Beach Morning

Wednesday I went to my friend Leslie's studio again, which is always fun, and makes me get out and do some sort of artwork even if I'm not feeling overly inspired. I started on a different painting which I hated more and more as I went on, so I finally took the colors on my palette and just wiped them back and forth all over the canvas. As I did it seemed a scene began to appear so I just pushed to emphasize it a little further. And that's how I wound up with this painting - not great art but something that felt very theraputic to work on. Acrylic, and slightly larger than I have been working lately, at 11x14.

Sea Turtle close-up

I had such fun at my workshop yesterday. I finished my sea turtle painting with over two hours to go, but had forgotten to bring a second canvas. My friend Kay, though, graciously gave me an extra 8x8 small square canvas that she had and it seemed perfect for a close-up portrait.

Of course I didn't realize how hard it would be when:
1) I was working from a very small reference photo without strong facial details.
2) I've never painted a sea turtle before so have no clear mental image of what they should look like.

So this was actually a bit of the struggle. As the instructor said "He looks a bit like an alien". But it was really more the water I cared about than the turtle anyway, so it was still fun.

Sea Turtle

What a fun day today. I took a one-day workshop on painting sea turtles and water with Gloria Clifford, who specializes in tropical and sea creature art. I've never painted a sea turtle before, but I do love water although I struggle with it, and I'm always happy to learn more about it.

Gloria was wonderful, and very much an intuitive painter, as I tend to be also, rather than one following all the classic "rules" of painting. She made the day a lot of fun, even for those of us struggling with the water and turtles. This was my first painting, done on 11x14 stretched canvas.

Small sketch - Club Continental

Today the Art Guild of Orange Park had a plein air day at Club Continental. I stopped by but just had my sketch pad with me, so did this 5x7 sketch using my colored pencils.

Beach Babe

 
Thanks to judge Tony Walsh for awarding "Beach Babe" Second Place at the "Everything's a Canvas"art show currently hanging at the Park Avenue Bistro in Fleming Island, FL. This is a show of original art masks created by members of the Art Guild of Orange Park (and friends) for the charity Masquerade Ball to benefit St. Vincent's Hospital in Middleburg, coming up this October at the Club Continental.

If you would like to see all the masks you can find them at: http://corksandforksclay.com/one-of-a-kind-masks/. Directions for purchase of the masks are there. All proceeds from the sales of the masks are tax  deductible and will go to benefit St. Vincent's Hospital.

We had a great reception tonight. Go out and eat at the Park Avenue Bistro and see the masks in person! There are over 120 masks on display. I had such fun making them I actually made fourteen. :-)

Life Drawing at Tidnish Bridge Art Gallery

I was out birding much of the day yesterday (despite on and off heavy rains!) and no quick paintings at home, but I knew in the evening I'd be going to the art gallery in Tidnish Bridge, Nova Scotia. By early evening the rains had stopped. The gallery hosts life drawing classes every Monday evening from 7-9 PM and the fee is reasonable - the model's fee ($40) divided by the number of participants. That worked out to a $7 fee last night which was great!

I felt rusty of course as I had not done any life drawing since I was up here last summer at Tidnish Bridge, and the human figure is so unforgiving. However it's always fun and good practice. Lots of quick (30 second, 2 minute, 5 minute, 10 minute) poses, mostly gestural for the shorter ones, then for the last hour two 25-minute poses. Those are the two here. I didn't bring any pastels with me, but did have some colored pencils and got to add a touch of color. It was fun, and I hope to attend next week also.

Floridian Fall

This is the second 16x20 acrylic I did for the "16x20" show at Reddi-Arts. Acrylics are still a huge struggle but I'm having more fun with them than I expected. Water, as always, is a killer for me regardless of medium. LOL.

However this scene is right here in the local shopping center in Fleming Island, a largish retention pond just behind and a little to the west of the local Wal-Mart - not exactly out in the pristine wilderness. But I have loved these trees ever since I loved to Florida in 2011 as their pretty colors give me a taste of fall arriving.

