In The Paint

Recently a Golden representative did a presentation at one of my places of work. I had never used used Golden paints before because they are a little pricier than other brands and because I usually paint in oils and not acrylics. At the end of the presentation we got a little loot bag full of Golden goodies and I couldn’t wait to use them. When I got home I started this painting with a limited palette of fluid Indian Yellow Hue, Manganese Blue Hue, Alizarine Crimson Hue (all samples from the bag of goodies) and Titanium White of a different brand. After the first layer I added Golden’s open Red Oxide and Sap Green Hue to my palette.

I loved the way these paints went on the canvas. It was easier to blend and dry brush looked great as well. It still dried quickly on the palette but while moist had a nice creamy feel. I think I have been converted to Golden.

Here is the finished piece. Thank you Stephanie for being my model! This and another portrait will be part of AWOL Gallery’s Square Foot Show from August 6th to 21st.

Here are how some of the lightbox photos turned out:

And here are some outdoor photos that the campers took:

This past week I had 14 11-15 year olds and we were learning about photography. The campers all had point-and-shoot cameras so it was pretty basic concepts that we were talking about such as composition and lighting. Again, the hardest thing for the group was to focus on the point of interest. We had many beautifully lit and composed flower pictures where the greenery behind the flower was what was in focus. But I think they got better as the week went along.

The first thing we did this week (after taking our first set of photographs) was to create a folio to put our work in. We used matte board, scrapbooking paper, envelopes, elastic chord, glue sticks, glue gun, and duct tape. These were easy to make and turned out great. It also helped that I had someone cut the matte board for me so that it was ready to go on Monday.

Here are a couple of results:

13 yr old camper

In the last photo you can see some of the activities we did. The blue square paper is a sunprint; at the back is a journaling page with different stencilling and painting techniques; and at the front is a faux-polaroid, the idea for which I got from a book on journaling techniques.

This coming week, I’m teaching Digital Photography to 11-15 year olds. I thought it would be a fun activity to make light-boxes so we could photograph small objects.

Having never done this before, I made my prototype out of a cardboard box and cut out a rectangle from the top, and the sides of the box. I then painted the inside with white gesso. On the outside I covered the rectangle with white tissue paper. I taped a white piece of paper on the inside of the box on which to place an object on and then placed lights from a desk lamp so that the light shone through the tissue paper.

Here are some of my results. I hope the campers end up with great results as well.

The lightbox doesn't look pretty but it works.

Thursday we had a friend visit us. We think s/he lives behind the neighbor’s shed with some of his/her friends. They visit us from time to time.
I used what I learned about natural light and backlighting in my portrait photography class. It would have been better had I used a tri-pod as it was difficult to keep the camera steady with the lense I was using.

In January I made a New Years’ Resolution that I would fill up my sketchbook. Every page. I don’t think I’ve filled a sketchbook since high school. I made this resolution out loud and in front of my Grade 7 students. I was encouraging them to use their sketchbooks more to plan, experiment, and sketch in. I’ve been using mine as sketchbook/journal. I am more than half way through the book and through the year.

Lately I’ve been thinking about photo-transfers. Next week at art camp I’ll be teaching 11-15 year olds Digital Photography and we’ll be doing a lot of collage and mixed media involving photo-transfers.

This first one uses two methods. For the image of the sale boats I used Golden’s Super Loaded Matte Medium and the transfer only takes about three minutes. And for the skyline I did a packing tape transfer that my friend Stephanie taught me. Thanks Stephanie!!

This sketchbook page is about my day at the Toronto Islands watching the Dragon Boat Races.

Here are a couple more sketchbook pages:

That’s my photo buddy aka my brother. I got the idea for a faux photobooth picture from a journaling book I bought on sale at Indigo.

The pears started as an acrylic still life demo for my adult painting class and was later cut up and added to the sketchbook.

This spring I took a portrait photography course one of the colleges in the city. Our first couple of assignments used natural lighting and after that we got to get into the studio and light up some models. It was a great time using the lights and backdrops, and we had some great models!

Here is one of my favourite shots that I took during the class.

Here is a painting that I did recently. Last year my husband and I travelled to Fergus and Elora, Ontario for a weekend getaway and I took plenty of pictures and am only now getting to paint from them.

For this one I loved the colours in the sky and the yellow in the landscape. These small paintings are so much fun!

Well after a year of teaching grades 7 and 8 Art, I’m now back at art camp with the 8-10 year olds. We finished a week of sculpture and did a few challenging projects that turned out really great in the end. I didn’t get too many photos of the work because my hands were busy sewing or gluing up until home-time on Friday. Here’s a picture of our balsa foam robot and fabric bird.

I bought the book “Countyside Softies” by Amy Adams and was inspired to try sewing with this group of campers.

It was more challenging than I anticipated and that was after I modified the instructions, fabric, and stitches, to suit the age group. But I might just be crazy enough to do it again later in the summer because the kids loved it and they turned out great!