Silver Brush Art Show

This has been a house of near-silence.

This has been a house of rather intense focus.

This has been a house with little social networking.

This has been a house that is NOW

Ready to Go For It !

Silver Brush Art Show this weekend.

November 13 and 14, 2015

Details below.

If you are in the area please stop by. 

If not, the new paintings are up on my website.

Sharing a few here.

Seems like I had a lot of ideas, sketches, photo references 

to pull from. As a result I ended up with a

mixture of styles, colors, surfaces: from encaustic

to oil to acrylic to mixed media grabbing anything near my easel.

Some times I wonder just how many tubes of paint I go through????

This is the Biggie 36x36 !

This one is wee, 6x6, inches that is.

Encaustic and Mixed Media...loads of fun!

Lots of flowers in this show...roses and sunflowers.

Enjoyed doing five mixed media paintings of women in various stages of contemplation.Would love to see you at the show..fabulous paintings, jewelry, clay work and photography. A portion of proceeds benefit Blessed Assurance, a local day care facility for adults.  A gift of giving.

Have a beautiful month filled with Thanksgiving.  May your blessings be bountiful. 

Thank you for the support and friendship you have given to me over the many years of painting, art shows, blogging, IG and a tiny bit of FB.

Silver Brush Show, November 13, 5:30-9:30 refreshmentsNovember 14, 9:30-4:30
Weaver, Bennett and Bland
196 North Trade Street
Downtown Matthews, NC

Rainbows of Color: a peek at a Sketchbook

Rainbow Travels: is my smallest sketchbook for traveling. 

This particular sketchbook I adhered checkered cotton fabric with gel medium to the top of the book. Separately I troweled plaster on top of rough canvas and got this really cool texture. After drying, I adhered with more gel medium, weighed down with books and let thoroughly dry. Fun part was painting a very simple design with diluted acrylic, followed by micro pen lines. Varnish completed the process.    The plaster renders the colors very intense.  Watercolor, gouache, acrylic or oil may be used.

When I get new watercolors I make small cards with the color/brand and name.  It can be very helpful when you have way too many tubes of watercolor, let alone "pan sets." 

I particularly enjoy Daniel Smith and some Winsor Newton colors.

Micron pen and very thinned watercolor. Sometimes I use the pen after the watercolor is in place and other times, before.  If you use gouache it is better to do pen sketching AFTER applying gouache due to its opacity.

Provencal fabrics are enjoyed all over the world, and I have done my share of "collecting" them.

They are a beautiful inspiration for an artist: design, color, pattern....everything to make one's heart go "ping."  

Tea in the Afternoon
Oil 16/2Tea in the Afternoon

Sketching is loads of fun especially working in a smaller format. But painting in oil is the "best-est" for me.

In 1990, I was "over the moon" to discover:

Sara Midda's South of France------A Sketchbook.

I can't imagine that half the sketching world 
isn't aware of this fabulously inspiring sketchbook.   
It is still available, along with other books she has more recently published.  
This week I am totally engaged with the idea of doing some 
"Sara-inspired" sketches.....soft soft colors, no drawn lines and tiny perfect handwriting. Not drawing with a micron pen will definitely be a challenge...but that is what art is all about 
 Personal Challenges.

"Oh Glorious"

It all started with the purchase of a bouquet of sunflowers.

I knew if anything was going to entice me to paint again after a long absence, it would be the GLORIOUS Sunflower!

I prepped a 24 x 24 canvas with watered down magenta and yellow-medium acrylic. A paper towel took off the excess paint.

The first marks were with willow charcoal which I find pretty messy, so I switched to diluted turquoise paint for redefinition.

It isn't unusual for me to start a painting with acrylic, setting in composition and some basic color.  Artist grade acrylics are fabulous and have wonderful color properties...and I can quickly change my mind as there is little drying time.

Pretty messy at this point, and time to re-correct drawing and

begin laying in thinned oil in corresponding colors.

I paint with large flats and occasional filberts/synthetic. Working the thick, viscous paint is sheer pleasure.

You will note the paint is "sliced" through, that is thanks to a credit card, palette knife, or small piece of hard rubber dicing up the paint, creating a softened effect.  

