October 27, 2018

Hang onto your hats! The Holiday(s) season has been officially kicked off, beginning with Isa's painting. She's got pumpkins and cinnamon... all the fixings for a luscious pumpkin pie. Clever, isn't it, how she moves from Halloween pumpkins to Thanksgiving pie? Isa still has a background and table she's planning to add. Come back to see how the painting progresses—but come hungry.

If home-baked pies make you feel nostalgic, you're not the only one. Sara revisited the painting of her mother, lightening the background colors and making her mother more prominent. Even though she "worked from home," Sara was right in tune with our vibe.

Many of us also waxed nostalgic about Elaine T.'s painting. It made us reminisce about innocent weekend mornings in front of the television, watching Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkhov battle Ming the Merciless. And if she didn't already have the nostalgia factor going for her, Elaine T.'s painting is beautifully done. Look at the concrete and the lovely radium glow!

Elaine O. tuned into another of our favorite themes... experimentation. She did this painting of Chicago's Civic Opera House to get to know a new paint. Yes, this is almost entirely painted in Genuine Hematite (with a few touches of blue and yellow). Zoom in to see the beautiful granulation.

Steve is also experimenting. Here, he's finished the same painting using four different triads. As you may recall, a triad is a set of three different paints. Steve mixed and blended each group to get the very different moods of the scene(s) below. We loved comparing the range of effects he could get—and the harmony he was able to maintain—in each painting.

Ellen is back... and she's experimenting, too. She's also in the "holiday" mood, making Christmas cards in a variety of colors, using souvenir Chinese brushes. Besides the new brushes, she's studied books, you tube videos and she has a sheaf of practice paintings on newsprint. One tidbit she shared with us.... it seems these brushes are made with two different kinds of hair. The center bristles are stiffer and they are surrounded by softer hairs. This is what gives the unique look of Chinese brush painting. All we know is these look very impressive and we envy Ellen's Card List.

Equally colorful is Marva's psychedelic painting—one we're calling Inagadadavida. She's debating adding black outlines (feel free to weigh in with your opinion). We think it would look great either way.

Can you believe this is Marva, too? Yes, after the riot of color above, Marva is moving back to a landscape with a softly colorful sky. It's in its early stages yet, but we already love the sky.

If we're talking color (and cats), can Ken's name be far behind? Here's the latest in his Not That Damn Cat Again series.  This is the penultimate painting in the series and it feels like Carnivale.

It's the first day of the new term and we're thrilled to have a new student. Dana brought her own travel palette of paints and spent the morning doing these lovely color explorations and plaids. This girl is an overachiever and we're already looking forward to seeing more.

As if the plethora of plaids weren't enough to intimidate us, Dana shared some paintings from her sketchbook. Scroll through and enjoy—who doesn't enjoy lovely colors and sweet woodland creatures?  This is just a small selection, too!

Join us next week for more watercolor fun. Remember, things move quickly at this time of year, so you don't want to miss out on anything.

October 20, 2018

Get ready for some retro fun! Elaine T. is working on her Kiddieland series—but with a twist. Just look at the study below. It's Elaine T., riding the Kiddieland rocket ride, and imagining herself on the  rocket from Flash Gordon. Besides being beautifully painted, it's a quintessential illustration of imagination and childhood, isn't it?

Moving right along, Elaine T. begins a painting of Flash Gordon (the Buster Crabbe incarnation) in the iconic scene where he's shoveling radium into King Vultan's furnace.

But lest you think watercolor is all fun and laughter, we assure you there is work involved! Here, as an example, Elaine T. does some color studies to determine the lighting for the painting above. Does she go with a suntan glow? Or does she have the subject lit with the radium green glow?

See what we mean about work? Elaine T. did this sketch to determine light sources, colors and effects. This is serious business!

Steve is also doing studies. He's painting the same scene, but with different triads. What's a triad? Using only three colors (generally three primaries like red, yellow and blue) to make up all the colors in the painting. Depending on which three colors you choose, the entire mood of the painting changes. Another benefit? You have a huge number of possible colors, but all of them are in perfect harmony. Come back next time for the next two triads in this series.

Speaking of moods and seasons, Elaine O. painted this winter scene looking out her Mom's front door. We couldn't decide if this should be her Christmas card or if she's seriously ahead of herself on the snow thing. We all agreed, however, that this looks like many of our mothers' neighborhoods, so we loved the nostalgia factor.

Sara is also in a retro/nostalgia mood, having finished her painting of her mother. We love it—the colors, the composition and the mood—but now Sara is thinking she might like to paint this again, but with a closer focus on her mother. We'll see!

From there, Sara moved on to this seasonal view out her front windows. Unlike Elaine O., though, she's in the right season, documenting the glorious changing foliage. Once again, the colors and composition steal the show.

Ken's latest cat is as colorful as they come. He's cleverly using color and shape to model the cat's fur and add texture. We love it and can't wait to see how it progresses—and we're not just saying that because Ken brought in corn muffins to celebrate the end of the term. They were delicious, with sun-dried tomatoes, black olives and two kinds of cheese. Yum!

We're also celebrating Gabby's graduation from "newbie" to "old master." Look at the piece below. She skillfully deploys concepts like complementary color and line to paint this portrait of two bananas nestled in a mountain of fabric. Looks very modern and "pop," doesn't it? Congratulations, Gabby!

You may be concerned after reading that we celebrated the end of the term. Don't worry! We start right up next week, so there will be no gap in the watercolor fun.

October 13, 2018

It's cool, crisp and sunny—a quintessential autumn day! Those of us who weren't on vacation were having a great time creating paintings full of color and fun. Take Elaine T., for example. Her painting had a serious goal (painting transparently), a serious color palette (browns, greens and ochres) and even a serious subject (ecology!). Yet she couldn't stop the fun. Taken from a newspaper article about snapping turtles being released, these Turtle Twins are beautifully painted, fun, and just a little scary—but mostly cool!

