Presenting: The Wedding in Soquel.
Hello, changed my mind and I'm back blogging this step by step. You'll see lots of changes in two days of work. Hopefully today I'll get much more done since I stayed home this weekend to concentrate on finishing the painting. I did get slightly sidetracked so far with starting a new facebook group page for my business. I'm so busy with planning for new shows and classes coming up that I think it will be better if I told everyone from one page made for that.
Here is the painting taken in the daylight. I like how the Ott light from last night showed me the way it will look with more whites on the gazebo and tent, so I'll definitely do that today. This will be my last photo in the step by step till I show you the completed painting. Don't know when that will be, but I'll have other posts from my exciting adventures in painting!
Couldn't wait to show you what I've done since the regrouping earlier (that was around 4:30 pm and I've been working till now, 11:00 pm) This was taken with an Ott light, so I'll have to take it again tomorrow. I'm happy with how the barrels are coming out and that the path is fitting in better. Tomorrow, flowers, flowers, flowers.
Sometimes I reach a point in a painting where I really don't know what to do next, and I hit that point today. I thought I needed to change this or that, but after I went back to my original idea, and after I asked a friend to help, I broke through and have a clear path ahead of me again. I am about half way there so it makes sense that I'd re-evaluate my direction in how to complete this painting in the best way. By the way, the friend I told you about, it's her birthday today!
On to day 6 of this wedding painting. It's Saturday and I have the whole day to paint. I hope to get very far along with it. I love putting in the elements and even correcting things when they need it. Thanks to Rich for suggesting I measure the photos of the actual wine barrels with a ruler and then measure what I painted in to get the proportions right. Things are open to lots of change at this stage. You just don't know how some things will look till after you put in everything around it. I am liking the focal point though.
Today I painted at my house with Christine. It was drizzling off and on outside, so it was nice to stay inside and paint with a friend.
Paint to canvas. It's a start. This painting will change so much from this, believe me and hang in there. Now I only want to paint constantly till I finish.
Hello fellow bloggers! Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this sketch is almost beautiful to me. It stands for good communication, forward movement and colorful possibilities! I've sketched on a piece of watercolor paper I cut to the 18x24 size of the canvas. The placement of things may still change a little, but by this stage I'm really committing myself to where I'll put things in the painting. Tomorrow I plan to start the painting with acrylics.
Look! The Villa Montalvo Calendars are in! They have 2 different backgrounds to choose from, patterned and plain colors. You see them at Gallery Saratoga. I love the way they turned out. I think I'll work on another calendar of some kind for next year too.
On the day before the birth of my grand daughter on September 4th, we visited The Birth of Impressionism exhibit in San Francisco at the DeYoung Museum. The height of the trip was having my talented niece who is assistant curator at the Legion of Honor of Fine Arts in SF , give us a guided tour of this exhibit! She helped set up this exhibit at the DeYoung and even wrote some of the information cards for the paintings! In some of the photos you can see Christine and me going back in time and space, dancing and making merry music right in the middle of our favorite paintings! Hoozah!
Queen of the Night... Sold! Guess where? At Aaron Brothers to a very nice lady who was getting a frame at the same time I was reframing this (the glass got cracked while transporting it from the Garden Party sale in August this year to my home). She saw my painting and heard I was entering it into a juried show the next day for sale and said it matched the colors in her living room so well. So I sold it to her, and as they were taking it into the framing room I said goodbye to an old friend who found a loving new home. What a road this painting traveled: the subject matter started in Peru (its a Peruvian Tree Cactus Flower), then went to Melbourne Australia where my brother found it on the cover of a Sunday newspaper and sent it to me, to America (where I painted it), back to Australia to my brother who personally thanked the photographer (who grows the cactus in his back yard) with a print, and finally to a woman of East Indian decent who thought it would match her home. Maybe it will go to India some day?
Here are 2 more shows I've been in this year: the Gallery Saratoga Garden Party in August, and the East Valley Artists Juried Art Show in October. At the Juried Art Show I brought only a few of my paintings for jurying, but at the Garden Party I brought every single painting I still own! I'll never do that again. I won an honorable mention for my Yellow Rose of Filoli for watercolor. It still is one of my favorites and instead of selling it, I think I'll retire it to my living room for good.
Remember all the photos from day 1 of this project? I had time to cut and tape them together how I saw them in my mind. And I feel like I made a breakthrough today. I can see the end now and very very excited about it. Now I'm free to paint! After I come home from driving on a field trip with my daughter's graphic design class (an international quilting and textiles show which should be fun) I'll put some paint to that blank canvas and away we'll go!
I'm starting a new wedding painting which I'll do in beautiful 'Golden' acrylic paints this time. As you can see I have plenty of reference materials and a lovely canvas. Now I just have to translate the photos into paint on a blank canvas! Again, I'll take you through the process step by step. Notice my doggie Caspian in the top photo? I had to get a closeup of that sleeping position. He makes me laugh.
And... Voila! Presenting: The Cabin in the Snow . The newest watercolor/pen and ink painting from the Cabin Series, by Charlene Celio. Enjoy!
I painted this last night and will continue today. I love the way the trees cast the long shadows across the snow. I also like the happy surprise of how the trunk on the right came out. Makes me want to go back to the cabin.
So, not so hard after all. I didn't wreck it, and I found that I actually really like it and that's why I keep painting! (amazing for someone who has to relearn this fact every new painting!)
Day 2 of making the Christmas Card. Last night I went over all the pencil lines with different colored artist ink pens. The next step was to paint it, but this is usually the hardest time for me. I look at the drawing and think that I may just mess it up and waste all the work I've done so far.
Today I started a new addition to the Cabin Collection. I'm calling it, Cabin in the Snow, and eventually it'll become a Christmas Card. I'll take you step by step and then show you the finished card after it comes back from the printer. Hang on tight since it's going to be a whirlwind creation!
Going back in time, here is one of my first attempts at watercolor painting in 2002. I call this one 
Here's another room at my friend's former house. Right after we painted the butterflies, I tried to paint the living room in watercolors using my oil painting techniques and some pointers Beth had just taught us. At this point I realized that I could paint in watercolors by using what I know of drawing and painting. After this, Bethany and I took more private lessons in watercolor together from another artist. This all happened during the years Bethany was home schooled.
