Karen Richardson Virtual Studio

To say an artist is ‘talented’ or ‘gifted’ somehow implies that they have not needed to try as hard as the average person to make great art. This could not be farther from the truth – artists become good at what they do through sheer hard work, determination and tons of practice.

That being said, there is a huge advantage in using the best of materials and equipment to make art. Inferior products often result in inferior paintings, despite artistic skill.

My watercolour materials and equipment come from Europe and I recommend all of them to my watercolour students.

From England comes Winsor & Newton’s sable/synthetic brushes and watercolour paints, from France comes Pebeo Drawing Gum and d’Arches 300 lb. 100% cotton paper and from Italy comes MaimeriBlu superior watercolour paints.

These professional quality tools and materials work predictably and consistently to produce the most wonderful results."

~Karen Richardson

Virtual Studio

From fall through spring, this page is updated every few weeks to give you a glimpse of my life in the studio and beyond. Find out what I have been up to lately - paintings in progress, artistic achievements, excursions, exhibitions in progress and art classes I have taught. Please visit often!

During the summer if we are making any interesting trips, I keep a picture journal of 'Tales From the Road' at artistjourney.karenrichardson.ca. I invite you to take a look from time to time and I welcome your blog comments and emails.

The Virtual Studio is now closed for the summer.

See you in September...

May 2010 - Week 4

For the long weekend we joined four other couples on a fun road trip to Buffalo, New York. Here is a photo of the group enjoying refreshments on a hotel terrace, taken by our good friend Roger. John and I are in the centre.

The main entertainment of the weekend was a tour of two of Frank Lloyd Wright's restored buildings in the area. Pictured below is part of the main house at the Darwin Martin House Complex, an example of Wright's famous prairie style. Note the horizontal lines of the design.

This summer home below is on the shore of Lake Michigan outside of Buffalo. It was built for the Martin family about 20 years after the Martin House Complex. A few years later the Martin family lost their fortune during the Depression and had to sell their properties.

May 2010 - Week 3

I found out this week that my Indian corn painting 'Simply Amaizing' (shown at left) was a finalist in a nation-wide painting competition in Canadian Brushstrokes Magazine.

The other finalists were from BC, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia.

You can read a copy of the magazine here (check out page 2 and page 8).

We drove up to Elliot Lake through a late spring snowstorm to visit friends who retired up there. As we approached the town (above), the roads had cleared up but it was strange to see bright green spring leaves amid snow-covered tree branches.

The landscape around Elliot Lake is rolling hills with lots of undisturbed forests, lakes and countless beaver ponds, like the one pictured above. You can see two beaver lodges in this pond.

May 2010 - Week 2

Spring flowers are always so gorgeous after the winter season. At my 'Close to Nature' weekly class in April, we worked on tulips and really enjoyed painting with vibrant, clear colours. Above you can see two of my students discussing their works in progress. Below are white and purple trilliums growing in my rhubarb patch.

I can find many lovely specimens of spring blooms to photograph in my own gardens or in our neighbourhood.

Here is a sampling of tulips, bleeding heart, magnolia and dwarf iris. Such inspiration for future paintings!

May 2010 - Week 1

Here are photos of some of my displays of paintings and art cards for the 11th annual Lake Scugog Spring Studio Tour. I had 50 paintings hung on the ground floor, and half of them were new since the tour last year.

We had about 300 visitors over the weekend and I sold three paintings and lots of cards and recruited 17 potential new students for my fall watercolour classes. All in all, a fairly successful tour despite threatening weather.

Shown above is the pottery display of my guest artist Jennie Creeggan, who was set up in my painting studio. For more information on the 47 tour artists you are welcome to visit our web site www.scugogstudiotour.ca.

April 2010 - Week 4

The week before the annual studio tour is always a busy time, getting the latest paintings ready for display. Here you can see five of my latest pieces ready to go.

April 2010 - Week 3

My husband John is a member of the Rotary Club here in Port Perry so every April we help out with the Rotary Dinner Auction fund raiser. This year it was held at the Royal Ashburn Golf Club and attended by about 220 guests. Rotarians collected over 150 auction items from local businesses and individuals for the event. Wow!

