Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Birds of Paradise

Oh my gosh, it has been almost a week since I posted on my blog. I try to post two or three times a week, so my students and friends can follow along with my journey as a painter. Anyway, I have been very busy, but it has all been fun stuff so that is good.

Last week I took a 3 day workshop from Steve Memering, a fabulous talent here in Sacramento, learning his painting process in acrylics. I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree as an art major, ions ago and my main medium was acrylics but I had not used them for ages. In the meantime so many new mediums, gels, paints, etc. have been created that you could go nuts trying to figure out what products you need to buy for what look you want to create. So to try to make sense of the dizzying aray of new products, I decided to learn Steve's acrylic painting process. Great idea, the workshop was very informative, I played with all kinds of new looks, and Steve was right there to demonstrate, explain and encourage us on. We also had a lot of laughs. His next workshop is in August, if interested go to the Smith Gallery in Sacramento's website as that gallery runs Steve's workshops.

Sunday the sun came out and I spent the day in the garden before adding more glazes to an acrylic painting from the workshop so I could take it to my critique group meeting on Monday. Kathy Young Ross also took the class and the two of us kind of surprised the group with our new work in the medium they were not use to seeing us work in. Fun!

Now it is Tuesday and a group of dedicated students and I painted Birds of Paradise in a class I taught in Auburn today. No photos - we worked from real live Birds of Paradise. The idea was to get them away from copying a photograph and into seeing what is really there. In real life you see so much more, subtle colors, reflected light, subtle textures. Fun class, everyone left with Birds that were well on thier way to becoming a nice painting, and I hope a better idea of what you miss if you only paint from photographs all the time. Want to join me? I am teaching the same class Thursday the 21st at the Sacramento Fine Art Center from 1:00 - 5:00pm Don't just show up, go to my website http://www.sandydelehanty.com/ and see how to reserve a space in the class, or if you have my phone number, call me. 3 open spaces as of now. I am working on a complicated tropical flowers painting inspired by these Birds of Paradise classes, so I am off to the studio now to get to work on it.

This Birds of Paradise painting was done a few years ago and sold. It is one of the most popular images in my greeding cards, so thought I would put it on my blog to let you see what my students and I are doing.

4 comments:

David Lobenberg said...

Nice h2o Sandy! Did you get my info. via email to you? The other thing you want to do is to ANSWER comments on your comment section. Anyone coming to this comments can click on my name and be sent to my blog. I too teach acrylics (at University Art), so if you know of anyone who may want to give Lobenberg a try, send them my way, and have them check out my blog!

David Lobenberg said...

See! Click on my name. Again, those birds of paradise look fab!

David Lobenberg said...

Sandy: Don't forget to post a response to my comment and for the life of me, I cannot figure out what you are or are not doing with your comment on my blog, but keep trying.

Sandy Delehanty said...

Hi David,

I answered you on my computer last night, but it may not have worked so now I am using Elliott's to send this. I have been advertising your acrylic classes at University Art every month in my "Semi-Regular Art Stuff e-Newsletter" readership is approximately 500 artists.

Thanks for your help with the comments thing. I suspect it is our server or my little laptop that is the problem.

Keep those brushes wet, Sandy