Tuesday, March 31, 2020

March Challenge, Landscapes

The challenge for March is to paint a landscape.

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Jean Thomas' Landscape

This was inspired by a hike that we took near Falls Creek Falls State Park. It is North of Chattanooga, TN and a real treat to visit. We had finished the hike, hot and tired, and I sat down to catch my breath. In front of me was a meadow full of wild flowers. It was late spring so I was marveling at how many different shades of green were surrounding me. The only other recollection I have of that day, was that I sat on an old wooden bench and got the worst case of chiggers I've ever had!!

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Carmen Beecher's Landscape

Florida Jungle, 8x10 Oil

I just love a nice thick, tangled Florida wood, especially when a tree is decorated with a big air plant.

www.carmenbeecher.com
www.carmensart.etsy.com

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Cindy Michaud's Landscape

Crossing to Safety
acrylic on cradled board
Price Lake Park, Boone, NC
This is from a lovely day at one of my favorite parks in the area.  A bridge of stepping stones in and over the water, in and out of the shade, seems an appropriate metaphor for todays time.  I loved making the many different areas of texture on this piece and found the acrylic fun to use.
Cindy Michaud
art@cindymichaud.com

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Denette Schweikert's Landscape

Puerto Rican Sunset

Several years ago we spent some time in western Puerto Rico enjoying the beaches, where I took a photo from the ocean.  Then a painted this picture in short painting session with the Pieces of 8.  I usually takes me days (or weeks) to finish a painting, but I am pretty happy with it.

Kathy Garvey's Landscape

A View from a Train
9x12 Watercolor

I've never had any desire to paint a landscape except for a visit in the late 80's to Italy. For some reason the hills, mountains, dark green olive trees on light green fields, and charming castle towns appealed to me. So, when this challenge came up, I looked through my pictures from that visit. I think I took the original photo from the train on the way from Naples to Assisi.

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Mary's landscape

This little watercolor painting is called "Dreamscape" because I dreamed this scene one night, and then tried to capture my dream on paper.

It was fun to do and I used a lot of water to get the effect I was looking for.

I normally paint  a lot of landscapes, but haven't done one for awhile.

Mary Warnick





                                     
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Donna Vines

This painting is a scene from North Carolina.  Driving through some back roads we came upon some small family homesteads on a hillside.  I just loved this collection of old farm buildings and had to paint it.  I painted on a board using  big brushes to give it that rustic feel.  I also made the tree a little more pink than it was but  love the pop of color.


                                                                Hilly Farm

donnavinesart.Etsy.com





 

Thursday, March 19, 2020

My Life in Limericks, Back to the Azores

I have not posted anything in weeks because I've been sick. I'm better now and have done a bit more in my journal. In the last post we were living in Bermuda. Click on the picture to view it better:


This was our second tour in the Azores, and we had a great time there. I started working at Lajes Air Force Base, and the rest of the time we were playing sports. We got our first horse there, a little Portuguese cart horse named Canasta. It was a great place to raise children.

Carmen

Monday, March 16, 2020

Watercolors, Chickens..What could go wrong?

Donna Vines
                                      
I did something really different for me and decided to just have some fun and experiment.  I saw some lovely watercolors in a store that were simply colors with ink lines on them.  The colors were so pretty and the design so simple I really loved them.  I thought it would be fun to try myself.  As usual the simpler something looks the harder they are to achieve.
I started with putting watercolors on paper and seeing how I liked that.  It was fun to do but not nearly as interesting as the ones I had seen.  I then did an abstract ink design on two of them.  They were o.k.



I then decided to outline the different colors instead of a randomly ink the design.  This is I liked much better.




I had some paint left and some time so I painted a few chickens I had photos of.  I painted three but only liked two of them so  I cut one out.

 
When I laid them down on a piece of blank paper I wondered how they would look in front of my experiments. 

This is one of them.  Chickens in motion, chickens in action, whirling chickens, run chicky, run.  All those thoughts went through my head in the most fun way.

Friday, March 13, 2020

ART TO WALK ON

It would be safe to say that if something can be handcrafted I want to own it and use it!  I'm always in search of new ways to bring original art into my home and my daily life.  There is great energy in something that has been made by human hands, designed by human ingenuity...it holds so much of the soul of the artist that I have everything to gain by its presence in my environment.

So you can imagine how excited I got when I met Alicia Keshishian.  Alicia was teaching a weeklong course I took at Penland School of Craft on color.  Titled "Chromolicious" it was designed for anyone engaged in making color choices and she did a wonderful job getting us all to rethink our color knowledge.  But this is only one of many of Alicia's gigs; she also designs rugs.  Yes, rugs!  All shapes, all sizes...need I say all colors??  Check out her website by clicking on her link above.  Its an explosion of great design...and there is a wonderful slide show about how her designs are translated by weavers in Nepal into amazing wool or silk rugs.

I lusted after such a collaborative endeavor until my husband caught the fever and we contacted Alicia for a commission.  What a marvelous experience.  Did I mention she resides in California?  No problemo.  We began our work by choosing four or five of our favorite rug designs on her website and articulating what it was we liked about it.  Yes, hubs and I had some differing opinions so that was part of the process.  We also took photos of where the rug would be, the size desired and other parts of the house for style images.  We fed her color preferences....it was quite a bit ofamazing input we sent her way.

Next Alicia brewed and stewed and sketched and imagined.  We set up a teleconference (thank you ZOOM) and reviewed about 10 preliminary designs.  We got it down to our favorite 4, then to three.  More talk about each....Alicia asked questions.  Then we nervously waited until our next consult.

When Alicia showed us the original design "Meander" we knew it was everything we had hoped it would be.  We didn't even bother to see the other two iterations because we were hooked.  She had tweaked her original design to exactly what we were trying to say...it was, without her knowing, so visually symbolic of our life right now that we fell in love.

A consumate professional Alicia offered to send us wool samples of the colors but we were already hooked so we sent the "go for it" money.  As this 16' runner will be hand tied, hand cut and shipped from Nepal it will not be the instant gratification we have become numb to via Amazon.  We will be waiting as human hands touch and craft our heirloom piece.  What a joy.

Here's a few snaps of the designs we settled on:


our color palate
middle left column will be the background color


this is the top third of the copyrighted design above


here is the middle portion



this is the bottom part of the rug...swoon


No doubt your taste differs from ours...thats fantastic!  You do not have to like my rug...you can walk on it though!  And I guarantee this piece of art is not only original but it will outlast my husband and I in lifespan.  (I made sure the heirs knew it did not come from Homegoods!!)

So, where are you going to add new art to your environment today?

Cindy Michaud
questions: art@cindymichaud.com
www.cindymichaud.com


Sunday, March 1, 2020

Paper and more Paper


(Backs of journals)



Here are a few photos of the results of a workshop a friend and I had recently on making your own sketchbook/journal. The challenge was to develop a way that students could create their own journal and have it completed in a few hours. We used all kinds of collage materials: cardboard letters, maps, tissue, magazine photos, and decorated napkins. These are two that I made during the demonstration. Great fun!   
Jean Thomas

Ballard Park, Original Oil on Canvas

  I had not painted outside in two years, so this was quite a challenge. It was one of those paintings I had to improve upon in the studio. ...