This week we will concentrate on fall themes, using any technique we have explored. I will provide some photographic resource, or students can work strictly from their imagination.
   At left are some of the paintings produced by Tom (bottom) and I on our recent plein air trip to the Opeongo Region. Tom's is at the beginning stages. Although our styles and media are different, we both try to create a piece that reflects our experience at the time.
   However, I think it would be lovely to reinterpret images and scenes in a more vibrant manner back in the studio. I will confess I have some difficulty doing this. Look at this stunning image below - I can't identify the artist as it was embedded in a FaceBook message, but wow!

In any case, this week we will grab a piece of fall beauty and hold onto it through the upcoming months!

Negative shape painting, it turns out, is not a simple concept. As I pointed out in class, many of us are taught to build a painting from the bottom up - you paint in the sky and the ground, say, and 'pop' the trees in over the top. Or, you travel across your canvas with tiny brushes building each element in sequence until the darn thing is finished. It works for some, but for me, this is not an exciting or engaging process filled with possibilities.

Filling a sheet of 140 lb watercolour paper with splashes and dashes, dribbles and splatters of colour, it turns out, IS an engaging and exciting process. Finding the possibilities within that 'mess' is a great creative exercise. Painting out what you don't want, while keeping the vision of what you do want, is an experience in letting go. And, as I explained, this is an exercise (so let go your fear). It could become your practice if it engages you enough. It should 'inform' your practice no matter what. And the brain training in negative painting is valuable.

The paintings here displayed used this process, and you can readily see the creative unleashed. Wow!

Click to see larger images.