On the road, again!

After staying home for a whole three days, I headed out again on Friday to take a seminar with Sandy Scales sponsored by Town and Country Decorative Painters. Sandy teaches projects designed by Maureen McNaughton. I took two of the three days of classes and came away with two lovely projects. I will never be an enthusiastic stroke work painter, but I am certainly glad I took the classes and I did learn a thing or two. So here are my projects. The violets are painted on a wooden tray. It needs to have the handles attached to finish it off. The Autumn bouquet is painted on a metal tray/plate with a filigree edge. I painted the lacy edge with DecoArt Traditions Gold using a very light touch so that it mostly just hit the high points of the design.

More from the Stallcup Seminar

Here are the remaining two projects from the seminar with Ros Stallcup. The Hydrangeas are on a large wooden tray and the porch scene is on a 12x12 wrapped canvas. I am working with Ros to select dates in 2010 when she will come to Franklin, PA, to do a 3-day seminar through my studio. I'll post more information as it is available. Contact me if you are interested in this seminar.

Recent Seminar

A couple of weeks ago, Town and Country Decorative Painters sponsored a 3-day seminar with Ros Stallcup. The seminar was very well attended and the projects were wonderful. Her is the project from Friday. Each student attending the seminar brought whatever surface they wanted to paint on. My piece is painted on a wooden lid that goes to a small basket.

Another HOOT project

To fill in a little time, I took a class that used fabric paint on a denim tote bag. Nothing much new in this class. It was just a nice little project to keep busy on that particular day.

More from HOOT

Here is another HOOT project. This one is colored pencil on sand paper--that's right, 400 grit sand paper! The project is very nice, but sand paper will eat up your pencils. This piece will mat to about 6x8. It is done in browns and white so that it has a sepia-tone look. By the way, the cup is not crooked, the photo is. I will need to take another picture with the surface sitting is a better position.

HOOT Convention

Every August the Heart of Ohio Tole Painters holds a large convention in Columbus, OH. At this convention, you can take classes, shop at the trade show, and attend demos of techniques and products. My friend and I attended the convention last week from Wednesday until Saturday. I took a few classes and had a chance to visit with friends from far away. Here is a photo of one of the classes I took. This yellow rose was taught by Pat Lentine. It is done in pastels on Mi-Tientes paper using layering and blending techniques. The size is approximately 14x16.

Taking Classes

Last week I had the privilege of teaching at the MAD Painting Conference in the Poconos. Since my classes were on Wednesday and Friday, I took advantage of some of my uncommitted time to take a couple of classes from other teachers. Both of the classes I took were in colored pencil. It is a good idea to see what other people are doing and maybe pick up a few new ideas and tips.

Rose Hips, Kelly Hoernig

At the Beach, Laurie McKenzie

A New Medium, A New Addiction

A week ago, I attended a 3-day seminar on colored pencils. I was really looking forward to the seminar and suspected that I would enjoy using pencils. I never thought I would find them so totally compelling. Colored pencils are a good medium to have in your bag of tricks. They are totally portable. With a container full of pencils, a support surface with some clips, and some paper you are in business. Another little bag with a pencil sharpener, maybe a blender, a kneaded eraser, and a regular lead pencil completes the things you need to create with colored pencils.

In the seminar, we used a number of different surfaces including papier mache, card stock, and suede board. I have also played with a wooden box and Bristol Vellum. All of these surfaces work really well with pencils.

Here are the projects we did in the class:

Day One: Wildflowers on Papier Mache Book

Day Two: Elephant on Black Cardstock

Day Three: Lighthouse on Suede Board

The last of the projects from HOOT

This is the last of the projects from HOOT. I was really pleased to get this class. It was taught by Barb Franzreb. Barb specializes in Early American art, although this project is not of that genre, and she has been commissioned by Colonial Williamsburg to design and paint items for the gift shops. I am hoping to bring her to our club for a seminar next fall.