Our niece Eryn was visiting with us from Winnipeg. The photo at left shows me and Eryn dressed up in our finery outside our house. (She's the tall lady on the right.)

Eryn volunteered to help at the Rotary dinner and had great success selling raffle tickets - after all, who could turn down a pretty woman like her? The other volunteers want her to come back next year!

I always support the Rotary Auction with a donation of some artwork. This year the theme of the evening was 'A Magical Night,' so one of my donations was a red leather keepsake box that I had purchased. I painted a watercolour of apple blossoms and inserted the painting in the lid of the box. I called it 'The Magic of Spring'.

I also donated a framed painting for the live auction. It is a watercolour on canvas titled 'Lunenburg Light' (shown below).

Both pieces of my artwork were purchased by good friends of ours (two families) so I will still get to see my artwork from time to time when we visit with our friends.

The evening was a huge success and we had a ball..

April 2010 - Week 2

This month my two day workshop was for advanced level students and we completed one fairly detailed piece. The subject looked challenging but turned out easier than we thought once it was broken down into layers.

We worked from a reference photo that had been taken looking down at a rocky puddle in the forest floor during the autumn season.

We started with a wet-in-wet wash for the pale sky reflection and when that was dry, added the reflection of the trees using green and bronze mixtures. Then we painted the surface rocks in grays and taupes, sprinkled on table salt and let everything dry overnight.

Next day we removed the salt and added contours to the rocks with a very dark mixture using the two-brush technique. The leaves were painted in two layers and then we used negative painting to hint at the underwater rocks within the tree reflections.

At right you can see two of the finished creations.

April 2010 - Week 1

I delivered my latest commission this week, 'The Island Bay', shown at right. This is a watercolour of a family-owned fishing boat in the Pacific off the coast of B.C. and my client had this to say about it:

"I have just received my second commissioned piece from Karen and again the process was delightful. From just a few pictures Karen was able to pick the angle and size of work that would best highlight the subject. Karen has a wonderful ability to bring memories to life.

Thank You Karen."

This client had previously commissioned 'Boats of Pokhara', shown below, as a memento of her vacation in Nepal.

March 2010 - Week 4

The Spring Cottage Life Show is happening the end of this week, so I am really busy getting everything ready.

A few weeks ago I sent out about 500 email invitations to the show. Got lots of responses back wishing me good luck, or saying they would see me there.

I've borrowed three paintings back from their owners, so I can display samples paintings of homes and cottages. I've done about 100 commissions of buildings - it's one of my specialties - but seldom have an opportunity to exhibit them as they are delivered to the customers right after framing.

There was a large batch of frames to be assembled this week to prepare my newest paintings for display. I print all the labels, storey tags and price tags on my computer and paste or tape them onto the art piece. Details - details!

I use a big checklist when I pack for my shows so I don't forget anything important, especially for out of town events.

Several years ago, John and I created this trillium tile inlay floor in our foyer (below). We get compliments on it regularly and we really love having art underfoot.

Recently he suggested we design some more inlay patterns and sell them at shows as an offshoot of my watercolour creations. Fabulous idea, so I drew a windblown pine design and scaled it to fit onto six 12" tiles. John was cutting the tiles out last week to show the finished sample at the Cottage Life Show, but his diamond ring saw broke down and he is waiting for replacement parts to arrive from B.C. Darn!

So we will have to launch our new product at the spring studio tour in May. Stay tuned...

On the subject of ceramic tiles, below is our new kitchen floor that John laid a few months ago. We worked out the design together and it took a lot of tile cutting on his part! I really like the little blue accent tiles that coordinate with the cobalt blue fleck in the Silestone countertop.

March 2010 - Week 3

My friend Aprille is shown here working on her water lily painting in our second 'Open Water' class this winter. My painting setup is shown at the bottom. It was just the two of us, drinking herbal tea, eating home made oatmeal raisin cookies and painting up a storm! Can life get any better?

