Where the Boat Leaves From

"Green Goddess" 8x8 Oil on linen panel

There's a place, where the boat leaves from
It takes away all your big problems
You got worries you can drop them in the blue ocean
But you gotta get away to where the boat leaves from
 

Take one part sand, and one part sea,
one part shade of a big palm tree
And the drinks they're cold and the reggae is hot
And I know this is the place for me...

Ahoy! Today’s posting title is from of one of my favorite “vacation” getaway songs by Zac Brown Band. We had a quite a big snow storm this week in Denver so although it's bright and sunny today my rather severe beach and palm tree withdrawal continues...

We don’t get too many chances to paint boats (or even water for that matter) in land locked Colorado so I loved visiting the beautiful marinas in Florida. I had to paint this lovely emerald and sea green boat I spotted at the Rose Marino on Marco Island. Speaking of colors, I’m still getting used to many new colors from my workshop—it’s kind of like having new golf clubs or something--but am immensely enjoying the process. Now I just need to find more Old Holland Carribean Blue.

TeachStreet Closing
I’m getting a few emails this week about my beloved TeachStreet closing February 15, 2012. I’ve been a top ranked art instructor on TS almost since they launched so I've been saddened and surprised by this announcement. I hope someone out there creates a new teacher/student site soon! (I apologize in advance if you come across a broken TS link.)

I've met so many AMAZING people thanks to TS and will be always grateful for that. In the meantime, be assured that I’m here teaching painting classes in my Denver studio almost every day. For more info please visit my Painting Classes Page or click the tab above. I look forward to painting with you soon! Pina coladas and tiny umbrellas included while snow lasts...

To Catch a Falling Dream

"Dream Big" Mixed Media on Canvas 24x24

Typically, one would not expect to get a lot of art inspiration at the podiatrist. (Unless of you course you like to paint feet.)  But I was in a waiting room a few weeks ago that happened to have a large colorful Native American poster. The elaborate feathered headdress reminded me that I’d been planning to paint a dream catcher.

And then I saw Core New Art Space (a contemporary co-op gallery in Denver) was having an upcoming dream themed show. So that gave me the final push to paint a dream catcher this week. FYI, the extra texture on the painting incorporates both acrylic gel skins and "recycled" dried paint peeled off plastic palettes.  Something new in the studio that I used that also helped me with this painting was an Ott full spectrum rechargeable light. The battery feature is great because it's cordless and that's always helpful in a studio.

I read that some cultures believe dream catchers help sort the good dreams from the bad. As someone with an active imagination prone to crazy dreams, vivid nightmares, and a restless night brain this is quite appealing. They say the good dreams flow down the feathers to the peaceful sleeper. (I have real dream catcher I bought in Taos but my cat kept attacking the dangling feathers. So this painting might be a more suitable replacement.)

Lone Tree Art Exhibit: November 12-December 31, 2011
I’m pleased that I had a small oil painting juried into the Lone Tree Art Show. If you’re in the area be sure to stop by the opening cocktail reception on Sat. November 12. This event usually features some beautiful regional art at great prices. P.S. There's still time to enter my contest to win a FREE print of my art (see details in previous post).

Win a Scarlet Owl Studio Print

Aspen Moondance-Mixed Media on Canvas-18x24

How to Win a Free Art Print
I've been wanting to run a blog contest for a while now so in honor of my new prints available on ImageKind, I'm having a special blog contest (details below) between now and November 15, 2011 for a prize of  a $30 value print of your choice of my prints in the Scarlet Owl Studio gallery on ImageKind. Note that most of these original paintings have been sold or are in private collections so I'm happy to have another way to offer them to my visitors and collectors.

Also, I'll be adding more images to the print gallery throughout the month.  For available prints, please visit my Prints for Sale Page or click on the black ImageKind banner on the right hand side.

