Home › Archives for May 2011

Irvine Park

Last weekend I participated in a plein air class at Irvine Park.  That park is beautiful and has many rural areas as well as a zoo, train rides, and pond.  This tree was at the edge of the pond and has a wonderful sculptural look.  Did I enjoy the day?  Noooo, but I didn't hate it as much as the last time I tried plein air painting even though it was cloudy, cold and windy.  Where's the warm So Cal weather when you need it?  I actually lasted two and a half hours.  That's a long time with my short attention span.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out even though it's a lot of green.

I've always been afraid to paint plein air with watercolor because it's harder to cover mistakes but this wasn't painful at all.  I may go back and re-paint this tree in oils as some point in the future and try to get more color into it.

Irvine Park
Image Size 12" x 16"
Watercolor
Unframed
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"Final Day of Acrylic Workshop"

It was day 2 and the final day of our workshop. Here we all are busy working on our paintings. You can see my pine easel with a carpet on the floor below it just to the right of the photo. Our instructor visited each and every one of us to see if we were doing alright.

Here, our instructor and artist, David Langevin, is demonstrating the application of glazes and veils using acrylic paint and glazing mediums. He applied the glazes in thin layers to the textures on the canvas and eventually building up more and more layers with different colors of paints and glazes until the painting is complete. We had to make sure to write everything down and to observe the process carefully before going back to our easels. Its not that easy to do this proceedure and takes some practice.


Here is the beginning stage of my highly textural painting. Spruce Trees is what we all did.  I went a little overboard on the molding paste but I love the texture I created with it.

Here is the next stage, with some of the glazes on. It looks strange at this point but is suppose to look better as you keep glazeing color on top of color. It's a fairly long process for a canvas this size which is 12"x30".

Kind of the finished product. I say "kind of" because I would have liked more time to work on it. I think I did everything right but I can't say that I really like my work on this painting. I know I could have done better if I had more time to work on it and at my own pace. But we were all there to learn new techniques and not create masterpieces as such, but rather create future ones using David's tips and techniques on glazes. This was a very enjoyable and informative weekend and I am hoping to be able to take more workshops with David in the future.
If you would like to visit David Langevin's website and see all of his beautiful paintings,
 just google David Langevin.com
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Every Day in May/EDM challenge—catching up again

EDM # 123 a bell— The bell on Monhegan Island.

EDM # 131 a spray bottle & EDM #126 a sponge

EDM #125 a bird. I live amongst the seagulls here on the waterfront in Portland.

EDM # 127 a cityscape—Portland Maine. The view from my living room.
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Candy Store



"Candy Store"
Water Color  Study 9" 12 "

Copyright by S. Ciaccio 2011



My water color study of the lollipops in the candy store on Galveston Texas . I really enjoyed working on this series, I think it was the bright primary colors. Hope it takes you back to your childhood.

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" Weekend Acrylic Workshop at Leading Edge Workshop and Gallery"

This is day one of a workshop I am taking at Leading Edge Workshops here in Calgary. In this picture we are just setting up. We have a large group of artists in attendance to learn painting techniques from one of Canada's premiere Master artist, David Langevin.

In this photo, David is showing students his techniques in using various painting mediums to show special textural effects such as Tar Gels, Molding Pastes and liquid polymers to use in a painting.

Here, David is demonstrating the use of  transparent glazes and veils, which he uses in all of his paintings. I am enjoying this workshop very much. David is a very knowledgeable and accomplished Artist.

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Garfield Coloring Pages




Posted in Garfield Coloring Pages
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Christmas Family Coloring Pages

Christmas is a family-orinted festival involving everyone's participation in preparations of Christmas eve. They together collectively work out to have best christmas party, decorations and gift exchange with guests & relatives. Watch out these Christmas Family Coloring Pages which shows family standing with Santa, decorating their house, placing tree, shopping and other scenes.



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Christmas Game Coloring Pages

Christmas brings with it playful holiday time for kids to enjoy activities, games, coloring and creative fun-filled work. Gaming and coloring togther make great combination just like the ones available here in the form of Christmas Game Coloring Pages. Puzzle, word search, arranging and other gaming options could be added to these sheets.

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Christmas Fireplace Coloring Pages

Color these blank pictuers of fireplace decorated with wreaths, garlands and stockings are hung for Santa to place some gifts inside them. View these pictures of Christmas Fireplace Coloring Pages to download and gift these easy printable sheet to your little kids and angels.


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Anime Christmas Coloring Pages

Enjoy the unlimited range of coloring material based on anime cartoons celebrating Xmas festive holidays in a group. Select from any of these listed Anime Christmas Coloring Pages for gifting to others. Hope, our viewers love these printable based on sheets.



