Transparency Studies

The Doodlewash watercolor prompt for today is "Transparent."  That was a great topic for me, as I have struggled with portraying clear glass.  I purchased a poster called "Painting the Illusion of Glass Vessels"  from Robert Burridge studios,  and spent the afternoon trying to follow his suggestions.

Transparency studies, Robert Burridge lessons

                                    
I was not wild about any of these studies, but one of my favorites was the martini glass.

Martini

 Here is a clear vase of bright flowers.

Flowers in clear vase

 And a clear glass of something clear.

Clear Glass

Clear Vase of Flowers 

I think I should practice doing a transparency study every day until I get the hang of it.  Great prompt!

We ended up with seven inches of snow yesterday, and the power off for seven hours.  Thankfully, it was restored before dark.  We had a nice Gator ride across the mountain in the snow.

This is our dog Kasey and my sister's dog Daisy enjoying the snow in their fur coats.

Our neighbor across the road has a couple of horses who came down to visit.

It is supposed to snow again tonight.  I am done with it...don't want any more!

Pears, anyone?

Pear Studies, Jeanne Turner McBrayer

I recently joined an online watercolor forum called Doodlewash.  One of the features is a prompt for a daily painting exercise.  Yesterday's was "saturated."  

I decided to use saturated color to do some pear studies a la Bob Burridge.  He offers a weekly online tutorial every Monday he calls "Bob Blasts," and he has often featured pears as his quick warm-up study subject.

Bob uses acrylic paint on most of his Bob Blast paintings, but I tried to use his technique with watercolor.  He does a lot of negative painting around his bright subject matter.  That is a little harder to do in watercolor, but I am pretty happy with these three pears.  I used his color wheel to make the colors pop.

Edited note:  Bob Blast 193 on March 12, 20012 is about painting pears!  And thank you to Bonnie Preslar for the lovely comment on this post.  I did not have your e-mail to send you a reply.

Contemporary Figure Painting Class

Now I will report on my first class at Art of the Carolinas 2016 with Bob Burridge.  The title was Contemporary Figure Drawing.  The advertised photo example was this:

That is what I thought he meant by a contemporary figure in art.  I was quite surprised to find that it was a Life Drawing Class with a nude model!  It was not embarrassing or awkward at all.  First we did timed sketches in charcoal on gray paper. The model assumed various poses and we sketched until time was called (just a few minutes to start with.)

I will share some of my sketches.  Please note I have never taken a life drawing class before, OR worked with charcoal!

There was a strong emphasis on dark against light and light against dark.

After using the charcoals on toned gray paper, we graduated to adding acrylic paint on watercolor paper.  Bob thought my painting of the seated figure was very successful, but said I should soften and lower the line between dark and light background that is dividing the picture in half right at her elbow.

All together, I probably did eighteen sketches or paintings during the one-day class.

 Did I mention we were to exaggerate the model's features?

I have to say, I really loved this class, and would take any class from Bob Burridge again.  He is fun, down-to-earth, and hugely talented.  He was very encouraging.  And, I would love to take another life-drawing class so I can get better at it. 

This afternoon,  I visited the Art of the Carolinas Trade show at the North Raleigh Hilton.  I came away with some replacement tubes of Holbein watercolor paint at half price, some toned gray paper, a casein spray which is supposed to protect all artwork without mounting under glass, and some new Pigma Micron black pens.  I also got some 11 x 14 gallery-wrapped canvas for only $2.99 each.  I had no problem finding parking, and the lines were not too long for checking out.

Tomorrow I will take a morning and an afternoon class with watercolor artists Sterling Edwards and Tom Lynch.   I can't wait!

Coming This Weekend: Art of the Carolinas!

Only two more days...until my first workshop of Art of the Carolinas 2016!

Held at the North Raleigh Hilton, it is a fabulous trade show with dozens of vendors selling art supplies at big discounts.  But the best part is that art instructors from all over the country will be here offering either three-hour or all-day workshops.

Here is my line-up of classes.

Thursday:  I am taking an all-day class with Bob Burridge on painting figures.  I am a big fan of Bob's videos (Weekly Bob-Blasts) on his website, and have tried many of his techniques.  This one should be fun!  He uses acrylic paints, but I have applied many of his lessons to watercolor painting.

Bob Burridge Painting Contemporary Figures workshop photo, AOC 2016

On Friday I may visit the trade show to stock up on supplies.

On Saturday, I will take two watercolor classes.

In the morning, I will take Big Brush Watercolor Landscapes with Sterling Edwards.  He is a world-renowned artist and teacher.  I will probably end up purchasing some of his "big" paintbrushes.

