In The Paint

Here’s another one.

I went out one morning before work this past summer for a quick photo walk. This is painted from one of the photos I took.

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!

The final week of summer camp has passed; the clean-up is complete and I’ve had a week to relax before I have to think about my adult classes that begin in the fall.
The last week my 8-10 year olds focussed on landscapes. We did painting, printmaking, and photography, and went outside to do some sketching. The kids really focussed on their first painting which was an acrylic on masonite board after Tom Thomson. After the ground was covered with a burnt orange, the kids were restricted to using only a palette knife.
Here are a couple of results:

The next piece that the group did was an acrylic on canvas after artist Dorothy Knowles. I was attempting to get the kids to understand the different paint applications that artists use. While Tom Thomson applied the paint in thick short brush strokes, Dorothy Knowles layers washes.
Here are two of the final pieces:

We continued the Time Machine course through week 5 of camp. I had a great group of kids these last two weeks and they created some wonderful pieces.

On the Time Machine theme, we visited different time periods through the magic of PowerPoint. To travel through time we would use a different Time Machine each time. I started the PowerPoint with an image and the kids had to guess either the name of the time machine or the book/tv show/movie that it is from. For example, the “time turner” from Harry Potter, or the “Delorian” from Back To The Future. If a camper got it right, they would receive a prize at the end of the week.

We traveled to the Northern Renaissance and visited Albrecht Dürer; to the 19th century and looked at Cezanne’s work; to the Ancient Greece theatre and were inspired by their theatre masks; and to the 20th century to see Modigliani’s portraits.  Here are some of the results:

Softolium Prints inspired by Dürer's woodcuts.

Cezanne Still Life

Cezanne Landscapes

Modigliani Self Portraits

Masks

This past weekend I participated in a local Art In The Park.  It was the first time I have done one of these art shows in a long time and while it was a disappointing weekend (low traffic) I would like to do more in the future. My talented husband built the walls that the paintings are hung on.  They were very sturdy during the windy weekend. Here are some photos of my set-up:

Click on the thumbnails to see the entire photo.

This week my students/campers (8-10 yrs old) learned a little about photography. It wasn’t the main focus for the week but part of all the other art that they created. We learned how to use the cameras, about the rule of thirds, and about light. I found that the biggest challenge for them was capturing the focal point in focus. We also manipulated the photos a little bit in iphoto. Here are some results:

I’ve been painting a lot of small canvases lately: as small as 2.5 inches squared. A few days ago I did two quick underpaintings on larger canvases and yesterday I completed one of them. As I was painting yesterday I hit a point where I really felt that I was in a groove or in the zone. It felt great! I haven’t felt that groove in a while.

The canvas size is about 24″x30″.

Hiking in northern Israel

Here are some new paintings, 4″x4″, that I’ve just added to my Etsy shop. The first two were painted from photos I took in Israel and the last one is from a photo I took in Nova Scotia.

Enjoy!

This is a painting that started as a demo in an adult acrylic painting class that I’m teaching. I was demonstrating how to start a painting by finding the main shapes and tones and building up from there. Afterwards in my studio, I worked the painting to completion in oil. I often like to use acrylic as an underpainting as it is fast drying.

This painting is available for purchase here.