April 2009 - Week 4

As you can see in the photos above abd to the left, we are all set up for the studio tour this coming weekend. These are views taken in the gallery space in my dining room and in my living room which normally houses our own art collection. During the studio tour I remove all our own art and display my paintings and my guest artist's work in the living room, studio, foyer and hallway, in addition to the usual gallery space in the dining room. There's a lot to see!

My guest artist this year is Cathy Mark, who does the fabulous stone and steel sculptures displayed below my watercolours. We generally host about 500 visitors during the annual tour.

Once the studio tour is over I will pack up about thirty of my paintings that will be going into the Collingwood show  '11 of Us' for the month of July. Cathy also will be exhibiting at that show and has offered very kindly to transport my paintings up to Collingwood when she takes her work up there.

The day after the studio tour my husband and I are leaving on our summer trip to the American Southwest. Check out my travel blog at artistjourney.karenrichardson.ca.

April 2009 - Week 3

This long vertical painting (shown at right) was my demonstration piece in my 'Confidant Colour' Workshop which was held in March.

The students and I each started with the same reference photo of one of the colourful 'jellybean' houses in St. John's, Newfoundland.

The really fun part was that, despite the actual building being pale green with an orange door, all the students had to pick their own colour scheme for the house. One student picked a yellow house with an orange door and another chose a teal house with a rust coloured door. I chose this red and black combination. We all chose different colours for the clematis blossoms too.

All of our colours were mixed from just three primary paints - red, yellow and blue.

Speaking of painted doors, another job we have to get done before the studio tour on May 2 & 3 is to strip and repaint our front door. It faces south so it need painting regularly. I'm thinking of navy blue this time, to complement our muted peach coloured brick.

Let's not forget the annual spring garden clean up too. I got the front gardens all tidied up about a month ago when we had a warm spell in March. My husband John raked the thatch out of the front yard then as well. My daffodils are up about 8 inches and the tulips are up a few inches.

We still have to tackle the back yard and garden which is a much larger area. All the beds are due for a good layer of mulch this year, so that means a couple trips to the garden centre to pick up about 20 bags of composted pine bark mulch.

The studio tour provides a timely deadline to get the outdoor tidying up done each spring. This year that is especially the case since my guest artist is a sculptor who will be displaying most of her work outdoors in my gardens.

April 2009 - Week 2

It was very challenging and energizing to paint some natural still life paintings in last weekend's workshop.

All the colours of green, the red and the black in this pile of gourds at a farmer's market stall were mixed using just three primary colours - fascinating! I couldn't resist calling the painting 'Gourdness Gracious'.

This painting was pure pleasure to paint in the 'Dramatic Light' workshop.

I am drawn to subjects with high value contrasts and this fit the bill nicely! Red, yellow and blue paints were used to mix all the oranges, grays and black. If you haven't tried this, you might find it hard to believe, but it's a tried and true method. Ask my students!

Now that April is here, preparations for the tenth annual Lake Scugog Spring Studio Tour are in full swing. This event is free - all you do is decide which artist studios you wish to visit and you drive yourself around following our brochure and map. Watch for our frog signs!

All the participating artists work to publicize the show, using our colourful brochures and post cards distributed through libraries, galleries and retail stores and sent to our contacts in the mail. We send thousands of email invitations to our online contacts. This year we even made a video commercial for the tour and loaded it onto You Tube as well as emailing it to our contacts. Our artists are being featured in several local magazines and newspapers and we are getting coverage on a radio station and a TV show. Window displays with samples of our artwork go up next week in a dozen or so downtown Port Perry storefronts. Our artist blacksmith Mark Puigmarti has fashioned steel stands for our four new banners, which have been placed strategically around Scugog Township. Next weekend, many of our artists will have their work featured in our 'Day in the Life' promotion at the Rotary Club of Port Perry's annual Dinner Auction gala.

Check out our video and see samples of artwork from all 34 artists at www.scugogstudiotour.ca. See you on the Tour!

April 2009 - Week 1

Back in January I was approached by a photographer that I had met through Showcase of the Arts, to invite me to participate in an independent art show of 2D and 3D art work in Collingwood in July.

