Tag: Durham region art classes

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Sunny colors in spring landscape with barn

Spring landscape painting with barn

Why do I paint what I paint? Why this landscape? I have done commissions when somebody else orders the painting subject and colors. However, when I choose the subject, I look for something which feels like me, and I go for it. I pay no regard to all classic or whatever painting rules. Instead, I usually guide myself with what feels right and suitable to me. That includes deciding when the painting is done.

Country barn painting on studio wall
Spring landscape with barn

This particular painting was started last year, around this same time. I did the first layers and left it since other things came up and I had to deal with them. As I have mentioned before, I have quite a lot of paintings which are in their initial stages. I don’t push myself – if I don’t feel like completing some painting, I leave it alone.

Recently, I decided to add some layers and see what I could do with this landscape. It looks good and has lots of appeal in the final version. Each painting undergoes numerous transitions, from the first blocked in layers to final details. I regret that colors are both, more yellow and bluer, and the red tones are sort of missing on photo.

Spring landscape painting with barn, painting steps

I paint what’s around me and what I know well. That is would be – forests, parks, backyards, creeks, trees, plants, flowers and garden. These subjects are applied in different combinations from still life to landscape and everything in the middle. I am not close to large water, and I absolutely do not have any mountains here. However, nature provides me with endless inspiration, especially trees and plants.

Spring landscape with barn, black and white version
Black and white version of spring landscape on studio wall

Just like always, I love checking out how the black and white version of this landscape looks. I think it is quite impressive, with all values in correct places, and certainly, it’s possible to see the landscape, barn and daffodils clearly. One can tell it’s spring even without colors.

Barn landscape painting, smaller version
Barn, spring landscape painting on studio wall

The situation with art materials and paints is very tough here. I have run out of most good quality paints; there’s no white paint left. I just use what I have, but I will definitely need to get some new art supplies from somewhere soon. I dislike internet shopping a lot, and I always preferred to see in person what exactly I was buying. No such option here right now.

Spring landscape painting with barn

Enjoy my new spring barn landscape with white daffodils and weathered fence. It looks sunny on the wall, indeed. Also, this view takes us to a beautiful day when blooms are out and leaves are opening. Let’s hope we get into the nice spring weather sooner!

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Bright and passionate colors of poinsettia

Bright colors of red poinsettia painting

Bright colors for dark days

When days turn grey and light diminishes to almost none, we turn to warmth and strong colors which brighten up not only our walls, but also mood. I’ve always loved strong and clean colors. I want color sometimes to be the main statement. It is infrequently that color is all one will notice, but there’s so much more in a vibrant flower painting.

Red poinsettia colors
Colors of poinsettia

Poinsettia, favorite winter bloom

Poinsettias are not only my favorite for this dreary and dark period which includes end of November and almost all of December. I grow a few of them, and poinsettias survive quite well even the heat of July. My model plants are still alive. Some years they have more blooms, some – less.

Bright colors of red poinsettia
Red colors of poinsettia

Composition and flow of lines

I try to keep my lines flowing and, thus, recreate the flawless perfection of the natural plant. It is easy to draw poinsettias, not always that easy to capture the balance between the shape of leaves and petals and the vibrant color. Color transitions are soft, yet, difficult to photograph. It always surprises me how impossible it is to take photos of red on painting. In my opinion, red is the most difficult color to capture on a photo.

Bright colors of red poinsettia painting
Horizontal fragment of poinsettia

Recurrent theme

Poinsettias are one of flowers I have painted numerous times. Sometimes, that’s due to art classes since almost everybody would love to have such painting. Sometimes, when the poinsettia plant is around, I simply cannot resist painting it. The most recent painting is done with watercolor on Saunders-Waterford archival grade cotton paper. It isn’t my most favorite paper since it’s greyish and rather too absorbing, but I had started this painting a year ago, and so I just added to it and I assume it’s done.

Red poinsettia painting in watercolor, art for sale

Time to restart promotions

Or rather, it is too late already. I don’t take anything too close to my heart. Therefore, I get through bad times and through good times unscathed. Better or worse, but somehow. The main motivation for me is the personal challenge. That means, to envision something in my own way and see how I can put it on a blank sheet of paper or white canvas. I hope you noticed not only color, but also everything else which makes art – art. This poinsettia painting will be soon available as an art print also.

