More from the Charrette

"Floral Study"

© Nancy Laliberte

10" x 8" oil on canvas panel

Continuing to work with the water-soluable oil paints, my good friend and fellow artist, Val Berkely and I, decided to follow an exercise from the book, Painting with Water-Soluable Oils by Sean Dye. Kevin Macpherson is a featured artist in the book so we followed his painting exercise to help us get a feel for working loosely and with lots of paint. In the end, our pieces didn't look like Kevin's but we had fun trying! My painting ended up looking better upside down, and somewhere hidden under the layers is a vase that is, well, upside down.

"Block Study"

© Nancy Laliberte

8" x 10" oil on panel

A block study exercise adapted from Susan Sarback's book, Capturing Radiant Color in Oils. Susan studied with Henry Hensche at the Cape Cod School of Art. One of the artists featured in the book is John Ebersberger, whom I had the opportunity to study with in 2004. That was my first introduction to seeing color and palette knife painting. To this day I still remember, "light plane, shadow plane." Block studies are a great exercise in seeing color and breaking down the masses with more color--something I think I could have pushed more in the painting. This piece was done primarily with a palette knife with a bit of brushwork at the end.

A good charrette always includes some art videos and our favorite was Larry Seiler's Painting a Waterfalls in Oils. Larry is a high school art instructor and all I can say is he has some lucky kids. His video was very complete and he does a great job explaining palette colors, design, brushwork and more. Check out his blog and website for more painting tips and other good stuff.

Thankful

"Pumpkin Worthy"

© Nancy Laliberte

6" x 8" oil on panel

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I have one can of pumpkin and several pumpkin recipes. Pumpkin cookies? Pumpkin bread? Pumpkin cheesecake? Pumpkin pie (can't get enough!)? Pumpkin right out of the can? (My friend Suzanne's favorite!) They are ALL "Pumpkin Worthy!"

Hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving. The best part was listening to my children say what they were thankful for: family and being together.

Charrette

"Apple Pair"

© Nancy Laliberte

6" x 8" oil on canvas panel

$95

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to partake in a painting charrette with my good friend and fellow artist Val Berkely. A charrette is often referred to an intense period of work by one person or a group of people prior to a deadline. Val has a cabin on the south shore of Lake Superior near Ironwood, MI. In her cabin is a 12 foot long table which makes a great space for a temporary studio. While we didn't have any specific deadlines, we did have a focus and an intense period of work. Our focus was to experiment with water-soluable oil paints, specifically the Cobra brand and its mediums. It took a little getting use to, but we liked the paints; I loved being able to blend and work alla prima. We did not care for the mediums made by Cobra---too smelly and gave me a headache and Val itchy eyes. The apple painting was a piece I did with the Cobra paints, minimal water and no mediums.

While we waited for the in-floor heating to get up to temp, I successfully started a fire in the stove--on the first try. Might have to audition for Survivor or something.

A whole new spin to "painting warm-ups."