New Art Supply of the Week
For all my acrylic painters out there, I wanted to share a new studio tool that I'm really enjoying and that is the Martin Universal Design Mijello Peel-Able Palette. I also use a covered palette, but I really like the roomy elliptical shape, separate mixing area, non slip rubber feet, and easy peel off cleaning.  It's available at many online art stores such as Daniel Smith, Dick Blick, Cheap Joes, etc. I've recently seen the peel off palettes in gray as well which I think would be even better for mixing.

Contest Details: To enter to win simply comment on any Colorful Connections blog posting from today (October 15, 2011) until November 15, 2011. The winner will be picked randomly using random.org. No purchase is necessary. The winner will receive any Scarlet Owl Studio print of their choice of my work on ImageKind up to $30 value (winner pays shipping if outside US). I will announce the lucky winner by November 20, 2011. Thanks all and good luck!

Inspiration Swedish Style

Getting close...

About eight years. That's how long I'd been waiting (along with many other IKEA fans in Colorado). That's when I first heard buzz that an  IKEA might open here. So yesterday, when I would normally be in the studio in the early morning, I found myself (along with a cast of thousands) in a cavernous parking garage waiting in line for the Grand Opening of the Denver IKEA store in a sea of cadmium yellow medium and cobalt blue.

500 seat restaurant--love the snowball lights!

Shopping Snack--Yum!

Thankfully the opening seemed well-organized and while I did win a sofa or chair, I only waited about an hour. While I've browsed the IKEA website many times, I've never visited an actual store. I was immediately struck by the massive scale--imagine an airport with towels,candles, rugs, and cool mugs. One of the staff told me the Denver store was now the largest IKEA in North America. I think it will likely take a few visits to really get a good sense of the place. Tip: Wear comfy shoes--it was also a great walking workout.

As a foodie with a Scandinavian heritage, I was particularly looking forward to the cafe and the Swedish Food Market. They did not disappoint. I had very tasty pancake with ligonberry preserves and bought some dark chocolate bars and in the market. Eventually I had get back to the studio, but I had enough time to pick up these fun Mala felt tip stamping markers. I also had my eye on this interesting paper roll holder and drawing paper that I thought would be great for casual sketching. (Both were in the kid's department where I thought the prices were super affordable.)

Colors, shapes, and textures in every direction!

 

I'm back in the studio painting and teaching today, but I have to admit, I've got a touch of  IKEA fever so if there are days I'm not posting in the next few weeks, you'll know where to find me...Welcome to Denver, IKEA!

Millefiore: Contemporary Floral Abstract

"Millefiore" Acrylic on canvas 18x 24

Today's Painting: 1000 Flowers
For this poured acrylic painting (which is basically a two part process) I used successive poured layers of Hansa Yellow, then Quin Magenta, and finally Thalo Blue (green shade). To keep the paint as fluid as possible (and easy to move around the canvas),  I mix diluted fluid acrylics into old plastic cups. I then tilt the canvas with each pour.  Note the Thalo will make a fairly dark line as you can see.

The acrylic pours stain the canvas leaving organic patterns of shape, color, and line. I then take some time to look at the canvas from a variety of angles before shapes start to emerge. Here, I kept seeing floral shapes and a vase so that's what I decided to work with. 

The final stage is to paint directly "alla prima" into and around the shapes suggested by the poured paint. Here I used the Golden Open Acrylics working with my "double primary" palette: 2 yellows, 2 reds, 2 blues and titanium white. As I  painted I kept thinking about the Italian glasswork Millefiore (e.g., 1000 flowers) and decided that I wanted to mimic that look within the flower shapes. At the end I felt the painting needed 3 key fixes:

1. Another small dark shape for balance (I choose a small bird silhouette)
2. Interesting texture. I'm not exactly sure what to call these but if you paint with acrylic you may see those skins that form around the top of your flip top tubes. Since this paint skins are flat donut shape, I thought they'd be perfect for the flower centers. And a great way to recycle dried paint!
3. Some "quiet areas" of color fields since pours can get very busy. Note these color fields don't have to be pale color, just less detailed. 

Thanks for stopping by--as always have a colorful week!

