Bob Burridge Workshop: Day Four

This was the last workshop day for me. Many participants spent an extra $150 to take the marketing workshop he and his wife Kate put on tomorrow. I opted out. Although it did sound very very interesting.

This clown was my last painting (I did several today) and I sort of liked the whimsy of it. The title is "Last Clown Standing" or "I Think I missed the Train". Despite the smile painted on his face...he is somewhat dejected to see the steam cloud from the train...but no train. It's not signed or varnished so there may be some small additions. He is based on a photo of clowns I took last February and if you look at my Feb posts you'll find the real guy. Acrylic with collage on canvas/board 11 x 14.

Bob demoed his "landscape" technique for us today. Starting with tissue paper to give it texture.

Here is the studio that we used for the workshop...studio One is also called the Tom Lynch Studio. Nice and airy and light. Boy, did we make clutter!!! Bob is way in the back on the left and Kate is in the white blouse taking photos.

Check out Bob's website in the days to come as we may all be featured one of these days!!!

We had a nice wine/champagne and snack reception at 4 pm. Very relaxing.

I met so many nice artists. You might want to check out Constance Grayson's website. She leads art tours in Italy (and cooking tours) and she lives half the year there.

Bob Burridge Workshop: Day Three

I am starting with one of Bob's paintings first today. This is, believe it or not, a watercolor. When he completes this, he sprays it several times with a fixative. After it is dry he varnishes it with an acrylic gloss varnish. Then with a thick layer of acrylic gel, he glues the watercolor (or acrylic) to a canvas that is about 1/2" larger than the painting. He supports the inside of the canvas with block of wood and then cover the painting with a poly plastic sheet and then a weight on top of that and let's it dry for 24 hours. After that he revarnishes the whole thing one more time to seal the edges to the canvas. He is quick to point out the advantages of such framing (no mats, no frames, no glass). However, he does mention that not every gallery or exhibit will accept this kind of framing so you need to check before doing it.

This acrylic collage is one of mine from today. It is a background collage i that the idea is that I may add more to it as I go along. You can probably see that I have already painted some acrylic on top of the collaged papers.

The only criticism Bob might have is that I really did not start out with any "intention" other than to experiment with the papers and colors I brought with me. So we'll see where this one goes. He really wants people to have some "idea" or "intention". And I agree that this makes perfect sense.

My Puerto Rican angel is from yesterday's post with some added collage. The music is to "A Bicycle Built for Two"...thus the wheels in the collage. She's just kind of funky with that hair. No golden curls for this angel! We'll see where this goes.

I came home totally exhausted at 4:30. How the class is going to go out to dinner and to a gallery tonight I have no idea. Usually I join the group for stuff like that, but Greg had a model train meeting, and I have already been to Moondeer Gallery this season. So I begged off. PLUS I am ready to drop!

Bob Burridge Workshop: Day Two

Those of you who have taken a Burridge workshop before have some concept of how "outside the box" this workshop really is! Most of us are really struggling BUT having a wonderful time. These first two painting are not by any means finished.

Like most paintings they are created in "layers" and in "stages". Bob calls this part a "resting" stage where you let the image settle and start looking at it from all angles, checking the values (which are way too much the same in the circus one) and light source (WHAT light source?) The wonderful part of working in acrylics, of course, is that you can go back as many times as you want, adding and subtracting.

We had our wonderful Puerto Rican model/dancer again today and she had all kinds of poses for us.

In additions we had lessons on varnishing your work (that is what Bob is doing in the last photo). And on fixing mud (which we all mix up from time to time). We got some excellent recommendations on art books to read.

Toward the end of the class Bob demonstrated how to use Citra-solve to create collage papers out of National Geographic magazine pages. How out of the box is that? The last two days of class are on collage. So stay tuned for more on that!

