Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Tahitierinnen taking a bath

Awhile ago our group "Pieces of Eight", decided to practice painting the masters for awhile.  This was a great excercise for us.  We spent a lot of time reading about various artists that we admired and copying their paintings, trying to learn their techniques. It was so interesting to find out how various painters treated light, used and mixed color, picked subjects etc.  I  think the main thing we learned was that there are as many ways to paint as there are painters.  You can copy anyone but that is all it is, a copy. When you really paint  or do anything creatively for yourself it is you that comes through.

Monday, March 21, 2011

I'm a Little Teapot

I guess I am still in the mood for collage.  My  friend and fellow artist Carol came over last week for a "play date" and we decided to do another collage and just have some fun. I put a teapot on the workbench and we started tearing.  We tried to use as many tea related items as possible, including old cook book pages and tea bag labels.  I had some doilies and I used those as a place mat for the pot.


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Ready for your closeup?

This is a closeup of the collage for the quilt show.  As you can see I took the Pear Tree part of the title very seriously. I had a lot of trouble with the background, it was just too busy, it kept detracting from the pears.  I took it to group and everyone agreed it should be painted with acrylics, Carmen suggested yellow ochre, which I would not have thought of and that was it.   Kathy gave me the wonderful orange and brown paper with the great design that really brought the piece together.


 

Monday, March 14, 2011

Collaborations


This week the Seaside Quilters, of which are own member of the Pieces of Eight Denette, is a member and one of the originators of this great idea, had their Collaborations Show. The idea was to put together a quilter with an artist and let them decide what they would like to do. Some artists and quilters worked one on one and some artists had two quilters to work with. The result of these pairings was everything from Rhapsody in Blue to Buddha to Mosiacs to Dolls. It was a great show with lots of wonderful ideas and unique displays.
 
 


Partridge in a Pear Tree

My display, on the left was a collage.  It was a tree made entirely of pears with a wonderful trunk

Chickens!!  Best of Show Display

This was a wonderfully whimsical display with not only a wonderful quilt, on the left but also chicken dolls and a really fun chicken painting.


Thursday, March 10, 2011

A good way to come back

I am finally feeling able to get back to the studio and back to my blog. It has been a long time and although I have done some creative projects I am just getting back to that feeling of being back in the groove, whatever that groove may be.
We have a great addition to our group Kathy, who loves to take photos and share them.  She took these photos at our group get together on Monday.  I decided to do a marsh scene and it felt great. I had really forgotten that wondrous feeling of getting lost in a photo and trying to translate that photo to a painting. I also love marsh scenes. Marshes are so beautiful, they are so many subtle colors and there is so much more going on then your first realize.
This photo shows the snapshot I was painting from and below that is my interpretation of that snapshot. The painting is not quite finished but I hope you like it and thanks.