Now, the project. Do you recognize it? First, it is a clock. I just haven't installed the clockworks yet. The surface is a 33.3 rpm record. This is about all these records are good for anymore. The theme for HOOT this year was Painting is All That Jazz. This design fits well with the theme. I am including an overall photo and a closeup of the instruments in the center. I can tell you that painting all the keys on the clarinet and saxophone was the very devil. The next musical instruments I paint will be larger! The piece is painted in acrylics. It was a fun piece to paint and what a great way to use old records!

More from HOOT

This is probably my favorite project from HOOT. This oil painting is from a class with Ginger Edwards. Ginger works in acrylics as well as oils. I have admired her work for a long time and was really pleased to be able to take a class with her. It was one of my Thursday classes. Since I did not know until we left on Sunday that we were not coming home until Friday, I had no classes selected for Thursday (a long story that it is not necessary to tell, call it a communication lapse). So, after registering on Monday morning, I went to the resale board and was able to find two wonderful classes. This was one of them.

Sunflowers
16x20
Oil on canvas

HOOT, continued

Not every project gets completed in class. I took two Genesis classes at HOOT. The first was with Carol-Lee Cisco. It is an 8" wooden plate with a fruit design that can be displayed year-round. It has a pear, an apple, some cherries, and two kinds of leaves with ribbon twined around the design. There is very little left to do on this project. The stems need to be painted on the fruit and the background needs to be repainted in the center of the plate. Finally, the ridge on the plate needs to have gold leafing applied and the rim needs to have something done--I'm not sure how I am going to finish that part yet. Overall, this is a nice project and I was pleased to take a class with Carol as she has announced that she will be retiring this year.


The second Genesis class was an Intensive Study class with Mary Gibilisco. It was a 12-hour class taught over two days. I was a little disappointed in the material that was covered because we did not get to the aspects of the project that I had hoped to spend most of the class time on--the fine details that make a painting come to life. There is a great deal left to do on this piece. The background needs to be painted. You can see the beginnings of the background painting to the right of the vase. There is another morning glory on the left side of the flower arrangement and a number of small filler leaves that need to be added after the background is completed. The grapes need to be improved and a lot of time could still be spent on tints, shades, shadows, highlights, etc.---the "ooo, ahs" that make the piece a finished work. This one will probably go in the closet and not be finished.

HOOT

Last week was the annual HOOT (Heart of Ohio Tole Painters) convention. It is held in the Columbus Convention Center and is a very large gathering of decorative painters. At HOOT, you have the opportunity to take a variety of different classes in different mediums. There is also a trade show where you are able to meet with some of the artists/teachers, see what various vendors have to offer, and purchase virtually everything you need and a lot of things you didn't know you needed. I took a number of different classes. The next several posts will be devoted to showcasing the class projects from the classes that I took at HOOT.

The first piece is a watercolor taught by Gayle Laible. This was a 4-hour class and the project was completed well before the class period was ended.You will note the leaves on the upper left of the design. These were done using negative painting. That is, the leaf was not painted directly. Instead, the background around the leaf was painted causing the leaf to be revealed.

Another Connie Parkinson Seminar Piece

Here is the second of the seminar pieces I did last weekend in Buffalo with Connie Parkinson. I think this is my favorite of the two pieces, but I really like them both. This piece is painted on an 11x14 piece of gesso board. It is actually designed to be painted on a 9x12 tray. To accommodate the larger surface, the table front became larger and I added a drawer.

Connie will be coming to Butler, Pennsylvania, for a 3-day seminar in September. This piece is one of the projects we will be painting with her at our Seminar. If you are interested in the September seminar, you can go to the Town and Country Decorative Painters website: www.townandcountrydecorativepainters.com and click on Seminars in the menu bar at the left of the screen. There are pictures of the three projects and registration information.