And it really does seem to be arriving now. Lovely cool and breezy when I walked my dog an hour ago, and supposed to drop down into the 40s tonight. Woo hoo, I love it.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

We had receiving for an art show this morning where every piece had to be 16x20. That is the image size, not counting mat, not counting frame, etc. The actual image had to be exactly 16x20. I never paint that large with my pastels. I work 9x12 or 11x14, and I buy frames in bulk in only those sizes. I didn't *want* to have to go out and buy a large sheet to work on and a large frame, . 

So I decided to try acrylics once again. Michael's had gallery-wrapped 16x20 frames on sale for about $8.60 each so the price was certainly right and no frame required! I was allowed to enter two in the show so I decided to go for it. This is the first one I completed.

[sigh] I still feel like a kindergarten kid when it comes to trying to use acrylics.

The Jacksonville Zoo Project

I just have not been doing much pastel painting lately. I still adore pastels but am sort of at a standstill with them. I can't seem to sell any paintings, and I don't have room in my house to keep storing them framed, and I hate to just squish them in drawers or throw them in the trash after spending so much time on them. So my solution lately has been to give up painting. Better not to paint at all than to have to paint and trash or stash. But I recently joined the Jacksonville Artists Guild and they are doing a project for the Jacksonville Zoo as a fundraiser.

Members are allowed to take one or more 8-inch-square wooden boxes to paint, and these will then go to the zoo to be on display, then to the airport, back to the zoo, and then sold as a fundraiser. So no need to worry about storing them in my home. The plain boxes are like the one above, and about 1 1/2 inches deep on the side. So I took three of them to paint, and started by giving them each three coats of gesso.

The problem, of course, is that you can't use pastels on the boxes. They can't be framed under glass. And pastel is the only medium I enjoy or feel comfortable with. I hate watercolor, hate oils, hate acrylics. Pastel is my love! So what to do? I do have lots of zoo photos at least, from trips I have made there with my grandson.  And I took three boxes to work on! So I had to plan something.

So this is my first attempt. I took a photo I had of a giraffe and used photo editing software to play with the colors to make it more "playful" looking rather than just a standard giraffe. I liked the colors in this one and had then planned to paint it. But I decided, heck, the photo was also my own artistic creation, so I just printed it out, and decoupaged the photo to the box. Added some acrylic touches, decoupaged on some sticks and artificial flowers.

Then painted the sides of the box with acrylic, including carrying the giraffe's neck down onto the side of the box, and glazed over the whole thing, and in general I was pretty happy with it, so then was ready to try an actual painting.

So today I tackled this elephant with acrylic. Again, acrylic is not my medium. It's an exercise in frustration and I don't find it fun as I do pastels. But I worked away on it and this is what I accomplished today. I'm not really happy with the elephant's trunk. I've redone it about 3-4 times and touched it up a few more than that but can't seem to get it the way I'd like. But I'm not displeased with the rest of the elephant, and the rest of the painting in general. I'll have to see what I think tomorrow. Annoying thing about acrylic though is that tomorrow I won't be able to mix up exactly the same colors I used today. We'll see. The trunk actually looks a bit better in person than it does in this photograph, so I might just leave it as is.

Still have one more box to paint however!

Early Oceans - acrylic on tile

This one doesn't really have a title. It's just an acrylic done on a 6x6 tile. It's a summer art project for the Art Guild of Orange Park, and these are all going to be sealed with tile sealer, and then used as appetizer plates at our September meeting. So they are just a way to play around. But I had such fun with this one that I said I'd enjoy doing a second tile.

I didn't have any sort of reference for this one. I just made it up out of my head, but wanted to try something that could incorporate part of the natural color of the tile, which is the sandy foreground.

My Studio

One of the things I was excited about with my new home in Florida was that I was going to be able to have one entire room to devote to being my studio! Except I've been in my house for 8 months now, and the studio room was the one room of the house that was still a wreck with boxes stacked all around. I also love quilting and fabric arts (though have not done much of it lately) so my studio also needed room for my sewing machine and fabrics, and I had boxes and boxes of fabrics and nowhere to put them.

