….and one is a sunflower
I think I complained that I couldn’t paint sunflowers. Well I persisted and the smaller of the two paintings features a sunflower. Both paintings started out as large pieces that I ended up cutting down in size and painted over what I had already done. It took several tries but I’m finally happy with the final outcome.
Here’s a photo with both matted and framed and sitting side by side.
…..Kevin only started painting again seriously last summer
Over the winter Kevin brought his paints back inside and worked on smaller pieces from his home office. He paints almost every day and some days he may do three or more paintings. Recently he started matting them and took lessons on how to photograph his work. I asked him to send me his favourite paintings. They are mostly mixed media and all are abstract. He likes to use watercolour, acrylic paints, pastels and inks.
…this name came from my daughter-in-law who was reminded of the Persian New Year, Nowruz
The colours in my second painting reminded my son’s wife of the colours associated with Nowruz. I thought it was the perfect title for my second entry into the New Members Show at WAAC in January. I’m really enjoying my experiments with intuitive painting.
…this painting reminds me so much of my friend’s mother’s garden
I’m getting ready for a new show in January and I’m experimenting with a new technique of intuitive painting. You would never know that this painting was going to end up as a floral when I started. I think a lot of my paintings will go in that direction but because it’s abstract and intuitive it could take a completely different turn. Spoiler alert: the second painting is also a floral abstract but quite different from this one.
….day 51 uses unconventional art tools
Tuesday’s prompt from Carla Sonheim was to create a piece of art using unconventional tools. I chose to use a toilet paper roll, a chop stick and a wooden skewer.
On a piece of heavy watercolour paper I placed the toilet paper roll upright and dropped a small amount of two or three acrylic paint colours and some white down the middle of the tube. I also surrounded the tube with some white paint as well. Then the fun begins. You start moving the tube around and the paints mix to create an almost marbled effect. If I try this again I’d use less paint and have three or four tubes on the paper in different locations.
When the paint dried I put a dollop of black ink on random areas on the painting and then using the chopstick and the skewer I moved the ink around to add some visual interest to the piece.
Here’s the final creation.
….making up for my non-painting days
Carla Sonheim’s post the other day had us use the scraping method to make a random blob shape onto watercolour paper and then look for shapes or designs to bring out with marker. This was a lot of fun.
For some reason I saw birds and cats. I hate drawing cats, only because I don’t think I’m very good at it, so I did the two birds first. In the first blob I saw an eagle with a fish in his mouth and the second one was a random mythical bird with an angry look. Then I tackled the cat drawings. One is of a cat sleeping and the other is a cat from the back side.
….seems like I need complete solitude to paint
I’ve found in the past that I get my best work done late at night when everyone is in bed. At the cottage it is more difficult to do because the light isn’t good after the sun goes down. Today I found myself all alone at the cottage. My neighbours had left for a few days and I didn’t have a lot of things to pack before I left for home.
I got out my paints and set up my brushes. I had a large canvas that already had the background done. In fact the background had been done for two years and I just wasn’t sure how to finish it. Then I remember hearing these wise words….” it’s only paint”. In other words don’t worry about messing it up, just go for it.
I knew that I wanted to paint pears and I had a vision in my head how I thought it might look. I lightly sketched two pears and then started adding colour. I like to work quickly and I use brushes, rags and my hands. Two hours later I finished my piece and am quite happy with it.
….my Fantasy Art and YouÂ
I can’t believe that I actually got this done on time. I’m not sure if I’ve hit the mark or am completely off. I’ll find out in the next couple of days when I get my mark back.
Close-ups:
My artist statement:
Artist Statement
by
Carol Cormier
Assignment: Fantasy and You
Title:Â My Life
My art work consists of acrylic paint, India black ink and collage done on hot press watercolour paper, 140 in weight.
In this piece I am trying to create a series of images that convey the path my life has taken. The left side of the paper is backed in lighter colours of yellow and green, representing the the happier periods in my life while on the right side the mood is definitely more somber. The top half represents the first 20 years of my adult life and the bottom half is a portrayal of the last twenty years and the years yet to come.
I’ve always felt that throughout my life someone has been watching out for me, either physically or spiritually. My early life was filled with children and pets as I did a balancing act between work and home and trying to keep everyone else happy.
At forty I experienced a very dark period in my life when death took my mother from us at the age of 61. For the next five years the ‘tentacles’ of death continued to take away very close friends and family members.
The bottom right hand corner represents the cancer that my husband has been fighting with for the last 3 years. The arrows represent the chemo trying to fight off the bad cells and the tiger jumping through the TV represents my husband’s remission.
I used to look for quick fixes for my weight problem for most of my life, hence the pill bottle. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve discovered that a healthy me involves healthy eating and exercise and a healthy mind is nourished with books and on-line courses. I’ve never been happier or healthier and I look forward to exploring the world, now and in the future.
Your input is always appreciated.
Cheers!
….. this started out as a filler for students who had finished their last project
The last major project that I assigned most of my classes was a one point perspective landscape. It was very detailed and has taken some students three classes to complete. As is often the case there are always students who finish well ahead of their classmates and look to me for the next project. I found a great project that I felt reinforced and extended some of the elements of design that we’ve been learning about and allowed them to dabble in both watercolour and acrylic paints. It’s been so popular that most of my students wanted to make a ‘doodle painting’. Here are a few of the finished pieces done by my grade three students.
Mama Cormier 