Knife Painting

Been a long time. Had little time for painting lately but still taking lessons. I will post a picture that is going to a Cafe in Dadeville to be displayed along with all the other painters in Cheeko's art class. One of our class members decided to do a knife painting and before you knew it, all classes wanted to learn the method. As for me, I was just struggling with my landscape thinking surely she would not ask me to learn this, but lo and behold, she wanted me to learn it too while it was a "hot topic" and she was in the mood to teach it.

Cheeko has a wonderful array of reference material from which we can choose to paint. She encourages those of us who want to experiment and learn and grow in our paintings. She also helps out whenever we don't understand how to paint a passage, she is not shy about coming to our canvas and demonstrating.

This work was done from a Walter Foster Still Life workbook. We change all sorts of stuff about the painting but get the ideas from the set up. These are fun to do. Some of the painters work from their own reference material, but since I am in the learning mode, I still use them to paint from.

White

Representing white in a painting is a good exercise in values. White has to have color painted into it so that tonal value and volume can be described. Another beginner painting...OMG, the things that cause me problems: LEAVES and that nebulousness of the floated washes that are supposed to appear as leaves and negative painting of leaves that are not there!! This was hard, but I have to take it easy on myself, because I am trying to learn how to do these techniques. Working with an angled brush helps to diffuse the harder cast shadows, now I need to learn how to work in smaller places with that loaded to one side brush. This was fun. In the middle of painting all this, I guess my husbands frustration with the dinner table being filled with watercolor paper, paints, books, bottles, erasers, pencils, etc. got the best of him, so I moved all my stuff back to my studio...I will send a snapshot of my wall of unfinished paintings. I decided to hang them up so I would look at them often and see if I can get some of them finished.

Scratchboard

This was a fun project. Mine is the pansies (I don't think anyone thought I did the buffaloes, LOL). I have done other Scratchboards using the small kits provided by Ampersand. It is messy because you scratch off the lights and leave the darks using tools such as broad and pointed scrapers, chisels, steel wool, etc. to achieve tonal qualities. Ever seen any of the professionals work in this area? It is so hard to believe that artists can use this media to achieve such fantastic work. I am including a sample by Sally Maxwell, she is a master scratchboard artist. Go look at her work at : http://www.sallymaxwellsart.com/

More from the paintbox

This afternoon, I had a wonderful time doing my last painting from the paintbox book of exercises. I was thrilled to see that I had finished with the book and will move on to more exercises in another book. I am pretty pleased with this one. I got my camera on my tripod and set up in my small studio to take pictures with a fair degree of regularity now. This painting has come a little easier, I find that all this practice I have been doing, has begun to sink in and take root somewhat.

My colors are beginning to become stronger and I am working my brushes differently. I just love this process.

Sunflowers

It has been a while since I last posted. I have been so busy trying to get my step-mother settled in assisted living that I have not painted a lot other than doing color wheels. I did however continue with my lessons and have painted a pretty embarassing mountain scene. My watercolor teacher said, put it away for a while and come back to it later. So, I started painting a sunflower still life from a book. Susan Schewee has a PBS program in which she demonstrates watercolor and I love watching, so I got a book of designs called Beginning Watercolor...I pay homage to anyone who can do this as a beginner. Here is mine. I am mostly happy with it except for the stupid leaves, they look pretty stiff. Still don't know how to paint leaves! But I keep plugging along. Also, I need some color in the background to make those flowers pop...now the big question? WHAT DO I DO NOW??? Paint some color that might ruin all the work I have done??? Oh well, it is just paper, right?

Lesson 1

Last night was my first watercolor class, I was excited! I learned more in this 2 hrs than in a long time, I guess you cannot learn how to paint watercolor from books. But I did learn about paint consistency, thick as buttermilk or thin as skim milk. Never was able to put that together before. But that was after I painted my image. We also learned how to paint a prettier tree which will take some getting used to but the secret is that you turn your painting upside down and hold your wrist over the bottom of the tree and without moving your hand, pull in jerking motions toward you, this way you get a more natural look. We painted a very simple image with 3 colors. Learned how to fling paint, then spray with water to create foliage. Mine was done with too small a brush so it looks like the leaves are just emerging. Cynthia Mask is our teacher, she is getting her fine arts degree from Auburn University.

Snow in Auburn!

Hooray for snow, it is beautiful; large fat snowflakes falling and quickly covering everything in its path. We are forcasted to get 3-6". Click on the image to see a close up image, you can see how heavy the snowfall is. I frequently take pictures of the lake across the street from the front of our house because I find such quiet beauty at the most unexpected times. I will take a snapshot and upload to the computer so I can remember. I finished another of the paintbox exercises, this one is really showing my lack of talent but, I am going to post because it is a visual record, so I can bring it back at a later date to see where I was and where I have come.