Learning from others

I was reading an article the other day about the fact that historically, artists learned by apprenticing and studying with the masters. Later, there were studios where you could study one-on-one with fine artists and teachers to learn your craft and improve your skills. While private lessons today can be quite expensive, there are options open to us to take classes with experienced teachers. These classes can be small groups that meet once a week or on some other sort of schedule or they can be a more intensive workshop that lasts for just a few days, but involves painting for 8 hours each day. In the decorative art world, the classes are taught much as they would have been at the feet of the masters. Techniques are demonstrated and then practiced on a project. Everyone in the room is painting the same project, but no two finished pieces are ever alike.

This weekend, I traveled to Buffalo, NY, to take a 2-day workshop with Connie Parkinson. Connie is an oil and acrylic painter. Her workshops are generally in acrylics. She had adapted techniques that are traditionally used with oil paints so that they can be used with acrylic paints. It was a wonderful workshop. I can't wait to do some of my own designs using the techniques that I learned from her. Each day was an 8-hour painting session and we completed one painting a day. Here is the Saturday project. It was painted on a 9x12 piece of gesso board.

A Make-It-Take-It

A little more of my Retreat report. While watching over the Make-It-Take-It table, I was able to take one of the project classes during a slow time. One of the teachers specializes in painting on fabrics. Her MITI was butterflies on an insulated canvas lunch bag. The paint is DecoArt So-Soft iridescent colors with permanent black ink outlining.

Trying Something New

I have just gotten home from a 4-day painting retreat. Unfortunately, I was a member of the retreat committee, so I did not get to do a lot of painting. I did have an opportunity to teach two 4-hour classes in Genesis and two 2-hour make-it-take-it classes. I like going to retreats and conventions. They provide an opportunity to gather with friends and acquaintances who share your interests. You can share ideas and a really good time. But retreats and conventions also provide an opportunity to try something new--a new technique, a new surface, or even a whole new medium. With a minimal investment, you can get a taste of something you haven't tried before and decide if you want to pursue it further.

Amidst all of the activity, I did make time to take one class. It was a class in chalk pastels. I have never used pastels, although I think pastel paintings can be quite lovely. I have read a few books and scribbled a little, but I was not happy with my results. Taking a 4-hour class with someone who knows what they are doing is a wonderful way to learn a little. I like pastels. I don't care for the mess--and they are messy. I have learned enough to know that I would like to work with them a bit more.

Here is my class piece--my very first pastel. The piece is painted on Mi-Tientes paper using Rembrandt soft pastels. The name of the piece is "Chloe". She is a ShihTzu and belongs to the instructor. I am quite proud of my first effort.

Sweet Violets

Here is another of the Virginia Beach Ros Stallcup projects. It is a file box for greeting cards. I have not attached the handle, yet. I need to varnish the piece before I do that. The handle is painted gold as is the top edge of the box and the edges of the dividers. This is a really useful piece and the violets are a delightful design. I have left the inside of the box unpainted. It will simply be varnished to protect the wood.

Luscious Strawberries

Here is another of the Ros Stallcup projects from Virginia Beach. I love painting her fruits. The surfaces for this project are a black tin tray and a black tin pitcher. They are really nice surfaces to paint on. The source for these surfaces is Painters Paradise in Wilmington, DE. They carry a really good selection of tin/metal ware for painters. The nice thing about painting on these surfaces is that they require very little prep--just figure out your design or transfer your pattern and paint. On this day we also painted a strawberry pin using a puffy heart wood cut out.

More from the beach

Here is another wonderful Ros Stallcup project from the workshop in Virginia Beach. This is a wicker basket tray decorated with Ros' signature roses (painted by me, of course). I am planning to use this piece on my porch this summer. It is a lovely piece. For me, one of the most important aspects of the workshop with Ros is not so much any new techniques (although there are some of those), but that she forces me to paint more loosely than I normally would and she makes me think about design.

Painting By the Sea

This week I will start posting the projects I painted in Virginia Beach with Ros Stallcup. What better project for painting at the beach than a picnic basket? And what better subject to paint on it than a seagull standing at the shoreline? Here is the lid of our picnic basket. Notice the bubbles in the sand and the shells half buried in the little grassy mound.