Homework

Too icy to get to Jeanne's class today so I stayed home and set up my own still life. It took me forever to decide what to use, but it was fun to do this at home - I could take a bit more care with the drawing. I'm fairly pleased with the way it came out and I think I should try setting up more still life setups at home. ('Need to buy more fruit?)

Soft Edges

Our assignment in Ron Schloyer's class this week was to paint using soft edges. This was extremely difficult for me. I tend to like leaving the hard edges when I paint. I did the one of the boy being carried by his mom quickly in class. I decided to try to put more effort into one at home and did the picture of the two girls using soft edges on the face. Soft edges do seem to work best when doing portraits of children. (At least I'm saying that for now - I want to try some children's portrait's with hard edges)

Jeanne Hartman's class - session #3

I was so excited about the beautiful coral roses that someone brought in, but found that it was much more difficult to tackle than I had expected. I scrapped my first piece and painted just a few roses (also added some watercolor pencil). I told the instructor that I thought it looked like "wallpaper". I think next time I need to focus more on the composition. The little bear doll was one that I had brought in for a still life. I did it in 15 or 20 min using markers and watercolor. I actually like it better than the roses. I want to try some more pieces with the markers.

Dylan and Harley

This is a picture of my grandson, Dylan and his dog, Harley. It's more of a traditional style of painting. I   used some photos I took when I was babysitting one day.

Hard Edges

Our assignment in class today was to paint a portrait without any soft edges. I decided to use a huge flat brush so there was no way to soften the edges. The portrait of the man is from one of Julie Hagenbuch's Mexico pictures. The old lady is a (very) quick sketch I did at home using the same type of hard edge technique

Free Spirit Watercolor class #2

Yesterday was class 2 of Jeanne Hartman's Free Spirit Watercolor. Apparently I paint very loosely when it comes to flowers. Here's what I did in class and the rose was one I did quickly before coming to class. I used watercolor pencils to do some drawing on the geranium and rose. I'm really enjoying Jeanne's class!

Jeanne Hartman's Class - Session 1

Today was my first class with Jeanne Hartman at the Mechanicsburg Art Center. She sets up several still life scenes and we choose what we want to paint. There's a critique at the end which I think is going to be very helpful.  There are many really good painters in the class and I'm sure I'll learn a lot from them as well as the teacher. The painting of the flowers was done in about 20 minutes while I was waiting for class to be over. I may get around to finishing it later. I painted the pear still life all with a 1 inch brush to keep it loose.

I think I might have liked this better before I played with it.

Yupo Ladies

I had a photo of these three old Russion ladies that I really liked. For some reason, I decided to do a painting using the Yupo paper (plastic paper). Things I like about this - During the process of this painting, I was able to let go of the way some of the things "really looked" and make my own decisions regarding color esp. I still love the subject itself and I don't mind the way some of the painting of the ladies looks. I'm not sure about the black lines I put around them (using a watercolor pencil), though. I feel that I need to do something different to the background to differentiate it from the subjects. 'Haven't decided what, yet. I did use the "wet tissue" method on the background to pull up some of the paint. I think I will paint these ladies again using traditional paper.