Bloomingdale Juried Art Show

My acrylic painting “Cherished” got into the juried show at the Bloomingdale park district museum.



 



Friday night was the reception for the show. It was the first time I saw the show all hung up. Where my painting was placed, it was the first thing you noticed walking in the door!







My friend Carl Zack’s oil pastel was hanging on the other side of the window (top one) so it’s good to know there was no bias against oil pastels.



Four friends from the Hoffman Estates Art League also got into the show. So it was nice for all of us.

Cherished -Acrylic paints

Cherished

Acrylic paint on canvas

30x40"



This painting is done in Acrylic paint rather than oil pastel. I've been branching out into Acrylics since I took that class about a month ago in Golden Paint's Working Artist program on Acrylics.



This painting is almost 3 feet wide by 4 feet tall. The heads are about 1-1/2 to 2 times life size.

This painting is based on a photo that I've had for a while. I knew I wanted to turn it into a painting but it wasn't until I saw some portraits that an artist did after manipulating the photo in Photoshop that I thought I may have found how to paint that photo. Once I tried this manipulation technique on the photo, I knew that this was the painting that the photo was waiting for!



I'm very happy with the way this painting turned out. It pretty much came out the way I envisioned it could. And my husband likes it too.

Prairie Center Art Show

This group show is on display now at the Praire Art Center in Schaumburg.

I have 5 paintings in the show. They are all Oil Pastels although they are different techniques.

At the entry to the show are 2 large paintings. One is my Bozo's Buckets.







Going down the hallway to the main exhibit area, another of my paintings is hanging.



 



Then in the main exhibit area, the last 3 paintings can be found.







This show is all artists from the Hoffman Estates Art League. The 5 members who hung the show did a wonderful job of figuring out what paintings looked good next to each other. It took them over 4 hours to hang the show.







The show is on exhibit until the end of the month. These 2 photos show some of the crowd that came for the opening night viewing.

Second sketch - garden

I went out into the yard on Sunday to do this sketch of my favorite part of the garden. That is a cement statue of what looks like a well-loved teddybear. And that square in the center of the gazing ball is me sitting on a lounge chair sketching.For this one I tried to do a somewhat loose pen sketch first. I liked this. It gave me a better idea of where to put the color. In the background I did some wet into wet without a sketch and I don’t like that part too much. Overall, I’m pleased with this sketch. It took me about an hour.

New Watercolor Sketchbox

I've been looking for a small, convenient way to do some plein air sketching.
I figure if it is small & easy to use, I might actually use it rather than having it just sit on the floor of the car! This past weekend was the first time I tried this Koi box by Sakura that holds a postcard-size pad in the lid. I had an errand to run and on the way home, I stopped for 25 minutes at the local park and painted this view of the pond and garden.






This was easy to set up and put away (although I still managed to get paint all over my hands!) And I was able to hold everything including the paper towel in one hand.
I have to figure out whether to use a pen first and the paint color in? Or paint with first and then define with a pen?
In the above painting I only used paint and no pen.

The Next Generation

The third generation painter in our family?
My aunt passed the passion for art on to me. And now it's my turn to pass it on to my niece.

I've been very lucky to have Nicolette painting with me lately.
She enjoys painting and has produced several beautiful abstract paintings.

Sharing a Joke

Oil Pastel on 12x16” canvas panel
This is from a photo I took at an outdoor bar.

What drew me to the image is a group of friends sharing a good joke.

I think I’m about 90% done but it still needs a few tweaks. Like showing a smiling mouth on the woman on the right to get across the idea that they are all laughing.

I'll get back to this one soon and finish it.

Snowy Morning

This 8x10" oil painting was done one very cold Saturday morning.

My friend Sharron and I had planned to go out and paint but as the weekend approached, it got very cold with a nasty windchill.

So we went over to a local forest preserve that had a visitor's center. We set up our easels inside and painted through the window.







We set up our easels within 3 feet of each other and were looking out the same window.

It is amazing how different the paintings are not only in the subject but the colors used.



Below is the view we was out the window.