MRU Library Art Gallery - Winter 2012 2nd painting

This is the other painting in the Mount Royal University Art Gallery's winter show. The Art Gallery displays include photography, paintings, jewelry, pottery, and a variety of art work. Judy and Joan do a wonderful and artful display that is very eye catching and draws you in for a closer look!

Lady Bug and Vase Still Life

 8" x 8" Acrylic on Watercolour paper

Double matted in a 12" x 12" black with red trim frame

I really had fun with this painting. I was playing with different shapes and shadows. When I was done, I peeled the dried acrylic paint off my palette and loved the mix of colours and shapes. I basically painted them back into the painting. It is unfortunate that the depth can not be viewed in this flat picture, it is very textural.

MRU Library Art Gallery - Winter 2012

This painting is now in the Mount Royal Library Art Gallery for the winter display. I had it in my office and really enjoyed the variety of colours. It is a watercolour and acrylic painting painted in a watercolour style. I love the bright red Anthurium with the muted leaves behind. I looked at the Anturium on line and made up the rest around them. It is painted on a full size water colour sheet and double matted in a dark brown wood frame.

 

Anthurium Garden

Watercolour and Acrylic on watercolour paper in a 22" x 28" frame

Self portrait #2

After having one class on a self portrait with Ingrid. I decided to start fresh on my own at home, where I wasn't distracted with the beautiful art coming alive all around me in the class. I also thought I would take a few more pictures of how the painting developed for my own reference later. What I found interesting is how focused and concentrating my facial features were. This apparently was serious business in both self portraits!

This is the underpainting where I am trying to place all the features as well as get the size and placement correct. I toned the canvas first with a warm golden yellow.

The painting is now at mid completion. I have also worked on the background and am quite happy with how it is at this point. Will post the final product at a later date when I get time to work on it again. The good news, the subject is always close at hand!

First self portrait #1

This is my first self portrait done in Ingrid Christensen's figure and still life class. This is the second set of classes I am taking with Ingrid. The thought of ever doing a self portrait never occured to me mainly because I would of had no idea how to tackle it. It was very interesting and intimidating looking at the work done in the class, the styles were all so different! I had a hard time focusing on my painting as I could of happily walked around the class just watching the paintings evolve.

We were to do a thumb nail sketch and decide on the placement on the canvas and the angle of the view. I thought more of a sideways angle would be interesting, but I kept forgetting to put my head at that angle and was painting more face on. This lead to my face shape changing, as well as my eyes and nose in the wrong spot! Ingrid helped me align my painting with a more straight on view as this is what I was really seeing. You can tell even without the features defined how hard I was concentrating!

The picture above is how far I got in class #1. Thank goodness this was over 2 class times. One artist completely finished her painting in that class. I found out afterwards she was a professional portrait artist in water colour. Now you can understand why I would of rather watched than painted!