A busy week, with lots of stuff to show you.

So, I finally got around to trying out some abstract ideas, based on the book I bought: 

"Painting Abstracts: Ideas, Projects and Techniques".

I really like the first one:

It's a 10 x 12 inch oil. I like the way it developed, from simple random straight lines, I suddenly felt like curving some, and from there it reminded me of waves, which I then chose to enhance a little, while keeping it abstract. I am calling this one "Rocking the Boat".

After that I did another, adapting the exercise in the book to work with the materials I wanted - oils.

This one is an 8 x 8 inch oil. I am not as fond of this one, though my kids both like it. I haven't come up with a name for it yet. My daughter suggested "The devils rainbow", which I kind of like. My son suggested "Last Nights Omelette", another friend suggested "Pizza Nebula", and finally another friend suggested "Cupcake with Sprinkles". Clearly, my friends are hungry.

It's been a busy week for me. Aside from my foray into abstraction, I did a little 10 x 10 inch oil of a toucan, which I called "Toucan Do Better Than One"

I touched on some acrylic work:

I also kept up a few little pen & inks:

And, finally, a little bit of pastel work on coloured stock:

Anyway, please feel free to leave a comment, or I'd even love a suggestion for a name for that orange abstract painting. I will see you soon enough with more paintings/drawings!

By the way, if you are interested in purchasing any of my works, you can do so through my Artfire studio Here

My current works are abstracts cunningly disguised as landscapes. It is the Canadian way. - Ted Godwin

That title is for my friend Janet. I know she'll appreciate it. She loves to tease me about how I should let go, and not have my paintings be so "tight".

While I wait for my abstract art class to start, and while I ponder what I can do for my first exercise in abstract art from a book I am reading, I have found a handy little way to distract and amuse myself. I unpacked the technical pens along with the indian inks, and started to do some quick sketches.

Inspired at first by the Magnolia tree down the street from us, I started with this one.

From there I remembered being in Tahiti, and how the look and the smell of the flowers there was so intoxicating. So, I then did a little sketch of sunset plumerias.

After that I walked around the block and saw these intensely coloured red pointed tulips. They quickly became the subject of my 3rd sketch.

I enjoy the speed with which I can do these, and somehow just telling myself they are only little sketches allows me to feel free with them. I don't feel the need to tighten them up so much, and I think that is having a positive effect on the sketches and my work.

This week I plan to try my hand with the abstract techniques from my book, and I'll let you know if I find the book helpful, or not.

Oh, yeah, and as for my current abstracts being currently disguised as landscapes, here's one of those:

Abstraction is an esoteric language. - Eric Fischl

I have wanted to experiment with abstract art for a while. The problem was that I had no idea where to start. In the last two classes, our teacher started the process of introduction to abstract techniques though, and for that I am really grateful.

We started by covering the canvas with tear-outs form the newspaper, some burlap, and whatever colours occurred to us. I covered the canvas quickly, wanting to have movement and truthfully not really caring how exactly the paint was placed. I was tired, I'd had a bad day, and it was tremendously freeing to "not care", to simply allow it to become play. It was fun.

Once the model arrived, we started our portraits "on top" of the abstract, and wanting to keep the same energy going, I found myself drawn back to using the palette knife - in spite of feeling like the past two portraits I'd done with the knife had been miserable attempts. Granted, in those two attempts we'd been limited by the "rule" of having to choose just one palette knife and no use of brushes allowed. Here, I could switch it up a little, since the point was not the challenge of using just the knife.

I used a couple of knives, a small detail brush, my fingers, and I achieved a look that I am quite pleased with.

More importantly though, I enjoyed myself enough that I have made my choice for next semesters class: abstract art it will be. In the meantime, I have just received a book I'd ordered about abstract, so look for some more examples over the coming weeks, as I play with abstraction some more.

It's been a while, but I try my hand at pottery again.....

At my daughter Amandas school, they have an open studio for the pottery class on Wednesday afternoons, and Amanda has been asking me to join her there. Today I was finally able to make it....


