April 21, 2018

Happy spring.... for real this time! It was a bit grey, but we think we've really turned a corner on this winter thing. Remember how we were all about nature and big skies last week? We're still interested! We begin with Yi's finished sunset. She's added the foreground mountain, house and treeline, but the focus remains on the incredible Maxfield Parrish-like sky. Look closely. This is exquisite.

And then, Yi moves from the fiery sunset to a delicate morning glory. She's only begun, but the drawing is in place and she's beginning to add soft blue washes. 

Isa is working on flowers too. These lovely roses are made of fabric and attached to a ribbon. You can't tell, but let us assure you that the brilliant color is spot on. What may be helpful is that Isa is using cold pressed paper instead of the hot pressed paper she used before. She likes it much better.

Ken is painting nature, hoping his tomato series will last until he gets real tomatoes growing. Notice that the mosaic elements on the tomatoes are circles instead of squares. This combines mosaic with pointillism (or maybe even printer dots ala Lichtenstein) and gives the tomatoes a whole new feel.

Susan paints people in nature. This is a garden resort from her recent trip to Asia. People come to these theme gardens to propose and take romantic pictures. Here, Susan and her husband share the ambiance with friends. It feels warm, friendly and tropical.

So does Steve's painting. He's added his merman to the water, removed the masking fluid from the wave froth and added reflections and depth. This is another one to zoom in on. You can actually feel the sun on the water, see the curve of the wave and hear the surf splashing.

Like Steve, Sara is a big fan of multiples. Here is a preliminary sketch for a painting of Uncle Andrew doing his Rafiki/Lion King bit with baby Nora. The gridding allows for perfect proportions when resizing. Notice the hands. These are some of the hardest things for artists and this pose is all about the hands. And Sara has them nailed!

Painting the same models or poses gives an artist comfort and familiarity—and makes for a better painting. Madeleine is working on two paintings simultaneously, but they both feature relatives that she is very familiar with. This beautifully composed painting is of her husband, daughter and grandson....

...and here's her grandson in Washington DC. We know it's early yet, but even the light washes look great. Come back to see how these progress.

Just as we paint people we know and love, we paint places to memorialize them, remember good times, and re-live vacations. That's just what Bill is doing here in Bruges. He's captured the grey day, along with the distinctive architecture.

Elaine is also painting a cityscape, but hers is much closer to home... and uses a totally different style. This is an eye-catching facade on Clark Street in Chicago. It's done in a loose illustration style, which started when she experimented with an ink brush pen (after she had to give up on a dried out Sharpie). It's not photo-realism, but it captures her memory of the crisp, sunny winter day.

Mae is also into architecture. Look carefully, though! This isn't painted out of whole cloth. It's an exercise where we clip a bit from a magazine, paste it onto watercolor paper and expand the scene from the clipping. The goal is color matching, but this is so much more than that. Most of us couldn't tell where the clipping stopped and the painting began...

...so we outlined the magazine part for you. Mae is good, isn't she?

Here's another of our favorite exercises—the paper towel and skin. Mae has a page of lovely swatches as she does the exercise. 

And then, just  for extra credit, Mae used this page to play with colors and scenes. We love the panels and the feel of a graphic novel, not to mention the individual panels. We can't decide which we like best.

Tal is also doing extra credit. This is an avocado tree he's grown from seed. It's only a year and a half, so it's still years from a guacamole harvest, but it's perfect for painting. The leaves are well observed and painted and the pot is nicely rounded, but the most interesting effect is the way Tal has created a spotlight to highlight the tree. 

And here's another of our favorite exercises—the three-way fruit or vegetable. Tal has painted a zucchini three different ways. From the top, very wet; then very dry; and then a combination of the two. They all look great and we're always surprised to see the different feel each style produces.

There's still time to catch our show at Ten Cat. It will be up another week or two and here are the details. Now that the weather's getting better, what better destination for a walk in the sun?

