CURRENT SHOWS
I’m very excited to be showing work with Andrea Carroll, a very accomplished abstract artist. This will be a large show with over 20 paintings. All are welcome to our opening reception on March 1st. The show remains up for the month of March and is open weekdays and Sunday. If you contact me I will do my best to meet you there whenever you can come.
Life Drawing
Life drawing images and observations.
Life drawing is something I do to help with my observation skills, work on my quick response to what I see and feel and work with other materials than acrylic paint. I enjoyed working with a group of artists outdoors this week in Kew Gardens with a life model.
I thought I'd share some of my drawings here.
Workshop with Grethe Jensen, Just Do It!
A day at a workshop with Grethe Jensen and fellow artists. A few new things to try out and how they came out.
May 6th I enjoyed participating in a workshop with Grethe Jensen in her studio with 8 other artists. We were encouraged to use "experienced" canvasses, those that already had paint on. Acrylic paintings are improved by the number of layers of paint underneath the top "picture". We were also discouraged from using more than one or two colors, at least to begin with. This painting started out as a person facing away from us with reddish hair and a hat on a grey background. I wanted to use a greyed down yellow green as a background, so that's how it started out. Then, I quickly added the vase and a few flowers. Then the challenge came. Pass your easel off to another artist who would keep working on your painting. I was lucky enough to get to work on Nick's colorful graphic composition. Lisa took over mine. She added grey and yellow to the flowers and deepened the shadow on the table. Then it was my turn, after some critiques, to improve it. Below is what happened next:
Funky Flowers
Next up, find another "experienced" canvas and learn a little about portraits. Grethe gave us a quick lesson in how to get general proportions of a face, and using some photos from Now Magazine, and similar papers, we got started. This time, I had a dark background with a boat painted on it. I painted over the boat first, then drew with watercolor pencil a face of La-Vane Kelly, who is in a movie "Unarmed Verses" that is being shown as part of Hot Docs. Here's the original and here's the painting::
Wild Hair
We all learned a lot, had fun, and went home with new friends and some finished pieces. Here are some other photos from that day. Wish I had been able to get photos of all the work produced. Whenever you can, take opportunities to learn new things. This class was very inspirational.
The Beach
Kids art on the wall around the Waterworks in the Beach - by Blantyre PS students.
Yesterday, I spotted this amazing mural painted by students from Blantyre Public School. I was walking past the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant (in the rain). There is a plywood wall surrounding the site while work is being done to upgrade the facility. It provided an opportunity for showcasing art created by students from local schools.
This mural showing what the beach looks like in the summer with sunbathers crammed into every available inch of sand struck my funny bone. I broke out smiling and laughing at the very accurate depiction of the action on the beach on a sunny summer's day. Hope you enjoy it and take advantage of any kind of weather to walk around our city looking at murals and other public art, as well as the art in galleries.
