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Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Kathleen for winning my Artful Gathering Workshop raffle prize!  All registered students in my The Good, the Bad, and the Beauty of Color Workshop were eligible and I had my daughters use random.org to generate the lucky winner.  She is the winner of this original watercolor painting:

Pear on a Ledge, Watercolor
Creating Drama in Black – Art Journal Tip

Creating Drama in Black – Art Journal Tip

Often before I leave on a trip, I often paint several pages in my art journal with black gesso.  I have a few favorite pens that I use that I have tested and the show up beautifully against the dark background.  Here is how I prepare my page and my favorite pens to take along on my journey.
1.  Put a piece of wax paper behind the page you are going to paint to protect the pages beneath from getting black on them.
2.  Coat the page with a light layer of black gesso.  I use watercolor journals with Arches paper and they coat very nicely.
3.  Let this dry.  Your page is ready for art and journaling!

This page was started with just a black background

Adding Texture to Your Paintings

Adding Texture to Your Paintings

Textured Stone Wall and Red Door

It is fun to play with different ways to add texture to your watercolor paintings.  Sprinkle, Splash and Splatter; Creating Texture with Watercolor, is one of the workshops that I am offering at CREATE, Chicago this Friday, August 23, 2013.  “Texture Stone Wall and Red Door” is just one of the step-by-step examples of one of the exercises that we will be painting in this workshop.

Learning about Color

Learning about Color

Here are a few things that we will be learning about in my CREATE class Rainbow Studies

We will do some color mixing making these fun color chickens

Here is how I use the color wheel to pick my colors

We will make some color studies
Using the colors on your palette we will make a color wheel
Pears are a great way to do color studies

Textured backgrounds add life to the paintings

Getting Ready for CREATE, Chicago!

Getting Ready for CREATE, Chicago!

I love collecting artistic tools to put in the goody bags that I give to my students.  I love meeting new artistic friends and catching up with old ones.  I love sharing what I have learned over the years about how to paint beautiful, colorful, glowing paintings and filling art journals with watercolor paintings and mixed media.  I love CREATE!

My little suitcase of supplies
Better clean up my palette
Showing off a colorful background ready for journaling

Dripping with color

Busy creating
Looking forward to catching up with Jenn Mason and Sue Pelletier
Stuffing goody bags

The Beauty of Color

The Beauty of Color

My online watercolor class is going well and everyone is having a wonderful time learning how to correctly use color in their paintings.  There is still time to join in on the fun.  Registration is open until August 1, 2013.   Here is a small sample of some of the paintings from the class and what students are saying:
 “Today I learned that I MUCH prefer tetras to triads! A good thing to know I suspect.”  Kaaren
Kaaren’s Pears
“I have enjoyed your class so much!  I hope you will do more soon.  I have your DVD and your book.  But I want more!  Putting miles on my brushes,
Karen”
“I love using the different color triads and compliments etc to make different works.”  Kristin
“I am so enjoying this workshop, and am really learning some things that I never learned in an art class before.  But I wanted to say that (in addition to finally understanding how a color wheel works) I love the idea of the chicken exercises and also the demo of transitioning the colors around the wheel, and “mixing, muddling and mingling…all great lessons, and I can’t wait to try them!”
Susan
Celeste’s Colorful Hearts
“I’m having a great time with these lessons. They are simple, but you learn so much about the paint itself and the colors.”   Celeste

Hearts on Fire

Hearts on Fire

I have new mixed media watercolor painting available for purchase.  The first in the series is “Hearts on Fire”

Hearts on Fire, Original Watercolor and Mixed Media Painting


Limited Color Palette

Limited Color Palette

I recently visited the Farnsworth Museum in the cute coastal town of Rockland, Maine.  It is so exciting to see what color palette great art masters like the Wyeth family uses.  N. C. Wyeth was an American artist and illustrator for such books as Treasure Island, Robin Hood and The Last of the Mohicans.  His son, Andrew Wyeth, was one of the best known artist of the 20th century and I have always admired his son’s work, James Wyeth.  The museum had pieces from all three generation of artists.  I was awestruck by the beauty that each of them could portray with a monochromatic or an analogous color scheme (if you are taking my online color class right now, you are familiar with these terms!).  Here below is an example from each of the Wyeths.  I chose these paintings to share because of their use of a limited palette.

“The Hunter” by N.C. Wyeth.  Powerful and bold – look at the beautiful use of a limited palette and a splash of red!

“Master Bedroom” by Andrew Wyeth.  This painting tells such a wonderful story, all again with a very limited palette.  I want to curl up with that dog!

James Wyeth, Beautiful use of limited palette of blues and yellows.

Class has Started – Artful Gathering Online Color Workshop

Class has Started – Artful Gathering Online Color Workshop

A really cool thing about the Artful Gathering Online Retreat is that you can take several workshops at the same time over a six week period.  Since I have always admired Pam Carriker’s art, I signed up for her online workshop, Still Pursuing Portraits and she is taking my workshop, The Good, the Bad and the Beauty of Color.  We are having a great time sharing what we know!  I love Pam’s style of teaching.  She has taken away the fear of drawing a face and broken it down into easy to follow steps.  I am so excite and looking forward to drawing some portraits today!
My class, The Good, the Bad and the Beauty of Color, has started!  So far, the chatter in the classroom has been very fun.  Here are a few things that the students are saying:
Melissa says “I am really excited, I have learned so much from your other tutorials, I’ve been impatient to start!!!”
Susan says “One advantage of being in Europe is that we’re already awake when the workshop is posted 😉  I’ve been waiting for this for ages and am really looking forward to getting started.”
Gina says “I’m very excited about this class as well! Any excuse diving into watercolor paints and learning more about color.”
Pam Carriker says, “I finished making my little color book using my Bind It All and some matt board for the covers. I filled my palette, had to clean out my gouache paints and fill them with watercolors since I already had this palette. Now on to color wheels and my first page:-)”

A Color Study Example

My workshop is about learning the properties of the paints you use, proper mixing techniques and how to use the color wheel to make different color schemes to use in your paintings. You will feel confident in your color choices and learn how not to get muddy color mixes.  

There is still time to sign up and join the fun!  I hope you find time to add art to your daily life in one way or another.