Budded Out [oil canvas, 6”x6”]

Friday morning I began painting this opening rosebud and the rose petals from it’s sister.  This was the last bit of painting we did during the Carol Marine workshop.  I finished this one at home last week. 

We spent Friday afternoon listening to Carol’s views about some of the art-related things like taking and editing photos of art, blogging about art, and marketing.  Marketing is a fact of life for most artists – if you want to paint tomorrow, you’ve got to sell today.  If not, you’re pretty soon going to run out of both money and storage.  This definitely applies to me.  So, I was keening interested in Friday’s “ways and means” discussion.  Of course one of my key goals with marketing is not being eaten alive by it – I want to paint, not market.  Lots to think about for sure.

That afternoon Carol talked about making it easy for folks to find you on the ‘net.  She suggested that both first and last name should be consistently included in an artist’s web presence, thus you are reading this post from my new blog www.cheryquist.blogspot.com.  This wasn’t something I considered In 2008 when I set my blog up as “cherylsdailyblog”.  I’ve spent some time over the last week backing up my old blog, importing all previous entries, and setting up this new blog.  What sounds like a formidable task was really incredibly simple! 

And so concludes my monologue on this wonderful week.  It’s been a trip down memory lane and a great refresher.  I hope you’ve enjoyed it too.  Cheers!

July Romp [oil on board, 6”x8”]

I painted this last week at the Carol Marine workshop in Benalto, Alberta.  This painting took 132 brushstrokes…  I know that because I counted them as I painted it.  This was such an interesting exercise with just two rules:

• count each brush stroke
• change the paint pile for each stroke

We were given no particular time constraint for this exercise but we had approximately 2.5 hours if my memory serves me correctly.  I used pretty much all of that time.  Allowing time for setting up the still life and drawing, I’m guessing I spent 1.5 hours painting.  90 minutes divided by 132 strokes crunches out to just over 40 seconds per stroke.  Usually I paint very quickly so this was quite a different experience for me.  I like this little painting.  I think the deliberateness of the strokes made this set up doable for me.  Highly polished subjects, like this spoon, are difficult to paint.  Of course Carol was coming around regularly to keep me pointed in the right direction and Sharon gave me some valuable tips as well…  It all helps.

I’ll wind up my summary of this workshop tomorrow…  until then, ciao!

Reflection of Lemon [oil, 6”x8” on panel]

After working us hard for several days Carol sent us away to set up and paint a still life of our choice.  And I’ve got this thing about a little blue medicine bottle that I picked up at an antique store in East Coulee.  Since i also love citrus fruit and the reflections they make in my favorite bottle the photo on the left was my still life subject.  On the right is my painting.  Carol Marine had this suggestion as she made her rounds.  In the case of glass like this painting the darks first isn’t necessarily the best way.  She said “just block in that bottle plain blue for now and go back and add the low lights and then high lights.  I actually like how the little painting turned out.  Blue/yellow is one of my most loved color combinations and has been for my whole life. 

Enjoy!

Workshop Monday [Carol Marine, Benalto, Alberta]

As I mentioned last Monday, the first day of our workshop we began with introductions.  What a talented bunch of ladies!  I’ve added the bloggers among them to my list of “Blogs I Follow” on the right side of my blog…  http://cherylsdailyblog.blogspot.com/

Here’s a photo of 4 apples Carol set up for her painting demo…  and her complete painting.  This took her about an hour, what with all our demanding questions [lol].  She’s fast and so fun to watch!

