Village Gallery Art Challenge Show Starts May 6th

The Village Gallery of Arts 2014 Art Challenge Show starts Tuesday, May 6th. I totally redid my four 6x6 pieces for the show. I took floral drawings from my sketchbook and reworked them in acyclic paint. I really like using Golden's modern palette.

This year, I also participated in the jewelry challenge.  It was fun to play with painted paper, collage, a Copperplate calligraphic word- "discover", resin, fiber, beads and wire. The Gallery gave each person in this challenge the pendant in the middle of my necklace. I took off the hanging loop on the top, changed the orientation to landscape and filled it with collage and resin, set it in a larger bezel.  Stop by the Gallery and check out the one-hundred participants' four 6x6 pieces and the jewelry.  The show will be up until the end of May.

Experimenting with Shapes and Spirng Flowers

Here's another exercise from Nita Leland's book- The New Creative Artist. We outlined a shape and then drew the flowers.  We positioned the flowers differently within each shape.

I like how extending the line outside the shape changes the dynamics of the composition.  This exercise also helps to work with negative space.

I had to draw and paint this beautiful bouquet of tulips in my sketchbook.

Modern Color Palette

Jo Reimer (see her One A Day blog) introduced me to the modern color palette.  I love these colors- how they go together, mix without making mud, their light and clear crispness. Patti Brady wrote a great article about Color Mixing for Golden's Just Paint using this palette. I like to use titan buff vs. the titanium white to tint the paints.

Another article from Will Kemp talks about choosing a paint palette for beginners. He also describes the modern palette.  Jane Davies often paints with this palette in her artwork.  I used the palette to create some postcards with painted papers.

Abstract Painting with Jane Davies

This summer, I took an abstract painting workshop with Jane Davies at the Pacific NW Art School.  First we worked on monochromatic pieces.

We experimented with balancing opposites.  Here's busy and quiet-

Soft and hard edges-

Depth, atmosphere and flat space-

Big Fat Art- this piece measures 18x24 inches and played with line quality, fine and bold.

I like the idea of balancing opposites and plan to explore this more.

Mary Beth Shaw ArtFest Fear No Paint Workshop

Mary Beth Shaw taught my second ArtFest workshop entitled "Fear No Paint". For the first layers, we used a variety of mixed media- inks, pastels, gel pens, brush pens, gesso, texture with stencils.
We painted the next few layers, sanded areas and added some fluid acrylics. I like how this painting turned out.

This one needs more work and I may rotate the position of the canvas.
It's all in the details and is better to see up close.

This is another painting that I want to continue to paint and maybe rotate the orientation.
What I like about Mary Beth's paintings are her textures, contrast in color which you can see in these detail shots of my painting. In the last two paintings, I want to improve their compositions.

For more of Mary Beth's techniques, check out her book "Flavor for Mixed Media- a feast of techniques for texture, color and layers". Her website is located HERE.

Flora Bowley's e-course

I'm taking Flora Bowley's online e-course called "Bloom True". She's one of my favorite painters and lives here in Portland. I love how nature inspires her paintings and her use of color, the contrasts of light and dark. Her paintings have a very organic, feminine feeling.

You might ask how do you take a painting class online? Each Tuesday and Friday, we paint with specific instructions. It's all very abstract with many layers. I started a notebook for the class and made the above cover with a couple layers of paint. It's a Strathmore watercolor notebook. I painted a layer of absorbent ground on the shiny surface, a layer of watercolor paint and then a layer of acrylic paint.

This week, we concentrated on inspiration. Here are a couple of my sketches.

Nature inspires my artwork and is a common theme I like to explore.


Midway through the course, here are my two canvases. For me, they are large- 24x30 inches. I bought a sturdy table easel that holds up to a 39 inch canvas for the work. At this stage, both canvases have six layers of paint. Flora says her painting often have ten or more layers.


The scary part comes next. To use all the techniques we learned to create another layer that brings the painting together. This is where courage comes to play and I just have to go for it.