Not to mention paintings, boxes of pastels, beading supplies, quilt batting, canvases, pastel paper.... I just needed more storage space. So finally this past Monday I went out to look at storage units at Home Depot. I had planned to just buy an open metal shelving unit, but while I was there I was quite taken by this inexpensive Martha Stewart 9-cube organizer that can accomodate fabric boxes that fit right into the cubes! The oraganizer is stackable so I bought two of them.

I had to shift things around a small bit to make room for the organizers, but that gave me a good spot to put the IKEA children's easel that my grandson and I love to use when he comes over for visits.

And the organizers look great. Some of the cubes I left open, and some I bought boxes for - so I now have boxes for things like acrylic paints, beading supplies, picture hanging supplies, small bits and bobs of fabric.

It looks so nice I may have to paint a picture today. :-) Or start a quilt!

St. Johns Barn - acrylic on canvas

I had such fun painting my 6x6 tile with acrylics, so I decided the same scene might even work with a small acrylic canvas. Pastels are still my passion but I have also been fascinated by acrylics ever since I saw the demo done by Ellen Diamond at one of our Art Guild meetings. I really wanted to take her one-day workshop that she ran for Art Guild members, and signed up for it. But when I priced out her supplies list for the workshop it would have cost me $200-300 just to buy her required supplies! That was a lot of money just to try something out to see if I liked it! So I canceled out of the workshop.

But in the meantime I had bought a few acrylics and a few small 8x10 canvases. I think one thing I like about pastels is working directly with my hands on the support, and one thing I dislike about acrylics is using a brush. I just don't enjoy using a brush! But at the very least the Ellen Diamond demo suddenly made me realize I could use my hands to put on acrylics too! Why not? There are no rules that say you must use a brush, right? It just had never occurred to me that I could use my fingers with acrylics too.

So that's what I did on a great deal of this painting. It was a lot of fun doing this scene again for the third time.

St. Johns Barn - acrylic on tile

The Art Guild of Orange Park suggested a summer project for all the members. They provided a bunch of rough tiles, either 6x6 or 4x4 inches, and asked everyone to paint a tile. You could even paint more than one of you wanted. They'll be brought to the first meeting in September.

I took a 6x6 tile, but of course could not use pastels on it! That would only be a mess. So I pulled out the small number of acrylics I have. I decided the same scene I had done yesterday in pastel, for the 5x7 painting exchange, would also work well on the 6x6 tile. It was another rainy day today, so I worked on this painting this morning. It was fun. Maybe I'll have to get another tile or two to paint. :-)

Stinker One

LOL. I was doing some straightening up in my studio room this morning and came across some acrylic paints. Since it was sort of a quiet day I decided I might try to use one and paint a painting! Silly me. My mom used to try to get me to work with oils, acrylics and watercolors when I was young (as that was what she used) and I hated all of them. Hated fine arts in general until I discovered pastels and fell in love!

But I gave it a try, and ended up hating the result as much as I've always hated the pastels and oils I tried. I found my wrists could not hold steady when holding a brush. I hated not being able to go in there with my fingers. I hated the result. But it was all a learning experience so I might try it again anyway. I have nowhere to go but up. :-)

At any rate, this was done on an 8x10 canvas, and is my back yard.

First Coast Pastel Society

Today was the first meeting of our newly formed First Coast Pastel Society.  It's great to be part of a new pastel society here in my new home. The mission of the new society is:
"To promote the use of soft pastel within the FCPS membership and the community at large as an important and continually evolving fine art medium."

Our moving force and first President is Lyn Asselta, PSA and she's been a real dynamo at getting the group off the ground. We has 15 attendees at our first meeting, which I thought was a pretty good turnout, and we had a great time watching Richard Lundgren, PSA, demo how he prepares his own surfaces for painting upon gatorboard.