October 28, 2017

Fall is definitely here! While it was cold and gray outside, the beautifully done watercolors inside made for a wonderful morning. And again, we're back to painting in themes. Susan continues to document her recent vacation to the Canadian Rockies. This scary looking contraption is a
glass bridge. Rising 900 feet above the ground, it affords a magnificent view of the mountains to anyone brave enough to venture out on it.

Madeleine's vacation paintings are from Amsterdam. Yes, that's a tulip bed in the background, along with a canal, trees and paths. Quite a complicated scene!

And it's beautiful enough that Madeleine paints it again, from a different angle. This is such a lovely composition, looking through the trees and over the canal. And did you notice the waves of tulips in the foreground? How lucky to have timed the trip to coordinate with tulip season!

Ellen is back and she's brought a sketchbook with impressions of her recent trip to the Azores. Yes, it was very recent—she just got back on Thursday. Here are some tiny sketches. Ellen's adding color washes to the drawings she did on site, beginning with a fort...

 a lovely coastline view....

...a restorer hard at work in a cathedral...

...fields and windmills (it's very windy in the Azores)...

... all the way to some cave exploration.  Come back next week to see and hear more from Ellen.

Alan is using watercolor paper to paint this scene. No, he hasn't actually vacationed there, but he did see it on TV.

 

Back to Yupo, Alan painted this water lily. We love the subtlety of the layers and colors as the water and the lily interact in a flurry of effects.

 

Believe it or not, we're still painting vacation pictures here. Alan actually did see this canine patron ay a bar in Mississippi. And he was drinking out of a highball glass!

Closer to home, Bill used two new paints on this Metro entrance. It's not a vacation scene—it's in Evanston—but we are completely infatuated with the panoramic orientation, the colors and the composition.

Moving ever closer to home, Greeta adds another page to her book of Houses of Graceland West. It doesn't look like she'll run out of beautiful subjects before her book is full. We're loving this series...and her neighborhood!

Again, Greeta took a break from the strict lines of architecture to paint this atmospheric floral spray. Beginning with a delicate wash, she's added elements according to her mood. 

Isa is painting close to home, too.  She's added another layer of spatter, using a toothbrush this time. While the spatter is denser than the brush spatter, there is still the problem of getting as much paint on the artist as on the painting.  But what landed here is exquisite!

Isa is exploring elements of composition below. Aerial perspective makes the field of flowers recede and we are in awe of the color variety in the flowers and stems. 

Sara is painting at home, too. She's concentrating on one of her favorite subjects... trees. In particular, she is capturing the explosive fall colors. Her composition choice to add the building and roof corner makes it all the more brilliant.

Another window, different trees.  Here, Sara contrasts the lacy colorful foliage with the solidity of the brick buildings. And she's managed to capture the particular blue of the autumn sky perfectly.

In this tribute to the end of summer, Ken finished his latest corn painting in his mosaic series. We especially like the contrast of the flat mosaic behind and around the 3D corn.

Elaine doesn't seem to have gotten the "we're painting places" memo, so she's continuing her experiment modeling a face in her People I Don't Know series. She's tried a technique called grisaille underpainting, where she began with a grey underpainting of the values. Then, she added washes of color.  We're not sure about this. The color glazes seem to have dissolved the underpainting and muddied things up.  Maybe it's worth trying again, but with more staining colors for the gray values?

 

And don't forget these ongoing events:

 

Corn and Cats.  Ken's show at Ten Cat Tavern (how appropriate!) is up. While you missed the opening reception—and it was fun—you can still drop by to see the paintings.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     September 30–November 15 

Food.  Alan and Greeta are featured artists in a group show about Food. The show runs through January, so there's still time to catch it. If you attend, you are asked to please bring a donation of non-perishable food for neighborhood food pantries.

