Evolution of a Painting-Seuss Tornado

I am just finishing up an intensive 12 week course with Nicholas Wilton. The class has been a roller-coaster between "I'm Awesome!" and "I suck. Why am I doing this?". Nick is a wonderful teacher, super-supportive and sharing. I was very hesitant to sign up back in February...It was NOT cheap...but I am so glad I did!

This painting has gone through so many iterations and may or may not be done. I thought I would share the journey...

The "Seuss Tornado" started out as thick swathes of paint on a 12x12 board.

The first layer had a ton of color. the second layer was an off-white.

I scratched back into the white layer and added tons of little details.

The white layer got a nice glaze to unify it and bring out the scratchy parts.

Now with such a beautiful background in place, I needed to define my shapes. 

I liked it at this point and thought it might be done, but the darks weren't defined enough and it was looking like timid paint application throughout. I glazed over the dark parts with blue to deepen them a bit and defined some opaque areas.

It was still to vague and I was missing areas of light light and dark dark so I went on a wild ride changing it up completely! Now it is "Seuss with a dark side". I didn't plan the monster...He just showed up... :)

 

Lesson 6 in Jane Davies 100 Drawings Workshop

Lesson 6 was all about maximum variety and the goal was to have all 4 quadrants look completely different without actually dividing the paper into 4 parts and working them seperately.

This lesson was super fun for me. Besides the quadrant part, this is how I work anyway-lay something down, cover it up, repeat, add something else, cover it up, repeat...etc.

I am always keeping variety in mind with regards to scale and contrast.

For all of the pieces, I would put down an element and then be sure that the next element was different in some way, I also practiced bringing marks back up after I had mostly hidden them.

A bunch of these ended up being postcard backgrounds at WAAR (our Wicked Awesome Artists Retreat)

1

Number two was super pastel and bland when I picked it out of the pile of previous  rejects unfinished pieces. I was craving some brightness and contrast so out came the orange, yellow, and turquoise. The only issue that I found with this lesson is that a few of the pieces are a little quadrant-y. And the goldfish cracker was just a happy accident...

2

3

4

The colors in 4 are soothing with only the yellow and magenta providing some contrast.

5

6

7

Playing with opaque paints and transparent inks helped with the variety in #7.

I definitely had fun with this lesson and have plenty more pieces that are started. I'm pretty good at remembering to vary lines, but shapes sometimes lean toward sameness. It's hard to remember to vary ALL of the bits...

Painting at The Marshfield Fair

 

It's been a busy few weeks with The Marshfield Fair in full swing. I stepped up my volunteering just a bit this year. First we had a full weekend of checking-in all of the Country Arts entries (see the exhibitor handbook on the Fair website). While most of the entries come from local artists and craftspeople, the quilt block competition brings entries from far and wide. The amount of work involved in presenting the country arts display is amazing-from checking in the entries to judging, then displaying the 600 entries, then packing everything up after the fair.

I had an awesome time judging the cooking competitions with an old friend from high school. He understood that I got the big piece while we were judging chocolate bonbons because "I'm the girl..."

 

I met some wonderful new friends this year and I did THIS....



 

 

 

The Marshfield Fair Plein Air competition took place last Sunday. I wasn't originally going to enter, but was gently coerced (mmm hmmm) and I'm so glad I did it! ...AND I got a third place ribbon! There were 12 floral designers who competed first. They had 2 hours to use the flowers provided to create a gorgeous arrangement. Once they were done and judged (the man who won didn't even realize he was competing!) , the 12 painters were each assigned a display to paint. We had 4 hours to paint, right out in the open...with people watching... I was competing against another friend from high school (Class of 1985) so there was a bit of smack talk mixed in with support for all of the artists.

 

I was the only mixed media artist competing. The passers-by seemed to like all of my texture from collage under the paint, glass bead gel, and a tea bag. I should probably concentrate harder on editing myself... :)

Remember that Big Piece?

Well, I ended up starting another and slowly adding to the first. Once I added the birds I figured I was done, but I wasn't sure. I get stuck not wanting to cover up previous layers even though I KNOW it gets better as more layers get added.

Then I had a revelation! I wanted to play with negative space. I let that idea roll around in my head for a couple of weeks and then I just jumped in and did this!

I love it! And I thought it was done, but a week later I sanded down some of the red to expose more collage from underneath. I'm calling it "Two in The Bush".

As for the one with the arrow, it may or may not be done. They are both sitting on a bookshelf between the living room and kitchen so that they can speak to me when they are ready.

I'm temporarily calling this peice "Target Number".

What do you think???

Michael DeMeng worshop

Last weekend was awesome! I spent the whole weekend making awesome art from discarded junk (and fabulous paints) . The top two pictures are altered Pez and the bottom one is my holder for my scroll. So much fun!!