Bob Burridge's class at Dillman's: Day One

Bob has a great style and is very entertaining and the class has about 22 members. It is being held at Dillman's Resort (you can google this to get the schedule of workshops.) It is very expensive but they have a marvelous facility and amazing well-known instructors. Dillman's is in northern Wisconsin about 2 hours south of Lake Superior in Lac du Flambeau.

The first two days we will be working with the figure as a centerpiece for our semi-abstract work. We have a live undraped model (professional dancer and model) and it has been so wonderful to have her. This piece is acrylic on canvas 11 x 14.

The second two days will deal with the use of collage. As you might expect I am exhausted as all workshops are very intensive. Needless to say I will sleep well tonight!. More tomorrow.

Midsummer Reverie

Midsummer, Georgia Avenue

by Mary Jo Salter

Happiness: a high, wide porch, white columns
crowned by the crepe-paper party hats
of hibiscus; a rocking chair; iced tea; a book;
an afternoon in late July to read it,
or read the middle of it, having leisure
to mark that place and enter it tomorrow
just as you left it (knock-knock of woodpecker
keeping yesterday's time, cicada's buzz,
the turning of another page, and somewhere
a question raised and dropped, the pendulum-
swing of a wind chime). Back and forth, the rocker
and the reading eye, and isn't half

your jittery, odd joy the looking out
now and again across the road to where,
under the lush allées of long-lived trees
conferring shade and breeze on those who feel
none of it, a hundred stories stand confined,
each to their single page of stone? Not far,
the distance between you and them: a breath,
a heartbeat dropped, a word in your two-faced
book that invites you to its party only
to sadden you when it's over. And so you stay
on your teetering perch, you move and go nowhere,
gazing past the heat-struck street that's split

down the middle—not to put too fine
a point on it—by a double yellow line.

"Midsummer, Georgia Avenue" by Mary Jo Salter, from Open Shutters. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2003 Reprinted with permission

watercolor 11 x 15 on Arches cold pressed

Demo for workshop

This nice sleepy looking Holstein will be my in-class demo on Sept 15 at my workshop. The hard part is stopping the fun and waiting to do it in class!

I've paper painted the vertical fence posts and two of the horizontal ones..a tiny bit of the white and shadow on the lower nose and am experimenting with a dark blue for some of the blue/black shadows to the right of his face on the body. But that is all I've done.

The rest is just acrylic paint at this point. I was not planning to paper paint the red of barn but we'll see on that. The grass I think will just stay paint but I will sprinkle some colorful torn paper flowers into the grass and pick up some of the red there. She is painted on YES canvas board 11 x 14.

AND I think the painted coffee filter paper is going to work just fine...it seems to tear nicely and has good coverage! Info on the class is in the previous post (Aug 10).

Supply List for Paper Painting Workshop Sept 15

I promised my potential students that I would post the supply list on my blog after Aug 1. Oops. I think it is after August 1.

So, anyone in the north woods of Wisconsin (in the Minocqua, Rhinelander, Manitowish Waters, Boulder Junction, Woodruff etc. area)...you are welcome to join the class! September 15, 9-3.

Cost is $25 for the day plus $6.50 for materials.

(If you have some of these materials, of course, you may use your own!) The class fee is less if you are member of Lakeland Art League.

Pre-registration is required by September 9. Call Leslie Johnson at 715-453-1652 or you can reach her by email at RICHJLESJ@CHARTER.NET

It will be held at the Woodruff, WI Community Center on Highway 47 just north of Ace Hardware and right next to the post office.

Materials needed:

· Photo references/ newspaper for covering floor

· A small jar of gloss gel medium (you need gel that is thick,not drippy like most collage glue.)

· A few brushes ¼ to ½ ” flats

· Acrylic paint (Liquitex Basics are fine or whatever you already have.)

· An 11 x 14 Yes Canvas board recommended. I’ll bring some ready to use for $4.00 each.

· Kinwashi Rice paper to paint. This is about $2.50. You can buy from me at class. Option: white coffee filters

· Other random papers: sheet music, wrapping paper, pretty postage stamps, even some magazine and newspapers with interesting print or designs. Some people shop garage sales and pick up old children’s books to use the colorful illustrations to tear up!!!

