Art Every Week 2012 – Week 9 The Big Brush Workshop

Do you think that you can never be an artist?  Did your 5th grade art teacher tell you that you can’t draw?  Are you afraid of picking up a paintbrush and just randomly painting whatever comes to your mind because you think it won’t be any good?  Well, then you should take the Big Brush Workshop™ at the Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, CT.  I heard about this class from my sister who has been trying to get me to go to it for a while now.  The class is held at the art center at least once every season and as a last minute idea I decided to sign myself and hubby up for it.

Picture a large room, about half the size of a gymnasium, where pans of paints of all bright colors are dispersed throughout.  Sheets of paper are hung along the walls.  When you walk into the room there is music playing quite loudly and as people show up the whole atmosphere of the class becomes quite festive.

The instructor, Carmen Lund, is an enthusiastic professional artist whose philosophy about painting is that anyone can do it.  Just go to her Facebook site and there she professes “Have you always wanted to be an artist? Guess what, you already are!  Now you have to begin to do it . . . how will you manifest the art in you?”.  Of course, did I mention that she is a professional and some of her artwork is wonderful?  Her enthusiasm to get everyone to create is very catchy.

We all start out by sitting around the table and Carmen asks us to write down in one or two short sentences what we think about art.  I write something like I love to be artistic but sometimes I get stuck, blah, blah, blah.  Hubby puts down “if you paint it and stick it on the refrigerator that doesn’t mean it’s art”.  For some reason Carmen is interested in his criticism of art and after questioning him it turns out that his grammar school teacher told him that he couldn’t draw and that he’d never become an artist.  Carmen is bound and determined to prove the teacher wrong!

Next we start the actual painting and experimenting.  In retrospect it’s interesting to recall how stiff and orderly everyone was making their one or two brush marks very carefully then stepping back to view their progress.  We proceed with some rounds of one person and then another placing a brush stroke onto the paper and then are told “now everyone grab any color and just start brushing away!”.

Fast-forward to three hours later.  We have plastered paper and paint all over the walls.  We have worked in teams and on our own to create such crazy work.  But it’s really beautiful!  We have donned rubber gloves and are finger painting and smashing plates of paint to create unique and expressive works of art.  One little girl has red paint up past her elbows and she is so very engrossed in her work.  This class is filled with parents with their children, husbands and wives, mothers and teens and everyone is just having a blast!

Back at the table we are now asked to turn over the paper where we originally expressed our feelings about art and write how we feel right now.  Hubby writes silly and tired.  I can’t even remember what I wrote but I felt really good.   Most of us agreed that even if we still didn’t feel like “real” artists maybe we did feel more artistic.

I would reccommend this class to anyone that’s looking for a fun way to spend an afternoon.  But, if you don’t want to pay for it then just grab some brown paper, pour yourself some paint and go at it!  Lucky for me I decided to bring my camera along.  Below are some pics from the class and some of the art that was created.  Enjoy!

Art Every Week 2012 – Week 8

I think if you were to take a picture to show my aura this would be it.

Art Every Week 2012 – Week 7

Dripping watercolor paints on paper scanned in then digital overlay on image. 

Abstract mandala.

Art Every Week 2012 – Week 6

Still life photo painting created with Corel Painter.  A reminder of a wonderful and low-key New Year’s Eve dinner with hubby.

Art Every Week 2012 – Week 5

Coming back a bit late with this.  Here are the answers to last week’s blog for What Is Art.  Last week I posted 7 art works and wonder which one (or more) would you consider to be art.  Here is the description of each of these works.

1.  Yale Art Gallery – Cy Twombly (American, born 1928)
Untitled, 1967
Oil and wax crayon on canvas, 79 x 104 in. (200.7 x 264.2 cm)

The dry, chalkboard-gray field of this untitled painting affirms a reading of the vigorous, multidirectional lines across its surface as an abstract visual language.
Twombly is known for his consistent interrogation of the practice of painting as a vehicle for expression and articulation. Playing the tools of abstraction (line and form)
against words and more figurative elements, the artist has developed an abstract vocabulary that is emotionally and visually dynamic.

2.  Wadsworth Atheneum – Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: Yellow Echo, 1957. Oil on composition board; 40 x 40 in.

3.  New York Modern Art Museum (MoMa)  – In Advance of the Broken Arm
Marcel Duchamp (American, born France. 1887-1968)
August 1964 (fourth version, after lost original of November 1915). Wood and galvanized-iron snow shovel, 52″ (132 cm) high.

4.  One of 2 cat drawings from Asha McGee, Barry McGee and Margarette Kilgallen’s daughter.  Found on blog site http://catsapalooza.com/page/8

5.  Pablo Picasso 1919 Still Life Charcoal

6.  Sketch and watercolor by Julie Kovac (your’s truly)

7.  Sarasota lithograph 20″ w x 25″ h   For sale $12,000 by Henry Miller (http://www.henrymiller.info/gallery/detail.php?id=33)

Art Every Week 2012 – Week4 What is Art? (with survey)

What is art?  I often question whether or not I’m an artist. After all I’ve never had any formal training aside from some non-credit courses which were taken primarily for fun.  Also, most of my paintings are digitally created which is a media that isn’t always considered “real” art though I beg to differ. To me art is all about the creative process not necessarily about the medium used. So, are the images that are posted on this blog art?

