Weekly art sessions

The warm weather is finally here - we have opened our cottage, and are spending quite a bit of time there. For now, my art work is on hold - there are too many other things to be done! But, in a few weeks I will get back into it, and plan to produce some new pen & ink and coloured pencil projects for the fall.

Our spring weekly art sessions have now ended, and I have a lot of art work to share with you.

Cecile decided to try a coloured pencil project - this picture is called Common Green Birdwing & Angel Trumpet and was designed by Sherry Nelson. The project is in Sherry's book called Painting Butterflies & Blooms, and all the instructions in the book are for oil painting. Cecile converted everything to coloured pencils, and came up with a beautiful completed piece. It was a big undertaking, and Cecile was definitely happy when she finally finished it.

This piece was completed by Ruth and was designed by Susan Scheewe. The original instructions are for straight oil painting, but Ruth adapted the pattern to pen & ink with oils. I was a little concerned about how the milk can would turn out, but, Ruth worked away at it, using different colours until she was happy with the result. I think the picture turned out great, and I love the variations in colour she has used.

Darlene has only done a few pen and ink projects, but she decided to try and do a portrait of her dog. She used one of Claudia Nice's pen & ink patterns as a basic pattern, then adapted it to look like her dog. After completing the inking she rouged various colours of oil paint here and there and came up with a great picture of her dog.

This picture was designed by Bonnie Seaman and is in her book Say it with Flowers. Linda converted the project to pen and ink, and added a few more flowers & greenery, then proceed to finish it with oil paint. The colours just seem to pop off the page! Great job.

Brenda is fairly new to coloured pencils - I believe this was only her second project. This is called Buddies and was designed by Pat Lentine (who is a coloured pencil artist). I had the pattern for this particular project and Brenda worked through it following all the instructions. I love this pattern, and I think it would make a wonderful baby shower gift (once it is matted and framed, of course). Brenda is really enjoying working with the coloured pencils and plans to continue working with them.

That's it for now - I still have quite a few pictures of completed projects that I will be sharing with you over the next few months. In September our fall art sessions will start, so, at that time I should have a lot of fall and Christmas projects to post on my blog.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Colored Pencils

Well, here I am again reporting on some colored pencil projects I have finished. I do have plans to work on some pen & ink pieces, but, right now, I am enjoying the pencils so much I just keep working on new c.p. projects.

The first project is called Daydreamer, and was designed by Pat Lentine (http://www.patlentine.com/). I love the simplicity of this design as well as the very subtle colour. There is really not a lot of colour on this piece - it is just tinted here and there, and the colour of the paper shows through in almost all areas. I have already picked out a picture (side profile) of my granddaughter, Abigail, which I plan to tackle with the col. pen., and I am going to use similar colours as are shown in this piece.

This project (Black-capped Chickadees and Cherries) was designed by Sherry Nelson, and can be found in her book Painting Garden Birds. All the instructions for this project were for oil paint, so I had to convert everything to colored pencils. I found the cherries rather challenging, but I loved working on the chickadee. When working with coloured pencils there is such a large range of colours to choose from that it is so easy to create the exact look and color you want.

Right now, that's all I have to share - I'm off to work on a project with two grosbeaks and fall leaves - will post it when I am finished.

The girls in my Monday and Tuesday art sessions are busy producing all kinds of interesting artwork, and I will post more of their finished pieces shortly.