Art While Injured

Last week I injured my back so over the weekend and this week I was confined to the couch for several days because I couldn't move without pain. It was the perfect opportunity to sketch and try something I'd never done before and something that lots of artists are doing these days. If you go online you will see videos of all kinds of DIY projects and artwork. I thought it would be cool to try to do a demo video of me using watercolour pencils to complete a sketch in my Garden Sketchbook. I know these can sometimes be boring so I  made it less than 2 minutes long.

I filmed it with my camera and used Movie maker to put it together but I couldn't figure out how to edit it so it is raw and uncut. I probably need a more sophisticated software to do the editing but what I got was not bad. I did have to leave out the section where I add water to the pencils because the file was too big to upload to my blog. There's no music or commentary, just the silence that I work in on a regular basis.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I participated in a critique of my work by SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) of which I am a member. If you are interested in seeing that critique you can find it at the link below.

SAQA art critique - Arja Speelman

Painting in the Great Outdoors

We've had a few nice days this week and since today was a forecast of rain, I decided to lug my easel, paints and brushes outside onto my back deck yesterday. I have a nice shaded spot to paint there and the scenery is so much nicer than in my cluttered studio.

I worked on the lower sky to soften it up and bring a brighter glow in one area to show where the sun was going down. The yellow sky was toned down as were the lower blue and purple clouds.

I also worked on the trees to tweek their shapes and their colours. Since they are almost silhouetted by the sun going down, they are very dark, however I still wanted to differentiate the middle section of trees from the trees on either side since they are further back. I have to do this with colour. The trees closer should have more detail and more vibrant colour and the further back trees are grayed a bit or have a bluer hue. This will be tricky.

Working on the rock on the left of the painting proved to make it too light for the time of day so I will have to do more work on it.

This is the painting before I started today.

This is the painting when I finished for the day.

It seems this painting with never get done but I am determined to finish it so I'll keep plugging away at it.  You can't really even tell by these photos that I worked on it for 2 hours.

When you paint outside you can bet you'll have little critters walking in your paint!

Art Quilt Critique

On Monday of this week, I spent an hour participating in a critique of art quilts put on by SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) of which I am a member. Along with two other Artists, Lorna Morck who lives in Los Alamos, California (http://www.fibervisionaries.com/lorna-morck.html) and Carolina Oneto who lives in Sao Paolo, Brazil  ( https://www.instagram.com/carolina_oneto/). The moderator for the Critique was Vicki Conley, also a SAQA member, from Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico and the woman doing the Critiques was Dr. Sandra Sider  an American quilt artist, author, and curator. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, specializing in Renaissance studies. She also holds an M.A. in art history from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts and she lives in The Bronx, New York.

We met all together online and each critique was recorded and will be available on the SAQA website for members to view and learn from. This was an experience I hesitated to join since I am an introvert and the thought of being filmed and recorded caused me some anxiety. Do you remember my blog about my goals for 2019? Goal number 5 stated: Do one thing that is "outside the box". Well, I thought here's that thing. Totally outside my comfort zone and outside the box for me. I find it extremely ingenious that you can get people together from different parts of the world at the same time to record such a thing. It was 10:30 am in Toronto and New York, 7:30 am in Los Alamos, California, 8:30 am in New Mexico and 11:30 am in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Amazing!

I had two of my art quilts critiqued. The first was "Algonquin Rapids".

 The critique was not as painful as I expected it would be. I was commended on the flow of the painting and the obvious movement of the water. The diagonal format was a good choice according to Dr. Sider. There were two areas of distraction for her and one was the dark backwards "C" shape just to the left of the tree. I was encouraged to tone that shape down as well as tone down the orange in the tree. I was told the eye was continually drawn to those areas due to the value and colour choices I had made. That made a lot of sense to me. Dr. Sider had photo-shopped my image and did the toning down for me but I felt that her changes took some of the depth away from my version and caused the trees to blend in with the background too much. 

The second piece critiqued was " All Creation Sings".

On this piece I was again commended for the diagonal format for the design and also the fact that I concentrated the quilting in the grasses, water and sky and left the rocks with minimal quilting. Dr. Sider felt that the sky was too heavy with too many colours so in her photo-shopped rendition she took out several of the colours which made it a little less busy and a little more calm. This time I agreed with her that the changes did enhance the design. 

I took her suggestions to heart and will be a little more critical myself on my work before I call them done. I also have some peers on the Toronto Pod of SAQA that I could email my images to for different perspectives and advice which I will be sure to do with my next art quilt. 

It was stressful at the beginning, but I actually really liked the experience and hope that it makes a difference in my future art and that it also helps others to be discerning in their own art.

Goal number five met!

Exploration and Discovery

Our house backs onto a ravine and my grandchildren and I like to explore down there. There is a lot of wildlife that frequents our ravine and we enjoy seeing plenty of deer, raccoons, squirrels, fox and coyote as well as various birds. While we are exploring, we find all sorts of things. Evidence of human life like broken chairs, bed springs, bricks, old poles with ceramic electricity insulators on them and lots of stuff the river washes down. The most interesting things we find are skeletal bones.

Yes, I know some people think that is gross and I used to as well but I have come to see that it is interesting to discover how God put together living things. This blog is about art and my topic today fits with that because after I have found and cleaned the bones and other things we discover, I like to sketch them. Take a look.

These are some finds we stumbled across in early April when the snow was just melting away. The top sketch is the jawbone of a White Tailed Deer that still has teeth in it. I believe the correct term is "Mandible". The lower left is a sketch of a Cephalopod fossil and the lower right is a Freshwater Clam shell.

