Happy Holidays
Sharon December 17th, 2008
Best wishes to all my friends, supporters, former students and collegues for a happy holiday season. May you all have health, good fortune and lots of creative ideas in the upcoming year.
Celtic Festival
Sharon October 6th, 2008
Again this year I informally demonstrated my painting techniques and talked about nature to visitors to the Chesapeake Celtic Festival at the Furnace Town Historic Site near Snow Hill, Maryland. I enjoy seeing old friends and former students and explaining the fascinating plants and animals of this lovely forest area.
This year I collected joe pye weed and autumn leaves, Virginia Creeper vine and wild grapes and worked on two paintings with those materials. I had one painting nearly complete when I was lucky enough to find a fallen feather and added it to one of the paintings.
Layering Media
Sharon September 15th, 2008
This week I’m experimenting again. I like those small ampersand watermedia panels for that purpose because if I don’t like what happens I can just wash the watercolor off! I played with making a golden toned textural pattern in watercolor and let it dry.
After it was dry, I set in a drawing of some violets I’d done from life last spring and scrubbed out the watercolor where I needed the transparent leaves and flowers. A small watercolor scrubber is good for this purpose as well as a small q-tip to pick up the paint.
After the spaces were cleared, I painted the flowers and leaves with fluid acrylics! These paints can be as transparent as watercolor which is why I did not want the background left under the leaves and I built the contrasts of light and dark with the fluid acrylics.
The result is layered watercolor and acrylic. To keep the watercolor areas from ever having problems if not framed under glass, I sprayed the whole painting with a fixative. It is an interesting technique that I am already trying again on another painting.
Sketchbook Shop
Sharon September 4th, 2008
Recently I was organizing in the studio and realized there were a lot of small watercolor and pencil sketches piling up.  I love to draw or paint individual wildflowers or leaves or whatever catches my fancy, and most of the ’studies’ never end up in paintings. Since I usually scan them anyway, I always have a digital record if I need it later, so the ‘originals’ are just taking up space.
There is a whole flat file drawer I call ‘working’. This has half finished paintings or things that were started and are never going anywhere. After 25 years in the studio, that drawer is stuffed! I’ve started cleaning that out too. But I just hate to throw anything away! I’ve been sorting and finding interesting small paintings or forgotten sketches but there are a lot of newly finished works too.
I set up a small Woodland Artist shop on ecrater.com to sell these ‘orphan’ studies as well as drawings and smaller paintings. You can see the shop at woodlandart.ecrater.com. The studies and paintings would be perfect for small gifts or an addition to a wall display and all are priced considerably lower than larger gallery paintings. Check it out the next time you need to send something to a friend or give yourself a bit of a present.