Sterling Edwards Big Brush Landscapes workshop photo, AOC 2016

In the afternoon, one more workshop with Tom Lynch, this time on painting waterfalls.  I have taken many previous workshops with Tom.  He has been a big influence on me, particularly in the use of bold color. I own lots of his books and DVD's.

Tom Lynch Painting Waterfalls workshop photo, AOC 2016

Hopefully I will have lots of new work to show you after the weekend!

Signing Back In

It has been a very busy couple of weeks!  A weeklong stay in the mountains, four days at Merlefest, a house full of company, and then a sinus headache that has lasted for 13 days have kept me occupied.  

We finally got the propane gas heater installed in the basement of our mountain cabin.  Just in time for summer!  Doesn't matter, I am looking forward to being able to quilt in the colder months.  One of these days, we will also have a ceiling, sheet rock walls, and a floor!

Here is another journal page on the Amazing Race Facebook challenge...next stop Italy.  Of course I thought of the great wines of Italy, and decided to try to paint wine glasses/bottles.  For this I looked once again to the free Bob Burridge videos on You-Tube and on his website.  He gives such insight into how light is reflected and bounced around in glass and liquids.

Both of these paintings are in acrylic, and are blatant copies of Bob's paintings as I try to learn his methods.

Then...off to Germany.  I decided to try to paint like Wassily Kandinsky, who although a Russian, spent a great amount of time in Germany.  Here is my impression of his painting Houses in Munich (1908).

I love the bright colors of his palette and the freedom of his brushstrokes.  I painted this freehand with no drawing ahead of time.

I am also working on two paintings of flowers inspired by Bob's videos.  They involve painting bright splotches of color, and then forming the shapes of the flowers and vase by negative painting around the original colors.  Mine are both works in progress on top of some old unsuccessful journal pages.

You would never believe what these two pages once looked like.  I like being able to paint over some bad attempts.  These are both done in acrylic paint. It is much easier to do the negative painting with a more opaque paint than watercolor.

Next up are some more Bible art journaling pages.

In the first one, I used Bob Burridge's techniques again to apply the light pastel colors of the angel, and then use darks to negative paint the shape of the angel and wings.  This one is done in watercolor. I like that you can still see some of the original bright colors under the dark blues and purples of the background.

Judges 6:12

Here are some other recent pages.

Psalm 145

Hebrews 4:10-11

Romans 5:8

Jeremiah 31:3

On Wednesday, I babysat for my three-year-old granddaughter, Charlie.  I used to keep her two days a week until last summer, and I still enjoy having her stay with me when possible.  We did lots of painting together, and I used her paintings to make a Mothers' Day gift for her mommy.

We painted the butterfly and bubbles together, and she painted some vast expanses of paper with colorful glitter paint that were cut up and used in the flowers. 

And here is a beautiful bouquet of my own from my South Carolina family.  Inspiration for a future painting?

We are lucky enough to live close to our other son and his family.  This morning it was church and brunch.  Here is Charlie with the balloon from her Mack-Mack that did not get away or get popped all through breakfast.  I am looking forward to my luxurious pedicure with which they gifted me!

That's it for now.  I went to my quilt bee meeting last week and have a few photos from that meeting.  

Happy Mothers' Day to all of you beautiful mothers out there!

More Bible Art Journaling

Since coming home from Florida, I have been able to prep my Bible pages with clear gesso and use my watercolor paints and markers.  Here are some more of the pages I have illustrated in my journaling Bible.

The first three are my copies of examples in Joanne Sharpe's book, The Art of Whimsical Lettering.  I love her exuberant color palette and no-fear lettering styles.

This one is original.  I googled images for Solomon's temple and abstracted an image.

This one was fun to paint, although I ended up concealing almost all of the text on the waterfall page.

I have also painted several Bible-related journal pages.  I think I will print these on vellum or printer paper and add them as "tip-ins" to my journaling Bible.

The first one is watercolor and acrylic, and resulted from watching Bob Burridges's videos.

The next one is just watercolor and black ink.

And one more watercolor with black ink.

Hope you like these.  Again, I am participating in the Original Bible Art Challenge and the Heaven is Calling challenge by Rebekah R. Jones.  The first challenge was in 2015, but is still available, and there is a huge number of people still participating and posting their work on Facebook. The Heaven is Calling Challenge is ongoing and a new prompt is given once a month.

Maple Leaf Studies

Yesterday I practiced painting maple leaves.  What could be prettier this time of year?

 

Influenced again by artist Bob Burridge, I am trying do series of paintings.  I brought in some maple leaves from the yard and put them up on the drawing board with some 5" x 7" papers.

 I sprayed some watercolor paint  to get the mottled effect.  

On the next one you can see the drips from the painting above it on the board.  I kind of like it!

I think I got the colors right, but feel like the paintings are a bit overworked.  I think I will try it again, and seek a lighter touch.