Weekly art sessions

Our weekly art sessions started in March and I have a few completed pieces to show you.

This is a pen & ink with oil rouging project done by Ginette on 11 x 14 canvas. The design is by Claudia Nice and is in one of her out of print books. There is a lot of detail in this, and I think Ginette has done a great job with both the inking and rouging.

Nicole has done two projects designed by Susan Scheewe on 8" porcelain plates - Nicole pieced some patterns together in order to make the designs. The patterns were inked and then oil paint was added to complete the pieces.

The first shows apples, and I think Nicole has captured the right colours in both the apples and leaves. She has taken the yellow colour from the apples and rouged it behind the fruit and the green leaf colour has been added to the scroll pattern on the edge of the plate.

The second project by Nicole is strawberries - both the berries and leaves look very realistic. Once again, she has taken colours from the project and used them in the background and on the scrolled edge.

This piece is a Mary Owens pattern called Eggstra Special Delivery. This is Renee's first attempt at pen & ink and I think she did a terrific job. She is very quickly mastering the pen & ink technique, and is close to finishing her second project - which is very different and cute - I will post it when it is finished.

Sue tackled this coloured pencil pattern designed by Pat Lentine - it is called Little Digger. Sue came to our Monday night art session, started the project about 6:30 and was completely finished before 9:30. I think this is Sue's third or fourth project using coloured pencils, and I think she likes working with the pencils as much as I do. I'm sure I will be posting more of her coloured pencil work soon.

This bird is called a mot mot. When Nancy was in South America she snapped a picture of the bird and decided to create a drawing using coloured pencils. The colours on this bird are just beautiful, and with the large selection of coloured pencils, Nancy was able to come up with colours that very closely matched those on the bird.

That's it for now! Our Monday and Tuesday evening art sessions wrap up in a couple of weeks, and everyone is busy getting their last pieces done - and, I am busy snapping pictures. So, over the next few months I will have lots of pen & ink and coloured pencil projects to post on my blog. I expect my fall art sessions to start sometime in September, and I will post all the information on my blog.

Colored Pencils

I have spent most of my time over winter working with my colored pencils - I can't seem to get enough of them.

This first project is called Copper Still Life and was designed by Janelle Johnson (http://www.janellejohnson.com/). It is done on 11x14 hand-dyed paper that I got from Janelle. Last fall I took a course from Janelle and this was the project we worked on. I did not complete it during the course, so I have been working on it on and off over the last few months. There sure are a lot of leaves on this piece - I was glad when I finally got them all done. But, I can say that I now definitely know how to do leaves! The copper pot and lantern were very interesting and I feel I learned a lot working on these two items. To finish the piece off I added a rust colored matte and put it in a black frame.

This project is called Buddies and was designed by Pat Lentine (http://www.patlentine.com/). I did it on 8 x 10 Mei-tentes paper. I expect it will probably end up being a baby shower gift. This piece was a lot of fun to do and did not take a long time. I just love the expressions on the faces of the bears! I thought the fur might be time consuming, but, once I figured it out, it worked up very fast. The bows just seem to set the picture off. I still have to matte and frame this piece.

There are a number of colored pencil pieces I plan to tackle soon. I have several photographs that I plan to turn into colored pencil pictures. Since there will be no pattern, I will be winging it as far as the pictures and colors are concerned. It will be fun, and, I hope to learn a lot by experimenting and attempting different things with the colored pencils. I have a total of about 150 colored pencils, so, I should have fun deciding on colors to use.