Mostly dogs, thought a couple of cats showed up for our pet portrait class yesterday. And what fun we had. A terrific group of painters from Kernersville NC visited the studio yesterday, joined by some of our lovely local painters, to paint pets. Long hair, short hair, fluffy and sleek we painted pets.
Are here is some of the terrific paintings from our students. And what a fun day.
I’ll have photos to show of my painting in my next post so come back to see my progress.
Drinking straw that is. We has such fun creating with acrylic inks, acrylics, and drinking straws.
Liz straw painting.
It didn’t take much demonstrating until the student’s had their creative juices flowing and were ready to create their own painting.
And they designed their paintings with wonderful color combinations and started puffing.
Straw paintings.
I have such terrific students.
My terrific students
Recently on face book someone questioned where the creativity was in everyone painting the same design in a seminar. This created a lively response and got me thinking about our project classes.
Colored Pencil Class
Decorative painting opens art for those individuals that think they aren’t creative.
Everyone is creative in some form or another. We all choose our clothes to wear each day, colors, what goes together. Some may express their creativity through cooking, child care, writing, photography, sports, and numerous other ways depending on their interests.
Most important for the student to have is an interest and a desire to learn to create art. The techniques can be learned and practice just means painting more which is the fun part anyway. If someone is interested and motivated they will work/play with their art and develop their skills.
By offering patterns and teaching step by step the teacher is able to focus on theory and techniques that are specific to the project. Each student is encouraged to develop their own style and to exercise their preferences as they build on art theory and techniques learned in class. Even though painting the same subject each painting is personalized by the different student to reflect their own style. And no one can paint exactly like the teacher anyway.
Project classes where students paint the same subject allows more time to focus on theory and technique associated with that specific painting. Students grow their skill sets while developing their art preferences and then continue on to create their own individual and independent pieces of art.
Cats Eyes
There is always creativity involved. There it is!
We’ve had such a great time painting with Ros Stallcup this week, polishing techniques as well as learning new ones. We’ve played with new products and used our familiar products in creative ways.
Ros’ seminars are always a terrific occasion to see old friends and make new ones while sharing a common love for art.
And we’ve made plans for our July 2015 seminar. Save the dates: July 22 – 25, 2015.
I’m back from vacation, which was lots of kid-filled fun, and ready to get painting again. Hope you are ready to join me.
Janet’s dog.
We have our Pet Portrait class coming up next week, Saturday, July 12. Be sure to register and talk to me about your portrait by this Friday so that we can plan your prep and pattern. Don’t have a pet, you can still join us. Paint a friend’s pet or find a magazine photo or I have plenty of cat photos to share.
Our seminar with Ros is only 21 days away but there’s still time for you to join us. Contact me now or register on line.
Registration is open for our Summer’s End ArtFling!
Come join us, paint, and enjoy the cool.
Liz
Here are a few photos from our Poppies in the Rain class on Sat. Lots of watercolor poppies and all different. What fun!
Jan is flying by at the studio with lots to paint, the shop to stock, and best of all, students returning from the holidays. We’re well into our Jan class schedule with enthusiasm and plenty of ideas for upcoming projects. I have the best-est students ever.
Morning ride has and is turning out awesome, each students adding their own flavor to the painting. We’re still working on the painting in Cary and I’m looking forward to their finished painting, some of them quite excitingly large.
Our Raleigh group is starting the first in our Doorway series. Some of the student are painting my design but some of them will be designing their own doorway painting. I hope more will join them in the next of our doorways.
Our Nesting mixed media turned out awesome. Lots of personal touches there. Thought you might like to see some of the student’s paintings. This design was lots of creative fun.
Nesting, students painting
CADANC, Capital Area Decorative Artists NC, meet at the studio for their first meeting of 2014. It was so nice to see everyone and share a painting experience. Susan T was our teacher and she did a wonderful job of instructing us in painting a pet. Well you all know that this is one of my favorite painting subjects and I was enthused. It took me most of the month to decide on which cat photo from which to paint. After making a couple of choices and printing them, at the last minute I changed my mind and chose another, just like choosing from the menu at a restaurant if the server gives you too much time to make up your mind. I did love my final decision, George again. He was so photogenic, a green eyed handsome fellow. Here he is. I was very pleased and am ready to paint another of my earlier choices, but class project need to come first.
What Up George?
OK I need to move over to my painting table where I have projects waiting to be started. I’m off to paint.
Liz
I’ve really been into painting owls this year. Fortunately so have many of our painters, so we’ve had some fun painting owls together. First there were the ornaments, then the snow owl. Here is our latest in our owl collection. This time a more realistic painting. My wonderful students created a whole flock of fluffy owls.
Barred owls by my talented students.
This beautiful design was by Sue Beckerton in Paint Works, Feb 2013.
What fun to visit the NC State Fair each year and see our beautiful decorative paintings displayed for our community to see and this year was no exception.
Rick and I went to the State Fair on Sunday, the last day of our vacation, and were very pleased with all your art work submissions, beautiful work. I saw lots of ribbons and even more paintings that I would have given ribbons to. While we were at the exhibit two women walked up, one pointing out a pumpkin and squash painting by one of our students that did not receive a ribbon. She exclaimed how much she loved that “pumpkin painting”, the other woman agreeing. Then a mother and son walked up to the exhibit and the son was holding out his mobile phone to take a photo of a painting with a wolf, again which did not get a ribbon. I asked him if he liked the wolf and as he gestured yes with a head nod, his mom explained that he loved wolves and had brought her to see the painting that he liked. I’m sure there were many more paintings not receiving ribbons that were some one’s favorite. If you are on face book, Artful Endeavors page, you can see all the admiring “likes” and comments on the St Fair photos that I posted. If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to “like” Artful Endeavors
As far as I am concerned, you all were winners to me. Thanks for sharing your art. It’s our best form of advertizing and letting others know what terrific painting you are doing.
If you haven’t been to the fair yet, decorative painting has a larger area this year, down where the carving used to be and across from the fudge.
Congratulations to Carol Burns for earning Best In Show Hobbyist Category for her mixed media. Beautiful Carol.
Congratulations Jean S for your blue ribbon.
Congratulations to Dianne W and all our ribbon earners.
Beautiful Maggie W. Congrats!
So many beautiful paintings entered this year. Our original paintings made an excellent showing.
Congrats Emiko.
Congrats Jean S. And Donna B.
If you go to the Arts and Photography exhibit be sure to look for Rick’s photos. He had both of his photos displayed this year, a win in itself. 75 out of 300+ were displayed for the professional category. He had the oak tree like the photo in our hall and our clothes line with clothes pins in the fog.
Liz
We’ve had a fun and busy summer at Artful Endeavors filled with seminars, workshops, and classes all exploring new subjects and techniques. I’ve added just a few photos here for our reminiscences. Notice all the smiles.
Please check our seminar pages for more of out photos for Ros’ seminar and ArtFling.
Cat’s Eyes
Our parent/grandparent and child class.
Colored Pencil Class
Cobalt and Hydrangeas
Night Vision workshop
Cary painting
Our awesome Cary painters
Our awesome artists.
Paint Your Pet
ArtFling 2013 Painting with Liz
Summer ArtFling 2013
Summer ArtFling 2013 with Gail Schmidt
Ros Stallcup seminar