I hope the next post won’t take that long. Meanwhile, all the best to you and enjoy!

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Fall landscape, dazzling colors

Fall landscape, fall trees, acrylic painting

Fall landscape is especially attractive painting subject when days shrink and it gets pitch dark already around 5 pm. The added bonus is bright color palette and the options of mixing colors are endless.

I’ve been painting away, but since the daylight is sparse and ends soon, the hours I can work on a painting are short, too. If you have ever done acrylic or oil painting, you probably know how wet paint is reflected in artificial light. To the extent that it becomes impossible to paint.

If you favor walks in the nature and you are just like I am – always enjoying the play of colors in the sunlight or cloud shapes when it’s rainy and overcast, – you will probably like this painting with its vivid colors and the nature-related subject. The fall landscape is something I paint always around this time, but I am going to focus more on fragments of landscape in the future, unless it is a huge canvas.

Fall landscape
fall landscape
Left side and right side detail of fall colors and forest road

It took very many layers of paint and going over and over some areas because it’s no secret acrylic paint is more and more lacking quality and saturation with pigment.

Fall landscape is a great subject for reflecting our love to color. To facilitate brightness and strong tones, I let the painting dry every night and return to it when the daylight is acceptable. Therefore, the process extends over a few weeks, but I am fine with it now. It already received lots of great feedback. The size is again 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm. I started this painted for the class, but certainly, getting it done took many more hours.

Fall landscape
Fall landscape

My paintings are very color-sensitive. While the picture will show only what camera with automated settings can capture, the actual painting always has more of everything, but definitely great balance between dark and light, as well as cold and warm. These particular pictures are more on the warmer side. Just like always, I took many of them and chose to publish the ones which are the closest to the original.

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Fall art projects for art classes

Art projects for art classes

Art projects for art classes and paintings for a show: they are very different by nature, subject and size. Time is of essence since one can attend only that many art classes usually (I always hope they’d come back for more!) and an art class needs to be of certain length. After holding extremely many of them, I’ve stayed with roughly two academic hours or 1.5 hours. There is a reason for that. The attention span can stretch only that long, and to create something good, we absolutely need to be attentive, focused and alert.

Art projects barns
Art projects

For show art projects, I’d definitely choose a much larger canvas size, as well as maybe more tricky, more complex and more intriguing subject which my students who can be almost or practically beginners would not be able to paint. The painting process itself is not the same also: I work on the entire painting and not with a few colors or on a few areas. My attention goes to any spot which requires it and I obviously do not follow special steps, but rather my idea and its implementation. All attached images are 20 x 116 in or 51 x 41 cm in size.

Art projects
Art projects for fall classes

Over time, one learns how to apply paint automatically, how to clean brush automatically and very frequently, as well as how not to skip the messy stage of acrylic painting which can look quite horrible at times. Brushstroke is one of the most important parts of the painting process. When somebody starts out, they just don’t have it yet. If you still remember how you learned to write manually, you know that the hand cannot follow what the brain tells it to. The other sensitive issue is that if you have experience, you never start acrylic painting with the final color and layer. You build color, build your subject, all shapes and color transitions starting with dark and moving up. Our art projects allow practicing all of that.

Fall art projects for acrylic painting
Country barns, acrylic painting

To cheat the visual perception easier, as well as to have at least one good base layer on what to build the rest on, I do ask my students using pre-painted canvas only. Yet, still people are so afraid of dark colors that the pre-painted canvas is way too light. Without strong base, there is nothing much of a painting. We can all move paint around, even to the point when it becomes muddy brown-grey, but to get on that canvas some impression and some mood, takes much more than that.

Art projects for fall art classes
Art project with fall trees

Since everybody paints abstracts and there’s no clear understanding what’s a good abstract and what’s just a colored canvas, I stick to my personalized realism. It definitely allows implementing my own features and apply something which others do not. Therefore, my art projects include some of realistic features. While having texture layer on canvas attracts lots of attention let’s say at a show, it can look not good on photos because the high spots catch more light which doesn’t always correspond to light areas on the painting.