      Where:
      Alderman Pawar's 47th Ward Office

      4243 N  Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL

     When:
     Exhibition: September 16–January 13
    

October 21, 2017

How's this for an appropriate starting image? Nothing says autumn like pumpkins swaddled in cozy fabric. Emily did this lovely still life entirely during class. We love the texture, the color choices and the composition—and did we mention that this is her graduation painting? Is she good, or what?

This is Emily's "fabric" homework. Talk about challenging. She's chosen a fabric with sheen and composed it with deep, tight folds. You can get lost in this fabric! On a sad note, we are sorry that she won't be joining us (at least in person) next term as she'll be returning home to Poland.  We have thoroughly enjoyed knowing and painting with her. 

We're all in the autumn spirit. Bill uses his new Mission paints for the still life below. Believe us that the orange of the bowl is deeper and richer than the photo would indicate. In fact, all the colors are. No wonder Bill is a fan of these colors, especially the warm ones! 

Bill also finished this piece visualizing a concept of the origin of the world. A vessel shatters, releasing the Word in ancient Hebrew.

Elaine finished her latest portrait. We think the subject looks like she'd be great fun to know. We had a lot of fun making haircolor suggestions for each other.

Moving along to another stranger, Elaine is trying something new. She's using shades of grey to build up the values on this portrait. Then, she'll add a wash of color. While this is almost the opposite of how Elaine normally works, she figures it works well for Steve and many Renaissance artists, so it's worth a try.

Greeta finished two more sweet colored portraits of her aunts from an old sepia toned photo. We love the bows and necklaces...

...and maybe it's just the season or maybe it's looking at two small portraits together, but our thoughts turned to ghosts and scary movies. We probably were a little over-imaginative today.

We quickly recovered ourselves in time to admire this next house in Greeta's Houses of Graceland West book. Individually, they are each beautiful, but it's a wonderful experience to flip through a whole booklet of these houses. Here's a thought.... maybe she'll publish these when she's finished.

And then, Greeta did this delicate floral painting using pen, ink and wash.  She says it was a relief after all the intricacies of architectural painting and portraiture. We agree! It's like a beautiful breath of fresh air. Just look at the shadow!

Isa is using the same device here, contrasting airy, delicate blossoms against strong graphic elements. Zoom in to see today's addition. She's added a layer of fine spatter. This keeps getting better and better!

And then, like Greeta, Isa took a break and painted some flowers. This almost looks like a tutorial or time lapse with each flower becoming ever more intricate and layered—an especially difficult task since yellow has a notoriously shallow value range.

Ken's been hard at work seguing his corn painting into mosaic mode. We're interested to see how this comes out, but so far, we are really liking the contrast between the deeply modeled kernels and the flatter, mosaic elements.

We're really into the yellows and greens of summer, aren't we? Alan finished his watercolor version of this painting and there's so much to love. From the composition with Greeta calmly framing the left side, through the flowers, the water and the the people. Not to mention the transparent shadows on the umbrellas, the highly polished table, and even the long format.

Madeleine is painting landscapes, too. Here, she's finished her Ann Arbor sunset, adding and blending colors to draw focus to the magnificent sky...

... before moving on to an Amsterdam landscape. Notice the complexity. There are countless elements from the tulip beds to the paths and water.

Susan's vacation landscape is very different. This is a glacier in the Canadian Rockies. The guide is dipping a cup into the glacier melt for the people to drink. How often do you get to see a glacier, much less drink from one?

Still in the Canadian Rockies, Susan adds some final touches to her waterfall. It's Takakkaw Falls and the name means magnificent in Cree.  We concur.

Another national park! Sara painted this impression of Yellowstone National Park, inspired by a Park Service poster.... and her recent trip, of course.

Another landscape, another national park. Feast your eyes as Sara guides you through tree branches, across shadows, fields and more, until you see the Grand Tetons rising majestically in the distance. This may be our record for national parks visited in a single post.

And we sketched! Sara did this sketch in preparation for a larger painting of her boys. We love it, but she's thinking of going even bigger or changing media. Keep watching to see what she decides.

