My Happy Place

Beach House 2

Collage 6 X 6

With all the election stuff going on we need a place where we can go and find some peace and quiet. How about a little house on stilts out on the water. No internet or TV, just the waves, the sea and the sunset. Ah, makes me happy just thinking about it. 

This little collage is mounted on a gallery wrapped canvas and is paired with  Beach House 1 that I posted earlier. The papers are all hand altered or painted and heat fused to 140 # watercolor paper. The collage is sealed with UV acrylic to resist fading. 

Palm Paradise

Palm Paradise

Collage/Acrylic 6X12

(Click for larger view)

 

 

This is the last collage I did for our collage class which ended in March. I wanted to show that not all the papers needed to be torn, some can be cut for hard edges. I cut some of the palm fronds and the grasses, it's too difficult to tear small pieces sometimes needed to complete your composition. The papers are altered Geographic pages, sheet music, printed papers and painted tissues. All are sealed with polymer medium, heat fused and the art is protected with UV varnish. Be sure to click on it so that you can see the little details.

I appreciate your comments so much. Thank you!



 

 



Beach Palm, 22 X 28 Acrylic

The last couple of weeks I've been working on a painting for a friend. She wanted a beach painting large enough to cover an electrical box. It was a challenging assignment for me since I am a watercolor painter. My venturing into acrylics has been sporadic and mostly abstracts and folksy things. A person who does watercolors has to switch gears and paint from dark to light instead of saving the lights and adding dark colors at the end. Learning how to get soft edges is hard to achieve in acrylic and one of the things I love about watercolor. Another challenge was painting a landscape in the portrait format in order to cover the electrical box. In the end, I'm satisfied with the outcome and hope my friend likes it. Sometime in the future, if I get brave, I may add a bird. Would you?

20 Minute Postcard

I found some watercolor postcards in my stash and decided I should paint on them and send them to friends. I made up this scene of a clump of two palms on a beach at sunset. The water is calm as it so often is on the gulf coast of Florida. There is a rosey glow from the setting sun and the palm fronds are picking up some amazing reflections from the waning light. Perhaps I used a little artistic license for that but then, I do have an Artistic License. It's signed by Kathleen Conover, AWS, NWS. I guess that's official enough for me.
(Also posted on 20 Minute Challenge http://twentyminutechallenge.blogspot.com/ )

Ipanima

Ipanima, watercolor and ink

The mention of Ipanima just conjures up such thoughts of a lovely beach with lovely ladies looking "straight ahead, not at me". I painted this for the Virtual Paint Out this month which is in Rio De Janero, Brazil. It took a little hunting for me to find Ipanima and what a charming looking place it is. All along the street side there are these cute refreshment stands with tables and umbrellas for their customers. I liked this one because of the coconuts piled in front of the stand. Are they serving rum drinks out of the coconut shells, or are they just selling the coconut milk and flesh?
Way down on the waters edge are the lines of beach umbrellas and sunbathers. It looks like quite a walk on the sand to get there, but no matter. From the pictures that I saw along the beach there is quite a crowd, not unlike the crowd you'll see here on the beaches in Florida during spring break. There's just something about a beach and water that is so inviting.

Sunbathers 2

From the second day of the Don Andrew's workshop: this is the second attempt at the beach scene capturing the light without making everything else so dark. I'm happier with the beach being more consistently light with the lightest where the sunbather's are. The placement of the palms is OK but I liked the placement in the first picture better. I also like that a little bit of sky is showing at the top. When I am consentrating on one aspect of the painting, I tend to forget to do the other things that I know to do. It must be a workshop thing. I know not to let the building end behind the tree but I did it anyway. This picture may be a good one to do again, who knows, maybe I'll get it the way I really want it. The third day we worked on figures and putting figures in paintings. I have a start on a painting with figures which will be posted later, if and when it get finished. This is the season in FL for shows, a very busy time.

Sun Bathers

Today was the first day of a Don Andrews workshop I'm taking at the Cape Coral Art League. Today's demo and lecture was all about capturing the light. Watercolorists know that the light has to be saved, protected and preserved. Don talked about how much to save and where to save it. Don explained that photos often have light scattered everywhere, the artist is to select the light areas that will make an interesting painting. He painted a beautiful Guatemala street scene with light reflecting off the buildings. Everyone was to use either their own picture or one of his to plan and execute a painting where the light areas were planned and preserved. I choose a picture that I took in the Florida Keys a few years ago. As a painting I think it's mediocre but I did manage to plan and preserve the light area. I think I'll be doing this scene again, all it takes is practice, practice, practice!

Here's to anniversaries!

It's been one year today that I started to blog with some consistency. I would have liked to post a new painting each day, but that was a bit too much to dive into. Some weeks have been more prolific than others but it has been a great motivator for me to get the brushes wet and paint.

Today's offering is more in the "having fun" category as opposed to working for a prize winning painting. I played around with some molding paste on a previously painted 8X10 canvas. I decided to do a palm tree shape with the molding paste and then painted it with acrylics. This was begun BS (before surgery) and completed (maybe) today, which is also 3 weeks AS (after surgery). Just for fun and for my old painting buddy, Marilyn, I've even sprinkled a little copper powder in it. For me, playing around with the different products, experimenting, having no fear of failure, is the best way to learn whether I'm on my own or in a class. And then I have the audacity to show it to the world.

Thanks to all who have commented and followed my blog, it's been a fun year and I hope to keep the whole thing going.

Something New

I found a new product to try while looking around my local art store. They are like watercolor pencils but when you wet them and they dry, they are permanent. They are called Inktense by Derwent. You can work over them and add to them and the color underneath will not move. I did my intitial drawing with them and when the first layer dried I went in with watercolor to get the depth of dark that I wanted in the wave and water areas. I think I'm going to enjoy doing watercolor sketches with them; so far I have a tin of 12, enough to have some fun for now.

Sunset, Sea and Sky

This one is a small one, 14.5 x 3.5 inches. It was painted on Yupo. One reason I like Yupo is that the pigment stays on the surface and dries there; doing so it remains vibrant. On ordinary watercolor paper a lot of the pigment is absorbed and it dries at least 20% lighter. If you don't go strong with the color the first time you have to glazed more color onto it.

Sand, Sea, Sky Series

I'm back after some break time on the beach in Sarasota, actually, Siesta Key. The sand there is the most amazing sand you've ever seen. They say it is almost all quartz that has been ground down into fine sugar consistancy by the water and wind. It is almost as white as sugar as well.

I was inspired to do some paintings on Yupo of just the sand, sea and sky. My sand needed some color to it, though. I have one of this kind of painting over my kitchen sink and people never fail to comment on how much they like it. Maybe it's the simplicity or the memories of time on the beach. Whatever it is, I enjoy the way I can get a really watery look on the yupo paper. I wet it first and then brush in my pigment and keep manipulating it until it looks like what I want. It must then dry completely before I can move it and the exciting thing is that the pigments will continue to move until it is dry. If you are a control freak do not try this. After it is dry I can come in with a wet brush and edit if I wish but once I change it there is no going back to the original.

Beach Girl

I painted this to post on differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com . The original photo had more people in it, but I elected to paint just the girl. In my mind she is looking wistfully out on the ocean, perhaps just a little timid about getting into the water that looks so inviting. The smooth beach reminds me of Daytona Beach in FL. The reflections there are always great and I love taking pictures of people on the beach there. I would like to know where Karen Jurick got this shot, somewhere along the Atlantic perhaps. It's just a reminder for all you northern folks that summer is just around the corner.