Always Be Yourself!

"Yacht Club"
original acrylic on paper
Image:  14 x 21"

Do you catch yourself saying something negative about your artwork over and over?  The same statement?  I used to say that I didn't like making so many itty bitty shapes.  Virginia Cobb straightened me out in a workshop when I told her that.  She asked me if I liked making little tiny shapes, and I said that I must, because they keep showing up.  She said to honor that unique quality of my work and then just unify them with a glaze to make fewer "grouped" shapes when I was done. I LOVE that advice.  So, now when I teach a workshop, I tell everyone that the very thing that they think might be their worst thing about their artwork, actually is the very thing that they should keep!  We all need to be ourselves!
This painting, "Yacht Club" is part of a local show called Bonnie and Friends.  Bonnie Featherstone asked about 30 artists, from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, to bring 2 paintings each.  It's at the Ames Center in Burnsville, MN for the month of December, if you get the chance to see it.  I'm so honored to be a part of such a grand show.  You won't believe all the different styles.  I was talking with one of the artists and he said that he wishes he could be a little looser.  His paintings are so good, that they are almost photographic!  I told him my story about excelling at what you consider your worst feature.  He agreed with me, and we both appreciate our differences.
By the way, one of my favorite painters is Gustav Klimt.  Check out how many tiny shapes he has in his paintings!!!! www.klimt.com But they are beautifully combined into big shapes and so well designed.

Another Charcoal Pour Bird Painting!

"Deep in Thought"

Here is the finished painting that I demoed for the workshop last weekend in Bethel, MN.  Below is the painting 3/4 finished.   When I am at this point in a painting, I ask myself many design questions, in order to complete the painting.
 1. Do I have a dominant value?  In order to see that, I take a black and white photo of my painting.  Then I see the values of each color. In this case, the lights and medium values were equal, so I decided to add more aqua collage paper.
2.  Have I linked the center of interest to the sides of the paper?
3.  Repeating the busy shapes within the bird by adding the stripes on the side is a good idea!
4. Cropping the picture so that the bird isn't right in the middle of the painting.
5. Added shadows under the feet.
6. Worked on details of the eyes.
By the way, the aqua colored paper was handmade by painting on deli paper and stenciling layers of different colored paint after the main first layer of paint.  To read more about how to do the charcoal pour, go to Virginia Cobb's book, Discovering the Inner Eye.  I absolutely LOVE this process! 

Another Bird Painting

Home, Sweet Home
This was my demonstration painting for the home studio workshop for the Charcoal Pour technique.  This painting is lots more busy than my last one.  Which one do you like better?  The students did fabulous paintings, and loved the process of the charcoal pour.  I'm really excited to paint lots more birds!

Funky Bird, using charcoal powder



"Dressed to the Nines"

This painting started with a charcoal pour. This process is discussed in the Virginia Cobb book, Discovering the Inner Eye, Experiments in Watermedia.   It is available for $150, unframed.  Image size:  11" x 11".  I love the texture that the charcoal creates.  Then I added fun by collaging the feathers, using all kinds of busy collage papers.   My home studio workshop went fantastic.  By limiting the students to only 10, we all got to know each other so well, and there was lots of individual help.  Their paintings were so beautiful! I'm definitely painting lots more birds in the future.  They are so fun, when they are whimsical!

Creating texture with Charcoal Powder, Birch Trees

This painting, Roots and Rocks, #1, is image size 11" x 15".   I'm preparing for my next home studio workshop, "Graphite Pours to Create Texture".  This painting started using charcoal powder and then pouring a big bucket of water on the paper!  This process is explained in Virginia Cobb's book, Discovering the Inner Eye, Experiments in Watermedia .  I love textures and I find that starting with texture on the paper, leads to inspiration for completing the painting.  It was fun to go back to traditional painting for a change.  But tomorrow, it's back to abstracts!