Now the plans have gelled into an exhibit of 10 to 12 professional artists working in several media, including paintings, photography and sculpture, that will be held at the Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts gallery in downtown Collingwood. The artists have rented the gallery for the month of July and will do all the hanging, publicity and selling ourselves. Apparently this gallery is visited by over 130,000 people annually, most of them in the summer. Sounds like an interesting new opportunity to sell my art to a new audience. I'll let you know how it turns out.

These photos were taken at my 'Dramatic Light' weekend workshop.

All five of us did some excellent work, producing dramatic paintings of green gourds and a yellow autumn vine.

Both images worked with a very dark background, which we mixed from primary colours.

March 2009 - Week 4

My 'Fun With Masks' two day workshop was, well, fun. Devoting twelve intensive hours painting and chatting with interesting people is a fabulous way to spend a weekend.

One of my students, Joannne Dutka, had this to say about the workshop: "I had a great time at Karen's "Fun with Masks" workshop.  In addition to being an amazing artist, Karen is a wonderful teacher ... she openly shares all of her techniques, be they based upon modern technology or those of the "Old Masters".  Although I had never painted before, I was able to create a frame-worthy watercolour that I am very proud of.  Thanks Karen!"

 We painted purple coneflowers with a complex background of leafy greens and some baby pine trees in a snowy field. My four students particularly enjoyed painting the detailed flowers and leaves and each of their paintings turned out very well (shown above). In the foreground is my demonstration painting and reference photo.

Shown here

are my demonstration paintings

for the

workshop. To see more of my paintings of Nature's details, visit my 'Close to Nature' Gallery.

March 2009 - Week 3

This is my painting setup for 'Pepper Power' (14 x 5") during my 'Confident Colour' class. Both my watercolour paper (300 lb d'Arches) and reference photo are taped to a backing board, which is resting on a box of facial tissues. This gives the board the right slant that saves neck strain while painting.

The back board is made of foam core covered on one side with a sheet of adhesive plastic shelf paper (such as Mactac). This creates a lightweight, waterproof surface at very low cost. I  sometimes use sheets of varnished Masonite but they can be heavy if you are transporting more than one back board.

Two of my students are pictured here, nearing completion of their pepper paintings. We each had a slightly different reference photo so each painting is a unique composition. This was a great exercise in mixing strong colours and deep darks, all from the primaries.

March 2009 - Week 2

With March Break coming up I have a two week window without any workshops, so I spent some serious painting time with 'Simply Amaizing'.

I decided to switch from painting the cob kernels, which are very slow and painstaking, to the husks, using warm and cool neutrals.

Here I have continued  painting the initial layers of some more husk material in the background.

Then I laid in the dark bands of shadow that represent the spaces between the boards on which the cobs are resting.

After adding two layers of the dull brown and dark gray of the shadowed boards underneath the corn, I can see where the shadows on the cobs need to be deepened. Stay tuned...

March 2009 - Week 1

I framed up the three panoramic sky scenes (shown at right) that were demonstration paintings for my February class 'The Sky's the Limit'. My four students and I painted on 300 lb d'Arches watercolour paper and what a difference it made to working with wet-in-wet skies! There is so much more time to work with the pigment before it dries.

I just finished off this painting that was a demo for my February class 'The Shadow Knows'. This clematis was growing in a doorway in old Quebec City and I just loved the shadows cast on the ancient brick wall.

Although all my days are full and seem to fly by, one day this week was a very busy one in the 'life of the artist'. And it had nothing to do with making art...

My husband and I spent most of the day on the road, starting down at the lakefront in Pickering with a Durham Tourism sponsored breakfast seminar about enhancing web presence. We got several great ideas and learned more about how internet usage is evolving. Then we changed my painting display at a local credit union, delivered a painting donation to the Pine Ridge Arts Council for their fund raising auction and dropped off our financial records to our  accountant so he can prepare our tax returns.

That evening we represented the Scugog Council for the Arts at the opening of a photography show in Port Perry. Whew!

February 2009 - Week 4

My husband and I along with six other friends snowmobiled in the Temagami - Timmins area for five days, putting about 1,000 km on our machines.

