I painted this nude from life earlier, but today I added the anthurium flower and reworked the painting to give it a more subtle/soft mood to enhance and play up the feminine subject & the softness of skin. I did however try to keep as much of the original painting as possible.
Several of my artist friends are figurative painters, and sometimes I join them for life drawing sessions organized by 337 Sketch Gallery, upstairs 337 Ottawa St. N, Hamilton, ON. There is no instructor, but Anne is the facilitator – we all contribute towards the model fees and snack. It’s an enjoyable way to spend the evening, and a valuable practice for an artist to maintain, even when it is separate from their regular body of art like it is for me.
Every now and then I do something that l’m proud of, like this sketch of a female model.
However, most of the time I jump in with colour long before I’ve resolved issues with the drawing and try to build the form that way. That may be partly because of the way I paint, and partly because I don’t draw from the figure often enough have an intimate knowledge of the musculature etc. Anyway, since I see this as an exercise, and I don’t plan on doing anything with the finished drawing, I’m more willing to take risks and make bold moves. Which often means I’ll experiment and the piece ends up being mixed media, like the one below.
The great thing about these sessions is that we are painting from a real live model as opposed to a photo, so not only is there more information to take in, but you have to stay in the moment to get as much out of the session as you can.
This is a form of daily painting, like plein air painting, and the best part of it is seeing directly how an artist thinks. Ideally, each stroke tells something about how the work was made, and this directness probably conveys more about the artist’s initial reaction to the subject than if the painting is worked on through several sessions. At its core, there is something spiritual about this practice, something to do with the mind, spirit & body connection.
I’ve wanted to try a monochromatic painting for a long time, and I really had fun with this. Some artists do something similar to this as an underpainting and then glaze on other colours. I sketch in the basic composition with my paintbrush to start off, but I usually can’t resist jumping in with colour soon after. This time I planned to keep the painting somewhat monochromatic, but I added a few extra colours to keep it interesting to me. I used burnt umber, raw sienna, titanium white and dioxazine purple.
I found that working on the 6″x6″ paintings I was using smaller & smaller brushes to get the detail I wanted, so I decided to work on a little bigger canvas so that I can loosen up. It really helped. Although I still painted on two days (last night & this morning), I wasn’t feeling as rushed because I was enjoying myself more.
I have a lot of great reference photos from this photo shoot, I’d like to try a much larger canvas some time. If that sounds interesting to you …e-mail me about a commission! We can work out payment terms to suit your budget. Also, please share this post to let your friends know about my work … maybe they’d like to follow my progress through the challenge as well.
Today’s painting marks the half-way point, two more weeks to go!
I’d like to thank all of you who have been following me during this challenge and giving encouragement. It’s so cool when I hear from someone else who is excited to see what I’ll post next, a growing number of you are waiting for a piece that speaks to you … and I’m amazed at how fast some of the paintings have sold. In a situation like this, not every painting is going to be a home run, but when it is, you just know.
And those paintings have sold within 2 minutes of me posting on Facebook! I’ve been posting all different times though, depending on when I’m done, so if you don’t want to miss out on a painting you love, you can sign up to receive my blog posts by e-mail, that way you’ll be seeing it even before I post the link to Facebook.
The painting above, is on the same size gessoboard as Red Ixora, I was thinking of starting a small series. I’m out of that type & size board though – and I really prefer to work on canvas – I have to make time to go to the art supply store soon, to see what strikes my fancy. I had a really hard time packaging up Red Ixora & shipping it off to its new home in England … I’ve grown quite fond of it. There are beautiful areas in the painting that I never could have planned, that’s the pay-off for painting the spontaneous way I do, letting the work evolve through layers of paint.
