Covid Activities

A lot of artists and musicians have been posting tutorials and videos on-line during this challenging time. It's been great to watch or join in.  One bright light for me has been the Portrait Artist of the Week event.  Hosted by Sky Arts TV in the UK, there is a live sitter and one of the winners from the past Portrait Artist programs painting live on Facebook on Sunday mornings.  You can join in by painting the sitter yourself then posting it with the hashtag #mypaotw for all to see.  Luckily the event is recorded, since it is 2 am here when it starts in England.  I have managed to take part in 3 of the 4 painting challenges.  Above is some video of my painting author Bernardine Evaristo, below is my 4 hr stab at getting Robert Rinder , judge and UK tv star on canvas.  Fun, I get up early on Sunday's when no one else is up yet and enjoy painting along and listening to the banter (or the one-sided conversations, since the artist is busy trying to paint the subject).

Biking and blogging

Summer usually means a slow down in my art creation. I am off work and more time is spent ‘Momming’, visiting, gardening and holidaying.  This summer I have been able to do a lot more mountain biking, now that I am in actual mountains every day.  It’s been great for the cardio and the soul.  So of course that has led me to my recent bike painting theme.  Occasionally I will get on a tangent and paint several paintings on one idea ( see cheeky prime ministers https://tessastanley.blogspot.com/2017/04/oil-and-acrylic-dont-mix-you-hoser.html ) I know that many artist spend months or years on a theme, painting just trains or flowers or abstract fruits.  I find I need to switch fairly regularly to maintain my interest.  

 So this is a view from one of the bike trails last week. Fabulous! Below  are some of my bike paintings and progress paintings.

Pet Painting

Well, the snow continued and the 9th annual Art in Our Park on Saturday had to be cancelled. sigh... I guess I will be very ready for next year and have time to work on a few new paintings.  In the meantime, I finished the above pet portrait for my niece.  It was a lot of fun doing this little 8x8 oil painting.  

The small painting was a nice break as I am trying to paint a large 36"x48" and am in the fear stage right now.  The fear stage is when it looks kind of good, you can see where the painting is headed but now I fear I will screw it up.  So I am avoiding it.  I think these smaller confidence boosting paintings help, maybe I will do some more today.