Weekend sketching

We had a wedding to attend this last weekend and I like to make cards to go along with my hand-made gift.  So I started with a watercolour on some cardstock, inspired by these watercolours that I had painted last year.  And then I just kept making a few more, playing with different colours and shapes.  Sometimes it's nice to work on something small, working through a simple concept to see where it goes.  Plus it's nice to have a few cards ready to go when the occasion arises.

Happy first of March!

Wow.  March already.  For some reason the shortness of February always seems to take me by surprise, and the month is over when it felt as though it just began.

Here's a little glimpse of one of the newer smaller abstract paintings that I worked on in January.  Sometimes it's hard to see connections between my architectural paintings and my ceramics.  This summer I had started on some small paintings with ideas that I then left it until January to work on again.  Something about the act of paintings re-surfaces in my clay work and vice-versa.  I find both practices integral to the way I work, and while the ideas out of paintings that come into my ceramics (or the other way around) can tend to take some time to be worked out, more often then not, the ideas are much more realized when they do.  I'm so much more inspired by the act of translating an idea, a shape, or colours in both mediums, even if one of the mediums doesn't turn out to be as successful as the other. 

On a totally different subject, I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my old ceramics instructor Joan Bruneau has a post on the Ceramic Arts Daily Blog, all about throwing/cutting & pasting.  I saw Joan last year at the Clay Symposium here in Vancouver where she re-inspired me to consider creating 'dynamic forms', and to re-consider form by creating little sketches or small pots to rework, cut and paste as possible examples for creating larger and more interesting forms.  Both posts are worth the read!

Curious Cranes

 For some reason I keep finding myself wanting to take photos of cranes of all kinds.  I even go out of my way to walk over the bridge to take photos of them. Not just any crane, one with the room on top.  Or what looks like a room.  Would they need to sleep in there?  Is it cozy with a bed and a table that might get used during break time?  Is it extra office space or does a whole crew work inside one of these while they build ships or move train bridges around?  Curious. 
I'm currently doing a  painting of the last image- couldn't help myself.  Every time I drove over the bridge and caught a glimpse of it I wanted to paint it. I really loved the curved side and the elevator thing.  Hopefully it will be ready in time for the Eastside Culture Crawl at the end of the month...

Birch

Another watercolour in the works inspired by my time away...

Watercolour Wildlife

As you may have noticed, I've been away for the past 5 days in Princeton BC (about 3.5 hours away from Vancouver) at a resort camp that we attend every June for a staff conference for Dean's work.  The climate in the interior of BC is really different than that of Vancouver-  I live in a mild and temperate rainforest climate, while Princeton is much dryer with much more extremes in climate- ie. cold in winter and hot and dry in summer.  There are so many birds and wildlife that we got to see while we were there; besides all the sparrows, birds, and eagles, we spotted (and photographed) a baby fawn close up, lots of deer, a marmot, and a little striped chipmunk.  Someone in our group even saw a 'cinnamon' coloured bear right by where we were hiking that day- yikes!
All the wildlife and of course the patches of birch and aspen trees were pretty inspiring, so, when it got cold and a little wet about the 4th day in, I spent some time indoors with Sasha (he's got such a cute and goofy smile on his face) doing some watercolour painting together. Here's a couple of bird paintings I managed to finish. Hopefully I'll have time to finish a few more that I started so I can share them with you here. To see more work from this little mini-watercolour series see here.

Clearly Seen

 

There's an opening for an art show tonight that my good friend and painters Fiona Ackerman, and  Zoe Pawlak are putting on at On The Rise Artist Collective titled 'Clearly Seen'.  It's a show combining both abstract paintings from both artists and a couple of figurative ones by Zoe.  It looks like it's going to be a really exciting show, with both artists collaborating on a painting- live on the side walk outside the gallery over the week!  They will be having a silent auction for this painting with proceeds going to Haiti relief efforts! I'm hoping I can make it- the opening is from 5pm-9pm at 2231 S. Granville St. in Vancouver.

a bit 'o press

When I first sat down to write down my 'business' plan a couple of years ago, I thought a lot about laying the ground-work for marketing what I do. As much as I knew my work might change and evolve, my strategy, more or less, was to make my work look great! So I hired a fantastic graphic designer and photographer, and we created a backdrop for how to introduce my work to the world, so to speak. The thing I hadn't thought of in my 'marketing plan' was promotion. I kind of assumed that if everything looked good and I did my thing to the best of my ability, that the promotion would just arrive on my doorstep, so to speak. Well, this is sometimes the case, and other times, I realize that I need to put in more thought and effort for this to happen. I've been slowly working on this, but today, promotion has landed on my lap and I'm excited to pass it along!

Someone out there in blog-land (her blog has amazing baked stuff, check it out here ) was kind enough to send me a link to another blog that has featured my work called Serendipity and Spark. Thank you to Carolyn for the great plug! I also checked out her blog where she has some great other finds! Nice.
The Federation of Canadian Painters have a painting contest called Painting On The Edge and they want to use my painting to promote it internationally! Last year I was one of 40 artists chosen out of 700 world-wide for their exhibition here in Vancouver, and while I didn't win $2500 (still a bit bitter about that loss), I seem to have 'won' their favour in the promotions departement! Very Nice!

a snapshot of what is to come!

Here's a snapshot of what will be available at the Crawl this weekend at my painting studio: 1000 Parker street, Room 350- around the very back corner of the building! Swing by and have a look- Friday night 5-10, Saturday 11-6 and Sunday 11-6! It's going to be a great Crawl this year- the studio is humming with artists getting their studios ready for people to check out their work! Hope to see you there!

Workshopping...

This past weekend I taught a painting workshop up at RockRidge Canyon's Women's Camp in Princeton, BC! I had a great time getting to know women of all ages from all over western Canada, and was able to coach 26 through a painting from start to finish. For some people, approaching a white canvas can be somewhat intimidating. I was pretty impressed with this crowd, who really took on the challenge even though some hadn't painted since they were teens! Our inspiration came from a variety of places, but the main one were my own photographs which I printed off to be a similar size to their canvas paper. Having a lot of different brush sizes and a variety of acrylic paints and mediums helped people move through the different stages of their painting. A little coaching and encouragement and knowing that everything can get painted over if you don't like it, calmed even the most intense perfectionist!
PS I also made them wear really attractive clear bags to keep their cloths clean- they were pretty good sports considering...