· A large black plastic trash bag to cover the table* this is important for painting the rice paper!

· If you would like to paint along with me, I will have an outline to trace.

So the class is an extra $6.50.

You will have to buy the gloss gel yourself. Cheap Joe has it for 8 oz for 7.55. Probably 3 people could go together with that much! (p. 72. Liquitex Gloss Gel WL5708) Michaels might carry this. (LAA members $20 + $6.50 and Guests: $25 + $6.50 for board and rice paper.)

Many people like to work with the board tilted up. If you have a small table easel bring it along.

Ginny Stiles email: ginny.stiles@gmail.com

The People's Choice Art Show

Finally got everything ready for the People's Choice Art show sponsored by the Lakeland Art League of Woodruff and Minocqua, WI.

If you are in the area...the show is open Saturday and Sunday. Sat 9-4 and Sunday 11-4. It is held in Arbor Vitae in the town community center right across from Fireman's Park on Hwy 70. Vote for me! Hahahaha.

My dear husband does the drilling on the frames so I can get the wire on.

I have two acrylics, two watercolors (one on canvas) and one mixed media. Voting is by category and perhaps a best of show, I can't remember. There are ribbons as well.

I will take them up at 4 pm this afternoon along with two plates of chewy fudge brownies for the punch table. This is, I think, the last show of the summer season here for me.

"Autumn Forest" Nearing Completion

I've had a few good suggestions and a few ideas of my own on some improvements. (scroll back one post)

I didn't like the sameness of the two brown trees and so that one became larger and longer and developed a branch that went off to the side. One of the colored trees got a bit larger. And I covered the bit of light colored leaves on the forest floor as sticking out and not adding to the composition. Acrylic is nice for making changes, isn't it?

I like how the rocks repeat the colors in the sky and the background in the painting.

You'll notice I haven't signed it yet. Still musing.

The acorns are falling now in the north woods and today the temp never got above 65 and sunny and windy. A very autumn like feel to the air!!! So I felt inspired to work on this.

I missed my en plein air group this morning due to company coming up from Pewaukee for lunch. Hopefully in a few weeks I can join them again.

Reworking an old painting...

This is a 16 x 20 acrylic on canvas I started last summer and ran out of time. Some of you might remember it. It is somewhere in my archive from last summer.

It already looks quite different than when I left it. But I need help working out the foreground...a common problem for me. I am thinking of extending the tree on the right down off the bottom of the painting. I could add some small pines or some rocks or something. What do you think?

I am a little concerned about the 3 red trees which I think are all too much the same size. I may enlarge one. Which one? I am thinking off to the left rather than dead center.

Does anyone have other suggestions?

Coffee Filters Anyone?

I am going to "mentor" a workshop on paper painting (ala Elizabeth Nelson style) on September 15. This is somewhat presumptuous being a complete newbie myself...but it's fun and you learn a lot when you try out stuff and then teach it to others!

I thought I'd shamelessly plagiarize Elizabeth's famous cow painting as subject matter that is not too difficult to draw.

I want to make the paper we paint on for the project as economical as possible for a short workshop I am trying out the possibility of using coffee filters as the painted paper. They seem to take the acrylic paint very much like the more expensive rice papers...not quite as nice a texture and of course being so small a little fussier to work with. I laid them down in an enameled pan (or an acrylic sheet) and painted at least 4 at time and then put them out on the clothes line.

So now I have the paper ready and I need to move on. More later.

Rainy Day ATCs

I've promised to do an "Intro to ATCs" when I get back to Hawthorne Park in Florida (November 19). Even though that sounds ages away...I know better. Time gets so full.

So while I have a rainy day in the north woods I am browsing among my notes about ATCs and books about them and trying some different ways of doing them.

You will see some Christmas ones in there because I think by Nov 19, people will actually be planning for the holidays and will be thinking of doing some with that theme. Luckily have have found some Christmas books and magazines at garage sales to inspire me and to give me some collage materials.