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Experimenting with Neocolor II Water-soluble crayons

On Tuesday, my morning colored pencil class and I experimented with the Neocolor II crayons as an underpainting for our still life drawings. In advance for the lesson, I prepared the surface for us to use. I took a sheet of gatorboard and covered it with with two coats of Storm Blue Colourfix liquid primer then cut it into 8x10" pieces for each person. The surface worked out perfectly for our
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Candy Store





"Candy Store"
Colored Pencil Drawing 9" by 11"

Copyright by S. Ciaccio 2011



Colored Pencil drawing of  Lollipops I saw in a candy store in Galveston, Texas. I had fun with this, I enjoy the bright colors  in this. In the background are those candy dots they sell. 
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The Coastal Route

It's taken almost the whole month for me to get around to painting something to submit to the Virtual Paintout blog.  This month's location is the French Riviera.  I was attracted to the interesting shapes of these cliffs leading into the ocean and the bushes in the foreground.  This is a watercolor and I tried to paint it in a loose manner.

The Coastal Route
Image size 12" x 16"
Watercolor
Unframed
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"Banana Trio" 9x12 Colored Pencil Study on Strathmore Pastel Paper


I really like this colored pencil drawing of bananas that I did yesterday. I drew it from life on my drafting table. I bought a new drawing pad from my art supply store and a few new pencils to try out. The paper pad is very nice. The paper has a medium tooth to it and comes in very nice pastel colors, which I think acts as a nice compliment to the colors in the artwork. Because the drawing is still in the pad, the store clerk suggested I place tracing paper on top of it to protect it until I'm ready to use a fixative on it. I think that's a very good idea and one that I haven't thought of before, especially for my pencils which are oil based.
I am feeling more confident now with my pencils and I am already thinking about doing a still life arrangement of fruit on a table as one of my future colored pencil drawings. A big project!  I'll see how that goes.
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Catching up on Every Day in May/EDM challenges


So busy with work that I haven't had time to keep up with the challenges. A cold foggy Sunday gave me a chance to catch up...sort of...

EDM # 121—a coin.
My beautiful gold Chinese coin necklace is a wonderful reminder of my time in Bali. These are the coins they use in Balinese offerings—except not in gold.

EDM #116 something green & EDM # 120 a flashlight

EDM #118 some hair
This a sweet rescue dog named Rudy belongs to one of my mom's "dog park" friends. I would have taken him in a second, but his new family isn't giving him up. Just what I need, another dog...

EDM #117 something round
This pin cushion has been with me forever.

EDM #115 a basket.
An L.L.Bean pack basket used to carry the groceries up the six flights to our place in Portland. It weighs a ton when it's empty, so it is easier to use recycled shopping bags.
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Crinkly Old Paint Tubes

I have been looking for new and creative ideas for different still life subjects and have been thinking about drawing some of my old paint tubes for months now. The older and the more crinkled, the better they look to me. I especially like the tube in the center with no label and paint residue smeared all over it. Last I finally sat down, sketched them out and started working on them. I began
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Candy Store



"Candy Store"

Pencil Drawing 9" by 11"

Copyright by S. Ciaccio 2011


A pencil drawing of lollipops from a candy store in Galveston, Texas. I remember these big bright lollipops from when I was a kid. The candy store reminds you of an old time store with ice cream and all those candy brands you remember from the past.






"Candy Store"

Pen and ink   Drawing 9" by 11"

Copyright by S. Ciaccio 2011


Pen and ink sketch of the lollipops, behind them are swirl type candy of the same type.   I enjoy working on both of these projects. 


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Tuesday Colored Pencil Classes

These are photos of some of my morning and evening students colored pencil work. I brought in several New Guinea Impatiens plants in red, pink and white and each person chose a plant and chose a portion of the plant to focus on and draw. The morning class worked on Raspberry Canson Mi Teintes paper and the evening class worked on Violet Canson Mi Teintes because I couldn't find any more of the
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"Pink Tulips" 11x14 Colored Pencils on Classic Cream Canson Drawing Paper

Here's another colored pencil drawing that I decided to do. Because I am still just practiceing my drawing skills with my colored pencils, I wanted to take on something a little more challenging this time and a little larger image to work with. I found a wonderful book at my public library on floral templates for artists. I tried to follow the image as best I could and changed some of the positions of the leaves and tulips to make the image more my own. The idea here is to just practice layering techniques for the moment until I can achieve a more smoother appearance to the subject. At least I am hoping that it will turn out that way.
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Cabbage Patch Kids Coloring Pages