Art projects
Fall art projects

The attached images were initially painted between 10-5 years ago. The subject of these art projects is what we liked back then: barns, roads, fall colors, something not too complex, but bright and vivid. The current acrylic class deals with slightly more sophisticated acrylic art projects. We’ve just had one class by now and the start looks promising. The group is tiny as in COVID era, so no problem treating everyone very individually.  They are still very good paintings, the ones which took the first brushstroke long time ago, and I will hang them in the studio room where I can put art on the wall because I cannot do that everywhere. Well, I rent, and that comes with requirements.

Enjoy! What better time to immerse oneself in color than now?

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Landscapes which live in my memory

Spring painting, spring creek

Places where I have spent most part of my life, do not stand out with spectacular landscapes. I don’t usually paint mountains, oceans, seaside or waves. I’ve seen them, but I have hard times recalling such views in detail which is necessary for creation of painting from memory. Many of these paintings were also started a long time ago just as a demo for my live art classes. That means, I’ve spent very limited time painting them during the class. My main focus was what students learned from each process and less an attempt to create a masterpiece.

Therefore, I had to change some parts, add finishing touches, increase strong values, add strong highlights, refine some details and mask out some other parts. These landscapes are views from my memory and imagination, they might or might not exist, but I usually want the subject to be recognizable without long explanations. I suppose, I’ve said it quite a few times that I’m not thrilled about small size, like 16 x 20 in or 41 x 51 cm paintings of complex views and detailed subject. For me personally, the most comfortable size for acrylic is approximately 30 x 24 in or 76 x 61 cm and for watercolor: full sheet which is most often 30 x 22 in or 76 x 56 cm. Such size allows implementing aspects which are very important in painting: decent values, decent size subject, powerful color switches and a few outstanding details.

Acrylic painting, country barn with daffodils
Country barn with daffodils is an acrylic painting on 20 x 16 or 51 x 41 cm canvas

The current trend of displaying paintings in clusters is a great one. Even when painting is large, it takes a lot of design skill to make it rather become a part of space than dominate it or disappear in it. Clusters of paintings suit any taste and allow using paintings of small and medium size, too. They do change the mood in room, they can take you to any season or make feel happier in your space. I am not allowed to hang much on walls in my rented space. We tried strips and some of bigger paintings fell down. I didn’t even attempt hanging the huge and large watercolor paintings that way.

Spring creek, acrylic painting
Spring at creek, acrylic painting on 20 x 16 in or 51 x 41 cm canvas

The history and story behind these paintings is the same, but some are pretty much painted from new. You can do that in acrylic, no problem. In fact, I think acrylic looks better with numerous layers, – the more, the better. Colors become intense and also change in different light settings, the most dramatic parts become textured and that looks really adorable. These paintings have taken weeks to accomplish letting dry between layers. I know how little of that is visible in an online image, but the presence is still there.

Acrylic painting, spring creek
Along the spring creek is a multilayer acrylic painting on 20 x 16 in or 51 x 41 cm canvas
Painting spring in acrylic
I use fairly limited number of paints, black, white, burnt umber, warm and cold yellow and blue

Since I spent 46 years in Latvia and it’s not even twenty in Canada yet, the subject of my painted landscapes is associated most often with Latvian countryside, Latvian country roads, gardens and plants, as well as with nature in Latvia. The area around Ajax where I live now is similar, but I would never paint the local box-like boring buildings which really offend one’s esthetic principles. That’s why we have imagination and can travel back in memories to any season, any place and any emotion that provoked.

Acrylic painting techniques, creating a book
The image contains painting detail and some color reference for along the spring creek painting

Other than that, I’m finally working on compiling a book of acrylic painting techniques for landscapes, still life and floral art. It is a slow process, and it probably will take numerous hours for creating more pictures, describing tools and efficient process steps, as well as basic principles of painting in any medium since most of them are the same. Creating art should never be struggle, that’s why I will also keep teaching live art classes when we reopen. That might be in July, or August, or September.

Thanks for reading, enjoy!

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