I’m spending more time on each painting than I’d thought I would, so I’ve had to let go of some of my regular chores & activities. I looked up from the easel today, past the pile of paperwork & art supplies that I’m growing on my desk, to my potted plants in front the window … and I’ve lost the poinsettia! It hasn’t had red leaves for the last 2 years, but now I’ve lost track of when last I’ve watered it, & what leaves it does have left are curling up & falling off! I don’t have a green thumb … unless you count green paint!
I really appreciate the feedback from those of you who are enjoying reading my thoughts. If you have any questions, topics you’d like me to talk about, please comment on the post or e-mail & I’ll reply.
I’m exhausted, my eyes keep closing as I write this, I went down the rabbit hole on this painting. I knew yesterday before I started on it that I was already drained & and I should rest first, but I had several things to do first, and then I had a second wave of energy. I think now it must be some sort of adrenaline that kicks in, because I went till 5am on this painting, slept till 10 am and still put in another 2 hrs this morning.
My older boy tried to remind me, “Mom it is supposed to be a fast painting, not your best painting”. But there’s this thing that grips me, an obsession I guess, this thought that maybe I’ll get it in the next few strokes. So much can change in a few strokes. Changing the colour or the shape of something can make everything click into place & redeem the time spent.
The way I paint by blocking in colour and then pushing & pulling to build up the forms, then refining – as opposed to doing a drawing and then adding paint to it – means that I need to think through the paint, I can’t just dial it in. Or else the painting will be overworked, instead of fresh & loose. The key is to work smarter, not harder.
The problem is that when you’re overtired, your brain is impaired & it’s harder to see your way out of the spiral. Not that I was actually feeling tired at the time, but I was on autopilot. I had my headphones on, watching some series on Netflicks while I painted. It’s a bad habit I’ve picked up from my weekly sessions at a friend’s studio where she plays movies for background noise. Usually it works well for us, but I’ve been cheating & watching movies & shows I haven’t seen before, which means I’m not concentrating enough on my work. Confession time.
I have family stuff to do today, so I am going to post an older work tomorrow so that I can try and get back on track. I need to recharge my batteries so that I can start tomorrow’s painting full of energy and excitement.
Today I got carried away working on the painting I started yesterday, and I prefer to photograph it in natural light tomorrow morning. So, I’m posting this little painting I did in June 2011. It is currently in St. Lucia, but can be shipped internationally. E-mail me if you have questions.
Recently, people have referred to me as a flower painter, or a floral painter and it doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, there are lots of flowers in my portfolio, certainly in the last five years, but the flower (or even the foliage, which I favour) itself isn’t the point of the painting. If it were, I would regularly go to the florist & buy the most beautiful version of the flower I wanted to paint, and paint from life.
For me , painting – like writing down my thoughts – is a way of observing life, in the pursuit of insight. An important theme underlying most of my art is the search for identity through landscape painting. Some artists value imagination & innovation above all else … their aim is to create something that has never been seen or done before, others view art as a tool for persuasion … social commentary & opinion. Those are very important aspects of art, and why art is so important to cultures all over the world, through time.
My drive as an artist though, has more to do with the desire for discovery than anything else. This is evident through all stages of my creative process … the first tug comes when I see something that moves/excites me. In our world of excess, desensitization and stress, the moments of true joy are rare, so I pay attention to those moments. For me, they most often occur in nature, but I don’t have to be alone in a woods next to a babbling brook, or even in a garden, it could be under the skylight in the floral department of my local grocery store, where the light is so magical that it highlights whatever potted plant they place on the little ledge and I always have to stop for a few moments & stare.
Those are the simple things that inspire me – shadows creating interesting patterns, back-lit leaves and petals, coming across a new plant or flower with unique shapes. I love exploring new locations with my camera. I wonder around, shutter happy as I make discoveries. It’s not that I’m a very good photographer – I have a lot to learn about how adjust my camera to get the shot I want in the available light – but I love composing through the lens. For me to capture the true colours though, I’d have to paint plein air.
