I have a couple of new workshops coming up in October.
Check out the Workshops page above.
Upcoming Workshops
30 days/30 paintings
Seriously, I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I signed up for Leslie Saeta’s 30 paintings in 30 days. I’ll get into the study early every morning during September and paint a small image to upload. And I’ll upload a week’s worth of images only once a week.
I’ve been working on a large series of landscapes for an upcoming solo exhibition and thought I’d use this daily challenge to create some smaller, micro landscapes and still lifes where only one object appears in the painting.
The emphasis will be on values, color contrast and texture. You can check out the paintings on the 30/30 page at the top of the website.
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A Little Easy Texture
Sometimes I just like to rub my hands over a painting to feel the bumps and lumps and grit of the acrylic texture. It makes me happy; it makes the surface mine; it shows my process.
The painting above is a small, 12×12″ canvas with lots of texture. I wanted to create a landscape minimal elements but with the look and feel of nature. The sky was painted; the mid ground forms were collaged using acrylic skins (a future blog post) and the foreground was created with fiber paste.
I spread Golden’s fiber paste over the bottom half of the canvas; let it dry, then painted the absorbent surface. With a drybrush of blue on top of the painted texture, there’s subtle tonal and value shifts and a more pronounced textured look.
The videos below show my process of working with fiber paste. The videos are only a few seconds long just so you get a feel for the application of the medium.
Unlike the painting above, where I applied the paste directly to the canvas, this series of videos shows me creating a fiber skin that I will collage onto a future painting.
As the video shows, I use acetate sheets for the process.
A cute product shot!
Applying the paste to the acetate sheet. Plastics sheets and bags will also work for this. And if you spread out the paste evenly and smoothly you can create something that looks like a sheet of rough watercolor paper. By the way, fiber paste is made with mineral fibers rather than paper or material fibers. It makes the medium more archival.
Odd little photo, but it shows me using a razor blade scraper to lift the dried fiber paste off the acetate sheet. You need to let the freshly applied paste dry overnight before removing from the acetate.
This is a three minute video that shows ripped and torn pieces of dried fiber paste being collaged to the painting surface. And you’ll notice I’m demonstrating upside down. That’s a skill!! I use soft gel medium to apply the fiber sections. Any of the gels can be used as a glue for collaging. The heavier the gel viscosity, the heavier the collage material can be. Notice I use a piece of waxed paper to press down on the glued fiber. By placing a clean piece of waxed paper each time over the fiber surface, and by pressing firmly and evenly without moving the waxed paper, you prevent gel medium from overlapping the fiber paste. If gel medium does cover the paste in sections, those sections won’t be as absorbent as the uncovered fiber paste. I wiped up excess gel with a paper towel.
Once the gel has dried and the fiber paste piece is firmly glued, paint the surface. You can also mix paint with the wet fiber paste before spreading and drying the paste. Heavy body or liquid paints can be used.
In this video, I drybrush blue paint over the surface creating a look similar to the one in the painting at the top of this post. The paint clings to the high spots of the texture creating depth and often contrast and vibrancy.
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Studio Construction: Five Days in Five Minutes
Finally having a new studio built on my property. I’m moving out of the small loft above the garage that I’ve worked in for eight years and into a 20×30 foot space so I can create larger paintings, have a designated spot for videos and add a printmaking work station…and maybe teach a few classes.
This video is a time lapse of the construction to date. Its’ a five minute video showing the first five days of construction. There’ll be a cathedral ceiling with skylights; horizontal windows to allow for more usable wall space; in-floor heatting for toasty toes and a garage door with roll-down screen at the front to allow north light in during spring, summer and fall.
I’ve worked in damp basements, tiny lofts, extra bedrooms, industrial rental units but this is the first time I’ve owned a studio designed to fit my needs. Getting excited to move in.
Video is courtesy Quinte Home Solutions the design/build contractors.
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Monoprinting in My Front Yard
In the summer, I move my studio to the garage, open up the large garage doors and try to paint what I see outside those doors.
This summer I’ve mostly been working in oils with cold wax medium creating small 8 x 10 field studies that I’ll later turn into larger studio paintings. Those field studies are small sections of the landscape as seen from my garage!
Today, I moved a little further down the driveway to create with a medium I haven’t used recently. During this hot, humid summer, my printmaking paper would misbehave. I use the paper dry so the weather made the paper damp and that forced the paper to bend and curl at will. Not easy to keep a print registered as you add multiple layers to the design.
But today it’s cool and the air is dry and I brought out my GelliArts printmaking plate, my registration board and my Golden Open Acrylics. As I mentioned, the scene is a view from the end of my driveway. I simply sketched a few versions of how I wanted the landscape to appear then went back to the garage to to create the monoprint.