From there, we move into joyful, happy color. Elaine T. bought some new paints for her upcoming series and is testing and mixing them here. It looks cool and retro and fun because the new series will revisit Kiddieland. If you grew up in Chicago, you know Kiddieland. So relax and wait for the fun memories to flood in.

Elaine T. uses sunny aureolin yellow to start painting the rocket ship ride. Ah, memories!

Just as happy, colorful and fun is Marva's abstraction. It too brings back great memories, but these are of Pepperland, not Kiddieland.

Ken's next cat in his series also uses fantastic colors. Yes, it's a cat's eye (hence the series name, Not That Damn Cat Again) and not a tree. But it's more colorful and magical than any cat we've seen.

Sara's painting of her mother uses unreal color and shape to set a warmly nostalgic mood.

With a few moments to spare, Sara experimented with her flat brush to paint this lovely floral still life. The expressive brushwork made us all take another look at the flat brushes in our kits!

Elaine O.'s portrait also ranks high on the fun factor. Even if you don't know her brother Bob (left), you can't help but laugh at these sharp-dressed lookalikes checking each other out.

Like Sara, Elaine O. moved from a family portrait to a floral. These purple petunias are growing outside her window, silhouetted against a softly colorful background.

More nature... more color. Gabby celebrates fall with these beautifully colorful leaves. She's made good use of her wet-in-wet exercise from last week. And she's cleverly added salt for texture.

In another extracurricular nature painting, Gabby uses dry brush to paint Brazilian pine trees. The needle pattern is different from our northern pines and these yield delicious pine nuts.

From the exuberant colors of the above paintings, Gabby's egg exercise is a study in subtlety. Yet even here, she still sees the color in the white and grey.

Today's exercise has Gabby painting two fruits/vegetables. The color and texture on the clementine are perfect and the apple glistens, even at this early stage.

Kevin is painting small but fast today, trying to complete half a term in a single class. Look closely at this postcard-sized page to see his exploration of complementary colors. Then, along the sides, he quickly color matched the infamous paper towel, his skin and eight other colors in the room...

...before moving on to the "three-way fruit." This is the "dry" version as you can see from the brushstrokes. The color is spot on, so we know Kevin mastered the color-matching exercises.

There's still time to see Ken's paintings at the Ten Cat. Stroll by and see them in the windows—or go inside for beer and good company. Don't delay! These are the last tomatoes of summer.

Mosaic Tomatoes.  Ken's exhibition at Ten Cat Tavern features his popular mosaic tomatoes series. Drop by to see the art.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     August 22–October 15, 2018

October 6, 2018

We awoke to torrential rains today—a dangerous day for transporting watercolors! Despite that, and to compensate for the gray skies and our gray moods, we all painted happy, colorful things. And Pat had a surprise for us today. She handed out "inspiration" pictures of famous art geared to each of us. We begin with Marva, whose colorful psychedelic abstract makes us feel like singing and smiling. And she now has a handful of abstracts and landscapes to inspire her going forward.

Elaine T. added a squirrel to finish off the tree stump she started last week. Even non-squirrel fans like this! And this "realistic" painting uses a lot of color. Zoom in and see for yourself.

From there, Elaine T. began this study of a colorful, happy Chicago icon. Yes, it's the Kiddieland sign! Breathe deeply and savor the fun childhood vibes. Oh, and Pat's inspiration art for Elaine included a shark, so we know those were good choices.

Susan opted to paint a happy place, too. This Klimtian painting highlights the color and energy of Rio de Janeiro. Susan's inspiration paintings included temple paintings, story paintings and aboriginal art to get her in the mood for an upcoming vacation.

Ken has toned down the blue in his latest cat painting, leaving some color reverberations in the stripes at the top. We see a tree-like structure in this one (and some of us feel the eye looks a bit malevolent, like a snake), but we'll wait to see how it winds up. What could inspire Ken? Pat handed him some mosaic portraits, along with paintings of women with cats—what else?

Sara has been doing countless value and color studies and has gotten to this colorful version. The colors are more vibrant than they appear here and she's moving ever closer to her vision. We can't wait to see this finished. And if you've followed us for any length of time, you'll know that the inspiration paintings for Sara included lots of trees—also, interesting shapes and colors, women with books, and women with babies.

Elaine O. has added to the subjects on this painting. Can you see why she finds it so funny now? In keeping with today's theme, color is a major part of this painting. These two "sharp dressed men" are definitely having a moment here. And Elaine O's inspiration paintings leaned heavily toward portraits and value sketches.

Steve finishes up his color testing. Here, he uses secondaries and primaries to create a range of mixtures, especially noting how the cooler and warmer pigments interact.

And from there, Steve explores cool and warm colors in an attempt to create deep rich blacks and neutral grays. The greys on the left side are bluer on screen than they appear in real life, just so you know. What did Pat pick for Steve's inspiration paintings? Seascapes and figures studies, of course.

Finally, Gabby's exercise was the giant fruit. This is the very essence of pear! Enlarge this to see the layers of color she used to create form and texture. And all the little "pear dots"? They are individually painted one by one. This is truly a portrait of her pear. Is it any wonder that Pat chose some fruit and vegetable still life paintings as inspiration for Gabby?

 

There's still time to see Ken's paintings at the Ten Cat. Stroll by and see them in the windows—or go inside for beer and pool in a convivial atmosphere.

Mosaic Tomatoes.  Ken's exhibition at Ten Cat Tavern features his popular mosaic tomatoes series. Drop by to see the art.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     August 22–October 15, 2018