The Birds of the Air ~ Acrylic Figure ~ PCPC Art Festival

"The Birds of the Air"
30" x 40" Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

This is the largest I've ever worked and I realize if I do this again, it would help if I had a large stand up easel. I enjoyed working this large and will try this size again.
This is my entry for the Park Cities Presbyterian Church Art Festival. I chose The Sower of Seeds theme from Luke 8:1-15. "The Birds of the Air" are watching a farmer as he goes out to plant his crop on a sunny spring day. Some of the seeds fall on a well traveled path and are trodden down and the waiting birds eat the seed before the seed produces a crop. The seeds are the Word of God that's heard by men but the devil takes the Word from their hearts before they can believe and be saved. The birds in the painting are more generic but are patterned after the raven. The raven is the first bird named in Genesis 8:7 and was considered unclean. I will post my second, and much smaller, entry later in the week.

Small Acrylic Landscape ~ Tuscany ~ Art Journal Page

"Tuscany Rental"
9" x 12" acrylic on canvas board
$54.00
This is the second small landscape I painted in the Maureen Brouillette class last week (see previous post). It is loosely based on a photo taken while in Tuscany several years ago. This small colorful acrylic landscape was fun to paint and the next class will be March 10 and it will be all about still life.

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I have been wanting to take a workshop with Anne Bagby for several years and now I'm gathering up supplies for a 3 day with her at the Artists' Showplace Gallery in March. Her just released dvd, Collage: Paper, Patterns and Glazing came yesterday and it was and is a visual treat. Now to gather up more supplies. Anne has a great section on her site about her journal pages that I know you'd enjoy seeing. Her pages generated the idea seen below.
On Saturday after good Texas barbecue, I watched "Changeling" just in time for the Oscar announcements. This is a pencil sketch of Angelina, then I am finally ready to part with my Snow White Barbie and I gave it to a grand daughter that had enjoyed her also, and a jewelry party on Sunday.
I've been thinking about an email friend that was about to throw down her brushes and give up watercolor. Then I remembered what Bob Burridge said in a workshop, "We all want to paint better. The only way to paint better is to paint a lot of bad paintings."
Check out some of these sites for some new inspiration:
A good book with some paint along exercises: Expressive Color
Free art lesson videos to watch: Jerry's
About.com Watercolor and Acrylic Painting
Now go paint some bad paintings to become a great painter - maybe even an art maestro and to see one at work check out Nicholas Simmons. I agree with his statement about a painting having a lot of interest that melds and has elements of abstraction and realism.

Maureen Brouillette Acrylic Landscape Class ~ Art Journal Page

Landscape Blue
8" x 10" Acrylic landscape small on canvas, 3/4" staple edge
This is one of the paintings I finished in Maureen's Fast and Loose class on Tuesday. The next class will focus on a still life and Maureen said "No flowers. Find something in your kitchen to use in a set up."

Maureen with a canvas board and a canvas drawn off but with circulating the room, I don't think she had time to get back to her second project. Maureen comes over from Dallas to teach these classes at the Upstairs Gallery and the next one will be posted on her web site or on the Gallery's site.

Maureen's beautiful finished acrylic 8"x10" painting.

Maryann, a Canvas by Canvas member, and her acrylic landscape. Nice painting with you, mas and Betty was there but got away before I could snap her photo. Betty is our CBC web mistress and has added two new paintings to our CBC site "Cowtown" and "From A to Z with CBC" and we're sold one of the boot paintings, Circle of Friends.

Emiko and her lovely painting and thanks, Emiko for sending me the photograph of the armadillo. I was complaining I had written a story (true) and I needed to paint an armadillo to go along with it and no photo. I've never painted this curious animal before and I've never seen a photograph of one being held like a baby either. He may end up a very impressionistic painting! To the rest of the class I'll try to get your photo next month.

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Me with a really red face at the Tony Saladino Critique, searching and losing stuff and what about as you age you start developing a 3rd eye called "the search eye" to find lost items, a new restaurant at the Highlands, Boudreaux's, and I'll be back, sooo good, tried out my new Raffine sketch book 5.5 x 8.5 with a practice rooster and with it's 100 lb. paper, I like the way it takes a wash, Maureen's class and I tried out Derwents' Inktense ink pencils, and some acrylic mini landscapes I'll post later and they are very bright and colorful and this small watercolor entry looks more like mud. Watch for them. I think I'll call them miniscapes.

Mel Stabin Watercolor Workshop ~ Student Paintings, part 2

"Steps of San Miguel:Doll Sale"
15" x 11" watercolor

"San Miguel Street"
15" x 11" Watercolor

Sketch with watercolor in preparation for painting. It's fairly apparent I hadn't opened my Carl Dalio DVD on drawing. I cheated by sketching in pencil first and paper got really abused by so many eraser marks trying to work on my perspective. Jan, one of the Artists' Showplace owners, gave me a quick lunch break course in perspective. After sketching the paper was wet front and back before the washes were applied.