Rose Paintings

Last Spring at ArtFest, I created a Deck of Roses in a class with Orly Avineri.
A friend asked me how I was going to use them. I made note cards with the images but wanted to do more with the originals.
They sat on my desk for a long time. Then a light bulb went on in my brain with an idea on how to use them. I glued each one onto canvas.
I added a textured, molding paste border, paint and voila- new paintings.
I love to combine new techniques that I've learned. My joy in creating art is in the process- experimenting, designing and seeing a piece evolve into something I like.

You can see them in person next weekend, December 2nd and 3rd, at the Portland Art Collective Open Doors Art Show and Sale.

Wild Arts Festival

Each year, the Portland Audubon Society sponsors a Wild Arts Festival. Local artists create and donate 6x6 inch canvases with a bird theme to benefit Portland's wildlife. My contribution is entitled Frost Moon.

The 2011 Wild Arts Festival is November 19th & 20th at Montgomery Park. It's a wonderful opportunity to see nature-themed work by Northwest and nationally known artists and writers.

Botanical Paintings

At ArtFest last spring, I took a workshop from Orly Avineri called Roots and Shoots. The two collaged paintings that I created can be seen HERE. They measure 11x14 inches.

Using the same techniques, I made these four 6x6 inch botanical paintings. I like the combination of loose abstract lines with finely detailed collaged and drawn lines.

The mixed media paintings include acrylics, inks and paper collage.

All of these paintings will be for sale at the December Portland Art Collective 'Open Doors' Show and Sale.

Katie Kendrick online class "Layered Impressions"

Last week, I started an online class with Katie Kendrick entitled "Layered Impressions". Many of her techniques are based on her upcoming book with the same name- a mixed media approach to painting and poetry. I've always admired the story telling style in her artwork. I'm just scratching the surface here in practicing some of the lessons. We drew several faces with our non-dominant hand and selected ones to paint.

I like the mix of watercolors with gesso. This face reminds me of Colette in Les Misérables. I can see how some of Katie's ideas will improve my drawing and painting skills. It may take me awhile to get through all of the workshop exercises and to practice them. It's always exciting to learn new techniques and see how other artists interpret them. I'll share more in future posts. I took a class from Katie in 2009 called "Spontaneous Haiku Painting". You can see the book that I made HERE.

Painting- the spirit of drawing workshop at Sitka

SITKA ART AND ECOLOGY CENTER north of Lincoln City on the Oregon coast sits in a beautiful setting between the Salmon River estuary and Cascade Head. I was fortunate to have a four day painting workshop with Bill Parks there last week.

BILL PARKS shared his painting techniques and demonstrated how drawing becomes painting. He works in many layers of paint, repaints and paints again adjusting color values and contrasts. I really appreciate how his work with monotypes influences his paintings- the depth of line and value in black and white, ways to soften or distress edges and the effect of wiping away paint. He firmly believes that it's the process that makes painting interesting not the final product.

We worked in Boyden studio. The first day we drew with charcoal and added white acrylic to explore values in black and white.

Then, we added color. The above piece transformed from a fern painting in black and white into a cornstalk. I love the variation and gradation of the background colors.

One afternoon after class, we climbed Cascade Head. The view of the Salmon River estuary on the left and the coastline is spectacular. This is one of my favorite coastal hikes.

Here's an abstract painting that needs more work.


These trees developed after painting over an abstract painting created the previous day- wiping paint away, adding contrasting colors.

I chose to work with drawings of fox glove. It was in full bloom. Both of these paintings have layers and layers of acrylic paint on them. I'm still working on them to get more gradation in color values and variety of textures.

Of the two paintings, I like this one the best. It still needs some work but it's getting there. One thing I learned is not to stop, keep painting and working with a subject. That's when it's spirit is captured.
I highly recommend the Sitka Art Center workshops. The staff is friendly and helpful and a variety of workshops from experienced artists are offered. Check out the Sitka workshop Dayna Collins attended with Lori Latham last week HERE .