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Hooray for Hellebores

3/31/2015

I've come full circle in my art journey of 2015! It began with a 30 day challenge to get me back into painting again, which worked wonderfully! Then I discovered a new teacher that I went nuts over and tried for 3 months to learn how to paint like her. Watched her 4 DVDs - some of them 3 and 4 times. I submitted artwork for critiques and will be painting the same painting 3 times now. What it has done for me is reinforce all the wonderful education I've had in the past 15 years with some incredible teachers. I've gone round and round and have finally come to the point where I have the best of the best of their total techniques and can finally paint by myself - if that makes any sense! I really like painting on the new Arches 140 lb hot press paper - good thing as I bought a huge roll of it! And I really like the Schmincke watercolor paints and the choice of colors in my new pallet. I've also learned that I need to take better photographs to paint from - if the light is not good in the photo, I can't do magic on the painting! And to choose more meaningful subjects.

I love Hellebores - this is the first of a set of 4 I am working on. It's a different background for me - what do you think???

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2nd Critique by Susan Harrison-Tustain

3/29/2015

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Oh my - didn't expect such a learning curve and feel like I am back at square one learning to paint for the first time. Frustrating and enlightening at the same time.

andrea_burke_critique_2_29th_march_2015.pdf
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Do you want some crackers with that whine?

3/25/2015

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I feel like all I've been doing is whining. I've been so excited to learn new techniques and achieve better results and feel like I'm taking one step forward and two step backwards. Sorry!!! I remember an old saying where if you assign a numeric value to each of the letters of the alphabet and apply them to the word "attitude", it equals 100%! :-)

This is the first critique I received from Susan Harrison-Tustain for my painting "I Will Always Be With You, Dear". I do not believe I could "erase" all the lines deeply embedded in the painting, so I am working very hard on second painting from the same photograph. It should be ready to submit for second critique sometime this coming weekend.

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A much better week....

3/24/2015

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Again with 6 paintings at a time, and as long as it is taking to do all these layers and letting them completely dry, it may be better to paint by the dozen! Ha!!

I'm still trying to find better backgrounds for flowers. I don't mind the pain staking efforts to get good subjects, but to do the same on a background is more than my patience will allow!

I have 2 completed in the set of 6 - and done my old ways just to fill my need for speed! The 3 paintings of the Hellebore's backgrounds are coming along nicely. I'm still working on the hands painting to submit to Susan for a second critique. Some things are coming out much better, some not so much. Ah, the learning curve. Perhaps you can't teach an old dog new tricks! :-)

We did a white flower in Lynn Ferris's class quite some time ago, using masking to protect the whites and then randomly painting yellow, pink and blue - and sneaking in with grey to finalize the flowers. I tried it with a photo that probably wasn't a good reference for this, but it was fun anyway. Still working on backgrounds - please let me know if there are any that you like in the last couple of flower paintings, and the Hellebores to come!

I'm still playing with lake paintings - we have such awesome sunrises and sunsets, I would really like to get good at these. Sterling Edwards advised to work with yellow/pink/purple/blue so they don't bleed into each other and create grey.

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All that glitters...

3/17/2015

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is not gold, or so they say! Who is "they" anyway?? :-)

I set off to do a set of 6 paintings...on two I ruined the skies on the sunsets - important part of sunset paintings.... on two I got carried away with sanding watercolor pencils onto my Hellebore paintings - both of them, mind you....and they were not keepers. I was able to "save" two of the paintings. I like the "Sandmen of Lakefest" - it took them 3 solid days to create the beautiful sand sculpture and they worked so diligently. Nice guys, too. I like this photo I did the painting from because they were both really concentrating, but in retrospect, the lighting was not good as they were working under a tent! On the final painting, I like the funky background - flowers could use more depth, but I am done for now!

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Harvest Festival in South Boston

3/1/2015

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Those of us living in small towns LOVE to see the streets filled with people! The Harvest Festival in South Boston was wonderful, and I look forward to their next one. Tremendous crowd and the vendors were terrific! 3 bands going - very impressive!!!

This is #13 of paintings ready for the show at The Prizery. 37 more to go by end of October - whee!

Today starts a new beginning with my art adventures - new paper and new paint in hand and ready to get serious about learning Susan Harrison-Tustain's methods! It's a much slower process, but I think that by the nature of working small areas at a time I will make far less mistakes. I love masking the foreground so I can easily slop on the background - but tape and masking fluid do leak - sometimes they even destroy the paper by lifting off the top layers - and if I wasn't real careful with the process, I'd have yucky edges I need to lift either with stiff brush or handy dandy Mr. Clean Magic Erasers! With Susan's methods, you carefully wet the background and slowly drop in paint - right up to the foreground. I can do this! :-)

Anyway, here is my most recent painting with my old wicked ways:

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Hooray for Hellebores

2nd Critique by Susan Harrison-Tustain

Do you want some crackers with that whine?

A much better week....

All that glitters...

Harvest Festival in South Boston

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