We stayed at a different town each night and hauled our luggage each day. The weather was nice and cold and the trails were exceptionally well groomed. The coldest morning was -31°C.

We stopped on the snowmobile bridge over the Mattagami River to take the photo above of the ice and snow formations below the control dam.

This photo shows our machines parked on Lake Temiskaming, in front of a huge promontory of rock. The lake was so large it took us some time to find the right place to exit onto the trail we wanted. There were lots of ice huts there too.

While staying overnight in Timmins we discovered a game farm next door and were able to see bison, caribou, elk and moose wandering around in the large fenced acreage. Pictured above are caribou and a bison.

Our favourite holidays are those where we learn lots of new things. This trip's educational highlight was learning about the fur trade. In North Bay we toured the depot where the trappers drop off their harvest and spoke to the guys doing the grading and sorting of pelts. The depot was getting ready for a big west coast fur auction and the place was humming. There were whole rooms devoted to each animal, such as beaver, raccoon, wolf, fox (gray, black and red), muskrat, mink, ermine,  lynx, and many others. I wish I had taken my camera in with me. We saw hundreds of thousands of fur pelts, yet the staff told us the annual volume is much less these days than in the past. The highest numbers of furs harvested are beaver, muskrat and raccoon.

These ponies are used for trail riding in the warmer months at a resort we stayed at on Perry Lake, east of Timmins. We fed them some hay and they were very curious about us. The resort owner was a retired commercial pilot and a chef and we had a fabulous gourmet meal there in a dining room on a cliff overlooking the frozen lake. We stayed in two cabins that were down on the lake shore - spartan but clean and comfortable. Apparently the lake is very deep and clear, the colour of the Mediterranean, and lots of divers come there in the summer to train. We all enjoyed the resort very much and the scenery was so gorgeous that we plan to return to there for an ATV weekend in the fall. I want to try some horse riding!

The owner of one of the more rustic resorts we stayed at was also a trapper. He showed us his shop full of trapping paraphernalia and several pelts, skulls, claws and even penis bones from many animals. (Didn't know they had bones!) We sampled muskrat asparagus quiche and barbequed beaver for dinner. Very lean healthy meats, low in cholesterol.

February 2009 - Week 3

For my February two-day workshop 'The Shadow Knows', I had a lovely time painting this rock and shadow piece shown at right, along with four students. While we  worked we chatted and munched on home baked goodies. I meet the nicest people in my classes...

I took a photo back in the 1980's of these spring shadows on river stone outside our home in Oshawa. When I was looking for 'shadowy' subject matter for this class, I knew this scene would be fun to paint.

My husband John and I celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary on Valentine's Day. We walked to downtown Port Perry for a hot breakfast and after walking back home, got lots accomplished around the house. Then John waded through the snow in our yard and barbequed two delicious rib eye steaks for our dinner.

That evening, along with nine of our friends, we attended a concert hosted by the Greenbank Folk Music Society. One couple brought a tray of strawberry heart cupcakes to celebrate the occasion.

On Sunday we took the Go train into Toronto with another couple to see a matinee play and have an early dinner before returning to Whitby for dessert..

What a great anniversary weekend!

February 2009 - Week 2

The great corn saga continues...

Here, all the kernels have been painted on the third cob. There is still some shadow work to be done before this cob is completed.

Stay tuned...

My January class  'Into the Wild' featured these two paintings of rocky places in Canada. On the left is a lake we hiked to in the mountains above Canmore, Alberta years ago. To the right is a waterfall at Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland.

I took a couple of great photos of my students working on these pieces in my studio gallery and unfortunately erased the photos off of my hard drive by mistake before they got on my web site. Darn! You'll have to take my word for it that my students did a great job on their paintings.

In my 'Painting Light' January two-day workshop I had four students painting a winter creek and the above rock and water scene from Georgian Bay. Can you tell I really love to paint rocks?

February 2009 - Week 1

I managed to fit in some time with 'Simply Amaizing', working on corn cob #3. I started with the darkest kernels, which makes it easier to keep track of which kernel is which colour as the cob progresses.

