Tone, values and color

Table Top,  12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

Had the pleasure of taking a workshop with Qiang Huang in AnnArbor Michigan.  It was a great learning experience, and would recommend his work shop to anyone interested learning more about oil painting.

Qiang Huang spends the first part of the day demonstrating and explaining his process, then we spent the rest of the painting.  This is the first step the line and placement on the canvas, from our own set ups.

The next stage is value and modeling out our paintings.  Flowers by color and detail.

Each day a new painting was completed.

Orange Reflection,  14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas

Working from tones to color give such a rich depth to a painting,  something I plan to practice much more in the coming days.

Mary

Schiros Art

Fruit Tree Blossoms

8 x 10 inches, oil on linen panel

 My fruit trees are full of flowers, and looking great.  Decided to trim a few low branches, and just could not let those blooms got to waste.  Today's painting is from one of my pears trees.  Just wanted to share some Michigan Spring time with you.

Mary
Schiros-art.com

Spilled Paint

Ever open a tube of paint, only to have about half the tube come squirting out.  Well,  I have, just a couple weeks ago, Old Holland cad. orange.  But I did not let it go to waste....

Pale Ride, Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 16 inches.  the orange adds a warm glow to this painting.

This is one of the finished paintings from that accident.  After the paint plopped out on to my palette and hands, I grabbed several blank canvases and starting priming them with the orange.  Mixing a little clear gesso with acrylic makes a fine base to paint over with either acrylic or oil paint.

2 of 6 canvas that got primed with the orange acrylic and gesso.

WIP

Some I added more color and some modeling paste and really had fun.
Just because the canvas starts out very orange, often the painting only shows a bit of that orange.

16 x 20 inches

While other paintings I let the orange show in all it's glory :)

16 x 8 inches oil Middle of the Pine

16 x 8 inches Right of the Middle

16 x 8 inches Left of the Middle

So to make a long story short.....never waste your paint :)

Mary
Schiros-art

Art Learning from Others

Oil 14 x 11 inches Fall Study 1

A Simple post today, with a quote from Tad Spurgeon:

       "A painting is fundamentally a dynamic composition of monochrome values executed in color. If the composition doesn't work in monochrome, the addition of color, however sublime or inspired, will not solve it."

Think that simple line says volumes.  Just something to think about.

Mary
Schirosart.com

Good news

Pastel Wave, acrylic on gallery wrap canvas

Just had to share some good news.  I got a painting accepted into the online show for the International  Society of Acrylic Painters!  The painting did not get an award but hey it got in and I am happy.

I have entered contests and shows for major groups before, and nothing came of it.  This year I thought I am finished with that, but changed my mind and gave it one more try.  I guess persistence
 pays off sometimes.

Mary
SchirosArtist

Using a canvas pad

12 x 16 inches oil

    A way to save space and money, if you paint a lot, is to use unstretched canvas.  Canvas pads are a handy surface to work on.  Fredrix  is my favorite brand, it has a nice texture and can be stretched over wood stretcher bars very easily.  Utrecht is also a very good brand,  has a texture truer to canvas but is a bit more stretchy than Fredrix.
    If you do not plan to stretch the canvas, another surface I like is Canson Canva-paper this one is good for applying to a wood panel, the surface is slightly more absorbent than regular canvas.  For large paintings, canvas roles are great.

   What I like about the pads is you can paint a ton of paintings and not have to fill every corner of your home with paintings.  I have a simple way to let these oil paintings dry without filling up the studio, I pin them to a cork board with tacks till they are dry enough to decide what I want to do with them.

Seven paintings drying!

   Also, I can easily work on more than one painting at the same time, by taping the canvas to a board.

   In this case I worked on two ideas for the same painting, at the same time, comparing them side by side.
    Also, these can be cropped to a different size.  One of these may end up a smaller version, ( I have not decided yet, but it is an option).

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Just thought I would share some more tips with you, hope you enjoyed them.
Mary
Schiros-art