Artist in Residence Project: Fair Oaks Mini Residency- May 19. 2013

Artist in Residence Project: Fair Oaks Mini Residency- May 19. 2013: Landscape Art The purple plants are starting to come in now. Notes From My Residency Journal It is suddenly summer here in N...

Challenge Yourself to Give

Small Landscape Paintings

Notes From My Loft Studio

Today I had my mentor group meeting for the month. I set up a private blog for the project in January so that my students have a place to show their work and receive assignments I give them once a week. Then we have a meeting once a month on Saturday morning. They all have topics on painting that they ask questions about and discuss together. I am the moderator and host for the meetings. We enjoy coffee and a snack together and our meeting usually lasts for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. The last portion of the meeting is a critique session for the paintings they have worked on during the month between meetings. We started out with about 11 members and now are down to 5 + me.  This happens every year. My mentorships are not for the casual painter or for the faint of heart. There are many lessons and assignments and difficult concepts of painting over a 12 month period. it is a serious commitment for my students. They pay no fees, as the program is my gift to artists. 

When I was a young, emerging painter, the world I lived in was very cut throat. Established artists did nothing to help beginners and in fact discouraged us at every opportunity. In those days art was very competitive. It took me many years to teach myself about the business of marketing and selling my work, and many years of bad paintings ( yep!! Still doing some of those too) to begin to learn anything about painting. 

I promised myself as a young painter that if I ever "made it", I would do something about giving  back to the arts community and this yearly program is one of the ways I do that.

I encourage you all to find a way to help your fellow artists, at whatever stage you are in your career. We all know what a tough business this is. There is a lot of discouragement for artists and we need a positive mentor or friend to keep plugging along. We need the inspiration of someone who is ahead of us, either in business or skill level. 

There are many small ways to help a friend in the arts. Buying small paintings and giving them to artists for their collection is a nice way to offer friendship and it helps everyone.

Holding court in your studio for artists is a lovely way to encourage them. Have  coffee and rolls for a few artists 3 or four times a year and encourage them to talk about their work or share it. If you teach classes, have a student show once a year or find a way to help students get their own exhibit. You can lend out your extra frames to another artist for a show so that their work looks good in exhibition. If you teach classes, give a prize to your class members via a drawing. I do this once a month and give out a tube of paint, a brush, or frame or canvas as the prize. Offer advice on curating or building a portfolio, or framing, or painting technique, whatever you feel confident about sharing with  a painter who is starting out.

You will reap wonderful rewards and gain the respect of other painters for going the extra mile. More importantly, you will know that perhaps you are helping an extraordinary painter to find their path for life and their career. Heady stuff!!

Lavender in the palette and waves

Flower Art

Notes from my loft studio

I'm using my I pad today so please overlook the errors.

I've been playing around with lavender in my clouds. I have done two paintings with that palette addition. I've never done much with purple before, so I thought I should give it a whirl. I like the combination of lavender cloud masses with a white and cad orange highlight on them.  A nice combination. 

I am also working on my wave studies, since I returned from the beach.  I have been nailing down some color mixing for waves and working on foam texture and color as well. I'm using some of the fabulous reference photos I took at SA beach and Washington Oaks beach.   A fun painting week.

Waves

Seascape Art

Notes From the Painting Studio

I don't live on the coast, so my wave-ocean-beach painting practice time is limited. When I spend time on the coast, I do some studies like the above painting and then do one larger piece in my studio when I get back home, before going back to what I really know how to paint. I think it is good to spend some time studying what we don't know.

One of the fascinations of wave and ocean study for me is the color. I see all kinds of seascapes in galleries that have sort of an artificial color in the water, either emerald green or impossible blue. The sea seems to be different than those to me. I have found that I like the combination of UB and ochre with white as a sea color. Adding a bit of lemon yellow to that, right at the top of the wave for the transparent feel of the water also helps. That is my base color for ocean paintings. To that, I might add some purples, blues and browns here and there, and then there are those days where the sea really does have the emerald color at certain times of the day, but I see a lot of gray in the sea.

I have a long way to go to be a good ocean painter. I think you need to have lots of time there to begin to understand it. In the mean time, I enjoy studying it.

I'll be home for the summer

Landscape Art

Notes From the Road

I'll be heading home tomorrow and I must admit I'm tired. I'm looking forward to being back in the studio, though I have enjoyed all of my road adventures since February. I believe the residency project is the best project I've ever had as a career artist.It has helped me to gradually weed out the paint outs from my list over the past two years and I don't believe I will miss them. The Wekiva Paint Out is the only one I will continue with, if they will have me.

I will start my summer schedule for the loft studio, working there on Friday and Saturday only from the first week of June through mid August. I anticipate many happy hours in my painting studio this summer. I am starting to paint outside of my comfort zone a bit, studying birds. I want to do a series of Roseate Spoonbills this summer. They will probably look like cartoons for awhile but that is how I learn new subjects. This week I did an egret and a pelican en plein air. It is always a bit challenging to do new subjects, and whether they are good or not is not really the point. I have to learn their scale and positions and proportions, and that takes time. My first tree paintings left a lot to be desired and I have studied them for years. In the summer, I try to push myself beyond my comfortable boundaries, It is my learning time as a painter. 

I love summer with less stress and pressure. I can sleep in a bit, clean the studio more regularly, and settle into a routine. I am a routine lover. 

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