Which bring me back to this painting, which I did from observation (flower in hand), on a canvas I’d previously textured. Passion flowers are so exotic to me. And I remember taking pictures in the greenhouse in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, and coming across the vine near the koi pond. There were just a couple flowers, but the vines were so tantalizing, so Art Nouveau, discovering them was the highlight of my day. Every time I go back there I look to see if there are flowers on the vine so I can get a few more pictures. It’s like I said, it’s not about one perfect specimen that’s going to represent all other flowers of its type … it’s about the unique qualities of each individual flower. The combination of the flower itself & the leaves, or vines next to it, and whatever else is in the background. The environment tells the story of that flower, the same way it would in any traditional portrait painting.
For every painting I do in a year, there’s a thousand more digital photos waiting patiently on my computer. When I’m about to start a painting/series of paintings, it can be a daunting task to look through and choose reference photos that are both appropriate and intriguing. I would never dream of painting from someone else’s photos (unless it was a commission, because work is work), because each photo has memories for me … each photo is a story waiting to be told with my paintbrush.
When you paint something, you find things about it that you never knew before … like when I spend 2 months on a croton painting and discovered for the first time that there were flowers! My whole life in St. Lucia I grew up with croton bushes in our garden, in our daily lives, and I had never noticed the tiny flowers before!
Finally, reference photo(s) in hand, when I stand before the blank canvas, my adventure is just beginning, and that’s the way I like it. The photos I paint from are usually not my best, because there is nothing left to be said about them. The ones I choose have something elusive about them, and often it’s the background where I get to invent, to use emotive colour, to push & pull forms & create rhythms. I teeter on the edge of needing to find control (the perimeters of reality form a nice, safe box), and needing to break free, be spontaneous and wild. Roots and wings, another theme.
Well this post, like today’s painting, has rambled on. And I’m going to pull a Mark Twain & say, sorry, I don’t have enough time to write the short version!
A tropical landscape this time. I’ve been holding on to a few photos I took of flowering Royal Poinciana trees at Pigeon Island National Park in St. Lucia for some time now, so I was excited to finally get a chance to work on one. I have of course painted the flowers before en masse (see some at www.bluerootsartstudio.com/portfolio), but this is the first landscape which features the trees.
I was trying to listen to some meditation sounds & music while painting, but for some reason the kids were just so loud last night, I kept getting interrupted. Still, I think I’m on to something… that zen feeling was so close I could taste it! When my little guy came by to ask for his 12th snack of the day (he’s part hobbit), I put the headphones on him & he tried to run off with them, he didn’t want to give them back!
I enjoyed taking a much looser, painterly approach to this painting, though I did get caught up in the trap of noodling around with it too much, and only really stopped because it was 1:30am! That could be due to the size (another 11″x14″), or because my flow was disrupted so often. I really do need to start earlier in the day for this to really work for me, but it’s tricky because I prefer to photograph the painting by natural light in the morning, then I write the blog post, and put the link in several places, answer some e-mails etc. Have lunch, do errands, get started on a new painting, get kids from school … madness ensues … paint some more … dinner, activities … paint some more … what the kids are still up?
Then I either put them to bed & go to bed myself, or in the case of a larger painting, I try to get back to noodle a little more. One thing that I hoped to get out of this challenge of daily painting … of finishing a small painting every day … was that I could paint while the kids were at school. Usually I spend a couple weeks on a painting, and I can get obsessive, painting an area over & over (noodling), until I’m relatively happy with it. I’m hoping to find more balance, not be such a perfectionist. Not that it isn’t a valuable trait for a painter, and not that great paintings don’t need time to evolve, but I want to be more decisive with my strokes. Economical but effective brushstrokes … that’s something to aim for.
My first snow painting … I think I did ok. Though I did noodle away at it a little longer than I wanted to for a daily painting & I’m tired this morning. We’ve been having a lot of snow lately, and it’s very cold … I wish I could stay in & hibernate & paint the winter away!