Let Them Paint Cake!

Buttercream Dreams--9x12--Acrylic on Canvas-SOLD

Today's Painting
Mmm...Cake. I've had some very positive feedback about my colorful red velvet cake piece  that I painted earlier this year with the slower drying Golden Open Acrylic paints. This painting is part of a set for a commission.  For me, if I had to pick a favorite dessert, it's probably cake so this is certainly a painless  subject to research. Plus, I find it very energizing to paint graphically with bold shapes and unusual color pairings like many of the contemporary pop artists such as Wayne Thiebaud.  

Colorful Connections Turns 2!
Before I forget, I wanted to quickly celebrate my 200th posting or what is basically my two year blogging anniversary.  Woohoo--Very exciting--So many thanks to all my visitors, students, and followers.I can honestly say that blogging about my teaching and painting has changed my art career as I'm sure it has for many artists. So again, my sincere thanks!

Cherry Creek Arts Festival This Weekend-July 2, 3, & 4, 2011
I feel very lucky to be able to walk to one of the premium art fairs in the country each 4th of July weekend. I don't think I've ever missed a year.  Each year the festival receives over 2,000 applications so as an artist it's fascinating to see the 230 artists selected. Like many artists in the Denver area, it's one of my top art goals to be in this show. Until then, I'm happy to be a spectator and speaking of food, be sure to check out the free culinary demos--it's one of my favorite breaks between art ogling.

The Fine Art of Travel

Mixed Media-24 x 30

Recently a student who had seen one of my larger mixed media  paintings asked if we could create a similar type of painting (i.e. mixed media collage) to pay homage to her trip to Italy this year. I thought this was a fantastic idea.

I've always loved bold graphic vintage travel posters (here are some examples from a poster website) so I thought we could combine the two looks onto a gallery wrap canvas. This is still a work in progress but we had so much fun creating it that I wanted to share it with everyone.

I love the idea of putting your travel memories (here we've included things like museum tickets, train tickets, a map, etc.) into a piece of art work kind of like a giant scrap book. My tip is to layout all your travel ephemera to get an idea of the size of canvas you'll need. I think bigger is better in this case to give you lots of room to work. In this painting, we also added rubber stamps of famous Italian landmarks as well as the individual names of all the cities she visited such as Rome and Venice. She also choose gorgeous warm colors that she associated with Italy--golds, plums, rusts, etc. 

We used acrylic paints for quick drying and easier glazing. I also love the look and feel of waxy encaustic paintings so some of the pieces of paper have been sealed with tinted acrylic gel (such as a matte heavy gel).  Here, I tinted the gel with a touch of metallic gold and some interference blue. And certainly you could cover the entire canvas surface with a tinted gel as well, which will also help seal and protect the surface. 

Before I go wanted to offer a quick congrats to another student who not only got into the All Colorado Art Show with two beautiful landscapes but it's his first show as well. If you're an artist who shows you know how exciting that first show can be--so way to go Dallas!

Sweet Sprouts

Happy March everyone! I'm back from my trip to beautiful, sun-kissed central Florida (I can see why so many painters live there) and eager to get back to painting and teaching this week. Before I left, I painted this quick oil painting study of a sprouting sweet onion.

I really wanted to paint a red onion for the red-purple/yellow-green complementary color scheme but I can't get the thing to sprout no matter what I try. (Feel free to email sprouting tips!) My favorite part was painting the semi-transparent onion skin.

Speaking of spring, I think this is a great time of year to start spring cleaning in your studio--weed out old brushes (they can still be used for texture but maybe not careful details), let go of that paint tube that's so old and dry it's become a mystery color, organize paintings by subject or size, and maybe donate rarely used supplies to a local art non-profit.  I don't know about you, but I feel much more productive and creative in a well-organized, well-stocked studio.

Finally, this week one of my students kindly gave me one of the Splash Watercolor Series books. If you paint in watercolor, you may already be familiar with these, but this consistently high quality series (currently their are 11 books in the series) is a marvelous resource if you work watermedia. Have a great week and happy painting!

