Change of Plans

I had planned on posting canoe trip images however I have been taking Laurie Wonfor Nolan's "Painting Outside the Frame" class at the Dundas Valley School of Art" and today was the last class.  The semester was a blast and I learned a lot from Laurie's sometimes totally off the wall exercises.


For this first painting she gave us a choice from a number of black and white images and we had to paint the image using a limited palette.  I used Payne's grey, yellow ochre and titanium white with just a little red to do the roofs. We were forced to pay attention to values.



In another class she suggested we bring an image of a favourite painting by a well known artist and either copy it or do our version of it.  I chose Tom Thomson's "Summer Sky".  When I brought this home and placed it beside my paintings most of them disappeared. The ones that held their own are in fact my favourites so I need to be more daring.




For this third painting we were asked to bring in three things that represented us to create a still life.  The canoe is a porcelain spoon holder that sits on our kitchen counter and I hope that the other two items are obvious.  These are a form of self portrait.



This last exercise was today.  We had to paint the words to a song in a Marc Chagallish style. I don't get many points for copying his style but I had a lot of fun doing this.  It reminded me of the shear joy of painting as a young artist and I may do more of these just to reinforce with myself why I paint.  Can anyone guess the singer/songwriter and song.

If I were to create a short list of the people who have most inspired me in my art Ian Thomas would have been added years ago and Laurie would definitely now be on it. Thank You for pushing me.