September Means a 30 Day Painting Challenge!

No. 1: Calendula Bouquet - 9 x 12 Oil on Belgian Linen

It is now September 1st and time to get back to work. Every fall, Leslie Saeta hosts a 30 day painting challenge. She says it isn't cheating to paint ahead, so since I haven't done that recently, I am going to take the opportunity to post a number of pieces that have not made their way onto this blog yet, while I also get back in the studio. I will be working on some large paintings, so may post their progress as well.

Way back in March, I attended a workshop by Canadian painter Robert Strickland. I like to attend at least one or two workshops every year with painters that I think can teach me something new. I almost always come away with new insights or ideas to pursue and a refreshed urgency to get into the studio and create.

I love how he simplifies complex flowers into their essentials. The flower on the left was painted  and re-painted several times by me. I was thinking it was looking pretty good, but every time, he came by, he wiped out all my detail! It is all about the form and capturing that first, then adding select touches to give the particular flower character.

Friday evening, we had a lecture, entitled "The Language of Paint" that talked about fundamentals of drawing, value and color) and then on Saturday and Sunday we painted from life with several people gathered around each vase of flowers. 

For those who would like to know, Robert uses very expensive panels as his support (Raymar oil primed belgian linen) and his palette consists of:

Titanium White
Cremnitz (lead) White 
Cadmium Lemon
Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Orange (optional) 
Cadmium Red
Permanent Rose (optional) 
Alizarin Crimson
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Viridian – Rembrandt

Transparent Oxide Red – Rembrandt

Colourful Mixed Bouquet Oil Painting and Using a Computer to Paint from Photos

Mixed Bouquet 12x9 Oil on Canvas Panel

Here is my final painting from the Dreama Tolle Perry Workshop I attended in January. For our third day, we all used our own painting reference, so everyone had a different subject to portray using Dreama's method. It was fun to try and capture the sheer ribbon.

Instead of using a printed photograph, I found a shelf at eye level on which to sit my laptop. I almost always paint from either life or a computer screen. Printed photographs do not provide enough information to see all the subtleties we perceive with our eyes and are frustrating to try and work with. They lie about value and color and compress either the darks or the lights. I love how looking at a photo with a computer is much more like seeing something in real life so would highly recommend using that if you are not willing or able to work from life. That being said, working from life is non-negotiable if you want to grow in your ability to see and paint well.