Love Birds

For several years I've donated a heart themed painting (usually abstract) to the Denver's AIGA Heart Art Auction which will be on February 10 this year. It's a benefit for Project Angel Heart and I often incorporate heart symbols into my abstract work anyway so a fun match for me to paint.

This year I decided to combine birds with the hearts using acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas. While I have a few finishing touches--may add some touches of writing and build up some texture to help frame the heart--but overall I'm very happy with it. I really like the warm red with the cool charcoal gray. I also love balancing my representational work with my abstract work as I think each endeavor strengthens the other. 

Today one of my students did an amazing painting where we first poured the very bright clean acrylics (yellow, magenta, blue) over a canvas (drying in between colors). Then she created a negative painting around the interesting poured shapes letting the poured layer show through in some spots. I just love the movement and texture the pouring creates in the under painting. This is a really exciting technique to try.

Speaking of acrylics and their versatility, this week bought two sampler set of the new GOLDEN Open Acrylics and am looking forward to trying them in the next week or so. According to the literature, these paints stay open (workable) for up to 10 times regular tube acrylics. As always, if you have any questions about my art or painting classes please contact me or visit me on Teach Street (search Scarlet Owl).

Rosy Winter

Hi Everyone--happy Wednesday! This little 8 x10 oil painting fresh off the easel was inspired by a snowy day and having "paint a floral in oils" on my studio to do list for the week. These are my roses and a few marigolds for pops of cadmium yellow. I'd like to take credit for growing them but frankly, as I think I've noted before,  I'm not much of a gardener. I just love to paint flowers. Thankfully, the previous home owner had a small rose garden that continues to flourish despite my thorny inheritance. 

The dark vase has an almost metallic navy glaze which was a fun challenge to capture in paint and was created by a wonderful potter in my neighborhood. I snapped this picture back in early October and put it away for a snowy, less colorful day just like today.

This painting was also inspired by watching and episode of Passport and Palette on Create TV the other day with Kevin MacPherson. If you enjoy plein air painting, or just want to get a sense of it while staying warm on your sofa, I highly recommend the program. 

In this particular episode, Kevin painted a wonderful landscape study of a snowy river bank near Taos over an older canvas he'd previously employed as a palette. In the process, he let the old, scraped off colors work for him in the new painting as interesting and unexpected pops of color. I've used this "method" before, but not recently, so this morning thought it would be a perfect technique for a floral study like this one.

Hi to all my fantastic new January students--It's been great to meet you and see what you're working on and what you aspire to. I hope you will all enjoy painting for the rest of your life as I do. And many thanks to everyone who has contacted me recently about classes--I know my teaching schedule is getting very full this time of year, so I appreciate your patience and I promise we'll get you in the studio soon!

Finally, as many of you know, this is also the time of year that the blog community likes to share goals for the upcoming year. So, speaking of plein air painting, one of my 2011 art goals is to paint at least once a month outside. Can't promise I'll venture out in January, but hopefully we'll have a more temperate day before the end of the month. And if not, I will at least head out with my camera for lots of snowy landscape reference photos when I'm painting this July.

 

Drawing Conclusions

Recently, while demoing mixed media painting (watercolor and oil pastel), it occurred to me that I've never really used oil pastels on their own merit. At least not since I was very young. And perhaps that's why we may tend to think of oil pastels as a really fancy crayons for less sophisticated art projects. Something we might have used at an arts and crafts camp.  

Clearly though in skilled hands, as some of may know first hand, oil pastels can be a beautiful and unique medium. FYI for this painting, I used a "vintage" set here by Grumbacher (who I believe no longer produces pastels) but I've also used high quality brands like Sennelier, I particularly love their gorgeous iridescent oil pastels.

Given their nice blending qualities, I found oil pastels to be a perfect choice for some quick abstract oil painting planning. Here's a helpful Oil Pastel 101 article about how oil pastels can be a convenient, affordable, colorful medium to add to our artist tool box. I found the Oil Pastel Society also has lots of interesting tips and info. 

