MRU mural panel celebration

Mount Royal University had a showing and celebration of the panels that are completed for the centennial mural so far. This is a picture of Curtis' panel. It is the view from a cockpit of one of the planes, a fun pilot view, not a fun passenger view (note the prairie and river). Curtis had to miss the celebration as he was in an evening class.

This is me with my panel. There were approx. 100 of the 180 panels on display. I now have a new panel to complete with the old Mount Royal College logo as the theme. Ideas have already started to flow! The panels were on display for the day and then there was a celebratory evening with music, food and wine.  There was one that had knitted and felting on it, one done solely in beads, and lots with different textures so it was really fun to see the artists and the panels up close.

Sunrise at Duck Lake

I have started taking an oil painting class from Robert E. Wood. My Creative Path Artist friends (Suzanne, Joan, Deb and myself) signed up together to make up a class of 10. I painted this one at home after watching his demo. I have painted this one before in water colour as a thank you gift for our friends we stayed with but it sold before I could give it away. I painted it again and gave it to it's rightful owners and now have enjoyed creating it again in oil. I am still learning how to take pictures for this blog as the painting is really quite bright and this picture shows it quite dull in comparison. Again, painting it brought back fun memories of a wonderful weekend with friends. I have it framed in a silver metal frame 13x10 3/4".

I am currently working on this Vietnam picture in oil. I am hoping to finish it tonight (might be too optimistic). Robert is very helpful and encouraging. We paint on whatever we want individually and he goes around the room to help and make suggestions. It really is inspiring to watch different pictures with different painting styles come to fruition. 

Last still life in class

This was started in our last class. These beautiful treasures are Leila's and we both worked from them. I used sepia ink for the first time to paint the underpainting. The underpainting was painted with a decrepid oriental brush that had bristles going every direction! It is painted in acrylic on water colour paper 7 1/2 x 10 1/2

This is my second painting using the same still life, but with my camera as the resource. I really enjoyed this one as well. After the class critique, I added more colour into the white flowers as well as a transparent wash on the dark background. The background looks flat in this picture, but it has reds, blues and purples in the actual painting.

Still Life - completed paintings

We have been working on Still Life in my art class. These pictures are ones that I did at home. I just used 2 items, a metal ladybug (a gift) and a small vase. I played with these items mainly to look at their shadow shapes and the variety of colours in the shadows (who knew?). They are all painted in acylic and roughly 8" x 8" unframed. I am going to frame 1 (or all 3) if I can't decide which one I like best and put them in my office. I also use the lunch room as a gallery so they might end up in there together for a fun trio.The blue one also had a shadow of a wooden flower that I just had to add in! It was fun to play with different angles and colours with the same subject.

 

 

 

This last one was a completed painting, but when I peeled off the dried paint on my pallette, I loved the design and colours so I incorporated it right into the painting! I love the textural effect when you look up close!

Still life - studies in colour

These are studies that I did in my class. The goal was to look at the shadow shape and the colours in the shadow. I worked in acrylic again and really enjoyed working on these without trying to design a picture.

The one below is my favorite. I spilled my coffee on it and it made the perfect design. I couldn't of made up that design if I was trying. It looks like a table cloth to me. It is titled "Coffee break" as it did give me a break from painting and I realized I was done with it when I stepped away.

Still life in black and white

These 8" x 8" pictures were live studies painted in black and white acrylic. The pepper and small pear are done on watercolour paper with the under painting a bright red. The idea was to  cover the whole picture using only black and white values. I enjoyed how the bright red still added to the overall tone of the painting without seeing it.

This study was done with a bright green undercoating. It really makes you study an object when you don't have colour to describe it.

Early morning lilies

Painting inspiration comes from everywhere! There are day lilies on our shower curtain and I look at them every morning thinking one day I am going to paint them. Of course there is no window behind them and I really had fun with the shadows. This is painted in acrylic and roughly 11 x 14. I was really pleased with how this turned out. The background of our shower curtain is cream with sand coloured squares.

Ingrid Christensen workshop

This is an oil painting I did at Ingrid Christensen's one day workshop at Calgary School of Art. It was a really fun day and I was happy with the results. Ingrid set up 2 flower still lifes and we could choose which one we wanted to paint. There were 5 students and with 3 of us doing the same still life and 2 doing the other. It was incredible how different they all looked. Ingrid did a demo and showed us how to do an underpainting with a rough painted sketch. I hadn't worked in oil so it was a very interesting, fun and frustrating. It was like knowing how to play the piano and then picking up a trombone and trying to play! I wasn't used to paint that wasn't dry and kept picking up everything underneath where I wanted to paint!

Ingrid's teaching style was to enjoy, have fun, and learn in an encouraging environment. I would highly recommend taking a class from her! Her blog is: http://ingridpainter.blogspot.com/  I put the painting up in our lunch room at work (my gallery) and have already had an offer to buy it. I am not ready to let it go yet though.

Mount Royal University 100 year mural celebration

This is Curtis' artistic panel. The unfinished mural can be seen at http://mtroyal.ca/100/mural100.htm Click on any of the small panel pictures to see a larger view, the artist and artist comments. He did his panel based on his MRU Aviation Program. Curtis will graduate from that program in April with a Commercial Pilot Diploma.

The panel (#116) he had to work with is below:

I am really excited we both were able to be part of this artistic MRU historical celebration.

Hiking memories

Acrylic 10 1/2" x 14 1/2"

This (hiking) picture is painted with a bright orange underpainting. I was inspired after watching a painting DVD by Hugh Greer. The picture below is my take on a painting he did on his DVD. It was fun and relaxing. I also used my hiking photo (close up) as inspiration as well.

Acrylic 14 1/2" x 10 1/2"