The Ten Cat Group Watercolor Show.  We are still at Ten Cat! The paintings are on display in the windows and you can stroll by and see them. See the postcard below for details.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     Exhibition: February 18–April 30, 2018
    

April 14, 2018

Happy Spring! On this blustery, blowsery spring day, is it any wonder our thoughts and paintbrushes turn to nature?  To start, Ken is eagerly awaiting the day he can plant tomatoes... like the ones from prior years he's memorialized in this mosiac style painting. Yes, he's finished and we are impressed by the combination of energy and serenity (okay, energized serenity, but still...).

Here, Ken's taken a step back to do a study of a budding tomato blossom. We bet you thought it was corn, didn't you? Nope, it's a tomato blossom that will be part of his next tomato painting. Come back to see more.

 

Then, there were some truly magnificent skies. Bill painted this scene of a rusting boat on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. While the boat may have caught his eye, we are entranced by the lovely sky. It's full of motion and color and weight—just what a sky feels like.

 

Madeleine was also attracted to a derelict building in Cuba. We love the vantage point, the texture, and especially the glimpse of sky between the crumbling wall and the beam.

Yi's focal point is also the sky.  The brilliant sunset deserves a close-up look. And the beautiful big sky is a perfect counterpoint to the mountain and trees below.

Sara is also painting mountains. Like Yi, she's reducing the mountains (the Grand Tetons, in this case) to a small card-sized painting. Notice how she begins with value sketches, then adds color...

... in several incarnations, before she switches to a landscape view. In all of these, we love the way Sara carves the mountains using just a few colors and well-placed strokes. She's used the same economy of color and brushwork to describe the aspen trees.

Steve was almost a theme of the day himself—we asked for help and consultation with all of the botanicals above, along with some plants you haven't even seen. Still, he chose to focus on water as his natural element. The yellow is masking fluid, used to reserve whites. It will come off next week. Meanwhile, we can't praise his water enough. We love the curl of the wave, the sun shining through it and the colors and depth.

We noticed Susan's sketchbook last week. This week, she's added color to the sketch of hungry travelers. But she's also added a frame, placing both diners in a Chinese restaurant. Notice how the flat framing contrasts with the dimensional diners.

Elaine's been experimenting with watercolor pencils again. This is a portrait using basically two colors (and a lot of water). We discussed watercolor pencils and how best to use them. The jury is out but we continue to be attracted to them, so watch for more to pop up now and again. By the way, this soft portrait is of Pauli Murray, a brilliant priest, writer, activist and lawyer well worth looking up.

Tal did the color matching homework, but took it to new heights. This is the Chicago skyline, painted from Montrose beach. The buildings are the assignment, but we are even more attracted to the colors in the water and sky.

You'll probably recognize this as the complementary color exercise. Again, Tal has gone above and beyond the task. And he had a little extra time, so he added the exercise at the bottom right. Look closely. It's a picture from a magazine in the center and he's expanded it with paint, matching colors and scenery.

Save the Dates!

It's time for Open Sketch at St. Gregory Church—and our group show is still up at Ten Cat. We hope to see you at one of these.

You're invited.... Open Sketch date
It's an open sketching/photography session on Saturday, April  21 from 12:00–3:00pm at St. Gregory the Great Church and you are invited! Bring your cameras, sketch pads, pens and pencils. A docent will also be on hand to answer questions.

     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, April 21
     12:00–3:00pm

The Ten Cat Group Watercolor Show.  We are still having a group show at Ten Cat! The paintings are on display in the windows and you can stroll by and see them. See the postcard below for details.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     Exhibition: February 18–April 15, 2018
    

 

April 7, 20018

We're back from spring break and while it's beautifully clear and sunny, it's also a bit cold. Still, we know spring is right around the corner. First things first...before we see any of the art, Ken wants us to mention that he was right about something today. Specifically, the addition of blue to the painting below. Bill was in Washington DC and painted this wonderfully misty and moody view of the Washington Memorial across the reflecting pond. While we loved just about everything about this, Ken suggested adding a touch of blue to the trees to add to the aerial perspective. Bill did just that and agreed that Ken may have been right (about the touch of blue at least).

