Art Date With My Kids

Today I went to The BDAC (Bountiful Davis Art Museum) to see the annual Statewide Art Competition.  Saw some wonderful things, including paintings by two new friends of mine from Diane Turner's art class; Andrejs (still life) and Brent (two trees).  Lovely. 

I now teach an art class!

In October 2013 I took on my first art student, Marion.  She started with me as a beginner and has done such a great job! She loves Italy and so she chose to paint an Italian window.  So proud if her!!

Since the beginning of 2014 I have started teaching three more students, with more planning to begin in the near future.  It has been such a delight to share what I know and to see them do amazing work!

This is Marion's second painting.

This is Hugo's first painting.  Love how well he captured the perspective of the room full of Rothko paintings.  Good job, Hugo!

Cathy drew the truck first and is blocking in the base colors and shapes on her first painting, and is doing a fantastic job!

Stacy chose to paint two pairs.  I love how she mixed such rich colors in the background.

Miner's Club (Park City, UT)

This painting was an experiment; my first time attempt to do a "plein aire" painting. It was pleasant outside yet, breezy.  It took two hours to get the basic sketch. I finished the painting in studio with a photo reference.  I learned that I have to be a lot quicker to do a painting outside. Diane Turner is a landscape artist. She can complete a painting in one and a half to two hours. I took a landscape oil painting class from her in February and was able to finish this piece of art. Diane was a student of LeConte Stewart; a famous Utah artist in the Impressionist style.

My sweet 10 year old, Anne Marie, just said to me, "This is a very amazing painting and I really like it."  I'm so lucky to have a girl like that.

Things I learned in this painting:

-when painting the mountains, take your finger and smudge the line up into the sky color in places.

-less yellows and oranges the farther objects appear in the painting.  The farther they get, the cooler the colors get and the softer the details are.

-on the road leading back to the club Diane suggested that I add a darker line-dot-dot-dot, etc. just between the grass   and road to give it a nice effect.  I like how it turned out.

-she also suggested I define the trunk in the foreground.  I like how it turned out.

-I learned that I can rent frames from the Appleframe  Gallery at the cost of 10% of retail when I want to take a painting to put in an art show.  

-let the mother color (the color used to paint the initial scetch.  In this case orange) show through at times.  If you check you can see it come through in the clouds even.  Fun.