I used the 6″ x 6″ GelliArts plate to create this design and the following Golden Open Acrylics – Titanium White, Indian Yellow Hue, Manganese Blue and Light Ultramarine Blue. And I used lots, and lots of low-tack painters tape to protect areas while I added color. I started with an overall yellow background applied to the plate with a brayer. Every other color was added with a paintbrush. The initial treeline color was the light ultramarine straight out of the tube. The rest of the colors were mixes of yellow, manganese blue and white. I finished the piece in almost 12 color layers.
Now that the weather has cooled a bit (and temporarily it appears) I have a few more sketches ready to go. This one is called “Someday Soon”; 6″ x 6″, matted to 12″ x 12″.
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A Tiny Landscape
A short, four minute video of me painting a 6×6 inch canvas for an upcoming show. The texture on the surface is created with gel medium. I wash the gessoed canvas with a color first, then, with a palette knife, I’ll spread a thin layer of clear gloss gel medium over the surface. I let this dry overnight, then start painting!
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Played in the studio yesterday to create this acrylic and charcoal landscape painting. I used charcoal, matte medium, white and black paint.
Starting with a 12 x 12 canvas, I applied some gel medium with a palette knife to create texture. After the medium dried, I painted the canvas white. I used the matte medium to create tooth on the surface to hold the charcoal and I started working the charcoal into the surface while the matte medium was wet which caused the charcoal to soften and smear. Once the medium was dry, I applied more charcoal and then, with a small bristle brush loaded with matte medium I worked the charcoal to create the image. To clean the brush, I simply wiped it on the mid and foreground of the painting to create the soft grays you see in the photo. The process required several layers of medium and charcoal and once I was satisfied, I used a small bristle brush to add some gray snow to the mid ground using the black and white acrylic then used a shop towel to wipe some pure white over the foreground.
The painting is ready for any additional coats of paint or for a final varnishing without fear of smearing the charcoal and losing the tree pattern.
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Lovin’ The Paste
I love Golden’s light molding paste. I wipe it on, spread it on with a palette knife or used credit card, brush it on…no matter, the goal is texture. And I want a fine, subtle texture that allows layers of chunky color to show through on the finished artwork.
For this painting, called “Walk With Me” (18” x 18”), I started by spreading the molding paste in the lower half of the canvas. The image was inspired by the farm across the road so I knew I only wanted texture in the lower half. I let the paste dry overnight then started adding color mixed with matte medium over the entire canvas.
This time, I used a very limited palette of Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Light, Cerulean Blue, Ivory Black and Titanium White. I mixed a pale red/orange and covered the sky; I mixed a darker red/orange and scrubbed the color into the molding paste on the bottom half of the painting. That was it for the first day. I applied some gloss gel medium to the sky area to protect the orange and to create a textured surface for the next color. And I let this dry overnight.
Next day, I painted the sky using a shop towel and mixtures of white and blue with a little black. Then I wiped back the color to let mostly red/orange show through. Using the palette knife and a shop towel, I spread green and orange over the bottom half. The greens were mixes of black and yellow and white with a little blue here and there and the orange was yellow and red and black and sometimes white. By applying the green color over the molding paste with a palette knife, the green hit the high points of the molding paste letting some of the red/orange basecoat show through. And where I didn’t want too much texture, I simply wipe the paint with a shop towel.
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Greens and Greens and Blues
“Shadows”; acrylic; 20 x 20″
Once again my backyard acted as model. But it wasn’t the landscape that captured my attention. Instead, it was the shadow in the lower right; a shadow cast by my studio. The shadow seemed to be leading the viewer in a specific direction and that direction was back into the woods, into the forest with its strong mix of shadows punctuated by brights spots of light.
Rather than being faithful to nature, I used my own color scheme – an analogous scheme which, to me, seems to create a quiet, peaceful mood. And I moved a couple of trees around to suit the composition!
Color palette for this painting was Nickel Azo Yellow, Raw Sienna, Napthol Red Medium; Transparent Red Oxide, Phthalo Blue (green shade), and Titanium White. And the paint was applied with a brush, painting knife, credit card and shop towel. The challenge was to make a simple color scheme work by using a range of values and temperature shifts with the warmer colors in the background to draw attention to that area. The shadows seem to be on the outside of the forest; the woods appear more inviting.
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Accepted
This painting, called “Out Front”, 20×20″; acrylic, was accepted into the Society of Canadian Artists Elected Members Juried Show. The show is on now at the Markham Flato Theatre in Markham, ON. Last spring, I was juried into the Society of Canadian Artists as an Elected Member and this is my first attempt at entering one of the Society’s juried shows.
The painting is acrylic on canvas. I built up several layers of color in the background before I applied the foreground tree. Successful layers of color were coated with gloss gel medium applied with a palette knife, then subsequent colors were applied with the palette knife. The use of complementary colors makes the foreground tree pop. And that becomes the whole statement behind the painting – even though you’re different, you still belong.
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