Cabbage Patch Kids Coloring Pages 001
Cabbage Patch Kids were originally crafted by Xavier Roberts in 1976. As these dolls were crafted by sculpting them with needle and thread, Xavier started calling his creations "Little People".
Cabbage Patch Kids Coloring Pages 002
Not one of these dolls were the same, each one had a different feature of some sort whether it was the hair color or shape of the nose making them very unique.
Cabbage Patch Kids Coloring Pages 003
Mattel now creates many versions of the Cabbage Patch kids, waiving away from the original form of cloth bodies and faces, to either having a cloth body and vinyl head or the newest version of an entire vinyl body.
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Orchid Drawing is Complete

Since my last post of this drawing, I decided on a blue background which is mostly Prismacolor Blue Violet Lake and the surface is Prismacolor Gingeroot. I chose the cool blues and cool greens in the leaves to make the flowers pop. When the background was complete and I worked on the pot, I then returned to the flowers and punched them up with more color. I particularly worked on the three
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Lost Canyon II - Oil Painting

I know this will surprise you but I actually did what I said I would do this week.  I always have good intentions but am easily distracted by new ideas and projects.  This is my oil painting version of last weeks' abstract.  Of course, it looks nothing like the first version but I like it for different reasons.  First, it is BIG -  30" x 40"!  I really like working large but this is really big for me since I usually work with watercolor and a full size sheet of watercolor paper is 22" x 30"
This painting has a drippier look where last week's painting had a more subtle, diffused look.  I like both but being a watercolorist, I probably would choose the watercolor because I love that look I can get as the paints mingle before they dry.  This painting has a more graphic look I think, which works with it's larger size.
I painted this with very thinned oil paints which feels more natural to me having worked with water-based mediums for so long.  I really don't like the feel of thick oil paints unless I'm doing a palette knife painting.  It feels like I'm fighting the paint when it's thick.  I'm sure it's just lack of experience with oils but the fluidity of thin paint just feels better to me.
What do you think?  The oil or the watercolor?  Which do you prefer?

Lost Canyon II
Image Size 30" x 40"
Oil
Unframed - gallery wrapped canvas painted on sides, no frame needed
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Hibiscus Water Color


"Hibiscus"
Water Color 9" by 11"

Copyright by S. Ciaccio 2011


Watercolor of a hibiscus grown in my back yard. I was pleased with how this came out. Hibiscus are on of my favorite flowers. Their colors can be so brilliant.
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Lily Water Color



"Lily"
Water Color 9" by 11"

Copyright by S. Ciaccio 2011


Watercolor of Lily in growing in a local park. Based on a picture I took las August. I was not as pleased with the end result of the water color. I was trying to get the effect of the bright sunlight and the shadows was hard.
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"The Perfect Pepper" 8x10.5 Colored Pencil Study on Canson Classic Cream Drawing Paper


One day last week, as I was planning dinner, I asked my husband to go to the grocery store and pick up a pepper. When he returned, he proudly handed me the pepper, calling it "The Perfect Pepper". It did look perfect and I admit I was hard pressed to cut it up because I had visions to paint it instead. Needless to say, I held it back from my dinner plans and the next day I drew it.  It has been a very long time since I picked up my colored pencils again. I wasn't sure if I was going to pull it off. There were some things that I had learned from the past that I had forgotten but at the same time, I realized just how much I enjoyed drawing with them. I think that this was the perfect subject to practise with and I will try to post more drawings in the future. Maybe by then my skills with colored pencils will improve. As for this pepper, it tasted great!
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Every Day in May—EDM #112 something fresh

I love avocados and in California they grow in abundance. Growing up they were always a part of meals—salads, sandwiches and guacamole. Our favorite way to eat them was when my grandmother would cut avocados in half, leave the skin on, cut out the pit and fill the hole with her homemade vinegrette. It was like a bowl of avocado deliciousness eaten with a spoon.
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Orchids in Pinks and Purples

I'm continuing work on the orchids that I started a few weeks ago. I'm using my bright pinks and purples and two of my favorite dark pinks have been discontinued by Prismacolor. The are Lightfast Madder Lake and Thio Violet so I am down to my last few pencils of those colors. I am working the warm pinks against the cool greens in the background, complementaries. The greens make the pinks pop
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Every Day in May—EDM #111 a bowl

Quick sketch of small bowl of stawberries for EDM #111. It had forgotten how hard it is to keep up with the Every Day in May challenge. Only 20 more to go...
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Every Day in May—EDM #110 something with a flame

I love rocks! The beaches here in Maine are filled with amazing rocks and I usually end up with bulging pockets after a long walk. The cliffs along the coast here are shades of gray which these wonderful granite votives were made. Up north or "Downeast" Maine the granite is a wonderful shade of pink—spectacular. Maine is so beautiful and a wonderful place to live...especially if you like a good long winter...
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