OCEAN CITY BLOCK FALL BLOCK PARTY

UNBELIEVABLE, FANTASTIC, WHAT A DAY.
I am guessing over 75,000 people.  They just kept coming along the street and some stopped in my tent to look and buy art.  This was my very best show at this event. I sold matted prints, framed prints, cards and framed originals.
In addition, Jan took one of my photos of a life guard stand, beach chairs and umbrellas on the 8th street beach and had it reproduced on high quality sweatshirts to sell................and almost sold out. 

We also sold three of our daughter Dawn's photos of several scenes of Ocean City.  The weather was the best I ever remember.  We went for a long weekend and spent time with good friends riding bikes, walking the boards and then they helped us sell at the show and set up the tent.
My next show will be the Z Gallery in West Chester for the month of November.  I also currently I have three paintings at the Gryphon Cafe in Wayne.
Our last show will be in Media at the Penn Crest High School the Saturday before Thanksgiving...........and wait to you see my newest prints and new originals. 

This is another flower painting from my course.  I learned to add colors that were not in the rose.  Also, highlights were added that were not there and your will find more variety in the leaves than you could have seen in the leaves.  Now I need to take these lessons and paint a few new flower paintings.

If you are interested in coming to one of my shows, send me an e-mail for a discount coupon.  Also if you have any questions about watercolors let me know.

I just returned from a vacation to Nova Scotia and will have some new sketches to show you on my next blog.  

Watercolor Flower Lessons

For three days, we spent painting flowers with different fresh cut flowers in our room.  We had roses, daisies, peonies, and more roses.  I tried to paint daisies the first today and found that hard with out a background.
However, it was important to try and see if I could paint the daisies.  Daisies are easy to paint outdoors with a green background, but with this attempt in the studio, it was difficult.

The second day I tried to paint roses. In this case Our instructor, Carolyn Anderson, was a big help as she would review our work and give us suggestions.   In this picture, you can see how a leaf was added to the bottom to add some interest and a little different color to the arrangement. I changed the value and color in some of the roses to provide some variety.  

New Flower Paintings

A few weeks ago just before we went to Ocean city New Jersey on vacation with our family, I completed a three day course in painting flowers in watercolor.  I used some roses that you see here.  I also used some pink peonies and then some other red roses.  Each day I painted but it wasn't until our teacher spent time each day to critique our paintings that 

The HOWARD PYE STUDIO AND MY FLOWER WATERCOLOR LESSONS

This past week, I spent three days in the incredible history filled studio of Howard Pyle.  Now for those who do not know him, he was a famous painter and illustrator who lived until 1911.  One of his many students was NC Wyeth, who eventually moved to Chadds Ford.  Howard Pyle started the Brandywine School of artists that got it's name because he would take the artists in the sumer to Chadds Ford to study and paint along the Brandywine River.  

As you walk into his studio, you notice a cross cut of a tree trunk in the middle of the floor. Why is this here I wondered?   After Howard Pyle died, one of his students took this slice of a buttonwood tree and located it on the spot where his teacher stood to paint and instruct his students.
Now I have always admired the paintings of Andrew, Jamie and NC Wyeth so for me to be in the studio of the man who started the Brandywine tradition, much less spend three days painting was a great experience.



I did not want to take for granted just being able to walk into Pyle's  studio and be able to paint where this master painter had painted.  ANd yet here I was doing just that.  For three days we entered his studio door and experienced the opportunity to learn how to improve our watercolors painting many different types of flowers.  What a privilege to be there and be painting.   


On top of that,  our instructor's teaching methods coupled with her technical skills and her encouragement spurred us on to improve our painting capabilities.   More in my next blog..........