Hellooooooo, is anyone out there listening?

It's hard to keep on bloggin' when the silence is deafening, so by all means, please feel free to comment, or follow.


So for the past few weeks, I have been busily working away. I have been doing a lot of pen & ink drawings, which can mostly be seen here at my Artfire store: http://www.artfire.com/users/Jaqui  You may want to check it out, I have a number of pieces that are on sale until Friday of this week, at 25% off.


I did 2 commissioned pieces, both 4 x 6, both pen & ink. I had found some watercolour postcards, and I love the weight of the paper, and how it doesn't warp when using the pen & ink. So, now I have switched to a heavier paper for the 5 x 7's as well.


Here are the 2 commissioned pieces: 

This first one has an interesting story behind it. I was asked if I could be commissioned to do one for a couple of friends who were staying at a womans place for the weekend. They wanted to give her a gift, and I was happy to help with that. One of my two friends asked me what I was going to paint. I said I thought I'd do a tree, and she replied that yes, she liked the trees I've been doing. She asked what kind of tree, and I said my gut was telling me it should be an oak. She replied that yes, she likes the oak, because of the strength it has. When I was looking for reference photos, I found one with the sun shining through, and a little voice in my head said, this lady who is being gifted, needs hope, so I should do something like that. When I was done and showed it to my friend, she gasped and said how fantastic it was, but later an even more interesting story came back to me. It seemed, the giftee, needs a healing of some sort, and so indeed does need some hope. Later a third woman asked me how I did this. I started to reply, "You know, layers...." No, she wanted to know how I had decided on this picture, so I related the above story. She then told me that there was a special story with the lady who was being gifted. She wasn't allowed to tell me said story until after June 30th, because of some confidentiality issues, but she said, "What I will tell you is that the picture you have chosen to do, is a picture that shows exactly what this woman is going through, and you couldn't have chosen a more perfect picture." Cooooool! I love stories like that, and can't wait to hear the rest of it!

After seeing the first of these two pictures, another friend asked me if I would be painting more trees, and of course answered that I would be. She said she'd know the right one when I painted it.  This was the next one, and she loved it, so it became hers.

I have also been busy with my abstract class, and I am in the middle of a series of 4,  which I will show you once they are completed.

In the meantime, I promised pictures of the pottery that I did.

Fun to do, and not bad for my first time on the wheel since I was fourteen years old! What's that you asked? No, I'm a little older than 29.

If you make pictures you are bound to be an abstract painter on some level. -George Green

This week, I started my latest class. This semesters class is about abstract painting. We started looking at the earliest abstract artists, so naturally, we looked at Cubism. Now, previously, about 30 years ago, I had a class that very briefly touched on the same subject, and we did 2 "cubist" paintings.  So, these first 2 paintings are from wayyy back then.

This first one works I think. It has a good feel to it. The next I don't think is as successful, and has less abstraction (at least to me).

Finally, we get to the one I did last Thursday in class. For this we were asked to keep it monochromatic, and I like this one quite a lot. The more I look at it, the more pleasing it is to my eye. I find myself exploring the textures and spaces, and my eye wanders over  and around it as if I'll discover something new, even though I painted it.

This sounds  like it's going to be a lot of fun, and I have some interesting ideas brewing, things to paint over the coming weeks. I may not be posting all that much as I also have a lot of traveling we'll be doing for business, but I'll keep up as much as possible, and hopefully you'll enjoy the posts. :)

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.