And as if that weren't enough, Isa was inspired by Ken's recent mosaic series and added this background of structured gridding to contrast with the softly organic shapes of the roses. You'll have to look closely since the background is a blue/green stripe (the colors didn't come out perfectly in the photo). The verdict? While we like the energy and movement, Isa was pretty tired of it and ready to move on to another painting.

Strangely enough, Ken said the same thing! Here is the finished tomato painting that inspired Isa...

... and the beginning of the next tomato mosaic. Ken is beginning to be bored by the background on this, but is bravely soldiering on. We like the way the flat background contrasts with the beautifully modeled foreground, and we appreciate the amount of work that goes into these intricate works. But we'll eagerly wait to see where this goes.
 

Yi finished her exquisite sunflower painting. Especially worthy of note are the way the petals and leaves are each different but everything seems to be in motion. Also, the sky background features the perfect blue gradating down to white. Doesn't this feel fresh and happy?

Sara's been fighting sinus issues, so she painted Backyard Dawn from her couch. She says she's not especially fond of the way the front trees are painted but she likes the contrast between the sky and the buildings in shadows. We do too—not to mention the way she's captured the glow of the morning sun.

Between the sketching, the evocative landscape, the markers and the color blue, Sara is hitting all our themes today. Here, she started a Baby Nora sketch and, disappointed, turned to markers to jazz it up. We love the juxtaposition of the delicacy of the sketch with the psychedelic colors and bold strokes of the markers.

Speaking of markers, Elaine decided to experiment today. This sketch was done with the Winsor & Newton Water Colour Marker sample we received from Johanna Silva about a year ago. Just the Thalo blue marker and a water brush. Elaine is still pondering the process—it's more like drawing than painting, but it's a bit of both. She's intrigued enough to play some more. And you'll be happy to know that we're refraining from making any "It's no Picasso!" comments (because it IS supposed to be Picasso...get it?).

We're all about blue today, aren't we? Madeleine sees her blue in the warm summer sky. This lovely abstract of a beach contrasts the serenity of the sand and sea with the active clouds. We are ready for a vacation! 

Another beautiful sky by Madeleine. This is from Mexico and captures all the colors of sunset and the last golden sunlight illuminating the buildings.

You'd think this was in Washington, based on the column, wouldn't you? But no—this column supports a building in Havana, Cuba. We love the composition and perspective and the way Madeleine captures the texture of the slightly dilapidated structure.

Susan's been on vacation, too, and painting travel landscapes. She's also demonstrating another of our favorite themes—sketching. Here are some pages from her sketchbook, beginning with Susan and her husband at O'Hare, ready to begin their journey.

Here is Susan's sketch of a reclining Buddha in Malaysia. Notice how she's captured all the information she needs (like the color notes)....

... as a basis for the painting she began today. She's using her sketch and her recollection of the scene to add to the background.

Want another example? Here's the sketch from Susan's sketchbook of James Bond Island in Phuket, Thailand....

... and the final painting. See how she's added bikini-clad tourists taking selfies to really personalize the painting and align it with her memories.

Not to be outdone in terms of color, our newest members are experimenting with all their new tools. Here, Mae tested her new color set with a series of swatches....

... before creating this color wheel. This is the expanded color wheel, where Mae mixes colors and takes them through tints, tones and shades.

Tal was also inspired to create and blend color swatches....

... before creating the expanded color wheel. Notice how both Tal and Mae start with the same exercise and tools and add their own touch. Fortunately, both Tal and Mae labeled their color wheels. These are remarkably useful tools for the future.

Meanwhile, if you haven't seen our exhibition at Ten Cat, it's still up! Drop by if you can.

The Ten Cat Group Watercolor Show.  We are having a group show at Ten Cat! The paintings are on display in the windows and you can stroll by and see them. See the postcard below for details.

      Where:
      Ten Cat Tavern

      3931 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL

     When:
     Exhibition: February 18–April 15, 2018