Turtle Tale

After success with the “blob painting” technique I wanted to go a step further. The delight of blob painting is what shows up, like images in the clouds. Starting a larger piece on better paper, my initial blobs were without intent, just color and movement. I don’t have a photo of that stage, but you can see it under the white line drawing below.

I took a bold step with deeper color to get a more under-sea feeling. I tested this in photoshop but the result was disappointing. Too busy, and I lost all the white.

So I got out the intense liquid watercolors and deepened all the blues.

Then I started in on turtle patterns. One thing I love in my reference photos is the bright aqua highlights. Since I’d killed all my what’s paper, I got out the acrylic. I always feel like I’m not making a watercolor anymore when I take this step. But, painting the fine highlights of yellow @ aqua gave me the turtles I wanted.

At this point I can see that I need more of the deeper aqua moving thru the background, indicating clear sandy bottom in places.

I didn’t want to turn this into an acrylic painting but I think I have already!

Any other ideas? I’d love your thoughts. Here or on Facebook.

August 22, 2015August 22, 2015

Summer Painting

You can catch me at the monthly Moyaone Markets, where I often have art for sale and in progress. In good weather I love to set up outside and invite anyone to make art with me, and that’s what I did at the August 1 Market, a blissful summer’s day.

I had a variety of guest artists of all ages, and we had fun in the dappled shade, splashing our watercolors, sprinkling with salt for cool effects, and watching the colors run and bloom, just like the flowers we were painting.

Haven’t you wanted to pick up the brush or pen and make images? What’s holding you back?

Next Moyaone Market Saturday September 5
9am-1pm • 2311 Bryan Point Rd, Accokeek MD

December 5, 2013

Poet, Feminist, Francophile, Painter: Marguerite Beck-Rex

NOTE: A New Series

Perhaps my favorite part of my work is coaching people to use digital tools to express themselves. I am blessed to be a part of some delightful success stories. I want to share some of these with you.

Marguerite Beck-Rex has the detailed mind of a Virgo, and the persistence of a tenacious bulldog. I met her 20 years ago in her 60’s when she had just taken up painting. She had been a journalist, lobbyist, activist, poet. A mother who raised two sons, one white, one black, both adopted, both adored. In her 70s, she led groups of artists on adventures in Provence. In her 80s, although challenged by increasingly low vision, she took up blogging.

The result is the charming Ink, Paint, Words.

Tender drawings touched with color alternate with deceptively delicate poems. They seem brief and spare; read it again, there is a potency there arising from a long life well lived and a writer’s craft well loved.

Poem: Either or Both

Poem: Losing Sight No. 2

Painting Losing Sight: No. 3

I hope you will go and explore some of the treasures on her blog, and follow the good stuff yet to come.

March 12, 2012March 15, 2012

Art from Nature class starts March 29

Drawing & Painting from Nature

Traditional and Expressive techniques

Here’s a fun class to gain experience and develop technique in drawing and painting using nature as our subject matter. Working in a variety of drawing media and watercolours we will explore technique, composition and colour working from, and with, Nature.

The natural form has a an inherent rhythm whether it’s sky, sand, leaves, fur, flames. You can capture that rhythm in your drawing and painting, by tuning in to what we and all creation have in common. Your charcoal is burnt wood, your brush is animal hair, your paper is cotton fibre, your paint is ground earth. The art is in letting the natural ways of our materials interact with your natural curiousity about the world.