February 1, 2020

Happy February—the days are slightly longer and we've made it halfway through winter.  What better way to celebrate than with good food? Or more accurately, colorful paintings of good food. Susan handed out her latest official calendar today with the theme of Phillipine food. She's revisited some paintings from the past and added small tweaks, backgrounds and improvements before including them in the calendar. Here, for instance, her lovely glass bowl of Lechon De Pobre is surrounded by other sardines and sea creatures in an undersea extravaganza.

She's added some seasonings, spices and fixings to the spicy fish.

Susan's also upped the contrast on her Kwek-Kwek...

... and cut the fruit into smaller pieces below.

Here, Susan's added a blue plate for emphasis.

In this flight of imagination, Susan envisions eggs as hot air balloons... being flown by chickens, no less!

But enough of food! Susan also touched up this painting of a vacation visit to Taal Volcano in the Philippines. Sadly, it is now covered in ash from the recent eruption.

Habte's church (below) is a product of his imagination, but the structure draws on many churches he's seen. He's used complementary colors to great effect to create a solid, dimensional building.

This lovely house with the red door is also from Habte's imagination. We'd love to visit. It looks so warm and welcoming. We especially love the sense of light filtering through the foliage. 

Sara is all about color too. She's painted a woman using a palette from an Expressionist painting. The result feels like a Toulouse-Lautrec painting and certainly commands attention.

Taking further inspiration from a book on female Expressionists, Sara painted this little gem. We love the painterly quality of the work, the pose, and way Sara has managed to capture the sitter's sweet personality.

Elaine T. has also captured the sparkle of her sitter—the mark of a great portrait. Here's her grandson, playing among the autumn leaves. We love his smile, the way he's settled in the leaves and the grip he's got on a handful of leaves. It's exactly how a baby grabs things...and exactly how this baby interacts with his world.

Elaine O. is also painting children... but we're only saying so as a hint, in case you can't see what's happening in this very faint beginning. No, don't adjust your picture—come back next week when she gets more paint on the paper.

In the meantime, Elaine O. finished this painting of a Chinese sculpture. She's used soft complementary colors to model the form.

Another fan of complementary colors is Ken. Notice how he's balancing reds and greens as he adds the wreath in his subject's hand, as well as the field of flowers in the background. Also notice that he's left the face (particularly the eyes) for last, against his own advice. 

Speaking of color, Tom has finished his advanced color wheel, with tints, tones and shades. We love the watery feel of this.

And isn't it coincidental that we've all been working in complementary colors? That's today's exercise, as you can see in Tom's work below. He works with three different pairs, then blends the orange/blue pair to achieve a spectrum of greens at the bottom.

Berivan's been exploring complements, too. You see the same violet/yellow, blue/orange and red/green pairs below, with rows of blended shades below. Aren't these lovely? And in the process, she's been able to color match the paper towel and her own skin tone!

Berivan's on a color matching spree as you can see below. She's successfully matched a range of colors from her original collage. 

 

Upcoming Events

Open Sketch date. You're invited to join us on Saturday, February 15 for an open sketch at St. Gregory the Great Church. This is a great opportunity to see, sketch, paint or photograph  some magnificent architecture, so bring your cameras, sketch pads, pens, pencils and paints (no oils, though). This is also a Chicago Urban Sketchers Event, so you'll get some inspiration.

     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, February 15
     12:00–3:00pm

 

January 25, 2020

We dodged a predicted storm this weekend... we got three days of wintry mix that was on the rainy side, rather than snow. To celebrate the beauty of natural water, we feature Elaine T.'s painting of Faxi Falls in Iceland. She's not quite finished—the plan is to add something to give a sense of the scale of these falls—but we're awestruck with the skill with which Elaine's painted this. You can almost hear the water thundering, can't you?

Another way we handle the dark gray days of winter is adding brilliant bursts of indoor color... as in Sara's amaryllis. Notice the way Sara kept the background subtle and muted to better complement the amaryllis.

From there, Sara did this portrait in direct watercolor (no prior drawing, just paint). Again, the colors are magnificent and Sara uses color and temperature to create value and model her subject in three dimensions.

By way of contrast, Ken's portrait is carefully rendered and the art noveau/mosaic touches on the hair and hat keep the background flat to better emphasize the softly modeled face and hand. This gets more interesting every week.

Elaine O. finished her painting of Green Tara, a Tibetan Buddhist goddess, known as a protector, as well as for her compassion and loving kindness. We get the sense of both strength and softness in this image.

Elaine O. is now doing a study of White Tara, another version of the same goddess, but known for her kindness and healing powers. We'll see how this comes out, but she already looks kind and gentle.

Habte's back, with a small series to show. He began by doing his take on a Christmas Card. We especially like the positioning of the family and the way the sun glows through the trees.

