Son's Painting...

Over the weekend I showed my 17yo son Flora's technique and here is his painting, even though we saw several creatures in the painting it was going to be tricky to make it into a cohesive painting, so he decided to paint on his favourite shape and block out with a transluscent paint.  Even though he's into art and studying it at school he's done very little painting,he did a great job on his painting.

To show him how to do his painting I had to do one too, so here's mine in the stages as this is very interesting to see...

I'm not too sure what I'm going to do with this, I thought I may paint a dragonfly on it, more houses, trees and cars....or a vase of flowers....still thinking...

Lady Flora

I have finished my painting:

Lady Flora
24th April 2011
Acrylic Painting  51cm x 76cm
Inspired by my love of acrylic paints and texture, girly/lady collage, Flora Bowley's layering technique, intuitive painting and artwork.
NFS

Lady Flora and I - both in progress.

It was two years ago that I first picked up a paint brush and started playing with my son's acrylic paints and fell in love with painting.  It was one year ago that a friend gave me a copy of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine and I tried to recreate  a demonstration/workshop of girly collage by Pam Carriker. Today I was inspired by my love of acrylic paints and texture, girly/lady collage (though there is no collage in this painting) and Flora Bowley's layering technique and artwork to create this painting - still a work in progress.

Lady Autumn Leaves - April 2010 (This was the first face I had ever tried to paint and it turned out wrong so I decided against trying to put any eyes on her.)

Me - 22nd April 2009

For more of the history of my art - paintings and collage - browse through my gallery on Deviant Art:

http://aussiesheila.deviantart.com/

Funky Town

Won't you come to Funky Town....had the best fun creating this painting, putting in the cars, and bubble wrapping little flowers everywhere.  There's an art award showing coming up that I'm thinking of entering it into...

Funky Town  Acrylic on Canvas 13th April 2011 18"x36" 46cm x 92cm

We have been without internet for several days and have  new modem now...

School holidays have started which means art group has finished for now and running around after kids....

Have fun and enjoy your art.

Ribbons...

I completed my first large intuitive painting today at home.  I'm still not sure if it's finished yet, could do more to it but will leave it for now.  My husband gave it the title of Ribbons as he thinks it looks like ribbons...

Tomorrow is the last art group for the term, and am working on an intuitive painting in class so the other members can see it transforming.  Life drawing classes have finished too which is just as well as I'm hopeless at that.

April is a big month for our family.  My aunty and uncle and cousin from Germany are visiting for a month, as well as my brother-in-law and sister-in-law will be  here for 2 weeks too.  Then there's school holidays, all the birthdays, Easter, Will and Kate's wedding as well as the big family get-together at the end of the month.


Ribbons, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40" 75cm x100cm 10th April 2011



Enjoy your April...

Painting with Windows

"Painting With Windows" and yeah, that's ok too...

Flora Bowley was talking about mixing colours and mixing enough colour and I said that it can be hard to match it up again if you run out and Flora said "...and that's ok too."

For more on Flora read Donna's blog with great pics too... http://www.donnaheart.com/2011/04/05/on-blooming-true-kamakaze-kookaburras-and-the-value-of-stretching/comment-page-1/#comment-412

Butterfly 5th April 2011 Acrylic on Canvas 60cm x 60cm/24" x 24"

The layer prior to drawing on the butterfly..

Adding tonal contrasts....

This painting was made combining Flora's layering technique and my control freak technique in a technique I call Painting with Windows which has nothing to do with computer windows but it's all about allowing the windows of layered colours to shine through.

I've thought about what shapes would be great to use to allow the windows of colour to shine through after my initial painting had houses and trees in it and have come up with a whole range of things...which I will disclose through my paintings.  So this painting was not a strictly intuitive painting.  I decided before I started that the canvas would have a butterfly on it but then set that thought aside as I began the layering technique.

Flora's technique uses intuitive painting - allowing the painting to tell you what shapes and colours to use.  You need to be able to see those shapes in the painting or keep on painting until you do.  I am not very good at seeing....

Flora's paintings at the end of Saturday:

Flora's paintings at the end of Sunday:

It was amazing to watch Flora paint and to see her transform her paintings.

What would Flora say about my combining her technique with my way of thinking..."and that's ok too."

Sigh, I must get back to the real world...



Connecting with other artists...

It is so great to connect with other artists and I've been blessed with an abundance in the past fortnight...

I've just been to an Open Studio.  Dixie from the Flora Bowley workshop emailed me about it earlier this week, so I emailed Debbi Baker http://debbibaker.blogspot.com/ to let her know when I would be there. When I got there I wondered if I had come to the right place at the right time on the right day and low and behold Debbi opens the door and I got to meet this gorgeous artist with a Canadian accent who loves to collage and loves Kelly Rae.  Poor thing, I hope she wasn't too overwhelmed with Debbi and I chatting away to each other and asking her a million questions and talking about Flora's workshop....

So Karla, if you're reading this, then thanks for having the open studio. *waves*  I bought some old Cloth Paper Scissors mags from her, one with Kelly Rae talking about blogging so here I am telling you about my experience...

 For so long I've felt like I was the only one in Australia who liked to collage and Kelly Rae, then I met Donna Heart  http://www.donnaheart.com/ and now all these other wonderful artists, it's been so great....the world is getting smaller and yet mine seems to be expanding....


More Flora pics..

And a sneak peak at my latest canvas...

The colours in the photo may not be correct but when it's finished I'll photograph it in natural light.

Happyhappyhappy :D