One thing I have not done and wish I knew how to do is to make "transfers" where you can "lift" images off of magazines and then position and re-glue them to collages and acrylics. If anyone know a good online source for information about that, let me know. I believe that you coat the image with something. There was a workshop that Dianna Barringer did a few years ago in Mt. Dora, FL and I wanted so much to go. Somewhere I read that you can use Crayola products to do this too. Hmmm? I am even sure I am using the correct word when I say "transfer". But I'll bet some of you know what I mean.

As I look these over and think which of these would I want to "trade" for? I think the hand painted watercolors, pens, acrylics are more desirable than collage. But then, perhaps a more combined method would be best...some hand painted, some collage. For instance I like the little wheel barrow watercolor better than a cut out Santa from a magazine..although he is colorful and fun placed on a piece of old map!

Now...how to display traded ones? I am thinking of an altered journal for that maybe? I do know that when people trade them, they put information on the back. Somehow that info would need to be transferred off and into the journal before you would consider glueing an ATC down into a book. But it would be nice to be able to turn the pages and see the images. I know some people use those plastic baseball card folders because then you can see the backs. But that seems so boring. I could group and frame them...but frankly I have so much art framed I do not have room for anything else on the wall! I think you want to get up close and personal with these little things too.

Summer in the North Woods

Watercolor and gouache.

11 x 15" Arches hotpress paper.

I worked from a photo on this one and had no color reference...well I did somewhere but I didn't know where it was. It was a quick "sketchy" little thing...once a preliminary drawing of the wheelbarrow was done...probably two hours to paint. I like the contrast of a few transparent washes against the gouache.

Mid summer here is like late summer elsewhere. Our season is SO short. Summer is pretty much July. That's it.

The golden grasses make it look a little later in the summer than it actually is right now. but somehow the color seemed right. We have way too much GREEN around here sometimes. I needed a break from it. I took the reference photo last summer while we at a garage sale. I liked the use of old wheelbarrow. Like watering cans and rustic pots, wheelbarrows are sort of icons of the garden.

Sold!

I think it the ultimate "pat on the back" when you sell a painting at a show to no one you know or are related to! :-)

I really liked this painting...it was kind of hard to see it go. But having said that, I did do a watercolor of the same subject matter before I did this gouache one. So I do have another one in a slightly different medium and palette.

I want to thank Karen Kappell for giving me the courage to play around with watercolor and gouache which I have found very satisfactory.

As an addendum to the sock monkey story I posted yesterday. I had an email from someone who follows my blog (she's a friend of a friend but I've never met her) who wrote to tell me that her father in law bought that sock company in Rockford, IL from the original owners!!! I LOVE that stuff! Serendipity. One thing leads to another. So much fun. Thanks for writing Mary Gayle!!!

Paper Painting Demo at Art Show

Here I am today in Manitowish Waters doing a Paper Painting Demo from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 pm. I am finishing up the "Sock Monkey" painting. My "Bucket of Sunshine" flowers if at the right.

I had several others there for people to see. I had my business cards and flyers for the class I am teaching in September. Mornings are not as heavily attended at afternoons and evenings. But I had a lot of interesting folks stop by to visit.

One lady informed me that Rockford, Illinois gave sock monkeys their birth. And I discovered she is absolutely right!

John Nelson, a Swedish immigrant to the United States, patented the sock-knitting machine in 1869, and began manufacturing work socks in Rockford, Illinois in 1890. The iconic sock monkeys made from red-heeled socks emerged at the earliest in 1932, the year the Nelson Knitting Company added the trademarked red heel to its product. In the early years, the red-heeled sock was marketed as "De-Tec-Tip". Nelson Knitting was an innovator in the mass market work sock field, creating a loom that enabled socks to be manufactured without seams in the heel. These seamless work socks were so popular that the market was soon flooded with imitators, and socks of this type were known under the generic term "Rockfords". Nelson Knitting added the red heel "de-tec-tip" to assure its customers that they were buying "original Rockfords". This red heel gave the monkeys their distinctive mouth. During the Great Depression, American mothers first made sock monkeys out of worn-out Rockford Red Heel Socks. (from Wikipedia)

Manitowish Waters Wisconsin Art League Show

What a lovely show!

