Tribal Line ~ Art Couture Gallery ~ Art Journal Pages

"Tribal Line"
Acrylic Figurative on Gallery Wrapped Canvas

After the Robert Burridge workshop I wanted to paint abstracts and have painted two that I will post later but I keep going back to figures. These figures were painted on a toned canvas. Bob had done a painting with a girl with bright red boots so this is my interpretation. It was accepted in the Art Couture Gallery in Dallas.


Art Journal Page 81
Unpacking from the Anne Bagby workshop and wanting to make a chop but just drew it instead. Shirley Trevena's new DVD, "Breaking the Rules of Watercolour", arrived from England and I just had to collage some of the mailing envelope. Check out Shirley's blog here.

Art Journal Page 82
One of my babies turned 51, oh, my. On that day he texted "51 years ago we had us a day."
Here is Theresa's baked oatmeal recipe and you can find more about it at the Artist Food Network. Drawing looks pretty bad at the top of the oatmeal box but I have an excuse because I was in a big, big hurry.

Art Journal Page 83
Not fun days as I was gathering info for income tax, and I've watched the Trevena DVD and she says forget perspective and gather up some of your favorite things and paint them. I chose my mother's biscuit cutter, my favorite coffee drinking cup, a gift from my daughter, a cut glass toothpick holder that my father used every day, and the bottom of the pointy bill holder because it was old and interesting and I didn't pay any attention to perspective. I started Burridge packing.

Art Journal Page 84
Still unpacking and packing and I've been wanting to draw better so I've gone back to some favorite drawing books:
1. Danny Gregory
2. Dan Price
3. Bert Dodson
4. Betty Edwards
I watched 2 granddaughters and if I hadn't drawn around their hands I'd never noticed that Mattie's little fingers had fingernails so short the ends of her fingers were visible (biting nails) and Grace had 2 fake nails on her 5 3/4 year old fingers.
(I hope this type face isn't an inch high. I'm working on a 13 inch laptop and it's hard for me to decide exactly the font size I need) I will post some Burridge adbstracts next.

Canvas by Canvas ~ Square "H" ~ Where's Dan ~ Marla

10" square for Canvas by Canvas commission of our Red Truck
I painted this Monday at the Upstairs Gallery and it doesn't stand alone as many of our squares do. (For first time readers, I belong to this group of 9 Texas collaborative artists.) It looks better surrounded by its friends. It's "H", bottom middle, and you can see the peek on our CBC website.
Last weekend I heard from Cecelia about a Sketch/Crawl and I was interested but the body weak. I discussed the possibility of participating in the September one with CBC. One of our members, Karen, is taking a figure drawing class and suggested that on Mondays when we go out to eat bring our sketch books and while we're waiting for lunch sketch something. What a great idea but I'm not ready to post the results. I quickly sketched the salt shaker after being so enamored by Dan Price's work.
I own his books, "How to Make a Journal of Your Life", "Moonlight Chronicles" and "Radical Simplicity" and Dan sketches everything and makes the mundane look great. Amazon carries his titles.
I have enjoyed reading about how Dan has tried to simplify his life and then drawing all aspects of it. I need all my "stuff" but I am desperately trying to organize it. A family member has lived with me for several years and moved out this weekend and I sent with him most of the bedroom stuff, bed, chest, desk, treadmill and promptly went to Home Depot and got 3 wonderful shelves, 72" H, 24" deep, and 3' wide and for the next year I will probably be working in that room (studio) to get my art stuff together, gathering it from forgotten places. The shelves went together so easy and I didn't even need a rubber mallet. So this is stage 1.


Last week I watched a Netflix movie, My Kid Could Paint That, that you might find interesting about a child painting prodigy, Marla Olmstead. Here are some sites I checked out about the movie and the controversy.
NPR and what is art?
and NPR has other programming about this movie.
The LA Times Art as Child's Play

Maybe there's hope for us late bloomers if a four year old is having great success.