It's hard to tell what is the best part of this painting... Habte's sun, the subtle gradations in the sky, the texture of the foliage or the water in the foreground. In any case, this is lovely.

Habte finished this painting today. As we mentioned, this may not be a planned "series," but you can tell it's by the same hand. Again, we see the glowing sun and the richly textured foliage, but this time we also see a person, silhouetted against the vibrant background.

Susan's painting a series, too. She's adding touches to her food paintings to bring them into her Gemini series, where the foreground and background tell two stories in the same painting. This painting of ribs and salad is framed by flowers and makes us think of a summer picnic.

Definitely more seasonal is this hearty bowl of chicken soup. In the background, Susan's added bamboo stalks and, behind that, sky and earth.

The stars of this painting are the shrimp. Rounding out the meal are cherry tomatoes, fried rice and a banana—all against a banana leaf background. And below, we see a family picnic under banana trees. In case you're wondering, Susan actually made, painted and then ate these dishes. Makes you hungry, doesn't it?

Our newbies are hard at work on their advanced color wheels. Nadia hasn't finished yet, but she's well on her way to a valuable resource, creating tints, tones, shades and hues.

Berivan isn't using typical class colors, and her color wheel is just as interesting. This uses three slightly different primaries to build all these lovely tints, tones, hues and shades.

Tom spent most of the morning sorting art supplies (and he does have an impressive stash!), but still managed to create this color wheel. We like how he's contained the colors in shapes.

Upcoming Events

 

Open Sketch date. You're invited to join us on Saturday, February 15 for an open sketch at St. Gregory the Great Church. This is a great opportunity to see, sketch, paint or photograph a truly magnificent architectural treasure, so bring your cameras, sketch pads, pens, pencils and paints (no oils, though). And this is a Chicago Urban Sketchers Event, so you'll see some great sketches.

     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, February 15
     12:00–3:00pm

January 18, 2020

Happy New Year! We're back—and what a day it was! But being the hardy souls we are, we showed up in good humor and with plenty of color to brighten the stormy winter weather. We begin with Sara's colorful amaryllis plant. She finished her first study below. The vibrant color really sings against the subtle background.

 From there, Sara did a value study in shades of gray...

...before beginning her final painting on a sheet of 300# paper. We're all interested in seeing how this comes out as we've had differing experiences with how 300# paper accepts paint.

Elaine T. finished her painting of Faxi Waterfall from her trip to Iceland. This is more like the cool gray day we've been experiencing. But isn't that waterfall beautiful?!

In case you missed the color, Elaine T. also finished her portrait of her grandson among the colorful autumn leaves. We can assure you that the colors are even more vibrant in real life.

Ken's been inspired to revisit portraiture, using his new favorite colors, perylene green and burnt yellow. They certainly convey a definitive atmosphere here, as they carry our attention from the subject's eyes to her hair to the background. Lovely!

Ken used the same colors in this alley scene. The colors are the perfect choice for the chrome yellow glow of city streetlights at night. Again, there is a delightful path of color from the lights to the window to the reflections to the puddle and beyond. While Ken hasn't finished his alley series yet, this is our favorite so far.

Back to his women series, Ken began this painting, based on a Julia Cameron photograph. Already, we're enamored with the softly realistic face against the art nouveau hair and are eager to see the final result.

We all seem to be into green today. Elaine O. is also painting a woman and also using green, but it's a cooler green. We're hoping she looks less spooky when she gets eyes. That was a topic of conversation today—do we do the eyes first or last? Both of the Elaines wait until the end, while Ken always starts with the eyes. Let us know if you have an opinion.

Susan's painting of a massage therapist and her client also features panels of warm green, giving this a softly expansive zen feeling.

Three of our four newbies braved the elements today and they were productive, too. Berivan did this color wheel, using only three primary colors to create all the secondaries and tertiaries.

From there, Berivan created this collage. The only instructions for this exercise is to create a collage using colors/shapes that appeal to you. Aren't our new students creative?

Nadia did the same color wheel exercise (using only three primaries)...

...and created this collage, using delicately neutralized color. Isn't it interesting how differently each of us does the same exercise?

Tom also did the color wheel exercise. These are going to be valuable resources, so it's a good thing they are all labeled.

Tom's collage uses bright vibrant colors and relies on shape to create action. It looks like a mobile, doesn't it?

Upcoming Events

Open Sketch date. You're invited to join us on Saturday, February 15 for an open sketch at St. Gregory the Great Church. This is a great opportunity to see, sketch, paint or photograph a truly magnificent architectural treasure, so bring your cameras, sketch pads, pens and pencils. There is plenty to sketch... something for everyone!

     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, February 15
     12:00–3:00pm