In May we discovered this skull and mandible. It was too small for a deer and the teeth are not the kind seen in a beaver so I had to ask Google for help identifying them. Note the "fangs" coming out of the bone on the top and bottom of the mouth. There were four of them. This feature helped me determine that this was a fox skull and jawbone.

This week in our exploring adventure, we were lucky to find these bones. It is getting difficult to spot them since the undergrowth has sprouted and covered the ground. There were several bones in the area and a short distance away. Since we never go exploring without a bag, we picked them all up and carried them home with us to study there.

Since I don't know much about skeletons, I first assumed this was another skull piece but the shape of it just wasn't right.

Here we have a leg bone, not entirely sure which leg bone though and along with it were two other smaller bones that fit together which I think were the bones of the Knee joint which from the diagram below are comprised of several small bones called Carpals and only seem to be on the fore legs.

I found many of the above shaped bones and knew they were Vertebrae since I have been under a Chiropractor's care for 6 months, I knew what the basic Vertebrae shapes were. The top left sketch is a Thoracic Vertebrae (side and front views), lower left is a Cervical Vertebrae, upper right is a Lumbar Vertebrae, and the lower left is a Caudal Vertebrae of the tail.

After cleaning the bones and fitting them together, It made sense that the piece I thought was a skull turned out to be the Hipbone or Ilium . It was just like a puzzle putting this spine together but so cool to see how each piece fit into the next. There are several pieces missing and perhaps I can still find them but this was obviously the remains of a White Tailed Deer.

The larger bone at the right end of the spine is the Sacrum.
I also found a few other bones that I could not figure out. They looked like they fit into each other somehow and at first I thought they were part of the tail. Enlisting Google's help again, I found that they were most likely the ankle bones or Phalanxes.

This diagram helped me to make sense of the bones I had found. I really enjoyed drawing them too and they add a story to my Garden Sketchbook that I have been keeping for the last few years.

Progress on the Sunset Painting

Today I didn't think about what I was going to tackle, I just went straight to my painting. The more I work on it the better I like it. My method has always been to block in a section and do as much as I can on that section before I move on to other sections. I do this mainly because I like to start with the background and then paint the mid-ground and foreground on top of that. For me it's easier to paint the trees over the sky instead of paint the sky behind the trees. There are always openings in the trees that show sky through them and I like to have the sky down first so I don't have to mix the sky colour and paint the openings in the branches afterward. It's just preference but I usually tweek those openings any way.

In this painting, I did the sky first and then did the water and the rocks while leaving the trees for last. I'm not sure that was wise. Last week I did notice that I liked the painting better after I had added the water and the rocks. So this week, I decided to put the trees in. What a difference that made. I really started to like the painting again.

This is where I left off last week

Above I blocked in the trees and felt the rocks were a little too light for the time of day. I also wanted to subdue parts of the sky to show where the sun was. I wanted that area of sky to be more of a focal point to draw your eye into the scene.

Here I toned down the rocks and added grasses to them, I gave the trees some better form and toned down the sky on the right side.  I also added some pinks into the water which is hard to see in these photos. Trying to distinguish the trees closer to the viewer, I made them a little lighter and more varied in colour than those further back but I can see that I will have to do a little more on that. I'm still not satisfied with the sky but I think I'm ready to take that on next time.

Ok, That's Enough Procrastinating!

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my procrastination. My acrylic painting was not going well and I just couldn't bring myself to continue it. I know that if I just keep working on it, it will get better but I just couldn't muster the desire to get back at it.

Today, I realized that I had put it off long enough and decided I would just do it! Since the sky was giving me difficulties, I turned the painting upside down on the easel and started working on the water. This was a really good tactic because had I started on the sky, I would have been so frustrated, I wouldn't have painted very long. As it was, I painted for 2 hours!

Why did I turn the painting upside down? Because the water is at the bottom of the canvas and the very bottom is obstructed by the easel so it is hard to paint that way. Also when painting something upside down you see it differently and then you are forced to look at shapes and colour and value instead of the subject. You get a truer interpretation when you don't have preconceived ideas about what the subject looks like.

This is where I left off before the procrastination set in.

I'm happy with the water so far. It reflects the sky and the distant trees (which I haven't painted yet).

After working on the water, I solidified the rocks a bit and feel that they add dimension to the painting because now I have a foreground and a mid-ground. I'll probably work on the background trees next and then start tweeking the details. I feel like I've made some headway and gotten my drive back to finish this thing.

Inspired by Sunshine, Urban Exploring and New Growth

So today, the sun was shining and the temperatures were such that I could leave my winter coat in the closet! It is "art day" for me but instead of spending it in my studio, I had to get out and enjoy this weather especially since the afternoon forecast is rain....again.

I love to be out in nature and living in Toronto, I always thought I had to travel out of the city to find pristine, quiet areas to enjoy wildlife and trees. Not so. I have found areas within the city where I can get my kayak into the water and paddle to my heart's content. Today, my daughter and grandson and I headed to High Park in downtown Toronto. It is prime Cherry Blossom time and we decided to spend this beautiful morning there.

When we were young, my parents often took my siblings and I to High Park to see the small zoo there. It was and still is a free excursion and we also took our children there to see the animals and play on the playground. This is the only section of High Park I had ever been to but today, I saw a whole other side of the park.

We parked on a side street near the park in a beautiful neighbourhood and walked across into the woods. Once in the woods, we didn't even feel like we were downtown in a huge city. We walked the trails until we reached the cherry blossom area. It was a great day to go because it wasn't really busy with lots of people. We wandered among the trees and eventually found ourselves on the shores of Grenadier Pond where we saw swans, Canada Geese, Wood ducks, chipmunks, squirrels, Mallards, Beaver, and turtles.

I had my camera with me and I took lots of photos. Here is a sampling and perhaps some among them will inspire some new art.