Fish Painting

I just completed this 36x36" oil painting on canvas which was a commissioned piece of artwork for a customer and art appreciator. He came into our artist studio, Beach Studios, to look at art and saw a similar painting in progress on my easel. I had stopped for the day and left the piece on my easel just like this, black and white with just a little blue in the same areas. The customer and his wife liked the piece and asked me to create another for their home. I was more than happy to oblige and enjoyed creating a second painting for them. The piece is unframed, I painted the wrapped canvas edges. 

Abstract Painting Workshop

 I always like to try new techniques in art because I believe we learn from each different medium. I decided to participate in a 2-day abstract acrylic painting workshop titled Intuitive Art taught by Theresa Girard. Theresa is quite an accomplished artist and excellent instructor which really helped me because (as you know) my art is very detailed and realistic. I really hoped this class would help me loosen up a bit and experiment with shapes, value, color and line. Above is a black, white and three shades of gray value study, 12x12". I think it's okay although I'm not sure what to do with it next.

 This pieced together study is an exercise in charcoal in which Theresa instructed us to move in make certain marks with charcoal and then move away from the painting. We did this several times, in and out making various lines, marks and shapes. In the end we cut them up and reassembled the squares. I like what I've got started here and plan to do something with it.

The other three photos are of the various paintings done by students at the end of the second day. We walked around and Theresa critiqued our work and gave us suggestions. I won't show you mine, it's a big blob right now! I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop, learning from Theresa and also learning from my colleagues in the class. I definitely would take another abstract workshop, while I was extremely tired from thinking so hard after the two days, I enjoyed the journey to abstraction!

My Colored Pencil Workshop for CPSA

I was honored to be asked to be one of this year's workshop instructors at the Colored Pencil Society of America's international conference and exhibition in Tacoma, Washington. This one-day workshop is called Colored Pencil Goes 3D and I taught students how to design and finish a colored pencil box. In this workshop I taught the process of image transfer and then adding colored pencil on top, thus skipping the step of sketching out the design and also having somewhat of a grayscale image to help with the values. After completing two small drawings we learned how to adhere the drawings to the top and inside of the 5x5" Ampersand Claybord Box Kit.

Here are photos of just some of the very creative students working on their drawings. 

Here you can see this student is creating a seahorse drawing. The black and white image is shown along with the color reference photo and her small drawing is in front of her.

This student created a beautiful butterfly with colored pencils and I liked the way she left the transferred black and white image in the background without adding color.

This student decided to skip the image transfer process and drew directly on the Claybord surface with graphite, colored pencils and black marker. The Claybord is very smooth so it will only accept a limited amount of colored pencil but look how beautifully she is managing the floral design.

See more examples of creative artwork below! Everyone had their own variety of subjects and styles.