On the easel

 These paintings are in progress (almost finished).  The first two will be submitted for juried salons. The last one is undecided, I'm happy with parts of it but as a whole not quite as thrilled.  We'll see.

Life is very good right now.  I've cut back to one day of teaching and spend the rest of the work week in the studio painting.  It's such a pleasure to finally commit to a full time schedule in the studio.  I have to do it in 4  10's but that works well for me.

The week in Boston

January 2 through the 6th I was able to tag along on my hubby's business trip to Boston.  What a lovely town.  Lots of historical buildings and the Museum of Fine Arts is stunning.

The Della Robia's were absolutely GORGEOUS!

A wonderful surprise was the public library which had some amazing murals and an entire room for the fine arts.

Can't wait to go back for more exploring.

Master Copies

 One of the best ways to practice painting is to make master copies.  Copy to the best of your ability paintings created by artists you admire.  The first two paintings below are just that.  I find exceptional images on the Web Gallery of Art site www.wga.hu/  they are high resolution and great to work from.

The best part is hanging the results on your wall!

Happy Holidays

Here's what is on the easel at the moment.  I love what happens to the hydrangeas and japanese maple in the fall.  Begs to be painted.

The portrait is a master copy I'm working on for practice.  Really love these old tranquil paintings

And below is a nook near the fireplace in our living room dressed up for the holidays.

These are some paintings that will hang in the smalls works show at Kaewyn Gallery during the holidays.  Stop by and take a look.

Workshop with David Gray

 Took a workshop with David Gray this weekend hosted by WIFAS.  It was fabulous!  He's a genuinely great artist with a very straight forward approach.  The key word was CHROMA.  We looked at the quality of the chroma of colors in light and shadow.  This will be a concept I need to really pay attention to.

David's demo

My paintings from the weekend

In the studio last week:

One of my faithful studio pals

and a painting in progress...

 Photos from the trip to Calistoga, CA for the OPA show.  What fun! 

Now it's time to get back to work and create!

Images taken at our latest POBL retreat in the Mt. Rainier area.  It's always such an amazing event; beautiful scenery, delicious food, and extraordinary artists/friends!!! 

Already looking forward to next year...

Happy to be back...

It's been awhile since I posted last so I'll spend a few minutes and catch everyone up on what's up.

Summer was wonderful!  A bit rainy in the beginning but the beautiful fall is making up for it.

The painting with the old drill was accepted to the Western Regional Oil Painters of America Juried Show in Calistoga California and will be on display at the Lee Youngmans Gallery beginning October 8th.

My daughter Ellie moves into the dorm on Thursday at the University of Washington and will be on their women's crew team.  She is very excited.

The lower three painting will be in the Matzke Fine Art Gallery on Camano Island in their upcoming invitational show "The Show Must Go On".  It looks to be a pretty amazing show and opens October 8th.

I hope to get back to posting on a more regular basis and apologize for the sluggish posting lately!

Cheers,

Michelle

Studio Sale!!!

Well it's been a while.  Spring and early summer was very busy with my daughter graduating. 

Now it's time for my big studio sale, it's this Sunday, July 31st, at the Arts Umbrella, Country Village Bothell.  There will be over 150 paintings for sale.  Come by and check it out

Just off the easel

 It's SPRING so the flowers are running riot in the garden.  I could spend all day just painting blossoms.  This subject matter is challenging due to the fact that the minute you start painting the flowers move constantly, very slowly but markedly.  So I paint from life until they wilt then refer to photos to finish up.

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Hot off the easel

Here are a few new paintings, the 2nd and 3rd are to be entered into a local juried show.  My fingers are crossed.

The next challenge is coming up with some new compositions with a little more depth and story.  I'd like to enter the Art Renewal Centers annual Salon for 2012 so I need to design a little more sophisticated composition. 

The last two photos are from my garden, we had a glorious sunny day!

Here's what's on the easel at the moment.  I'm having so much fun working with bright colors.  Thinking SPRING!!!

The goal these days is to push past good enough and really work towards amazing.  Which means slowing down a bit more and really checking that everything is thought through, ie color relationships, edges, values, composition and story.

Images from our retreat

Images from our POBL retreat in March.  The portrait is baby Andrew... he's a delight!