Thursday, April 30, 2020

April Challenge, Fish

The Challenge for April is quite simple and can be interpreted any way we like. It is just Something Fishy.


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Carmen Beecher's Fish



I love brilliant tropical fish with their elaborate costumes. This is a Red Siamese Fighting Fish.

Carmen Beecher

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

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Fay Picardi's Fish
   
Carmen's post is especially hard to follow, but I can't not post a fish. Having a husband who goes out fish hunting 2 or more times a week makes it mandatory to at least try. I found this little fish that I started when we were trying to do lion fish. Donna did a great one, but I abandoned mine fairly quickly. I rediscovered this little attempt several days ago and set out to save it.



After some research, I found that the Trigger Fish is the closest to what I had already done, et voila. 
I first did the background with stripes of blue paper, trying to go from dark to light. None of the images were of the ocean, but I wanted to give that impression. When I looked for papers to fill in the rest, I wanted something bright but not plain. I ran across a jewelry advertisement and finished the fish with gold, diamonds and emeralds. So I named it appropriately.  

What's Your Trigger?  by Fay Picardi

I like the effect of the different strips because I can create so many landscapes as I look at them. Ocean, sky, mountains. What do you see/sea?

www.faypicardi.weebly.com    
*****
Cindy Michaud's Fish





I know nothing about fish that isn't found on a menu! But since I really needed some practice with repetitive design work I decided to make this challenge into exactly that.  The underwater grasses are the fun in this pen on paper work.  I stuck the fish in to keep with the theme!  Many ways to skin a cat...err....fish?
Cindy Michaud
art@cindymichaud.com

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Kathy Garvey's Fish
Gotcha!
16x20 Acrylic
This started as canvas for "cleaning my palette" a long time ago. I used all the colors leftover in my palette and spread them onto a canvas so they weren't wasted. Then I tried to find something in the crazy results and I saw a fish jumping at an artificial lure. I finally finished it for this challenge.

Below is the watercolor I started for the same challenge. It's hard to finish a picture I don't really like, but wanted to get it uploaded before the month ended and we moved on to something else.
Wreck Fish
9x12 Watercolor

*****
Donna Vines

I redid a Lion Fish that I had done a few years ago.  I have always wanted to do another and this was the perfect time.  I had to use an old canvas of an abstract landscape that I had.  The top was light blue and it had a lime green area, a dark stripe across the middle and a dark blue bottom.  I thought it might look interesting as a background, it didn't so I painted the canvas using some really fun acrylic tropical green paint I had.  I had enough for two coats but not three so you can still see some shading.  This was a fun one.





Lion Fish 2

donnavinesart@Etsy.com
dvines1944@gmail.com


Mary Warnick

I have not been painting lately because my painting corner has been converted to a
sewing corner, so I can stitch up face masks.  However, here are a couple of old fish paintings and a recipe.

Recipe:  Healthy Fish and Chips
for each person use about one quarter pound piece of cod or haddock and one medium size potato.
Cut the potato into french fry shapes, with or without skin.  Place in baking pan that has been sprayed
with olive oil (either Pam or from a Misto), spray tops of potatoes.  Bake at 360 for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare fish.  Beat an egg in a low bowl, and grate a little lemon peel over it.  Coat fish with egg and then coat with panko bread crumbs.  If you have room in the potato pan, add fish to it.
Otherwise prepare another pan the same way for fish.
Turn potatoes over, spray top of fish and continue to bake about 30 minutes longer, turning fish once.
Serve with tartar sauce and/or lemon wedges, and be sure to round out your meal with veggies.
           



Fish Faces




Funny Fish

Mary Warnick

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FISH
The original sketch submitted for my mural for the Eau Gallie Arts District


The trout were representative of the Indian River. The child in the rain was from Verdi Eco School. 
The mural is still there, facing West. I'm not sure how the trout are doing. There are fewer now than when I moved to Eau Gallie in 2002. I will say though, the water seems clearer lately since our quarantine!



























Monday, April 27, 2020

Mondigliani 2020

Donna Vines

I am doing a water color (my arch nemesis) online class while in isolation.  I have to say it has been a lot of fun and a timely learning experience.  I already new water color was the most unforgiving medium.  It requires a lot of prep, planning and patience my three weakest suits.  I am very sloppy and can get paint on me just looking through a catalog.  I did learn though that there is something very soothing about the 3 P's and yes if I really, really have to I can do it.
For one of our assignments I used the face and shoulders of one of my favorite Mondigliani paintings Cushions.  I love his skin tones and the casual elegance of his women. Part of the assignment was to embellish, enhance or remake the painting in some way.  I had trouble imagining her any other way or with clothes on but I thought maybe I could modernize her.  Make her a very 2020 model. 