In these quick (less than 30 minutes) paintings I approached the overall work much as I would paint with a brush in oil or acrylics: I begin loosely (which means only left handed drawing for me) with broad, gestural lines to help define spaces and larger shapes. As I begin to layer in strokes of color, layering along the way, I focused on mind my primary painting composition goal: Variety. 

While these are not refined works, I have to give a big multi-hued thumbs up for oil pastels. (In fact, I think it's that "fancy crayon" feeling that makes them kind of a comfort media.). So next time you are looking for a fresh perspective, try a new medium or revisit one you gave up on long ago. You might just discover a new BFF or rekindle a long lost love! Enjoy!

Portrait of Moi (the Artist)

I haven't done a self portrait in at least several years since I was assigned one in an oil figure class, one 2010 goal was to paint a self-portrait.  So far, I've yet to tackle this but I've been at least thinking about it.

Today, I'm cheating a bit with this post as this "portrait' of yours truly painted by a fellow artist Terrey, who I shared a workshop with several years ago. She created this with Sharpie, yupo (one of my favorite surfaces) and watercolor. I've always loved paintings of artists at work and so I'm thrilled that Terrey captured me hard at work.   

If you paint or draw, I think painting a something that you'll find both enjoyable and challenging. Here's a short article I found called 6 Reasons to Paint a Self Portrait. 

If you are in the Denver area, I wanted to give a quick shout out for First Friday Art Walks. These fun, informal walks are a great way to spend a Friday night out with family or friends. While the Santa Fe Arts District is probably the best known art walk in Denver there are more "intimate" neighborhood art walks such as Old South Pearl Street.  I'm happy to say I have a few small paintings (as well as some of my friends and students) hanging at the always lively and bohemian Stella's Coffehaus so be sure to stop by if you are in the area.

Also, although I'm proud to say I've been in shows since I was a teen, receptions never get old so I'm greatly 
ooking forward to the Littleton Own An Original Show opening reception tomorrow night. Congratulations to my fellow artists in the show, I look forward to seeing you there! 

Autumn (in Progress)

Happy Thursday! Keep telling myself that autumn is a favorite time for many artists and I'm doing my best to embrace the changes and let summer go, but it's never easy...Here's an autumn inspired abstract in progress that's almost done, but not quite. I thought a longer, tall format would be a challenge...

I also created "living" stamps from the leaves in my yard which often end up looking like colorful, layered flora fossils. Another busy week, getting a show submission ready and meeting some great new fall students. Don't want to jinx the show entry so I'll let you know later if I get in.

One of the best aspects about teaching and being an online artist is that I'm always discovering new painters  that I would have likely never found on my own. For those of you who enjoy unusual landscapes, one of my students who hails from the South lent me a gorgeous book called Marsh Mission that features dramatic, colorful marsh and bayou paintings by artist Rhea Gary.

If you're like me, I'm always looking for art related TV shows. So I was thrilled (not an exaggeration) to discover that our Denver cable now has the Create TV Channel. It's kind of a "best of" art, cooking, crafts, travel, etc. PBS channel that we now have in Denver. I'm really looking forward to watching Passport & Palette which starts in a few weeks.

Questions about painting? Please feel free to email me. Also, in November, I'm offering just for fun a FREE short (and friendly) critique for anyone who would like to send me a painting. Thanks and enjoy the rest of your day! 

Kimono Thursday

Taking a brief break from my daily apples to post this fun Japanese kimono watercolor I painted in this week's Monday group class. I was inspired to paint a colorful kimono with a dark background for a variety of reasons.

First, at the gym a few weeks ago (note this is my excuse for watching daytime TV) I saw an interview on Oprah about the "secret world" of the geisha. I was surprised to hear that a high quality formal kimono can exceed $20,000. So I started thinking a kimono would be a fun painting subject. A few days later I was reading about was reading about the Japanese design concept of  notan which involves the interplay of dark and light shapes or what we likely think of as the relationship of positive and negative space.

