Introducing Art History

A delightful picture book came my way last week. I would highly recommend it  for a number of reasons. First, it is a good imaginative story in itself. It has quality, not cartoon-y, illustrations and it is educational. It is even has words not often found in picture books- cerulean and indigo, for example- to describe some blues the fox is seeing and this can really appeal to young children by giving them new words to play with.

If you look carefully, Monet can be found painting in his garden on quite a few pages. There is also a yellow butterfly that follows all the action. A natural follow-up would be to find reproductions of Monet's paintings as an introduction to this famous artist. The expressions on fox's face as very well done. There is also a very satisfying ending that shows the joys of plein-aire painting and solves fox's problem of how to preserve the colours of the garden. This is one to really enjoy reading aloud to a youngster and I predict it could be a real favourite for them to keep.

High Noon

Here is my pastel of Michael as Gary Cooper in High Noon . the drawing is done on a rough hand-made paper as I felt it suited the subject.  I love doing figure drawing and I feel that drawing is really important. I usually do Life Drawing once a week and save some drawings, The warm-up one and two-minute poses are drawn on newsprint and I usually just put them in the recycling bin. Right now  I am drawing with a white pencil on black paper - just exploring the effects of the light making highlights on the figure. There are more pages in the black sketchbook than I originally thought so it is going to be awhile before I get back to colour. Maybe I'll work with water-soluble crayons then - or even watercolour for awhile. This pastel work is from a different day - usually every other week - when we have a "long pose" and I often  work in mixed media - in my case - pastel over acrylic and acrylic pastel gel which you can see in previous posts.

New Show at Gateway

This is my painting currently up at Gateway Theatre. Richmond Artists Guild has a show called "Bodhi of Work" which was inspired by the current onstage production of "Yoga Play". All the works are connected to yoga in some way - so they include scenes from the East. I will confess that I did not do this painting specifically for this show as I had it from my "Dream Cities" series.... but I have done considerable revision so it is in a new incarnation and incarnation certainly fits with Eastern spiritual beliefs! It is, of course, Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat as you are not likely to see it today - uncrowded with a spiritual vibe. The show at Gateway is well worth seeing and is getting quite a lot of attention. If you aren't attending a production (and the play is fun!), you can call in during box office hours and go in to see the display.

50 contemporary women artists

Forgeries?

Well- here is one I did for GuessWho? I took away the tobacco from Van Gogh's chair and gave him a cat  for companionship...a much healthier choice and maybe he wouldn't have contacted Gauguin to come and live in the yellow house... and then they wouldn't have quarrelled ... and maybe there wouldn't have been the "ear incident" - who knows? ... a cat might have made the difference for Vincent

Then I channelled Renoir to make the little girl with a watering can a slightly wider painting-
so that there was room for a cat. The actual painting is really large and this is, of course, a
10 x 10. There is a really good short story about this painting in a short story collection about
art by Susan Vreeland. The book is called Life Studies and the story about this painting is "Mimi
with a Watering Can". Of course, I had to do colours and brushstrokes differently.

And then I had a go at Modigliani

- the girl with a braid was obviously missing a cat too. There is a also a story about  Modigliani

in "Life Studies" and I enjoyed changing styles again. However, nobody saw my warped sense of

humour in these and they didn't sell at GuessWho? So, I guess I won't go in for a career in forgery. It wouldn't work too well anyway as I like to paint in acrylics and the paintings I copied were all painted in oils.

GuessWho?

Well, what do you think? Could it be a newly discovered Renoir?  Come on Saturday and decide for yourself.- over 128 paintings to choose from and all only $100 each - and you get to help out the Food Bank!

Into Fall...

As we move into Fall - and all that garden cleanup (!)- colours soften and change and I find it is often a nicer time for landscape painting. The excessive greens of summer can be difficult to deal with.  Sometimes a  summer painting can be almost harsh. Grasses fading and leaves changing  colour and revealing more of the tree's structure can lead to more interesting paintings. These trees grow along the Sturgeon Banks trail and especially appealed to  me because the day was a little misty. This painting is 30 x 20 so is not something that I would paint outdoors. I settled for a sketch and a photograph and worked on it for a much longer haul than three hours plein air. As for plein air, we are mostly indoors in the studio in this cooler weather. However, last Tuesday, we had a bit of outdoors as it was warm and sheltered on the garden deck at the Art centre and we ate lunch outdoors.