Now I should have left this painting about here, just finishing up the vase....but I left the painting for a week or two...then couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do...meanwhile my Bell glass jar with water and flowers had ceased to be and I had no photo as reference.

Oops didn't realize how blurry this photo was, sorry, it isn't your eyes.  Anyway, I did an about face in all directions: gone-- water/vase, no soft side flowers, and clouds of swirling background. 

Eventually I became weary of this painting, sent a photo to Tam, my best critic ever, and expected to call it quits.

Uhhhhh, not quite the response expected.  Tam gave me some suggestions and I took it to heart.  She is pretty persuasive.

(By now I am not photographing my steps, as I was pretty much not enjoying the process like I had at the beginning.)

I think you would agree with me...this is far from my original design when I worked from life and ended up painting in the imaginary part of my brain.

From soft to stylized....

One thing I have learned: there are ever so many ways to paint a subject. None of which is correct or incorrect, but rather that you are pleased with the final result.  This painting, in particular the color has grown on me.

"Oh, Glorious" is happily framed and hanging in the RiverView Gallery.  410-939-6401

Anatomy of a Painting Part I

A short tutorial on a new painting.

20 x 20 cradle board....a new substrate for me, when working this large. I love it.  Before painting I apply several coats of gesso, or a gray primer paint.  Sand between coats for smoothness.  I left the sides "natural" and later whitewashed them.

Be sure to use blue tape to mask off the sides so that paint doesn't drip down.

OR

paint your scene all the way around the deep board.

Damask Sunflowers

 I bought a fading bouquet of flowers from the local grocery store. Of course they faded and died before I barely got started. So I took a photograph and then didn't use it !!!  So much for painting from "life."

 

This started out as a traditional painting, but the next day I didn't like it and scrubbed off all that I could. You can see bits and pieces of the original painting. One reason to love working on a wood surface is its resilience.

After priming the board, I rubbed in various colors of light to medium: turquoise, white, yellow, magenta..achieving a mottled appearance.

The bottom half was painted a medium yellow ochre.

Selecting a delicate floral/leaf stencil, randomly placed on the canvas, I used  a palette knife to push lavender or turquoise paint, thickened with heavy gel medium through the stencil.  Remove stencil carefully.  

These first steps were all done with acrylic full bodied paint to hasten the drying time.  

It is not unusual for me to start with acrylic, but do all large design work in oil.

I had a fabulous piece of tri-designed paper from Anthropologie, cut it into a vase shape and attached with gel medium.....you can see the original flowers I could not remove.

From here on I "winged it" and painted the flowers without photos, still life, etc.

The entire floral design, scrolls, detail work are painted with oil.  

I lightly painted over the collaged vase to blend it back into the painting.

Up close you can see the paper design and heavy stencilled background.

Although I am slow to wipe a painting off, it does happen. And in this case it led me to a knew way of looking at something.

You can see this painting on my website.  (It sold just before posting this blog! ) 

sharonfurner.com

I have one more piece to share with you...next posting.  There are many ways to approach a painting when the first idea is not the greatest....
Isn't that what LIFE is all about?

Capturing the figure

Capturing an image of a person is an illusive challenge for me.


Over many years I have worked at capturing the essence, the body posture of a person. 
I am not interested in rendering a person realistically...each hair, eyelash, lip in perfect formation.
Rather it is the essence, the persona, the posture of what is going on in front of me that I find intriguing. 
The following sketches are in various mediums, differing amount of time spent, some finished many not finished. Hopefully each image will set your mind at wondering who they are, what they are doing and can you feel some personality peeking through.

An exercise in capturing the body movement of a model. We studied her for a few minutes. Then she broke pose. We sketched (oil on paper). Then she returned and we had a few minutes to complete.

Working from a photograph, watching for values and the bare minimum of sketch. 
The idea is not to duplicate the photograph.
Oil on canvas.

Three distinct personalities, but all waiting.
Red wash over the canvas before painting.

Brown paper sketchbook. Very pale washes of watercolor
with fine pen sketching. Captures a moment....

Working  with multiple photographs taken in Cambodia, designs were sketched on watercolor paper. Each has collage paper from their country.  All express what I saw and felt without being specific.
Gouache on watercolor paper.
Most outlining done in thick gouache.


Sketching is fun and one can only get better with practice.
Time for me to spend a little more time with my sketches on paper.