For reference for this watercolor/Sharpie piece, I used a vintage Japanese print that I found online and then gave it my own "over the top"color flair using a full spectrum of hues.. I wanted a nice matte black background so I simply used black acrylic paint rather than watercolor. The support is Arches 140lb CP paper.  

Thanks for stopping by--please feel free to drop me a note or comment if you have any painting questions or would like more info about my watercolor, oil, or acrylic painting classes. Domo arigato!

Vampire's Delight

12 x 12 oil on panel

SOLD

Happy September everyone! Is it me or does time just seem to fly this time of year? I also find it's a time of year when I tend to start a lot of different painting projects, which is exciting, but it also means that it's taking me longer to complete any one piece. (That was excuse no. 1 for those of you keeping track).

Painting excuse no. 2? For those of you who've done any home renovation you know how time consuming and distracting that can be. Exciting, but distracting so that's one of my excuses for not posting more in the past week. But bathroom reno means there's a new heated whirlpool bathtub in my future to help soothe the aches and pains of hours at the easel, so I know it will be worth it!

This is also the time of year when I start to prepare for my annual winter panic. To help the transition go more smoothly, I try to concentrate on things that I do enjoy about this season and one of those, as I've mentioned before is cooking. Particularly I love making soup and I always use a ton of garlic when I do. So I'm posting  this oil painting study of garlic that I did a while back. It's one of my favorite "food" paintings.  

I've got 2 quick tips today. For my fellow oil painters who want a less toxic medium you might want to try M.Graham Walnut Alkyd medium. I tried it today for about an hour and so far, so good, which for me means no headache or itchy eyes.

For my watermedia painters/pet parents, I'm always looking for "pet proof" water container (pigments can be very toxic) and after looking around the house I realized I could use large dishwasher tab containers. (I rinsed them thoroughly before using.) Not only are they roomy, but most importantly, the lid clicks firmly shut so I don't have to worry about monitoring my water bucket ever time I turn around. Right Mr.Dash??

As always, if you have any questions about my work or classes, please drop me a line, I'd love to hear from you. Have a wonderful and colorful week!

Clementine, Darling?

"Clementine, Darling?"

6x6 oil on linen panel

Price: $60 + shipping

After teaching a morning oil class (great job Bob!), I was in the grocery store looking around the produce section for some daily painting inspiration (and healthy snacks!) when I spotted a big bag of Florida clementines. The warm orange hue was so vibrant and juicy I had to get them as models. 

This was also my first painting on my new RayMar linen museum quality panels and they are a really lovely painting surface--a little tooth but not too much. To use a cooking term, I'll say the panels were al dente! In this particular case, I toned the canvas first with a nice rich quin gold.

For fellow painters, my tip today is next time you want to lighten an area, try the "friendly neighbor" --a lighter hue on the color wheel before using our "go to" white, so yellow-green for a green subject, red-violet for a dark violet subject, etc. You may even want to take white off your palette altogether for a while as an experiment in maintaining bolder, cleaner colors.

For more information about my work or classes, please feel free to email me anytime or visit me on TeachStreet. Thank you!

Yupo Nalu

Nalu, as some of you may know, means wave in Hawaiian. One of my younger students, this week painted this gorgeous frothy wave on Yupo with Golden Fluid Acrylics. We had a great time working with the wave pattern and texture with spraying both rubbing alcohol and water directly into the wet acrylics which tend to hover on the Yupo surface until dry.

We also added some freshly ground sea salt into the Quin Gold for the sandy texture beneath the wave.  For the wave colors we used Thalo Blue, Turquoise, some Quin Magenta, as well as a touch of Hansa Medium and Crimson.

It's been a joy to be back this week painting in the studio and I'll be posting 2 new pieces soon, one oil abstract figure and one acrylic abstract horse. While working, I've also been busy listening to some very inspirational and informative Blog Talk Radio shows called Artists Helping Artists.

