Friday, August 22, 2008

Mixed Media Workshop







I just finished a week-long, mixed media workshop at our local art center. There were 6 of us the first 3 days and then only three of us the last two, plus the teacher (Nancy Barch), of course. Most of us had taken MM workshops from Nancy before and we had a great, if exhausting, time. Nancy did demos and critiques. We each had mounds and mounds of stuff . . . watercolors, acrylics, collage materials, pastels, various drawing implements, glue, scissors, thread, gesso, stuff to make texture such as bubble wrap, meshes, etc. Nancy scheduled this week just at the end of the art center's summer season so we had a room where we could each have a large table and could leave all our stuff spread out and ready to work. I have a few pieces which aren't anywhere near finished, but many that are close enough to share. The paintings are roughly in chronological order, although I often worked on 2 or 3 at a time so they had time to dry.

As usual, these are brighter if you click on a picture for the larger version. And also as usual, comments and critiques are invited.

Most of the paintings are on half sheets (about 14" x 20"). The more square painting is a small part of a larger, definitely unsuccessful, painting and is probably more or less 8" square. The final one, with the dog pictures collaged on, was originally painted on a full sheet but is cropped all around.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Peonies


I love the red stems 'n stuff on these white peonies. The painting is a combination of two photos.

Monday, August 11, 2008

waterfall

I have had a photo cropped from a larger one which is of one of the creeks that abound in our area. This crop just shows the water falling over a rock, making a "waterfall" perhaps a foot high. This makes a good abstract shape and I've been working on painting it over the last week. Here's the photo:



First, I painted the picture in watercolor, quickly so as to stay loose. I knew watercolor wasn't the best medium for this project, and I tried anyway. I was right. I don't much like this painting, although when I just looked at it small (it's 10" x 14," a quarter sheet) it didn't seem so bad.



Today I did what I've wanted to do all along, and painted it in pastels. A much better medium for painting the value shifts and blends that are in this photo, and I didn't have to save any whites. I've changed it from the photo, something easier to do with pastels because when I don't like something I can go back and change it easily.


So here's my final waterfall painting, the same size as the watercolor version.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Demo slideshow

I did my demo and I think it went well. Here's a slideshow of some of the photos Fran took. The captions are long, so you may want to go through one photo at a time. You get to the controls by pointing your mouse at the bottom of the pictures. You can also see much bigger pictures on Picassa: http://picasaweb.google.com/janefranphoto/DemoAtMedfordLeas.