Creative Path Artist Challenge

Every two weeks, The Creative Path Artist group meets and paints for an afternoon at a community hall. It is a very safe environment to challenge ourselves and share our art escapades and lives. We set up challenges for ourselves and the last few times together, an artist brought a picture for everyone to paint. I brought this picture in of a bird fishing in the ocean near Sidney, B.C. I loved the reflection of the bird. I am not sure what kind of a bird it is. Once again, starting was the hardest part! I am pleased with the way this one turned out and happy I painted it in oil.

"Fishing in Sidney"

Oil on birch

11" x 14"

I bought a new tool for signing my name. It has a rubber tip on it and really just pushes the paint around. It would work better if you had a colored canvas to start with. This painting was white underneath and you can just barely see my signature in the bottom left.

Second figure class

We had our second figure class with Ingrid Christensen painting in oil. The model was lovely with a combination of bare legs and a flowing dress. We did thumbnails first to decide on what we wanted to include and the placement of subject and empty space and how we were going to link our darks. From where my easel was, the view was mainly of her thighs and everything was foreshortened. Here is my view from my easel and the painting so far.

Ingrid showed me how to make the folds in her dress on my painting. I scraped the paint off at her suggestion and then did it again myself. The other difficulty I was having was the size of her hand and the fore shortened forearm. Again with Ingrid's help, I was much happier with my result. This was a one evening class so once again, a full painting was not completed, but I am happy with the result below.

First figure in oil

This was the first of 4 figure classes that will end the Fall oil lessons with Ingrid Christensen. As oil is a new medium for me, I have learned a lot! Ingrid did a demo for the first hour and then we painted for the next 1.5 hours. If she did not do a demo first I would of had no clue how to even start! It was hard to shape the body to get the feeling of volume and not flattened out. Flattening out the body seemed to be my specialty!

Here is a picture of my easel with our model behind. I did not ask for his permission to put his picture of my blog, so I have only a partial view of him.

Below is how the picture looked when our time to clean up had arrived. It was really hard to get the roundness of his belly. As this class was just for one evening, I wiped the picture off to use my canvas for next week. Ingrid generously lets us take pictures of her demos so I have those as a reference. This class is for learning, not necessarily to get a finished painting. This is one I knew I did not want to finish.

Still life lesson on pattern

This was an (one) evening set up of a teapot and dried sunflower heads. The lesson was on how to paint a pattern to get the essence of the pattern without painting every little detail. It was extremely daunting to look at the set up and again begin with a blank canvas. Below is the my view of the still life and my work in progress.

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Ingrid's demo was starting the painting with the still life set up on the other side of the room (round bowl with delicate flower pattern) to show us how to tackle a pattern and still get the roundness of the bowl. Again, this painting is not finished as I plan to finish all the paintings from her class when the class ends or I have more time. I still want to work on the sunflower and the area under the teapot.

12" x 16" Oil on canvas

click on picture for a larger view