I loved their recent interview with well-known daily painter Carol Marine about daily painting and what it's meant to her and her career. I hope I can get to one of her workshops at some point, if I can find one that's not full! But in the meantime, I really looking forward to her book 100 Small Paintings which I ordered earlier this week. Mahalo everyone & happy painting!

Call Me Tuesday

I started out early this morning painting on a small representational oil bird study (After my cardinal the other day, I've decided to paint my way through all the state birds this year. Next Alabama, which I believe is the Yellowhammer.)

Anyway, while I was painting the beautiful Eastern Bluebird (the state bird of Missouri and New York) I was enjoying one of all time favorite studio albums, Abbey Road. The intriguing and imaginative lyrics never cease to amaze and entertain. So when I took a short break from my bluebird painting (so I would not overwork him), I decided to start an abstract. For me, I an occasional creative break from representational work really helps to fortify my brushwork, design eye, etc. 

Getting back to Lennon and McCartney, one of my favorites lines on Abbey Road has always been "Sunday's on the phone with Monday, Tuesday's on the phone with me."  (The next time you are looking for abstract inspiration consider a visual interpretation of one of your favorite songs.)

In addition to listening to the Beatles, I had spotted my vintage Remington typewriter in the corner of my office this morning. It's become a giant dust collector and I keep thinking I should donate it, but I've always been drawn to the graphic design of the simple san serif black letter forms against the yellowed keys...

And so in this piece, I decided to combine the two as my inspiration. Here I started, as I often do, with an very quick gestural drawing in oil pastel on the primed (gessoed) Masonite. And then I start layering with some earthy, warm transparent acrylics and moved on to some nice rich, yet relatively transparent Ivory Black oil paint.  I rarely use tube black in my representational work so it's a special treat to have in an abstract like this. As with most of my abstracts, I'll continue to work on this some more but I wanted to post what I had so far.

As always thanks for stopping by. For more information about my Curtice Street Monday painting group which starts on May 3, please email me. All levels and subject matter are welcome. Have a wonderfully creative week!

Year of the Artist

Happy New Year from the studio everyone. First, thanks again to all you who helped make 2009 one of my best art years ever, I know 2010 will be even better. So many ideas, so little time...

I'm just about finished watching my fantastic new Quang Ho Nuts & Bolts DVD and getting much inspiration and ideas from him. I already can't wait to order one of the demo DVDs. In the meatime, his review of the visual basics (shape, value, edges, line, color, texture) inspireed me to rush into the studio and get started a local tone abstracted equine painting yesterday which I hope to post in a day or two. I even added some Burnt Sienna to my typically primary color palette and was reminded just how versatile and rich this color is...

In weeks to come I'll be posting some of my 2010 Art BHAGs (aka Big Hairy Audacious Goals for all you Jim Collins fans) and hope you'll be working on yours as well.

Like many artists, I listen to a variety music while working. Often our local public radio Jazz/Latin station KUVO, but favorite CDs as well. Yesterday I listened to my new Eric Hutchinson CD which I've seen on several other artist blogs as a studio favorite and I have to agree it's upbeat, funky, and has some great painting energy.

Here's to a great year of art, learning, color, and creativity! Cheers!

Mixed Media Moon Lady

I was showing a student last week how to make patterns with watermedia using a variety of techniques such as pressing into the wet paint with plastic wrap, bubble wrap, tissue etc. This is one of my favorite mixed media paintings using that technique.

This abstract figure actually began as a southwestern landscape, but the more I worked with the shapes and the added texture of the Japanese rice paper, the more the imagery lent itself to a winged, almost mythical figure. It's also an example of using opaque colors (adding white to watercolors or acrylic) in a watermedia painting.

For more information about my painting and art classes, please send me a note at ScarletOwl@hotmail.com. I look foward to hearing from you and happy painting!

"Lady Moon" 16 x 20 acrylic and mixed media on board, Private Collection.