Weekly Art Sessions

Hi:

I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful weather. I am in the process of finishing a couple of art projects, then I will be packing all my supplies up and moving over to my cottage. The following 'masterpieces' were completed by some of the girls in our spring art sessions - this time there is quite a variety - pen & ink with oil rouging, coloured pencils and acrylics.

This is a coloured pencil piece done by Sue on 11x14 mi-teintes paper. I do not know who the original artist was. Sue has a wonderful talent for just working away on things with absolutely no pattern or instructions. Such was the case with this project. Sue just jumped in and coloured pencils started flying out of her case. The colours in the picture turned out wonderful.

This piece was done by Monique on a 11x14 wood plaque and is called 'Snowy Trails'. It was done using pen & ink with oil rouging and was designed by Mary Owens. This particular piece has been very popular over the last few years. All the background trees and the evergreen in the foreground are done using a fan brush, and it only takes minutes to complete them all. The white 'snow' is simply the white canvas showing through, and the snow on the tree is just dabbed on with white acrylic. It is a fun piece to do, and I think Monique did a great job.

I love these flowers. Nancy did the projects with acrylic paint on large (maybe 20 x 20) canvas, and they were just so 'in your face' paintings. They were so bright, colourful and bold - most of the pieces done in our art session are much more subdued, so it was wonderful to have these big, bold pictures! I don't know who the original artist was. Great job.



















Renee designed this piece - her daughter asked for a pen & ink piece with a dragonfly, frog, fence, etc., so Renee looked through a number of books, found all the things requested, and placed them in a picture. I think Renee enjoyed doing the piece, but, when she was done she did state that she was going to stick to patterns for the next while! I think the project turned out very well for an original design!


This colourful piece was done by Ginette. The original design was by Shirley Koenig, and can be found in her book titled 'Country's Edge'. Shirley's instructions are either acrylics or oils, but Ginette converted everything to pen & ink with oils. In the original project (by S. Koenig) the background was quite dark, and Ginette wanted hers to be dark also (if you have worked with the pen & ink with oil rouging technique, you know that most backgrounds are simply white with splashes of colour matching those in the picture). So, Ginette experimented with the oils and came up with this wonderful mottled background. It looks great!

Thats it for now - I still have a few pictures done by the girls in our art sessions, and I will post them soon. In the meantime, I have completed a couple of pen & ink projects that I will post in a few weeks. And, I have lined up several interesting projects (I am going to try working with texture, and also some silhouette pieces) that I will be working on at my cottage over the summer. So, in September I should have some new (and hopefully different) projects ready to post.

Our fall art sessions will be starting in late September, and I will post further information about that at the end of the summer.

Thank you for visiting my blog, and I hope everyone has a great summer.

Joan

Colored Pencils

Hi, and welcome to my blog. Our weekly art sessions have been going strong for the last seven weeks and are now winding down for the summer - our last session is this week. The girls have created lots of wonderful pieces, and I will be posting them over the next few months.

In the meantime, I have completed two colored pencil projects that I want to show you.

The first was designed by Gemma Gylling called Yorkie. The picture was done on 5 x 8 suede board, which was a new surface for me to work on. I found working on suede to be very interesting - it takes lots of layers of pencil, so you can build the hair and make it look very fluffy and realistic. With the suede surface you also end up with a wonderful background without doing anything! Sometimes with colored pencils, creating a background can be rather challenging, so it was great to have the background already there. I liked working on the suede, and plan to use it for more projects in the future.


This project is called Western Meadowlark and was designed by Sherry Nelson - the entire project can be found in her book called Painting Songbirds. The instructions in the book are for oil paints. I converted everything to colored pencils and completed the piece on 8 x 10 wave green mi-teintes paper. I really enjoyed doing this project - the butterfly and grasshopper were a bit of a challenge, but, I was happy with the final result.

I am now getting my summer projects ready to take over to my cottage, so I can work on them over there. I plan to complete projects in pen & ink and colored pencil, and I will also be doing some Christmas ornaments - fall will be here before we know it, and that is when we all start working on our Christmas stuff!

That's it for now - please check back in a few weeks when I will post some wonderful art completed by the girls in our art sessions.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Joan

Weekly Art Sessions

Hi:

Well, things are finally getting back to normal here - I spent the month of March in Florida, and, needless to say, there was no artwork accomplished while I was there....too many other interesting and different things to do! Our weekly art sessions started in early April and will run until the end of May. We have been very busy inking, rouging, oil painting and using coloured pencils. The following pieces were completed by the girls in our art sessions, and I would like to share them with you. I hope you enjoy them.


I think this piece is wonderful. Sue did this project on 8 x 10 grey suede board using coloured pencils. The piece is called Red Hat Cat (which is rather appropriate!), and was designed by Tina Norris. It did not take long for Sue to complete the picture - she started it about 6:30 p.m. and was finished about 9 p.m. She added a sparkly pin and some feathers, and ended up with an adorable piece.



This project was designed by Mary Owens and is called Do You See What I See? Cecile inked this on 11 x 14 canvas and then used the oil rouging technique to add colour. When you are using this technique and creating snow on white canvas, the canvas itself becomes the snow, and all that is needed is the creation of shadows using some payne's grey or indigo. This was only Cecile's second pen & ink project - she has now started her third. I love this piece!


Nancy completed this Bengal Tiger in coloured pencil. The pattern was designed by Lee Hammond and can be found in her book 'Lifelike Drawing in Colored Pencil'. The tiger looks very realistic, and, I think Nancy has done a wonderful job with all the detail on the face, and, in particular, the eyes.