The reception was this evening and it was catered with delightful food and drink and a harpist!

The art was very lovely and I'll post a few of my favorites in the days to come.

There was a lovely crowd!

This is the kick off for a 4 day event.

I'll be doing my demo there on Friday.

Quick sketch

I did a quick 30 minute watercolor sketch in my moleskin while the grandkids were all out tubing yesterday afternoon about 4:30 pm.

This morning it is DARK and thunder is rumbling north of us...sure smells like a big storm coming in. The grandkids are watching a movie while I make up the lasagna for dinner tonight.

Greg and I are headed off to the artist's reception for the Manitowish Water's show this evening. I hear from my artist friend, Barb Schneider, that this is a very posh event with live music and hot and cold appetizers and drawings for a raffle and the sponsors are all invited. I am impressed!!!! Should be fun!

Fun in Prepping for Altered Journals

On Friday we went to the garage sales. Always a delight of sounds, textures, and a mish-mosh of thoughts, plans, and ideas. WHAT will I discover that I can wear, read, watch, listen to or make into something? It never fails that I find SOMETHING.

This Friday all 5 of our grandsons (8-14) went with us plus my husband and daughter from Madison, Wisconsin. What an excursion!

Besides a LOVELY blue sweater and a fantastic 16 x 20 frame with re-useable canvas I found some old hard-page children's books. Right away I thought of that book (a few blogs ago) called Collaborative Art Journals. A fast and furious way to start one is to gesso or otherwise change the pages in these books to make them your own. No worry about binding or making your own paper or anything. 25 cents! It's worth a try!

I started by using Cheap Joe's Black Gesso and just covering the pages...it dries to a mat finish. Then for a few pages I tried some sort of "abstract" changes to the background that might be fun as a background. The first one at the top is wet black gesso and I laid 3 cotton strings over the wet pages, closed the pages and drew the string out one at a time. This revealed some of the bright color below the gesso. I also dropped a few drops of alcohol onto the book pages to make the circles.

Then I tried adding color over dry gesso with liquid acrylic paint (yellow) and then closing the pages to make identical opposing imprints. The tiny "vein like" texture was so much fun and a surprise.

The gesso takes longer to "cure" than I expected and so I am just doing a few pages at a time and letting them air dry over night or even for a few days. I am thinking I'd like a theme for the book...that's a traditional way to start. I might devote one page to each grandchild putting photos and collaged items on that remind me of that child. Another might be "impressions" of our north woods cabin...a "cabin journal". So much fun to think about.

Peaceful Afternoon on Lake Tippecanoe

A one hour sketch watercolor on canvas done yesterday. The grandsons were out tubing with grampy. My daughter, Julie, and I were doing a little sketching.

The little "deck" with garage sale umbrella has turned out to be a pleasant spot for reading, napping, and general quiet time. A favorite spot of Julie's for sure.

Hope to do some watercolor (on paper) yet maybe later this afternoon although we may decide to do some arts and crafts with the younger boys while the oldest watches the World Cup Soccer match this afternoon. Field trip to the Native American Village nearby tomorrow (Ojibwa tribe).

Congratulations Wisconsin!

As of July 5, the state of Wisconsin is now smoke free in all public places!

My family (including 4 of the grandsons) attended a big party in celebration of this event!!!

Since one of my daughters worked on the task force to get this legislation passed we were more emotionally involved than some people!

We drove to Rhinelander in a huge rain storm Monday to join others in this big party. What a wonderful accomplishment and congratulations to all who worked so hard to get this passed. (Florida where we winter has been smoke free for a long time!) So this is just GREAT.