Carol had several teaching points Monday including:

• Boxing up fear…  she even provided a cute little folding box to put it in :).  We reviewed the wonderful benefits of painting small and daily vs big and infrequently…  I’ve experience many that she mentioned – reduced fear of failure, more playful, increased confidence, less emotional involvement.  Try it – really!!!
• Materials – lots of great points from Carol and tips from the other artists including:
• Carol’s medium mix – 2 parts linseed oil, 1 part stand oil, 1 part mineral spirits.  I’ll be trying this out after I’ve used up my current supply of Maimeri’s ecoblend
• using burnt umber [a color I don’t currently own]
• brushes – she needs a new one every month or so
• brush cleaning – she rarely does more than clean with mineral spirits.  Uses Murphy Oil every couple of weeks to clean them.  I LOVE this idea – brush cleaning is a pet peeve
• brush storage tool – PVC pipe and cap makes a good seal and then brushes don’t dry out.  That makes cleaning with soap and water less necessary :-)
• Painting method:
• try painting the most “vulnerable” bits of your painting first.  These are usually areas of color that would be harder to paint later [think orange slices on a blue ground – would get muddy if you did the orange first – so logical]
• Carol paints island first, ocean second.  This just means the background usually goes in after the focal areas. 
• don’t get hung up on painting inside the lines of your drawing, cutting in and/or overlapping the background in places creates some beautiful effects.
• Squint, squint, squint…  in fact we stopped on Friday morning and took a photo of the class watching Carol’s demo SQUINTING.  We had a great laugh over that – it won’t be easy to forget!
• There is no “right way” to paint

Painting Exercise:

Value [light versus dark] is essential.  Carol gave us 30 minutes to set up and paint a little still life that had a dark, medium and light monochromatic pattern.  We used dominant, secondary, and “smidge” values.  The dominant value in my still life set up  [the cup below] was “mid” [takes over half the painting], my secondary value was “dark” [takes up most of the remaining area], and there was just a smidge of “light”. First I wrote down my pattern, then I painted the cup in a neutral color to match the pattern I had noted in my subject.  Good exercise in SEEING.

All week, Carol amazed me with her ability to SEE in every way possible – the value, color, intensity, shape, etc. of both her subject and the painting she was making. More tomorrow!

Beginning with the ending…

I’ve just arrived home from a week long Carol Marine workshop and, although my lodgings were superb [ty Conrad & Teresa], I can truly say I am happy to be home, sweet home!  I’ve neglected my blogging this week due to shortage of time & energy but I’ve painted lots, and I’ve learned even more! 

Tomorrow I’ll begin a day by day recap of the workshop highlights with photos of my work, but today I want to share what happens at the end of Carol’s workshops.  Over the course of the week, Carol painted five 6”x6” paintings during “demos”.  These are made available to student to purchase for a modest price if you’re lucky.  This morning we had a draw to see which students would be selecting a painting to buy, and in which order.  My name was drawn second.  I really wanted Carol’s painting of orange slices, a knife and a little bowl of mine [as yet unnamed].  But, another student’s name was drawn first and she selected this one.  Later, she had a change of heart and we traded – thanks Margreet! 

I love everything about this little painting – the oranges just glow against that blue background and the brush strokes are lively & free.  I find Carol’s style engages me in a way that hyper-realism doesn’t.  As a viewer, I have a role in this painting…  a connection. My eye moves around in the painting noticing the colors and shapes, confirming the story.  The connection is also stronger because I enjoyed watching her paint it!  Throughout the week Carol came by to help me with my painting and every project she commented that the highlights needed to be smaller…  I’ll remember that every time I look at this painting – the dark shape says “knife” with just those small lights on the handle! 

Two very, very tired ladies today… and now to bed!

Carol Marine Workshop

Today I began a 5 day workshop with Carol Marine.  We are meeting at the Benalto community hall near Red Deer.  I'm fortunate to have a lovely place to stay here at my brother and sister-in-laws' place about 40 minutes from the workshop.  This morning we got things going with introductions and some general discussion around the daily painting movement.  Carol's story is such an inspiration and I am thouroughly enjoying this workshop so far.  This afternoon we were given 2 hours to set up and paint a little still life. 

I found these fun little key limes at the grocery yesterday and I set them up on my kiddie blocks with my new little mixing bowl.  I'm hoping to get some help with making the limes read a bit better tomorrow.  They aren't the usual shape of a lime but are round little guys.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun and we're just getting warmed up!

Cheers!