Donna Vines after Mondigliani 





Donna Vines after Mondigliani  2020



donnavinesart.etsy.com

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Ballerina, 11x14 Oil on Panel by Carmen Beecher


Ballet dancers are so beautiful and graceful, and what they do represents so much hard work and pain. In the end, they not only receive applause, but also those perfect bodies. 

Carmen

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Climb in through a small window
This was a fun assignment I gave my watercolor class:

Take your sketchbook or a scrap of watercolor paper, and a pencil or fine tipped pen.

Draw a 3”x 3” square

Inside the square, draw as many animals as you can in 10 minutes (It’s up to you how you interpret that) 

Now draw a second 3”x3” square, except leave one of the four sides open. 

Then, draw as many animals as you can, escaping out of the square. Again, you have 10 minutes


Now, only if you want to, add some paint
Here is my solution: 



This is not about drawing skills, and it’s not a test. It’s about doing something relatively light-hearted that gets you moving. It is a reminder to enjoy the process in your own way. Have fun!

Friday, April 10, 2020

Drawing with Sticks

Schedules are different these days.  We are all moving more slowly and I am finding it harder to concentrate on anything too detailed or complicated.  Thus I've been amusing myself with new painting techniques via U-tube.  With low or no expectations as to outcome I have thoroughly enjoyed playing and experimenting.  I am absolutely positive that each experiment is teaching me something new which will inform my future work.

I've followed Australian Debbie MacKinnon on Instagram (Draw with Debbie) and she recently started some short videos talking about some of her techniques. When she mentioned using sticks and other natural found objects as tools I was all ears.


So after a short walk about I gathered up some promising "brushes" and sat in my chair to play with mark making. I put a large sheet of watercolor paper on the ground beneath me and anchored it with rock.  Debbie uses a variety of inks, I brought out what I had and poured it into little cups so I could better get my "pens" and "brushes" dipped in.


I started out a bit too realistically for such an exercise...I could not abandon the landscape in front of me and initially got frustrated that the length of the sticks and their flexibility caused me to lose control. Repeat: lose control! duh! I think that was the point.


One of Debbie's suggestions is to take the paper back to the studio and put white gesso over spots that are not as "likable" as others. You can totally blot out lines or make them recede with less gesso.  This is pretty ugly at this stage but I'd seen her make some as ugly (or worse) so I kept the faith and carried on.


I even added some paint to the gesso to add a little color to the experiment. Here you see the ink I used with a little water...only because I had it on hand. So I head back out the next day to a new location and two sheets of paper, one scarred up and one pristine.  Gathered new tools and made the same set up determined to be free and easy.


I tried moss, I tried different kinds of sticks, I tried pulling as well as pushing the implement...I finally (with no drawable landscape in front of me) let myself play.


This is a piece of one of the sheets when I finally called it quits.  Isnt it interesting? The movement and flow were exciting and I learned not to fret when a big ole glob of ink dropped off the stick in some unplanned place.  Just drag a tool through the glob and watch the magic.

Now you have to love an artist who admits at the outset that these pieces are not intended to be masterpieces.  She wants to experiment with the rhythm of energy and clean space, the jagged line of a stick not tightly held and the random marks of a piece of moss.  However I equally love the fact that after the papers sit for a while and she thinks about them, the good and the bad, she feels perfectly free to tear them up and store in little ziplocks based on color or whatever....why? Cause these pieces just might be the perfect start to another piece.  She will collage them on to a paper and go from there.

Can it get any simpler?  No.

Look for Debbie on Instagram (draw with debbie) or go to u-tube and search Debbie Mackinnon to download her video.

Hope you have as much fun outdoors with paper and sticks as I did.
Cheers,
Cindy Michaud
www.cindymichaud.com
art@cindymichaud.com

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Just Letting Photoshop Watercolor for Me

These are pretty lazy stay at home days but my yard is blooming. I've had time to let Photoshop do a little water-coloring for me. There are lots of big effort methods to do watercolors with Photoshop, but on these two, I kept it simple.
Princess Vine Photo

Here's the basics:
Open your image and crop it if you want to.
Replace any of the background you don't like. (Content aware fill is a good method for doing the job.)
Copy the layer by dragging it to the new layer icon (so if you don't like what you do, you can toss it and try again).
With the new layer selected, click Filters and just play. My favorite combination is Dry Brush, Paint Daubs and Poster Edges in that order.


Princess Vine "Watercolor"

On this Poppy, I used the following filters: Dry Brush and Rough Pastels.
Poppy Photo
Poppy "Watercolor"

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. ...