Cool Shade - Study

Original Oil on Stretched Linen 6 x 6 SOLD

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This is a study for a larger canvas I have planned. I'm working on a series of landscapes in acrylic, on textured canvas, in a larger format. It's interesting to me how painting these small paintings regularly, can impact my painting in another medium and size. For me, the improved skill set and familiarity of putting paint to canvas, allows for greater freedom and bravery in carrying out a concept. As I get farther along with the larger pieces I'll start to post the process.

Cool Shade - Study

Melon and Berries

Original Oil on Linen 11 x 14 - SOLD

I recently participated in a workshop on traditional still life and wanted to reinforce the skills I learned, so I set up this composition and painted it from life. It took several sittings to complete, and I had to keep lifting the setting, which I'd made on top of a wooden pop crate, off of my dining room table and placing it elsewhere while we ate. The cantaloupe was wrapped and put back in the fridge several times. Because of this the folds in the fabric kept changing and the melon started shrinking and the berries were all wrinkled and dried up. Instead of hindering me, I realized that it aided me in painting from an emotional place and adding what I felt was needed for the picture making rather than being tied to the subject. I was able to concentrate on edges, and to adjust the shadows and highlights as I felt added to the painting.

I've mentioned a few times that I would like to loosen up my painting style and create more visible brushwork. Hmmm....It does look a little tight, but in real life it seems to fall somewhere in the middle. I'm thinking of entering it in an upcoming show. What are your thoughts?

Melon and Berries

City Stroll

Original Oil on Panel  8 x 10  $125

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Here is City Stroll complete. My focus on this painting was to simplify the image as there was a lot going on being a city street scene, and try to say it with less, in terms of image content and brush strokes. I wanted the strokes to be fresh and painterly. I had some great feedback on the process posting so I'm going to open for discussion some of thoughts while I was painting and now that it's complete.

I decided that I needed some of the foreground street clutter, like signs, sandwich boards, newspaper boxes, and tables and chairs to create the ambiance of the place. Then from midground back, I squinted a lot and just laid in strokes with tonal values greyed and lightened to push them back.

I'm quite happy with the composition and the colour palette. The fellow strolling is my focal point and I really like how the highlights on the brick wall and the awning on the right point down to him, and the two vertical posts on the left frame him in. I also placed him so that the highlights on his chest would fall at the intersection of the grids lines, if the canvas was divided in thirds in both directions. These four intersections are the strongest positions for the focal point. To suggest the street going back in space, those three lines of shadow were quite important. The colour palette of complimentary red and green happened as I was painting. The fellow had a light blue T-shirt which I decided to change to yellow green as the brick wall  took shape, and then I just added toned down touches of red in the objects around him so he would pop. So I hope you like the outcome and please feel free to comment on my decision making process.

City Stroll

'City Stroll' in progress

Thanks for all the feedback on my last post. I've painted a lot of lemons but not for about two years, so I was really surprised when I found the shadows so difficult. I completely agree with Karen Sampson's comments on keeping the colours clean and going to either the oranges and reds or to a cool palette with greens and blues. I tried all of those colour combos but because the shadow is in fact a shadow, normally the colour has to be greyed, and there in came the mud. Expect to see some more lemon paintings cropping up because evidently I need to practice.

This past summer we were in Vancouver during the World Cup Soccer Championship, and there is no better part of the city to take in the vibe, than Commercial Drive. I shot a lot of pictures over a few days, and here is the start of a painting in one of my favourite parts of the city. It's a fairly complicated image, so my emphasis will be on editing and simplifying the strokes. Trying to say it with less.

'City Stroll' in progress

Lemons and Light

SOLD


happy New Year everyone!! So here is the first painting question of the year. Why are lemons so difficult to paint? I find the shadows on lemons really hard. I wiped this one several times before settling on this final version. I kept saying paint what you see, but the darks looked SO dark and when I applied that colour, it just didn't seem to work for me. So now that I've posted this, I can see that I'm going to tweek it a bit.

