Thursday Nite Art Club.

                 To-nite was fun, we finished our last effort in Chinese Painting. We did a painting including all 4 Gentleman, and added a fishing Kingfisher. Ha, ha, not too bad for first time. I will post my painting to nite, but I failed to get a photo of Tina's before she left for home. but they are quite similar.

                                   Kingfisher and the Four Gentlemen.

                                                     Close up of Kingfisher.

                           Next Thursday we are falling back to landscape painting and sketching, till then "Happy Painting!"

Thursday Nite Art Club.

             We have missed a couple of Thursdays at Art, due to members having summer visitors. That's fine, as visits from friend's and family are important to our life. I have been busy with putting away the produce from my garden for winter, but have still been able to find time here and there to do some painting, and think up new projects for the future, as we are just about at the end of the Chinese Brush basics. We should be all together this Thursday, and finish up the last of our lessons. There was a few lessons that were a bit unsuccessful as we did not have access to the proper papers (sizing) to get the right effects. Our closest art store is 50 miles away in Penticton, and does not have the variety of material we would wish. We will look into the stores in Kelowna, soon we hope, they have  Opus and  Michal's art store's there. They will have more stock, or will order for us.

                         Meanwhile We have been plugging along as well as we can, and I think we have done well with what we have, whats most important we are pleased and happy with our efforts and have learned a lot about brush work, that will fall over into other types of painting. 

 A beautiful impression by Tina, of flowers, seed stems, leaf's and buds. Color on a black ink background, and really making use of white space to great and delicate effect!! Well done Tina, a beautiful painting!

 This colorful group of flowers was painted on a pale color wash background. I enjoyed this composition!

And taking a break from Chinese style, but still using a Chinese brush, A little go at my Cone flowers blooming against my fence, with the neighbors Walnuts hanging over!

          So? what will next Thursday show us? I will keep you posted, meanwhile, KEEP PAINTING!

Thursday nite Art Club.

              We have been all plugging along in the book of Techniques of Chinese Brush  Painting, working on flowers and Plum Blossoms. To nite we got into color wash backgrounds, and one method is "Scrunching", where you literately scrunch up your paper, than smooth it out, it makes tiny, bold ridges in the paper which you swipe a brush loaded with paint across. the ridges catch the paint. It's for background, but we all could see possibilities, so we followed up on our ideas, and surprise, surprise, came up with nice complete paintings! We were all really pleased with our results.

                                            Tina's Pines and Peaks!

                                              My View in the Forrest!

                                                   Hedy's Flower Bed!

             Every one will be away next week, but the week following we will paint a picture on the blended color washes we also did to nite. It will be interesting to see what we will come up with next! Happy Holidays everyone!!

After the Storms

                  I have not been on the blog for some time, due to too hot to be in the house, ( I need a AC.) or it has been thunder and lightning. At which times I turn off the computer. The storms have been coming every 2 or 3 days, (severe electric) And in between the weather is HOT! like almost 100 degrees each day, so the garden is either cooking or flooding, what a crazy year for ex stream weather. Yesterdays wind and rain blew down a lot of branches from the willows, tossed a few items about the yard and made a mess in general. broke down some of my corn too!

                  But we are surviving, I have been dashing out in the evening, when cool and not raining to pick from the garden. I have peas, young carrots and little beets in the freezer already. I will soon be picking little pickles for dills, yum.

                  I have lost 2 art students for awhile, due to work and holidays, but Tina and I have been hanging in there with a couple of road trips to paint trees and flowers. Taking a break from Chinese Brush for a couple of weeks to enjoy our watercolors too.

                        Old Wood; Chinese Brush Painting.

                When it's hot we paint flowers. these are my Cone flowers by my fence, with walnuts hanging    over from the neighbors.

          And when it's stormy, I'm stuck in the house, so why not paint the storm?

       Will try to get back on here sooner than this time, meanwhile "Happy Holidays"