Holiday in Cuba

We had a short holiday in Cuba recently, and here are a couple of the typical scenes that I painted in watercolour. Someone came up to me when I was painting and said"Why are you working when you are on holiday?" I replied that I just liked painting. It is also nice to have a painted record of the trip- not just photos. I tend to paint watercolours on holiday, even though I am not that good at them, as it is easier to carry them than heavy tubes of acrylics and canvases.

The flowers in the foreground are Bourgainvilleas whose brilliant colours are everywhere.

Local art for the tourists is not that great, as they appear to be mass produced with the use of a lot of primary colours and way too much "straight from the tube" green. However, I understand that paint and materials are very expensive for the locals to buy, so they probably use the oil paint left over from painting buildings.

Talking of buildings, there were some great murals on the walls of the hotel lobby and bars.

They were mostly semi-abstracts or fantasy paintings. One was a type of "trompe d'oeil" which depicted a staricase leading to no-where. One girl got a little drunk and someone tried to march her up the painted stairs for a joke. She was going along with it until someone pointed out the stairs weren't real!

Acrylic workshop for beginners

I am going to be teaching a workshop in acrylic painting for beginners in April, Some Tuesday or Wednesday evenings at 6-8p.m at the Michael's store in Belleville. There will be two sessions a month. You can drop in to Michael's to sign up any time after March 20th. The cost is $45 per session.

You will also be required to purchase a kit of basic materials including an instruction book, two brushes, canvas and acrylic paints from Grumbacher. You will need to bring a small table easel, a water container and paper towels or rag. There is a nice, well lit craft room at the front of the store where we will be painting.

We will all paint the same flower or landscape painting, step by step, but of course, you are welcome to add your own flavour to it. Hopefully, you will be able to complete the whole painting in the 2 hour time frame. This is the first picture we are going to paint.

There will be a short critique at the end of each session. You do not have to participate in this if you don't feel comfortable. I will be nice!

Children are welcome, but they will need an adult to sign them in.

Mandy Bing's workshop on animal painting

Here is a painting by Mandy Bing, who is relatively new to the Belleville area. She was invited to give a workshop on animal painting last Tuesday at the Belleville Public Library, Parrott Gallery. Every Tuesday morning from 10 -1p.m, the Gallery hosts an "Open painting" session for area artists to get together.

I attended Mandy's workshop and was fascinated to hear about her techniques for making these colourful images of animals -mostly cats an dogs. She went into details of how she deals with the customer when doing a commissioned portrait. She also pointed out that in some ways, painting animals was more difficult than painting people, but that taking life drawing classes helped her a lot.

One way she differs from me considerably in her painting method is the amount of preparation time she spends on each piece. She uses a variety of different photographs and edits some of them with photoshop to play with different colour combinations and edge treatments. She then carefully draws every little detail on her prepared canvas (she uses several layers of gesso first -to get a smooothe effect.). Next, the painting begins with adding exaggerated colours.