There were enough requests for my 'Georgian Bay Light' class that I ran it in February as a weekly daytime class and in March on a weekend.

Below is the second group working on their water scene.

To the right are three of the students with their paintings almost finished. Well done everyone!

March 2010 - Week 2

We enjoyed a weekend visit with our friends Rick and Nancy at their new retirement home in White Lake (near Renfrew).

They own over 100 acres and the sap was running in the hardwoods so we had the pleasure of helping Rick make maple syrup.

Above, the fellas are pouring clear sap into storage pails.

In the photo at right, Rick is pouring the sap into the evaporator, which is a custom-made shallow steel pan, set over a wood fire. The chimney in the back draws the air and raises the heat under the pan.

The weather was warm and sunny so we enjoyed chatting around the 'campfire'. All afternoon we stoked the fire and kept refilling the evaporator with sap. By the evening, it had reduced to a dark syrup so we transferred it to a large pot and finished it off on the kitchen stove. Then we strained the maple syrup into jars and we got to bring one home with us. Amazing!

Earlier that day we walked a short way into town and crossed the bridge over the gorgeous Madawaska River (shown above). The water stays open all winter.

Here is a tree on their property that shows the claw marks that bears leave when they climb.

Below are the wild turkeys that roam through the yard every day. Isn't life in the country grand!

March 2010 - Week 1

It seems most of the requests I receivet to donate to charitable fund raisers comes in the springtime.

This week I donated 'My Great Ant Peony' (left) to the PineRidge Arts Council for the silent auction table at their annual general meeting coming up in April.

I also donated 'Hosta Honesty' (right) to the Station Gallery in Whitby for their Drawing For Art '10, to be held April 29. This is a fund raiser where guests purchase a ticket and when your ticket is drawn you choose a piece of art to take home. As more tickets are drawn the selection becomes more of a challenge. Fun concept.

February 2010 - Week 4

This week we enjoyed a snowmobile trip in the province of Quebec with three other couples. What a marvelous adventure that was! We trailered the seven snowmobiles to Montpellier which is northeast of Ottawa and left our trucks and trailers there for the week. Below is a photo of John with our rig in front of the inn.

The next day we headed out on the machines and saw these deer (below) feeding in someone's front yard.

The day was very long (about 11 hours of riding) and we pulled into our hotel after dark. The next morning before we headed out I took this picture below of the snowmobile trail grooming equipment parked at the hotel. A big rig for sure.

Occasionally we stopped to see the sites and stretch our legs. Below we are looking at a scenic river from the trail bridge.

Below is our group, minus the photographer of course.

After three days of riding we reached the Ice Hotel near Quebec City. We stayed at the resort next door but had a chance to tour the icy palace, have a couple of drinks and take photos. What a magnificent structure, with all the walls inside carved with fabulous themed sculptures.

Several of the guest rooms had freestanding fireplaces and all had thick foam mattresses on the ice platform beds (I'm reclining on one below).

Here is John leaning one of the two bars in the Ice Hotel, ordering our drinks. They came in little blocks of real ice so they were a little cold to hold onto without gloves (below).

As we journeyed back westward, one morning we had to clear the snow off our machines.

We got stuck in icy mud on a steep hill one day and another time we went off the trail into soft snow and spent an hour digging our machine out. Then we discovered two bogie wheels at the back of our track were broken so we limped into a village, stopped for lunch at a lovely microbrewery cafe and phoned a Skidoo dealer to come pick up our machine and take us to their shop for repairs. In the photo below their 'rescue' driver is loading our machine onto his truck.

Luckily they had the parts in stock and we were back on our machine within a few hours and met our friends at the resort that evening, despite a winter snowstorm that rolled in that day. The inn was a gorgeous spa resort in the mountains north of Joliette and the scenery was lovely.

The snowfall was so heavy that the trails would not be passable so the guys decided to rent a van the next day to drive them all back to Montpellier to pick up the four trucks and trailers, drive back to the inn to pick up the snowmobiles and head home from there. This took a whole day, so we four ladies stayed at the spa and had a massage, a sauna, a swim in the salt water pool and a nap. (Somebody had to do it!) The food was to die for as well. The next morning we drove home on try roads to end our lovely week away.