I would like to thank all of you who have visited and commented over the past year. I never imagined when I started blogging, that I would be introduced to so many kind and giving individuals, who would make me feel a part of a strong supportive community of artists. I have learned so much from all of you, and grown from painting frequently, so one of my resolutions is to keep on blogging, and to do it more frequently. Thanks so much for following my work.

Lemons and Light

Fallen

Original Oil on Canvas 8 x 8 SOLD

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I've been away from painting for a while due to the holidays. I hope you all enjoyed your celebrations with family and friends. We had a wonderful Christmas with all the family in Vancouver, which made it really special. So to get back into things, I decided to choose a subject I was familiar with - Red Anjou Pears, and decided to concentrate on edges and brushwork. After a bit of frustration and feeling it was a too tight, I took a paintbrush and just made some bold strokes and messed some edges, and then I liked it a whole lot more!I'm really pleased with the values of the reflections on the shadow sides of the front and right pears. Those can be tricky, but I think I captured them. So now the dry spell is broken, and for the rest of my time off, I'm going to look forward to painting each day. Please take a moment to say hi because I've missed you!

Fallen

Pear Hug

Original Oil on Linen  8 x 8  $95 

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Merry Christmas Everyone! I didn't have a Partridge in a Pear Tree so I decided to send a little love and do a Pear Hug. I'm having fun playing with these dark backgrounds, and edges. I liked how the pear on the right was almost completely in shadow. These were extremely red pears, giving it a bit of a Christmas feel. The wooden crate is one of my favorite props. It's a vintage pop crate - "Canada Dry". I'll have to try to get more of it into one of these paintings. Have a wonderful holiday season with your families. Talk to you soon!

Pear Hug

Melon and Mandarines

Original Oil on Linen  8 x 8  NFS

Here is the last still life from my workshop. I actually finished painting it at home and enjoyed taking a little more time to think through some of the decisions. Although I'm happy with the outcome, it's a bit tighter than I'm attempting to paint these days, as it's a Christmas present and the recipient will prefer that style. I really enjoyed the workshop with Keith Hiscock (find him on facebook), who has motivated me to shake things up a bit and remember to put the art into what I'm doing, by looking at the canvas instead of the set up once I have enough information. When I paint landscapes or cityscapes, I spend a lot more time putting the art into it - editing out, changing the position of things to create a better composition, changing the amount of light coming through the trees. It seems that still lifes really pull me into a literal place. I think it comes from trying to nail that value and hue with minimal brushstrokes and then the next thing I realize that I've become chained to the set up. I guess there are no compositional or lighting changes that need to happen as I've created the the set up to my liking, so the art part becomes all about edges and brush work.  What about you? Do you find yourself being more literal with still lifes, and if not, how do you work your painting to avoid it?

Melon and Mandarines

Still Life Workshop

Second Still Life Painting from Workshop

It's taken me a while to photograph this painting as I've been a bit challenged with light (or the lack of it) and rain. Yesterday there was a brief moment when the rain stopped and I rushed out onto the deck and managed to grab this image before the rains started again. :-) This is the second painting I did at the Still Life Workshop last weekend. We had about two hours to complete each piece, allowing our instructor Keith Hiscock, to come around to each of us a few times, giving us feedback.

Keith acknowledged that critiquing is very valuable but that we don't always have someone there to critique our work, so he recommended regular self critiques. To do this, he suggested choosing an artist whose work we admire, selecting an aspect of their painting skills that we would like to develop in our own painting skill set, and work on that aspect. It's not to copy their style, but to understand and develop things like brushwork etc.  After the completion of each painting, we should do a comparison of our work against theirs, to gauge our improvement. The skill and artist should keep changing as we improve our skill set. I think most of us do this on a casual basis, but by specifically choosing a skill for improvement, focusing on that, and doing regular comparisons to monitor development, results will be much greater. I think this an excellent and easy to do tool for self development, and  feel quite excited to get started on this.

Still Life Workshop

Keith Hiscock - Still Life Workshop

This first image is the first painting I did on day one of the workshop. It's not a great photograph because I ran outside and propped it on a wall to shoot it without a tripod etc, so I'd have something to show you. Below are shots from the day.

Keith Hiscock is a very well known Victoria artist. He paints beautiful landscapes and still life pieces. You can find him on Facebook.  This is Keith's quick sketch to place the positive objects in the still life set up. 

