improvement. I then added a sprig of foliage to the table top beside the bowl. I also corrected the bowl which started tipping down on the right.

 

Mandarin  Oil  16 x 16

The mystical orb syndrome reminded me that although we have to paint what we see, we also need to interpret and change things for the good of the painting as a whole. I sometimes lose track of that in my effort to capture the subtle light on vessels etc. Luckily I saw the flaw quickly and was able to make the change. Do you ever commit too much to painting what you see and forget to look at the painting as a whole?

 

Mandarin - Painting Step by Step