Wishes
Wishing each one of you a warm and wonderful weekend. Hope you find some creative time! (Acrylic painting “Wind in the Hills”, private collection.)
Month: January 2015
Art From The Heart
I am happy to have my painting “That’s What Lets The Light In” accepted for the Art from the Heart show at Westland Gallery in Wortley Village. Hope you can come to the opening on Friday January 30th at 7:30 pm. There will be a lot of wonderful art from local artists.
Make a What?
As I work to grow my art, I am pondering what techniques really push the creativity button for me. One tip can be summarized in three small words: make a mess. Starting with a lot of mixed up or messy colour and then working with it gives me results that frequently turn out better than carefully planned painting. Especially when working with acrylic or oil, I can just keep layering to bring a mess into some sort of shape and form that is exciting and pleasing to the eye. Actually, now I’m thinking about it, I also like approaching watercolour this way, and if need be I can switch to layering with fluid acrylics later. It takes a bit of courage to do this, plus a certain amount of willingness to accept that the painting can look awful for quite awhile – you just keep layering until it works. Today’s creativity tip for you: make a mess!
Favourite Colour
I’ve been thinking about the concept of favourite colour. Certainly there have been periods when I reach for the same tube frequently. Blue was a favourite when I was first painting. Now a days it’s more about certain colour combinations rather than individual colours. Several paintings with a blue/yellow ochre combo happened in the last year. I’m excited to be concentrating on combinations, and am about to start a painting based on phthalo blue and orange mixes. That yellow ochre will likely be in there too. What about you? Any favourite combos these days? No fries with mine.
Going To My Room
Go to your room – and paint! 🙂
A Celebration of Spheres
Watch this oil painting develop in just over 1 minute.
Matter with Memory
Here is a video to stretch you mind. Always a good creative thing to do.
“Fellows in the Field: Skylar Tibbits – from TED talks”
Painting – Joy and Challenge
Lots of painting happening over here. Currently into a still life. Mostly loving every minute – but who knew that you could feel angst toward a red pepper?
More About Gestures
Gesture drawing as a warm up exercise can get boring. Here are a few tips to help keep it interesting:
1. Get lots of sports photos to work from. 100 or more recommended. You certainly won’t benefit from doing the same 10 over and over.
2. Ask a family member to pose for you. Have a list of poses for them such as “shoot a basketball”, “swing a golf club”, etc. They only have to hold the pose for about 10 seconds. (Gestures are fast.)
3. Use a sports movie or show and freeze the action to sketch from.
4. The ultimate gesture challange is to work from a sports movie and only freeze the action in your mind. You can do this as a sport spectator too.
The main thing is to make it fun so that you will keep practicing. Draw on!