Kay Smith Workshop

Our Splash group of artists here in the Tyler area is having Kay Smith from Big Spring in for a 2 day workshop this Friday and Saturday. We have 18 or 20 ladies attending so we'll have a full house. We are all very excited as Kay's work is so colorful and fresh...and freshness is so illusive for so many of us who work in watercolor. Just don't know when to put that brush down as there is always another fiddle to do here and there and then it's overworked. I hope she won't slap my hand very hard as I'm going to try really hard to be good.

Kay, Debbie Cannatella (from Corpus), and Vernita Hoyt Bridges (from Houston) are all staying with me at my house and we are very excited to have a 3 day slumber party going on in addition to Kay's workshop. I'm thinking that we'll all be pretty tired when it's over. We are all on the Artcolony blog and don't get to see each other very much so this will be lots of fun. They are all coming in tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening we're going out to the ArtRetreat for a little "meet and greet" for Kay. I'm hoping to post our progress and adventures each day so stay tuned.

Baby Chickies

Artists do have other things going on in their lives, and since I live on a farm in the country, I reaaaalllllyy have "other things" going on. My hubby doesn't think I need any more chickens, but I fell underneath the wheels of temptation this morning when I went to the farm store for feed. Got 12 day-old chickies! This is my spring gift to myself (I don't have to have much of a reason to do these silly things!). Anyway, there are 6 Buff Orphingtons (pullets) and 6 bantams (don't know whether they're boys are girls yet). I house them in an empty horse watering tub for about 6 weeks before putting them into a larger enclosure and from there they go in with all the grown chickens. Of course, being day old, they've got their own heat lamp, water and chick starter food. Guess you know by now that they'll all get names and they'll all turn into pets...as usual. I know...I know...I'm bad, but just couldn't resist.

Old Roses

Here is the finished (I think) painting of Old Roses. I enjoy doing these rather vague backgrounds because I can always go back in and change them...drop in more colors from the subjects or darken the whole thing for a really dramatic look. This may be a milestone for me in posting a finished painting right after a WIP. Yea!

Old Roses WIP

Well, here's another WIP I started today with my wonderful art retreat friends in Bullard. One of our artist friends, Debbie Cannatella, (who has recently moved to Corpus) was in town for a workshop and decided to paint with us today before going on to Baton Rouge. She had produced some wonderful paintings in the Mr "Z" (can't spell his name...from Australia)workshop and we enjoyed seeing them up close and personal.

This painting still has lots of work to be done, but do feel pretty good about what I have done to this point. Especially so since I'm working off a black/white value photo. It's much lighter than my usual "in your face" stuff (at least the light pink one anyway), and there's more adding of the stems, leaves and background...and then going back in for needed "fixes", but so far..so good. It's is half sheet and I've only used 3 colors so far...DS perm rose, AJ aliz crimson, and AJ new gamboge. Debbie gave me a tiny blop of Perylene Red and I did use it on one petal, but it was really ugly so I've covered it up. It's more of a grape color than a rose color and I really knew better than to use it...but...it's only paper as I've said before. I'll be out of town for the weekend, but look forward to finishing it Monday and I'll post it then.

Cutie Oranges

Thought I'd post an almost finished little painting that we're doing on my Painting Friends Blog. One of the artists drew the oranges, painted them and posted a "how to" demo for 4 or 5 steps along with the colors she used. The oranges were predominately quin coral and it almost "ate my lunch". Really had trouble with the brightness and I guess I just used too much. The base wash was of new gamboge and that made the oranges even brighter I guess. Anyway, I had to resort to going back with quin burnt orange to tone it down...and it's still pretty bright. I still need to go back in and define the slices a bit more. The demo used masking for the slice veins and I was too lazy to use it so this could be a whole lot better with masking and more layering. May paint it again and reposition the oranges and peelings just for fun as it is small (8x10) and was a good quick exercise.