I found a fun little video on you tube that poses the question. The author of the video doesn’t appear to be a college art professor.  He doesn’t even answer the question but honestly who can?  Here’s the link.  Watch the video then I have a little survey for you to take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZXOL-HUfWM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

What do you think of the video?

Now, below are seven images.  You decide, art or not?  Next week I’ll post the source of each image.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

Art Every Week 2012 – Week 3

This week I’ve been spending more time on my larger art project, a floor cloth for my art room.  Towards the end of summer last year I decided I needed a place to put all my art “stuff”.  I have a spare bedroom upstairs that has in the past served as baby room, music room, yoga room and most recently ironing and “throw everything in here” room.  Someone (I think it was my son or his girlfriend) suggested that this room would be perfect for an art room.  It’s fairly bright and a cute space.  Up until this point I’ve been working on all my art projects in the dining room which is really annoying since it requires pulling everything out to work on a project and then spending a half hour or more packing everything up again and putting it away.

Within a couple of weeks all my junk was packed up and pulled out of the new art space.  Walls were painted and I found these really nice wire shelves at home depot that are amazingly sturdy for the price and very easy to set up by myself.  One wall is lined with the shelves.  In another corner I have a beautiful oak rolltop desk that my dad made for my son.  I very nearly gave it away but after the room was emptied out it seemed to be the perfect piece of furniture to store brushes, pencils, paints and other art supplies.  Plus my little portable easel fits right on top so I’m keeping the desk.

Here’s a link to a 3D photo of the room before I started my project: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=ad5729b7-dcb8-4157-9095-d95f3d1aa8ef&m=false&i=0:0:0&c=0:0:0&z=448.162805040418&d=-1.06964316443897:-1.40292653988032:-1.40440629181368&p=0:0&t=False

The bigger question was what do I do with the floor?  The room had a nice berber carpet which wasn’t wall-to-wall but bound so that about 6 inches of hardwood floor was exposed around the edges.  I really didn’t want to start using paint and glue while working over a carpet but also didn’t want to mess up the hardwood floor underneath.  My sister (a phenomenal decorative artist) suggested a floor canvas.  She has painted some gorgeous floor cloths.  You can see a sample of one here – http://designinspiration.typepad.com/design_inspiration_planet/2008/10/viktorias-floor-cloth.html 

I don’t have anywhere near the patience that my sister has for detail and intricacy plus my vision is to make something more abstract, free-form and simple.  Floor cloths are a work of art but this canvas will also be placed under a table and used in a working space.  The canvas that I purchased is a 6×9 foot Fredrix pre-primed floor canvas.  Ultimately the entire canvas will be painted with at least 5 coats of clear varnish so it will be very durable and easy to clean. 

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the original canvas.  It wasn’t until I completed my background that it occured to me that I should document my progress with some pictures.  I would like to note that this is currently a work in progress.  Sometimes I’ll stand and stare at the floor for 20 minutes trying to figure out what my next step will be.  Some days I really don’t like it but then there are times when I feel like it’s really starting to come together.  What started out as being just a piece of canvas that I would splash various colors onto is turning into a very fun project.  Granted I was hoping to finish this in a few weeks so I could move on to other art work and until this is finished I can’t move my table into the room and start working on other things but who cares?  Isn’t this what art is supposed to be about, having fun and creating?

So, the original concept I had was brushing on various splashes of color and leave it at that.  Then I started having this vision of geometric blocks of color shapes overlapping each other.  My most recent idea going with the geometric shapes is to add a mandala picking up colors from the other shapes.   Regarding the color that I’ve used, I’m really not that good at mixing colors and with a project this big I was afraid that I would mix a color, love it and then need more and not be able to come up with that color again.  My sister, in her absolute enthusiasm about me doing this, showed up one day with a box of cans of acrylic paint.  I made the decision to work with the colors that were there which actually are quite interesting colors.  Now that I’m working on the mandala I’ve broken out my other tubes of Golden paints and am starting to add other colors.   

Below is a closer look at the brush strokes.  I used a pine cone to paint on the orange and crinkled up plastic wrap for the red.

The shapes were added using tape to outline some rectangles and triangles.  I created a “snowflake” stencil from brown paper – you know, like the kind you used to cut out when you were a kid.  This was used to lay down a first layer of shapes.  I plan on painting the rest of the mandala free hand.

Here is the work in progress.  The first layer of shapes in the mandala have been filled in.

As of today I’ve gotten this far.  Come back again to see the progress or maybe the end result.  Creating your own floor cloth is so much fun and you don’t have to make something this big.  Fredrix sells primed canvas for floor cloths in all sizes or you can buy your own canvas and prime it yourself.  I’m FAR from an expert on this technique but there are books and videos out there with all kinds of information.  The main thing is just to get started and have fun!