 He then switched to the negative space and blocked in a thin layer of a mixed black.

 Keith demonstrated switching back and forth between the positive and negative spaces, helping you to really see, and to start setting up a variety of edges. Hard crisp edges at the focal point and soft or lost edges as you move away from the focal point or blend into the background.

 Here's Kerry Fleetwood, an FCA friend, and a very talented artist, who I painted beside during most of the workshop. As you can see, Kerry was really picking up on everything that Keith was saying. Her paintings were beautiful!

 Artists hard at it. You could have heard a pin drop!

Here's Keith giving Kerry a few pointers.

I learned some great concepts during the weekend, that I feel over time, will make a big difference to my painting technique. Among the many pointers here are a few that particularly spoke to me, for improving my work:

• when developing the painting, switch back and forth from positive to negative space,  helping you to  form  shapes accurately and to really see. 
• I found that this push and pull between negative and positive  also allows you to paint back and forth over the edges of negative into positive and vice versa, rather than painting up to the edge of an object, helping to start making decisions on your edges as the painting is in progress.
• As my painting evolved and I had recorded on canvas the necessary information, Keith encouraged me to stop looking at the set up and focus on the canvas, making decisions as an artist, directing where the painting would go, rather than recording the image. I had all my values down and the placement and composition was where I wanted it, so I needed to stop looking at the set up. This point is going to have a big impact on my painting. I'm one of those who tend to overwork things.
• At this last stage is where I tried to really focus on edges. Sharp well formed edges at the focal point, soft and lost edges moving away from the focal point. In the case of the leaves in my painting up top, a few leaves were defined and the rest blurred at the edges so they started to disappear. This was really fun for me. I've only been painting in oils for about 6 months, so being able to play with the edges like that is quite exciting.

Keith Hiscock - Still Life Workshop

Mandarines

Oil on Linen  6 x 6  $85

It's mandarine season again, and I had some on hand so here they are featured in a small painting. I've been wanting to paint oranges on this tea towel for a while, and I've finally done it! I find the colour combination quite yummy. 

I've just spent the weekend at a fantastic workshop on Classic Still Life, learning the technique "Chiaroscuro" meaning light out of dark. The workshop was taught by well known Victoria artist, Keith Hiscock. Check him out on Facebook. He does beautiful oil paintings of west coast scenes and still lifes.  I'm really excited about the weekend and will post all about the workshop in a day or two, when I hopefully will have taken some photos of my paintings from the class.  Now that we've hit daylight savings up here in the Pacific Northwest, it's hard to get photos of my work outside of the weekend, as it's always dark when I get home! Yuck!

 

Mandarines

More Christmas Small Works at the AGGV

Sweet n' Spicey  6 x 6  

A-pear-antly Red  6 x 6

I'm happy to report that my two paintings Three's a Crowd and Tempting, that are part of the Christmas Small Works Show at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, posted November 22, have been sold! So I've been invited to submit two more and these are my new submissions. If you are interested in either of these paintings they are both framed and are $125 each and can be purchased through the AGGV 

 Also, after receiving such kind and supportive comments from you on my last post Ford Cove - Hornby Island, I realized I hadn't told the whole story about this painting. I'm sorry this photo is so dark, but it gives you the idea.

This painting was selected for the Vancouver Island Art Calendar 2009, and was the image for the month of December. The calendar was produced by the Rotary Club to raise funds for their humanitarian program - ShelterBox. These ShelterBoxes are sent into areas where natural disasters etc. have displaced people from their homes. These large green plastic boxes contain a 10 person tent, water filter system, a special portable burner that will operate on any fuel - even paraffin, tools, cooking and eating utensils, school supplies - all of the essentials for a family of 10 to survive for at least 6 months. They have been sent to places like Myanmar, China and Haiti.  I was  very proud and honoured to be part of this fund raiser, and managed to sell enough calendars to fund the purchase of one entire ShelterBox.

An amazing thing about the program is that if you purchase a ShelterBox, you can track it online and know when and where it is sent to aid people in need.

More Christmas Small Works at the AGGV