February 2010 - Week 3

For the past several months John and I have been doing some renovating and redecorating in our 22 year old home, to take advantage of the tax credit and make some long overdue updates. John installed new flooring in the kitchen, two bathrooms and our upper hallway, and we had two sets of stairs carpeted. We also repainted four rooms and continue to do some major purging of 'stuff' in our attic and basement. Now the place is looking pretty spiffy!

To the left is our newly-painted bedroom and above is the view from our foyer showing the new carpet on the stairs. You can see a glimpse of my gallery and teaching space to the right of the stairs and the window in my studio down the hall.

Above is our master bathroom with fresh paint and new ceramic flooring.

It feels great now that all the work is done!

February 2010 - Week 2

My husband John and I went on a four day snowmobile trip in the Timmins area this week, along with our old friends Rick and Nancy. Here are John and I on our 'sled' below. We have three pieces of luggage strapped on the back and sides, as we had to carry all our clothes and emergency equipment. We're getting really good at packing light!

Below are the three drivers with their machines - Rick, John and Nancy.

One day Rick was leading the group and he stopped his machine on the trail because he saw an animal up ahead. Here are John, Rick and Nancy shown above, walking towards it (the black speck on the left side of the trail between the guys' shoulders).

This is the animal we saw - a lynx. It had caught and eaten a mouse or a vole on the snowmobile trail and then moved off into the bush as we approached on foot. The photos were taken with my zoom lens so we were not really close to the lynx. The footprints it left on the trail were about 4 inches across. A big cat!

We had good weather for our trip, although it was cloudy most days. The trails had only opened two weeks before, which is really late for northern Ontario. On Valentines Day John and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary. How the years have flown!

February 2010 - Week 1

After the Station Gallery show was over, I delivered my cactus and lizard painting 'Desert Compadres' to its new owner. Patti already had a spot picked out in her foyer (shown below).

This week my Tuesday afternoon 'Georgian Bay Light' class began and I taught a two day 'Open Water' workshop on the Thursday and Friday. Busy week, needless to say!

Pictured below is a student who has been attending my classes since I started teaching at the Station Gallery in Whitby several years ago. I have enjoyed Dianne's company in many of my classes and she has progressed really well, as you can see by her two lovely pieces in progress below. These were the subjects in the 'Open Water' workshop.

January 2010 - Week 4

There was enough interest in my beginner level class 'The Value of Values' to run it twice this month. Below you can see the students hard at it and the lovely paintings they created.

January 2010 - Week 3

There is a four month exhibit of my paintings going on in the gallery space of Herongate Barn Dinner Theatre on Altona Rd., west of Pickering. The exhibit opened in November for their last play of the 2009 season and continues during the first play of their 2010 season. You can enjoy a delicious meal, take in a humourous performance and view sixteen of my paintings before the play and during intermission. The first show 'Run For Your Wife' ran Nov. 13 to Dec. 31 and the second show 'Secrets of a Soccer Mom' runs Jan. 29 to Mar. 13. Here are some photos of the exhibit.

January 2010 - Week 2

Our first snowmobiling day this year was absolutely magical. There was fresh snow so the trees were loaded with white icing. I got some great photos to inspire new paintings.

I'll let my photos tell the story...

January 2010 - Week 1

Happy New Year!

We had a very relaxing Christmas holiday with several special dinners and get-togethers with friends.

For New Years, John and I organized the 10th anniversary party of the Y2K bash we had in 1999, at our friends' cottage near Bancroft.

Eight couples contributed all the food with an Oriental theme and we began with hors-d'oeuvres and a scavenger hunt at 4 pm, followed by a Wii Fit Bowling competition. Everyone joined in with enthusiasm, as they could earn play money which they could use to bid on valueless prizes at the end of the evening.

We changed into formal attire for the 8 pm dinner, had our group photo taken (at right) and continued the Wii Fit games afterwards. Everyone contributed photos and mementos to a time capsule that will be opened in 20 years.