Movin' On

We had another fun meeting of  The Art Buddies (We really do need an official name), at Dinah's yesterday.   We decided to save 'backgrounds' for another time when more of us could attend-which may be in the fall with everyone's summer schedules.  Anyway, we were the 'Mighty Four' and had fun thanks to Dinah's hospitality, lovely flowers, and  everyone's good company.   We s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d  our comfort zone painting car fenders, and in spite of the comments "OMG, This is hard!" etc. I think we had some pretty good results!

In case you're wondering about the flowers: Dinah salvaged a fantastic vase from the trash in her office.  The shape allows the flowers to be arranged perfectly, hence the photo.  We started talking about cameras, and the consensus is that people are loving the Canon PowerShot.  Mine's a SD960 IS with 12.1 MegaPixels.  This whole digital thing is relatively new to me, despite the fact that I've been a professional photographer since college.  With a Hasselblad, all you needed was a good light meter, some knowledge of posing and light composition and you were set!  Digital is a whole other story.  In many ways, now you can do so much more with a lot less of a camera investment. I was able to put my camera on Macro 2x and get the close-ups of this peony.  We decided to bring our cameras and the instruction book that came with it to our next session, and teach ourselves how to take pictures for our art.

Below, Carol shared her find from Art Media.  There's no tray on the bottom for pencils etc, but it tilts up and you can tape your work on it.  It's great if you don't want to sit all the time while painting.

It's always fun to have Show and Tell (Thank you, Jude).  I always think we learn a lot from each other.  I always hate it when I take an art class and don't get to see other students finished work.  Above, Carol shared a recent finished pencil drawing, and showed a layering technique in which you paint a grey wash and then add your color for increased value.  Maybe she will do a show and tell when we're all together.  Carol showed us some of her beautiful work.  I especially loved the creek scene below, where she used pencils on watercolor paper, and it had a lovely texture.

Dinah shared this Lake Oswego bridge painting from her journal.  I was so impressed, since I've tried to paint that same bridge with dismal results!

Hard at work...

I brought some car photos from an exhibit from the High Museum in Atlanta, and it was fun painting them.  I had to leave before everyone was finished, but I think we did good!

Carol's great color mix

Dinah emailed me her finished work.  WOW, it's fantastic!  She even got the overhead display light reflection. 

Judy made this impressive drawing, and then added a wash.  The drawing is so good, you wouldn't want the paint to distract, so the wash was perfect.

My car with the fun wheel interest.

Watercolor Journey-Mixing color

Our watercolor group met earlier this month at Dinah's, and discussed color mixing.  Joanie shared some poppies that she had painted, and showed how she had added different colors to her backgrounds for a more dramatic effect.

Below, Carol shared a lovely landscape that she had painted near her beach house on the Oregon Coast.

Judy painted some lovely African Masks and shells.

Judy also shared her beautiful tulip and Henna paintings...

Carol shares her flower studies.  Her first love is colored pencil, and it shows in her technical style.

Below Carol and Judy show us their lovely flower studies.

Roberta shared her Pear Study.  Her use of a cool complementry background really sets off the warm tones in the fruit.

Roberta also shared a study in Neutral Values from our class this term.  We had to use only two colors- Burnt Umber and French Ultramarine.  It was pretty amazing the different shades you could get with only those two colors.

Carol shared info from a recent class, using birds to explain different techniques in mixing colors. It's so great to have such a wonderful group of new friends to keep us all on track with our painting.

I know several friends who can't take classes right now are enjoying the tips from the Blog, so I'll pass along the information if you want to paint on your own.  Use birds, circles...whatever shape you'd like using ten objects.  

1. Mix three rich colors -yellow, blue, red-however you want

2.  Using the same three colors from above, mix three pale shades.

3.  Mix rich colors using a dancing brush.

4.  Add water to dilute the three colors, and drop in color wherever you want in your space

5.  Using the three colors-yellow, red, blue, make a glaze-really water down the three colors

6.  Mix a dark and light of one color in the pace

7.  Same as above-this time use a darker color

8.  Mix using Analagous Colors-colors on either side of the color you use

9.  Mix three colors using Complementry Colors-colors that are opposite on the color wheel

10.  Free choice

   

Happy Painting!