Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Weekly Art Sessions

Hi:
Welcome to my blog. I hope everyone is enjoying the cold, snowy weather - I do not like it at all, so, I am planning to get a lot of painting projects done over the next several weeks. I am quite happy to sit in my workshop, with my music playing, and work on new, and, hopefully, interesting projects. I have already started on a couple of 'textured' pieces and also a coloured pencil project.

I have some wonderful art pieces to share with you that were done by the girls in my art sessions prior to Christmas.

This piece was designed by Roberta Hall, and is in her book titled Silhouettes (Maple Sugar II). This book is full of different silhouetes with various colours of sunset glows in the backgrounds. It is a lovely book. Sue decided to do this picture on 8x10 wood. She mixed her oil colours and did the sky and ground first, sprayed it, applied the pattern for the silhouete, inked everything in, then sprayed it. It turned out great.


Let it Snow is a pen and ink with oils design by Mary Owens. Marie did this on a large (16x20) stretched canvas. The instructions called for the sled to be a brown shade with reddish hilights. Maried decided to do her sled green - she mixed a lovely shade of green and, the large picture with the green sled and big red bow, turned out beautiful.


Cecile decided to try working with texture and chose to do two wall paintings....she took ideas from several different patterns. The surfaces she chose were large MDF boards that had been prepped. She applied the texture, painted and sprayed the backgrounds, then proceeded to use several different techniques: pen and ink, acrylic and oil paint.....
The first one has a bright yellow background with deep red poppies. Most of the painting on this piece was done with acrylics, and the poppies just seem to jump off the page. The leaves were done with a much lighter touch and seem to fade into the background. The printing was done with pen and ink and the gold border was added with a gold leafing pen. I think the picture turned out great.



This is the matching piece that Cecile did. The background colour looks wonderful next to the yellow one above. I believe Cecile did most of the painting on this piece in oils - note the double colour on the tulips...she has done a wonderful job of bringing the two colours together. The printing and gold border were done in the same manner as above.


The two paintings look wonderful side by side.

This piece was done by Lauren - it is very simple, but also very effective. She did this art on 4 separate pieces of stretched canvas - I think each one was about 8x8. She mixed 4 different colours using acrylic paint and painted each square (the sides were also painted). She then sprayed the canvas, applied her pattern and inked the design in. I love the colours she chose and the design looks great on it. Oh, did I mention, this is only Lauren's second pen & ink project?



This is a Mary Owens pen and ink design called Beach Chair. Renee did it on 11x14 stretched canvas (she always works on stretched canvas - does not like the cheaper canvas!!). She did make some changes in the colours of the objects in the picture. I think the project turned out great.



Our winter art sessions are now in full swing and will run until late February. I have lots of wonderful pictures of the art being done, and will post them over the next few months.


I have been experimenting with some different techniques - texture crackle, texture glass, stencils and image transfers. So far I have been very pleased with the results, and I will post two of my new (and different) projects in a few weeks.


Thanks for visiting my blog and please check back to see more wonderful artwork.


Joan

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Colored Pencils and Pen and Ink,

Hi, HAPPY NEW YEAR, and welcome to my blog:

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I certainly did, but, as usual, I ate, drank and partied more than I should have...but, I did have a wonderful time! Now, all the decorations have been put away, the tree has been taken down, all the sweet snacks have disappeared from the fridge, and I am settling back into a normal routine. Quite frankly, I am ready to have an organized, calm life again.

Prior to Christmas I finished some ornaments, and I would like to share them with you.

The first two pictures include Icy, Flake, Chill and Noel. The other character in this group is Believe, and he is posted in my November 30 post. These characters were designed by Jamie Mills-Price, and can be found in her book 'Christmastime 6', along with a lot of other wonderful projects. These ornaments are done on wooden cutouts. I did all my basecoating with acrylics and also a lot of the decorative dots, bows, leaves, etc. All the black areas - the hats, penquins, etc. are filled in with a Faber Castell brush pen, and the rest of the pieces are done in oils (all the shading, hi-lighting, etc.) I painted the backs of all the pieces and added snowflake stencils. These ornaments were a lot of fun to do, but, there is a lot more work than what meets the eye!

I found this little angel - I don't know who the original artist is - and I decided to make her into an ornament and use coloured pencils. So I started with a wooden heart, glued mi-teintes paper on, traced my pattern, then did all the work with coloured pencils. When I was done, I found some acrylic paint that matched the colour of the mi-teintes paper, painted the back of the ornament, and added white snowflakes (I used a stencil for this). This is the first ornament I have done with coloured pencils, and I am sure I will be doing more.

I think this ornament is funny - all the snowmen hamming it up in the woods. With the exception of the ornaments on the tree, everything is done in pen and ink with oils. It is a very quick project to do - did not use a pattern...just starting inking in trees and snowmen. The 'snow' is applied with sno writer, and the glitter is glamour dust. A very fast (and silly) project.

One of my granddaughters is right into Strawberry Shortcake and the other is crazy about Minnie and Daisy. So I decided to do them each an ornament as part of their Christmas presents. The ornaments are wooden cutouts. I sealed and basecoated the mittens, traced and inked the pattern, then used oils to rouge the colour on - I used acrylics for the Christmas tree decorations. To finish them off I used white oil paint for the 'snow', then sprinkled glamour dust on all the snow. I am pretty happy with the way they turned out - my grandkids loved them!

This year I will be holding winter art sessions on Monday evening and Thursday morning beginning the week of January 9 and running until late February. So, over the next few months I will have lots of new artwork to show you.

I have a few ideas about new projects I plan to work on, and, after taking a Christmas break, I must admit I am anxious to get started on some new pieces.

Thanks for visiting my blog, and please check back in a few weeks

Joan