So, I decided I wanted to work on the wheel. I hadn't done that since I was her age, and I had enjoyed it then. Her teacher had told Amanda and her friends that they would be allowed to use porcelain for the first time, and the girls were excited to do so. I asked the teacher what the difference is to work with it, as opposed to working with regular clay. She said, "It is soft like jello, and much harder to work with because it's so much more fragile." So, when the girls asked me if I wanted to also work with the porcelain, I declined. I reasoned that with the expense of it, the fact that it's more difficult to work with, and that I hadn't done any wheel work for so long, I didn't want to waste it.

I opted to work with a regular white clay. My first attempts with it, ended up in a lump of goo, from re-working, and re-working, until it was almost more water than clay, and had to be put back in the bin to be reconstituted.

When I went back for more clay, I ended up with another white clay that was soft and smooth in my hands, and a total pleasure to work with. One of the girls asked me if I was using the porcelain, and I said I didn't know, but this one was sooooo buttery, and felt wonderful! She replied, "Yep, that's porcelain!" 


Ooops! Oh well, it was for me, much easier to work with, and I ended up with a nice porcelain bowl, which is currently drying. I'll go back and finish it with some design next week, and after it has been fired, I'll get to glaze it. :)

Meantime, I have some plans, that may just include porcelain after all. ;)

I am an artist… I am here to live out loud. - Emile Zola

Today I finished a nude. I have been really excited to do this one. We had a nude model last semester, but I missed it when I went to Scotland for a funeral. So, we finally had another nude model, and I am really enjoying this. I put a call out to my friends to see if anyone would be willing to send along a nude picture of themselves for me to paint, but no such luck. In the meantime, here is my first nude. It's acrylic ons a stretched canvas of 16x20 inches.

I have been feeling really inspired lately.  I feel something coming in my art. I am not sure exactly what that thing is, but I can feel it in the same way that a person with arthritis feels the rainstorms approach. It is a little intimidating, precisely because I don't know what it is. I'd like to just break open the shell, and release it, but I am not sure exactly how, so I wait as patiently as I can, and continue to "play" until then. Who knows, maybe the act of sacred play will release it.

I finished off a couple of other paintings, some of them just reworking bits and pieces that I wasn't satisfied with before, and others finishing off last details that had been left blank.

My apologies for the glare on these next few.

This one is a 16x20 oil on stretched canvas. I had a little more than 2 hours to get it done in class, so I finished off the hair at home.

This one I just reworked the background, as I really hadn't liked the look of it before. It's an acrylic on stretched canvas, and is 18x24.

You remember this guy? I simply added a 5 o'clock shadow. The nude and this guy will both be going into the show at the school, and a third  one will be as well, but I am not sure about which one that will be. I will post about that last one when I know which will be the third and final one to go into the show.

The show is called From Portraits to Abstraction, and will be at George Brown College, Fine Arts building, starting on April 16th, 2010. My work along with that of some other students will be available for purchase. Hope you get a chance to visit.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Recently, I started taking night courses again. I wanted to get back to Life Drawing, since I hadn't done any for years, and then I decided I'd take a few courses on portraiture, since I had never done any of that. So, in September, I headed to school for 2 classes: one Portraiture in Oil, and the other Life Painting in Oil.

One of the things about portraiture classes that never ceases to amaze me, is the fact that we all put something of ourselves into the portrait. Literally. The very thin faced woman, who always makes her models look thin faced; the Asian girl who always makes her models appear to be Asian; the wider set man with bushy eyebrows, whos' models always have a likeness to him. It's absolutely fascinating to me. Psychologically, I know why. We all know our own faces the best, so unconsciously, we will paint what we know, rather than what we see, until we learn to paint what we see.

What fascinates me even more though, is that, for the life of me, I cannot see in my own paintings, where or how I put myself in there!

This semester, I thought I'd try the acrylics class, since I hadn't really ever worked with acrylics.

We started the acrylics class with a still life, to get the feel of the paints.

What I love about the acrylics, is the ease with which I can quickly overpaint and correct. What I find challenging, still, is the lack of time for blending. Having worked with oils since I was 9, I am used to long periods where I can play with colour blends. This has been especially challenging when we moved to portraiture.