"San Miguel Buildings"
15" x 22" Watercolor

These are 3 of some landscape and figure paintings from the Mel Stabin workshop that I painted. At the end of the post there is a slide show of the rest of the class paintings. The class worked hard in this 5 day workshop and many paintings were finished.

Many of these workshops are filled with mostly women but this time we had a "Colorado Boy" and we taught him the art of saying "Bless Your Heart". It seems in the south you can nearly get away with slander if you end the conversation with bless your heart and Max left us by repeating that phrase. Click Here and Here for other thoughts on the subject. The last link made me smile because I hadn't thought of "I swanee" in a long, long time. After all the bless your hearts be sure to ask "and how is your Mother" and all will be forgotten and maybe forgiven.

Some "Mellisms"
1. The worth of the painting does not depend on how much time you spend on it.
2. Indigo and Aureolin make a good dark rich green.
3. Develop good brushwork. Don't use the tip but press down on the brush and use the flat side (round brushes).
4. Have little echoes of color to create unity.
5. Make simple washes with subtle color changes and max of two washes.
6. Use fewer strokes.
7. Exhaggerate the essence of what you are painting.
8. This one is important and he stressed a lot....Make one shape of close values to fuse edges say a garment to a background.

Slide show with Mel demo using his backpack as his support/easel, and placing students' work in mats for the critique and lots of slides of students' work, part 2. See previous post for part 1 and the class dinner at Amore Italian and some of the best food.

Mel Stabin Watercolor Workshop ~ Watercolor Figure ~ Art Journal Page

15" x 13" Watercolor figure "San Miguel Market"
I painted this on Monday from one of Mel Stabin's photographs and I consider it a more successful effort than some landscapes later in the week. The project of the day was landscape but I like a figure better than a tree but I watched and listened to Mel and his "tree talk" and I may attempt one yet. I've posted a slide show below of student's work from the Artists' Showplace workshop (in the previous post I have a slide show of Mel's paintings). Remember each one is at a different place in their watercolor journey. We had one student present for her very first workshop and with Mel's guidance she had several real success stories. Apologies to class members that I didn't put your name under your work and this is a partial list and I will include more work in the next post. The paintings in the slide show cover the full 5 days.

Mel has written two books, Watercolor: Simple, Fast and Focused and The Figure in Watercolor: Simple, Fast and Focused. He said he has another book in the works about "dancing brushes" and he knows his way around his Raphael mop brush.

8" x 10 Watercolor on gessoed paper "San Miguel Lady with Calla Lilies"
I didn't use a photograph but just painted a portrait from my head and looked at some photos of calla lilies taken when I was in the San Miguel workshop. His comment "A lively painting painted by a lively person." I enjoy working on the gessoed paper as redo's are easier. When we'd be hesitant about starting on a half sheet and putting down that first mark, he'd give us the sage advice "Screw it. Just do it".

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A small sketch of a workshop painting, fun to find new bags for supplies deeply discounted, a quick hamburger, two of my acrylic entries for PCPC and more about that in a future post, lunch at Potager and a new experience of no checks but you place money in an envelope for what you thought the meal was worth, then a dining experience at Sevy's before the SWS meeting.

Now for some of the student's paintings from the workshop and more to come in a later post.

Mel Stabin Watercolor Workshop ~ Dallas ~ Art Journal Pages

Watercolor 15"x22" Sold
The client had a photo taken on a Cabo beach and asked for a painting. It was fun to paint but I had to ask for help several times. Mel is very helpful and I appreciate his calling out the colors used when he begins a demo.
I painted this in the Mel Stabin workshop during the first week of February at Artist's Showplace. This was painted on Thursday when Mel said it was "our choice" day. On Monday was landscape, Tuesday - landscape with figure, Wednesday - Something ordinary and sketched with a brush, Friday - the figure. This was my 3rd workshop with Mel and his workshops are filled with energy, his poems and quotes plus his fabulous watercolors to encourage us to a new level.
The morning was devoted to a Mel demo on a half sheet of Arches of our day's objective and then around lunch it was time for each of the 25 in the class to get down to business while Mel visited around the room. Most days ended with a great critique for each work.
We could paint from our own references or he provided some great photographs that he'd blown up to a 11x15 size. I remember at the Nicholas Simmons workshop he questioned working from 4 x 6 photos and how I could see the detail and now I understand what he meant. I'm getting some larger photos.
Cheap Joe's has a supply list for Mel if you'd like to see what colors and brushes we used, click HERE. There are no gimmicks, mask or salt for Mel. He says "I trust the brush. It can do amazing things."
In the slide show below I have shown some of his paintings and I will show more of the student work in another post.

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Some art supplies needed for babysitting my grandchildren, some of my back fence fell over, then it's pack and pack for Mel, Dana Gioia kicks off the PCPC 3rd art festival,
and no I did not watch the Super Bowl - still trying to get every thing loaded for the workshop. Dana was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts under President Bush since Jan 29, 2004.

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Some sketches about the workshop, the value study where Mel corrected my car to make it larger, the bottom two sketches are my paintings.

A slide show feast of some of Mel's paintings from the Mel Stabin Workshop. Mouse over for captions.