Linda made these four paintings to put on a little girl's wall - we all know how much princesses mean to little girls! The basic pictures were inked onto the backgrounds (stretched canvas), and then Linda added oil paint to complete the projects. The pictures are very colourful, and I think Linda did a great job.

I am busy working on about four projects, most of them in coloured pencil, and I will be posting some of my work within the next few weeks. The girls in our Monday and Tuesday art sessions are also very busy working on a variety of projects - I will also be posting their projects as they are finished. Their work is amazing and I am really looking forward to seeing all the completed projects.

Thanks for visiting my blog - please check back in a few weeks.

Joan

colored pencils

After taking a break from my artwork in January and early February, I decided it was time for me to start painting and colouring again.


This piece is called A Partridge in a Pear Tree, designed by Audrey Bettin, and it can be found in the October 2000 edition of Lets Paint. The original design is on a dark green cloth vertical banner and, it has three pears and lots of leaves and berries. The instructions in Let's Paint call for fabric acrylics.
So, since I am not into acrylic or fabric painting, nor did I want to do a large piece, I decided to downsize and convert everything to coloured pencils.
I did not have any dark green mi-teintes paper, so I settled on a burgundy background - I really like the background, but I did find that some of the brown shades in the partridge did not really pop out on the burgundy. The original project had shiny metallic paint on the ribbon and wings, and I really liked the effect. So, on the partridge wings I used a gold metallic Prisma colour pencil, and I used gold metallic acrylic paint around the outside. When the light falls on these areas they shine. It was a fun project and I really enjoyed working on it, but if I do it again, I think I will use a dark green background.

I have already picked out my next coloured pencil project, and I am in the process of deciding on a new pen & ink piece.

Our spring art sessions start in April, so I will have lots of new pieces to share with you soon. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Weekly Art Sessions

I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful, cold, snowy winter - I am not! But, it is comforting to know that a good portion of the winter is over, at least the temps are starting to warm up, the days are getting longer, AND, I will be able to go to my cottage in about three months. Since I am not a cold weather person, I have been staying indoors as much as possible and I have managed to get a lot of cleaning and organizing done.

Although my weekly art sessions do not start until April, I do have several pieces from the fall that I can show you.

I absolutely love this one, which was done in coloured pencils by Nancy. The piece is called Vanna in Velvet and was designed by Tina Sue Norris. Nancy did this piece on a suede board, and you can see how soft and fluffy the fur looks when done on suede. She topped the piece off with some very flashy jewellery, and I think it looks wonderful.

This piece is called Kitty and was designed by Renee Mullins. Linda inked the design on a 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" piece of wood, added oil paint, then glued the window pane on top. I love it! Wood is a wonderful surface to use pen & ink on as long as it is prepped properly.

Renee started working with pen & ink last year, and, I believe this is her fourth completed piece. This project was designed by Sandra Malone and is called Snowman. It is done on 11 x 14 canvas. I thought the lime green was a strange colour for the hat, but, when it was completed I thought it looked great.

Jackie is relatively new to pen & ink - she has done a lot of work with other techniques, particularly oil paint, but, I believe, she has only completed a few pen & ink pieces. This piece is called Covered Bridge at Dusk and was designed by Mary Owens. Jackie took the original design and added more deer and trees. I did not measure the canvas but it was VERY long!

This last piece was done by Ginette on wood (approx. 10" high by 8" wide). I don't know who the original artist was. The project was done using pen & ink with oils. She added the 'snow' with Snow Writer (by DecoArt) and then added lots of sparkles (glamour dust). Looks great!

I have a few more projects done by the girls in my art sessions, and I will post them over the next month or two. Our art sessions start again in early April, and, once everyone gets busy, I will have lots of new projects to post in the spring. Personally, I have been working on other projects (paperwork, housework, etc.), but plan very soon to grab my coloured pencils and get busy - I will post my new pieces as they are completed.

Happy painting!

Colored Pencils

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

Before Christmas I was very busy working on two projects I was giving as Christmas presents....and I would like to share these pieces with you.

My granddaughter, Jessica, loves everything involving princesses. So, for her Christmas present, I decided to do the Disney Castle. This picture is done on 16x20 mi-teintes paper (orchid colour), and the entire piece is done with coloured pencils. I had a lot of fun experimenting with the pencils to get the right look for the castle, but, I must admit, the bricks at the bottom did get a little tiresome after the first couple of hours working on them! It was a huge undertaking, and I was definitely happy with the results. I was also very happy to finally complete the picture! However, it looks like I have to do another one - my granddaughter, Abigail, now wants a castle for her wall.....

In my collection of pictures I had one of my granddaughter, Abigail, with this wonderful, crazy hat. It was a picture I just loved. So, I decided to try my hand at doing a coloured pencil portrait from the picture. Although, I had done some portrait work using patterns, I had never attempted one from scratch. It was an interesting undertaking. I did the hat first - it was fun, - I had a great time and was very pleased with the way it turned out. Then came the face, the eyes, nose and mouth - it wasn't nearly as much fun as the hat! I made several corrections along the way, and I really had to do some experimenting with the various skin shades. I finished off with the shirt, which was very easy, and did not take much time at all. For my first portrait I am pleased.....I learned a lot, and I am looking forward to doing more portraits in the future. I gave this portrait to my daughter, Jill (Abigail's mother), for Christmas, and she was very pleased with it.

For the next month I will be taking a break from my art work - I will be working on other projects that I need to complete. However, I still have lots of pictures that the girls in my art sessions completed, and I will be posting them every month or so. So, please check back in a few weeks.