I have recently  finished the online Strathmore Visual Journal Workshop. The workshop has been great and I have met some really creative artists online. Everyone has been so supportive.

I have done a number of entries and I must say that  I really like journalling. I have found that I can have fun, and try out new techniques focussing mainly on the process rather than the outcome. That in itself is freeing. Not every entry is a masterpiece, but it definitely is a learning experience.

While I have been doing this, my 7 year old daughter has been doing a journal too. I love watching her creativity, the way she just goes for it, not caring if the result is perfect or looks a certain way.
She is certainly teaching her mother a few things!

Rain

"Change" My daughter made the heart 

as a gift for my journal inspiring the rest of the page.

Visual Journal

This week I started on an on-line visual workshop with Strathmore Visual Journal Workshops. I am hoping it will help with developing my creativity.

It will be interesting to see how the pages progress from beginning to end, a bit of an experiment. I plan to post my pages periodically. So far it has been fun especially working with a variety of media.

Here is my first attempt.

Coffee

"It Never Hurts to Ask..."

I have always been told this by my mother, grandmother, friends but for some reason I have hesitated many times, held back by shyness,  or the possibility of no. Well this time I asked.

I have many of my mother's paintings and I have been trying to decide what to do with them. I have picked out my favourites, saved some for family, but there are still quite a few left. Some are damaged as they are 30 years old, but I can't bear to part with them.

My mother was a teacher, and also worked as a guidance counsellor. She worked for a number of years at a  High School in a small town in Nova Scotia. It was because of her work there that she took up painting. She took lessons from her friend and the art teacher at the school. The school now has an Art Gallery named after the art teacher.

I contacted the gallery and offered to donate one of my mother's paintings and they accepted! I am so thrilled. What a wonderful place to hang one of her paintings in a school she worked hard in, in the gallery named after her good friend. So fitting.

Happy Mother's Day.

Artist Gladys - Oil on Panel - 1981

The Moon in May...

I returned back to work this week after an amazing year home with my baby girl. So fortunate to have the time off. Since I was going back to work I wanted to do a new painting and decided to try to paint a scene I imagined rather than one I had experienced.

This is the first time I did my own composition and it came out completely different than the original plan! I picked up a round canvas and really wanted to do something with it. Initially, I first thought of painting a spring scene of flowers, but the canvas reminded me of a porthole, which inspired a scene of the ocean. I decided to continue with the theme of nighttime and which led to the full moon reflecting on the water.

Funny how our mind works.

Here is the result...

Moonlit Dreams - Oil on Canvas
10 inch round

Night Harbour

Have you ever spent a few moments just watching how the lights reflect on the water at night? I am drawn to photos and other art work of night scenes. So, always overestimating my capabilities, I decided to try and complete a few paintings of the the city lights reflecting on the harbour.

The first painting I completed, was for a silent auction fundraiser to raise money for the Nova Scotia's Provincial Men's Choir;  Nova Voce. I am happy to report that the painting sold.

Harbour at Night

11 X14

Oil on Canvas

2011

The second painting I did is a close up of the one above. I chose to  play around with acrylics again and completed a 4X5 painting.

Harbour View
4 x 5 Acrylic On Canvas

The next one I completed, used a slightly different palette with less oranges and reds.

Harbour Lights
11x14 Oil on Canvas
2011

I decided to call the three paintings "Night Harbour Series". The shimmering of the water was a challenge, but I like the way they turned out.

Stomping Through the Tulips

A few years ago, when my daughter was four, she really wanted to paint a large picture with me and asked if I would buy some large canvases. I was interested in starting to paint again so I bought one canvas for each of us and some acrylic paints.

She did a wonderful job. I love children's artwork, they are so creative. 

This is her painting. 

The Rainbow and the Flood - Acrylic and Finger Paint
2008

For my painting I decided to try and paint a picture of tulips. At that time I was pretty proud of the painting when it was completed. I hung it up at my office at work, then I hung it up at home for awhile. I had really liked the colour choices I had picked. 

Tulips  - Acrylic
2008

I came across this painting again a few weeks ago. It is funny but now that I have been painting for several months, I no longer felt the same connection to it. I was just going to paint a completely different picture over it. 

I changed my mind and decided to try and redo the same painting. I used acrylics again and then finished it with oil paint.

This is the result...

Tulips - Mixed Media
16 X 20

Painted Garden

It's the beginning of April, spring is here, though the weather doesn't seem to be warming up that quickly. I may also be a little impatient. The days are longer which I am enjoying.

I am looking forward to getting into the garden to plant a few flowers, though that still seems like a long way off. Because I can't plant any flowers yet, I have been busy painting them. I have done three more small paintings which I have really enjoyed doing.

The first painting was inspired by a photograph I saw in a magazine of crabapple blossoms. I contacted the photographer to obtain her permission to use her image. Her name is Virginia MacDonald and her work is amazing, particularly her personal work.

Night Garden - 5 X 4 Oil on Canvas

The second painting was from an image I took last summer of a hummingbird in my garden enjoying the honeysuckle. He visits often but completely ignores my very pretty, awesome feeder. I guess there is nothing like the real thing. I decided to play around with this one a bit and try something different.

The Hummingbird and the Honeysuckle
8 X 10 Oil on Panel

The third painting has  more meaning for me. I love daffodils, and always buy them each spring from the Canadian Cancer Society. This is a cause I feel strongly about so this year I decided to volunteer to sell them for a few hours, I really enjoyed myself and was happy to participate. The month of April is considered Daffodil Month, in honour of Spring and Daffodil Month, here is my latest painting.

Daffodil - 6 X 6 Oil on Canvas

Well, if I can't have my garden yet, I am just going to paint one.