Painting Flowers with Leslie I

Painting Flowers with Leslie I

This month I decided to jump in and take an "online" course with Leslie Saeta... this month painting flowers. A beautiful bouquet of white flowers on the window sill. I always loved the simplicity of Leslie's paintings and hope to learn more about her pre-mixing and palette knife technique.

These post will be work in progress.... so first the sketch.... On gessoed cardboard... 13 3/4 x 10 1/2 " It's a bit cut off..... panel is slightly larger than my scanner head... but you can get the general idea...

Now to start color mixing!!!

Workshop #46 - #49 Small Birds

Back to the Workshop

During the January 30 in 30 I continued painting in my weekly workshop but neglected to photograph, edit and blog.  So before I jump into my "online " class given by Leslie Seata this month I am posting these small painting that I did of some very small bird statues that I photographed at my daughters' house.  These are very small not longer than 15 cm.  Played around with them photographing from various angles.  Some of the colors in the references were bluish so I went with that palette... they are actually various shades of browns... I was fascinated by the negative shapes surrounding the birds.

23 x 23 cm cut canvas that I mounted on a board. Oils mainly using a palette knife...

January 30 x 30 Challenge...Reflections

January 30 x 30 Challenge...Reflections

First thanks to Leslie Seata for making this all possible.... thanks to all the participants  ... seeing so much varied art work each day is awesome as well as inspiring.  Also thanks to Sea Dean for her art party!!!!

Decided to make 2 final collages...one for my references and one for the paintings !

Hope you all enjoyed  a brief  visit to my favorite spa. 

Posting the collages for those not interested in my bla bla ranting...

click to enlarge

References

click to enlarge

Here we are at the end of our January  30 paintings in 30 days.. This is the third 30 in 30 that I have taken part in.  In each one I learned a little more about my self and my habits and my goals.

Why am I doing this challenge

Can't put it better than Leslie:  The challenge is not about finishing 30 gallery quality "perfect" paintings. It's about getting in to the studio to try new things. It's about painting more often. It's about having fun and developing new habits! 

What am I learning

• Organization  this is key since as we are not only painting but scanning/photographing and blogging
• How to use my reference material .. cropping/editing/fiddling
• Learning more about my media... in this case my wax pastels
• Excepting my limitations and building on them 

Where am I headed

• More creativity
• Learning more about what I want to say and how to say it

Who give a Sh......

• I do!!!!

This month's challenge I chose to work in one type of format... Heavy brown paper... It was my second choice... wanted to work on heavy grey cardboard but local art store was out of stock. I also decided on the size 20 x 20 except for # 1 which was panoramic. Decided to work with a dry medium Neocolor wax pastels and pencils adding medium or not.  I chose a general theme my favorite spa Hamei Yoav which allowed me a wide amount of subject matter.