Steve's also been sketching in preparation for the next in his Hawaiian and merman series (what's the plural of series?).  Here is a merman rising from the water, pushing himself up on a rock. You can barely see a splash of water and a flash of tail at lower left.

These hibiscus blooms are from memory and we think they'd look great painted in the Hawaiian mud pigments.

The same here. Steve's pineapple would use the different muds to great advantage. And we're intrigued by the way this looks like a fine botanical painting.

And don't forget these ongoing events:

    

Corn and Cats.  Ken's show at Ten Cat Tavern (how appropriate!) is up. While you missed the opening reception—and it was fun—you can still drop by to see the paintings.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     September 30–November 15 
 

Food.  Alan and Greeta are featured artists in a group show about Food. The show runs through January, so there's still time to catch it. If you attend, you are asked to please bring a donation of non-perishable food for neighborhood food pantries.

      Where:
      Alderman Pawar's 47th Ward Office

      4243 N  Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL

     When:
     Exhibition: September 16–January 13
    

 
Kilbourn Park Mural. As part of  the Year of Public Art in Chicago, Erika Doyle and three other other artists have painted murals in the Avondale area. There is an opening reception on Sunday, October 22 but if you miss that you can drop by any time to see the murals.

Where:
      Kilbourn Park
      3501 N. Kilbourn Avenue

     When:
     Reception: October 22, 2017, 2–5pm
     Exhibition: ongoing

 
    

October 14, 2017

Wow! What a wet and wild weekend! The perfect weekend for watercolor.... unless you accidentally expose your masterpiece to the elements. Luckily, no one did that. Let's take a look at some of those masterpieces. Special thanks to Bill, our guest photographer!  We begin with Alan, who finished his Yupo portrait of Greeta...

... before attempting the same scene on standard watercolor paper.

Then, Alan painted a landscape of a golf course. Notice the mat? That's his "sacrifice" sheet.

Bill paints the same lily pads from last week, but from a different viewpoint. This time, we're looking from the other side of the pool and see them against a background of steps.

Ken has finished his mosaic cat ...

...before starting a corn painting in the mosaic style.

 

Madeleine finishes her sunrise in Ann Arbor.

And here, Madeleine paints herself and Bill in an old Irish churchyard.

Marva begins a new and different landscape. This is a desert landscape with a lone car. Already we love the sky.

Sara has finished her family portrait below. We like it so well she's thinking of using this as a study for a larger one.

Switching gears, Sara begins a landscape based on her recent visit to several National Parks.

Steve added a background to his four figures.

The background is designed to act as a sort of mat as all four will go in frames like the one below. Great color choice!

Like Sara, Susan is painting her vacation. Here, she revisited a scene of a cable car in the Canadian Rockies. She changed the color of the cable car and added more detail to the trees below.

Also by Susan, this waterfall empties into a river in the Canadian Rockies.

Remember to see Ken, Greeta and Alan's exhibitions and to drop by St. Gregory for an open sketch next weekend.

Food.  Alan and Greeta are featured artists in a group show about Food. The show runs through January, so there's still time to catch it. If you attend, you are asked to please bring a donation of non-perishable food for neighborhood food pantries.

      Where:
      Alderman Pawar's 47th Ward Office

      4243 N  Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL

     When:
     Exhibition: September 16–January 13
    

    

Corn and Cats.  Ken's show at Ten Cat Tavern (how appropriate!) is up. While you missed the opening reception—and it was fun—you can still drop by to see the paintings.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     September 30–November 15 

Open Sketch date. You're invited to an open sketch on Saturday, October 21 from –12:00–3:00pm at St. Gregory the Great Church. Bring your cameras, sketch pads, pens and pencils. A docent will also be on hand to answer questions. It's art and architecture month in Chicago, so this is the perfect time.  

     Where:
     St. Gregory the Great Church
     5545 N. Paulina
     Church entrance is on the corner of Gregory and Paulina;
     one block west of Ashland and one block south of Bryn Mawr

     When:
     Saturday, October 21
     12:00–3:00pm