Thursday, May 19, 2016

Plein Air Thursday

Yeah!!!!! The weather has finally improved!  And the art society that I belong to has been going out plein air painting.  They have a full schedule of sites for us to go to each Thursday from 9:30am - 12:30pm.   

I went out the last two Thursdays with my friend Sherida who is also part of the art society.  The first Thursday was a bust.  We went to Knox Park in East Aurora, NY.  It was sunny and 50 degrees when we started but by the time we were set up to paint it was 45 degrees, windy and cloudy.  You can call us fair weather painters because it was not fun being out there in the cold, so we packed it in and went to Sherida's house for lunch:)  We did take a little walk behind her house where Casa Novia Creek runs and I found the best photo reference for a tree house.  It was actually a deer stand, but to me it looked like a tree house to me, so I made it into one!  I decided to do a little study of it.  You never know when that little study might come in handy for a picture book!


The next week was much better!  It was 60 degrees and sunny the whole time.  We went to the same spot and this time it was beautiful.  It was full of life with bees buzzing around, birds singing, and dogs coming through with their owners, their tongues flapping out of their mouths in happiness.  So many wonderful things to paint!  Usually plein-air paintings are of landscapes or tree portraits, but there was just too much life around me to paint those things.  So I did a few little paintings of the animals I saw that day!  



There is another plain-air trip today!  Can't wait to see what I will discover!  Enjoy your Thursday, I know I am going to enjoy mine painting:)



  

Friday, May 13, 2016

Embrace the Shake

I found this awesome TED talk and had to share it with you all.  It's about an artist who developed a shake in his hand and couldn't control his pencil.  At first he thought it ended his art career, but then he learned to embrace the shake and it launch a whole new way of creating art and of looking at creativity for him.  Truly inspirational!




Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Bologna Children's Book Fair

Sorry I have been absent for a while.  Life got really busy:)  Here is a video of this year's Children's Book Fair in Bologna Italy.  It took place at the end of March.  This is my aspiration...to one day go to this book fair and better yet, to one day have my art there!  This video shows how artists leave their work for others to discover.   So much FUN!




Enjoy!