That lack of time may not be a bad thing though. I am finding that sometimes, the speed with which I am forced to paint, makes me think less, and feel more, and I seem to be slowly allowing myself to loosen up a bit.

I still sometimes find my paintings too stiff. For now though, I want to concentrate on accuracy. From there I can branch out to more loose, and abstract. I just need a little patience to get there. (Yeah, right. I'm a Gemini, and speed is the name of the game!)

Here is another I finished last night.

I keep looking at this, and thinking I need to learn how to paint a 5 o'clock shadow.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

I am not a fan of going to the dentist, and that, is putting it lightly! My first memories of going to the dentist as a child, involve numerous adults standing around the dentists chair, all holding down my arms and legs, so they could put a big, scary, black mask over my face. I remember the first few panicked breaths, convinced I would not be able to breathe, the smell of the gas, and finally a weird sort of oblivion. This oblivion consisted of black and white psychedelic dreams, and the "music" of buzzing in my ears.


Fast forward to recent years, and the problem has become worse. My experiences of the past few years have left me pretty much incapable of sitting in a dentists chair without the aid of some sort of relaxant, like nitrous oxide, or more.


I also have a sensitivity to epinephrine. It's used in the shots they give you to help make you freeze faster, and stay frozen for longer. I was once told I was allergic to it, though since then I have been told you can't be allergic to it, since your body makes it. However, during a hospital visit I was told a sensitivity to it, can be dangerous. I was told to wear a medic alert bracelet, just in case. 


So, when a dentist gives me a shot to freeze an area, without the epinephrine, the shot doesn't last as long. Consequently, I have a long history of telling dentists that I can feel what they're doing, and they either don't believe me, or they try to rush through to finish it up before I can feel more pain. While I would agree that the less time I spend in a dentists chair, the better, the rushing itself makes me even more nervous. 


In the past week, I have spent about 5 hours in the chair, getting some stuff fixed that really just couldn't wait any longer. My friends told me to be sure to ask for the "happy gas". During the first 2.5-3 hour session though, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they would call it happy gas. I was not happy to be there, and did not even feel all that relaxed. 


Today, that changed. I'm not sure if they used higher levels of gas, or if I was just a little more relaxed going in there, but today, the gas was working. At one point, I thought that something was going to be painful, but was so relaxed, I didn't think I wanted to even raise my hand to let them know. I suddenly could see why, in spite of being gassed as a child, there could potentially be some unconscious memories there that contributed to the fear. What if, as I lay there thoroughly gassed, the work being done was painful, but I was not able to let them know?


That brought to mind another thought. Just over a year ago, I had some work done. That dentist used what we jokingly called "blue juice". It made me conscious enough that she could tell me to open my mouth, but unconscious enough that I don't remember a thing from when she did her work. I only know that when she was done, I was bruised, swollen  and in pain from my neck to my cheekbone for a week. I looked like I had been in a fist fight, and whatever she did, since then, my terror of dentists has increased significantly.


So, what does all this have to do with art? Meh, not much. Except, that in my drug induced woozy brain today, with all my musings, I had the thought that my state of mind was much like a couple of paintings I had done. Those two paintings were so totally not inspired by drug induced states in a dentists chair, but I do think now, they represent that state quite nicely. As I just about merged with the seat, I happily thought, "I feel a blog post coming on." Then I had to try not to giggle, since he was playing with the drill at the time.


The first one was actually inspired by seeing some highlighted writing. Out of the corner of my eye, I "saw" the image as I was flipping pages of notes. The image so captivated me, that I had to paint it. Cheery Bouquet of Flowers

After I did that one, I thought it might be nice to do a series like that. All fuzzy, without defined edges, and I thought about this next one. So totally what I don't usually do. Since painting this next one, a number of friends have commented about how it makes them feel like the are seeing the auras of the birds, so I named it that. The Auras of Birds

I have not done anymore fuzzy edged paintings since then. But, if I have to go back to the dentist for more work, I may just take a few images with me and see what works best. You never know, there could be a great painting waiting for me in the fuzzy edges of my mind.