Studio Update, This And That

The Brush and Palette Club Show and the Lambeth Art Association Show were both well attended. I enjoyed the chance to catch up with friends and to see what the club members had produced this year. I sold some paintings at both shows and that is always nice too. I fell in love with a couple of paintings and purchased one.
Brian and I went to the show and sale at The Pottery Arts Center. Wonderful!! We came home with two handsome mugs and a fabulous bowl.
This past week I have been busy..... delivering work to ArtVenture Studio and preparing to deliver work to The Art Exchange, Sunset Arts and JMR Gallery. By Sunday all the paintings will be out of the house and there will be room to move!
Some limited progress has been made on the studio space, but I think it will be at least a month before I can move in. Very frustrating, but it can't be helped. In the meantime, if the weather holds I will do some work on location.

Sketchbook

Inspired by  Urban Sketchers, I have started to take my sketchbook with me where ever I go. This one was completed in the five minutes I waited for my appointment at the audiologist. 

Colour Therapy Continued

I was upset that I was unable to get to any of the London Studio Tour locations this weekend. Life is complicated.

Today I played with yet another combination of three colours and found it to be  surprising to work with and it produced some interesting results.  I think that it will lend itself nicely to landscapes as well as "villagescapes".

I have everything ready to go for the Lambeth show and the ArtVenture Studio show and am getting excited about both.

Next week I will be taking work to the galleries in Grand Bend and Bayfield, which means that summer can't be too far off!

Today I will get the work ready for the Newfoundland Group show, which simply involves putting tags and business cards on the back of the paintings. Opening night is May 7th and I am looking forward to it very much.

More Colour Therapy

 Having spent the last two days picking up work from the framers, adding labels, doing lists and assorted paperwork, listening to reasons why work on the basement is getting nowhere, waiting for telephone calls and email messages, I decided today to play with colour. Once again I experimented with a triad of colours I don't normally use. I like this combination very much and will certainly be using it in the future.

Happy Easter...I'm Getting Ready for Paint Out Season

Flowers from Cathy and Daniel

I spent this morning getting my paint out gear ready in an attempt to hurry up the season. This fabulous weather has me itching to get outside and paint! I am very much looking forward to the Gallery Painting Group Paint Out season. I wonder where we will paint this year? We usually go painting every Tuesday and Saturday, sometimes to public places and other times to private homes and farms. It really is a wonderful club to belong to with a long history here in London... over fifty years!  Painting on location has its challenges...mosquitoes and horse and deer flies being my pet peeves... but there is nothing so exhilarating, relaxing, inspiring and enjoyable ( in spite of the previously mentioned pet peeves) as working on location with a group of like minded souls. At the end of each paint out we have a critique of each others' work and it is so much fun to see what has inspired the other painters. Occasionally we hire an artist to accompany us and to give an on site workshop. These have been very useful and a great deal of fun too. Our members use a variety of media ( oil, watercolour, acrylic, graphite, pen and ink, oil pastels). There are those who prefer landscape, others who love architecture, some who paint flowers or animals, some who have a variety of painting subjects. For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of belonging to this club is having had the opportunity to meet so many interesting people, both club members and those who offer their property for us to visit.

Colour Therapy

In an attempt to forget the ongoing reno problems I purchased a lovely book called Confident Color, written by Nita Leland, and have set up shop on my kitchen table in order to work through some colour exercises and ideas. Working on the colour reference card templates is perfect because they are small and easily accommodated in this temporary set up. I have been exploring the colours on my palette, combining them in new ways and also working through some of the triads described in the book . I have found some I like and have used them in subsequent small paintings ( 1/4 sheet size or smaller) and have been pretty happy with the results. I have posted some of these below.

French Village 1

Forest Floor, October

Medway, October

French Village 2