The painting is also larger than I’d planned for a daily, but I felt it needed to be a little bigger. The location is very close to the swing set in “Five more minutes” from day 3, and the palette is very similar, but that was taken later in the day, in the summer.
Thank you to those of you who have left comments, liked and shared my posts through your social networks. This is one of the reasons I’m doing this challenge, to increase the eyeballs on my art! If you haven’t yet, please like my Fb page, and sign up for my mailing list!
This year I’m opening up my studio space to the public for the Annual Art in Action Burlington studio tour for the second time. I’m hosting Louise Young with her jewellery, and fine artist Donna Fratesi who will be demonstrating in watercolours. We all submitted applications to get into the tour, and were matched up by the organizers, but I already knew these ladies from the Burlington Fine Arts Association. Ours is studio #1 on the tour map.
I like to do this event because it is so well-organized, with each of the 29 participants in 8 studios this year doing their part, it generates a lot of publicity, and of course, it’s local. Also, I have a great time meeting so many people who love and appreciate art and craft.
This year we held a pre-tour group exhibition at Teresa Seaton’s Fine Art Stained Glass to kick off the promotion for the tour. This exhibition is great for people who can’t make it out to the tour, but want to see a selection of art that will be available.
One of the fun aspects of this group exhibition was a wall of 8″x8″ works that we each contributed to as a sampler of our work as a group. I submitted One for all, and All for one.
Thanks to photographer Mary Dilly of Snapd Burlington who came to the Opening of the pre-tour group show & featured many photos of the event in the October issue. My paintings & I are in at least one. And thanks to Mayor Rick Goldring for coming out to show his support.
Donna Grandin, interviewed by Deb Tymstra of Halton Insider, TV Cogeco about Art in Action Studio tour 2013
Teresa Seaton, myself and Cheryl Goldring (in that order) were interviewed by Deb Tymstra in Teresa’s studio/gallery last week, so that we could let more people know about the tour. Jeff Haddow of JAWS video shot & edited the video clip and did a great job of getting in all the pertinent information.
So, if you’re in the area put Nov 2 & 3 on your calender, come on out and pick up some art to give as Christmas gifts (even if they’re all going under YOUR Christmas tree!). The studios will be opened 10am-5pm Sat and Sun.
This summer, I camped at Long Point Provincial Park, Ontario with my family, and one morning while everyone else was fishing off a dock, I roamed along the banks of the inlet with my camera. The area was teaming with life, in between the lily pads and moss, there were frogs, dragonflies and here and there a snapping turtle would raise its head, or swim away if startled. I’ve always wanted to paint dragonflies, there’s something so attractive about their body proportions, the double set of wings counterbalancing the long narrow body. They’re like miniature aeroplanes, zooming around on some crazy flight plan. After a while of observing, and taking photographs, it occurred to me how much more I see, understand, and appreciate about Nature because of my art.
The following is a post that I’ve brought over from my original blog where I wrote about exhibitions, career highlights etc. in the 3rd person.
Views of the exhibition from outside of 337 Sketch Gallery, located at 337 Ottawa St. N, Hamilton, ON.
The acrylic paintings of Donna Grandin, and the glass art of Stephen Zawadowski are currently on exhibition at 337 Sketch Gallery until Sun July 17th.
Donna Grandin, a visual artist whose acrylic paintings, while realistic, explore the abstract rhythms and organic shapes of nature in vibrant colours. Donna received the gold award in visual arts in the M&C Fine Arts Awards in St Lucia in 2000 and has an Hons. B.A. in Art from McMaster University.
Stephen Zawadowski, a glass artist and graduate of Sheridan College has been written up in the Remote Stylist. His work is a fusion of clear crystal glass and copper.
Meet the Artists: Donna will be painting in the gallery on Sat, and Stephen will be in the gallery on Sun.
337 Sketch Gallery is located near Barton & Ottawa St. N
Hours: Thurs to Sun 11-6 pm