I delivered this painting to the Station Gallery in Whitby, as my donation to their annual Drawing For Art fund raiser. The painting is titled 'Trinidad Timeline' and was inspired by the streetscape of the village of Trinidad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the south coast of Cuba, where we vacationed a few years ago. The draw will be held in April at the Gallery.

A woman who went hiking in Nepal a few years ago commissioned me to paint 'Boats of Pokhara' from photos that she took one evening during her holiday. The sky was technically challenging and took a lot of thought to execute, so I was very pleased when it turned out so well. Even better, so was my client!

January - Week 4

I had the privilege of volunteering for an afternoon at the Dragon Flies' annual retreat at Nestleton Waters Inn, just east of Port Perry. I taught an introductory watercolour class to eight of the group, all breast cancer survivors. We covered colour mixing using the three primaries and painted pebbles on a sandy beach from our imaginations. A good time was had by all, as the pictures above reveal.

More good news...

I have been invited to exhibit my paintings at a solo show in the Deep River Library next fall.

This is the town in the Ottawa Valley where I went to public and high school. Apparently they heard about my art  through a girl I used to work with at my summer job back in 1976. Last November my sister linked me up with this girl, who then featured my art in a Deep River newsletter. That resulted in the sale of several paintings and this invitation from the Library Arts Committee to show my art up there. Amazing how one thing leads to another...

January - Week 3

I had a very enjoyable time this week teaching eleven members of the Port Perry Artist's Association at a 'Watercolour Sampler' workshop at Vos' Upstairs in Port Perry. During the 6-hour class we made a half dozen small studies that focused on Nature's Details, including tree bark, a split rail fence, pine trees, distant hills, a grassy field and pebbles on a sand beach.

Each painting used primary colours so students could practice mixing warm and cool neutrals, as well as very dark greens, grays and blues.

The students said they enjoyed the class and learned a lot. And I learned something new from a student - you can reposition the puddles in the mixing area of your palette by shoving them around with the side of a credit card. Works great!

January - Week 2

As expected, my Indian corn is growing slowly.

The painting started with a very  detailed sketch and all the shiny highlights on the kernels were masked out. (Right now they look like gray dots.)

I used two reds, two blues and a yellow to mix all the kernel colours. Each kernel has a highlight, a shadowed side and reflected light within the shadow.

I'm so glad I didn't choose this subject as a project for my students! They would kill me...

Oh boy, two cobs done, three to go!

I've already decided on the title for this piece, should I have the patience to turn it into a finished painting.

It will be called 'Simply Amaizing' (since maize is another name for Indian corn).

January 2009 - Week 1

I picked up my watercolour 'Carved by Athabasca' (shown left) from the Station Gallery in Whitby, at the close of 'Fresh', their annual members' juried art exhibition.

My painting was one of 92 works by children, youth and adults accepted into the show, from 160 submissions from across Ontario.

Over the Christmas holidays, I began a fairly large (14 x 21") watercolour of Indian corn.

I chose this size so the corn cobs would be larger than life sized, to maximize their impact. This still life was inspired by a photo I took last Thanksgiving weekend at a farmer's market in Prince Edward County, ON. It is thrilling to do a piece with so much exuberant colour and detail...at least at this point I think so...

December 2008

I had several pieces of good news this month.

I found out my photograph of lodge pole pines in the mist of Cypress Hills (pictured left) was first runner up in Saskatchewan Tourism's 'Snap It! The Great Saskatchewan Photo Contest' in the Woods & Water category.

When we camped in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park last May, I entered a few photos in Sask Tourism's online contest. There were 3 finalists from Ontario, 3 from Alberta and 30 from (you guessed it) Saskatchewan.

Due to my artistic affinity with rock and stone, I have been invited to demonstrate painting pebbles in watercolour and exhibit my 'Canada Rocks!' series at a farm property near Grand Valley, ON next Thanksgiving Weekend at Rocktoberfest 2009.

This is an annual event of the Dry Stone Wall Association of Canada, which was formed in 2001 with the primary goal to promote the art of dry stone walling and facilitate the networking of 'wallers' from all over Canada to learn, teach and practice this age old building tradition. Check them out at www.dswa.ca/events.