Mary B Spires Watercolor & Art Stuff

11" x 11" on Watercolor Paper Holly Hock Tuesday August 14th 11" x 14" on Watercolor Paper Swan Lake Thursday August 16th 11" x 14" on Watercolor Paper

8" x 8" Oil on Board Last morning of class Dreama challenged us to a "round about" where each artist starts a painting from a photograph that Dreama gave us.  We were to work on  each  painting for about 5 minutes, you got to take your brush but that was it!  What fun! Five other artist worked on this cupcake that I just love.....what a wonderful take away from all the new friends.  I got to work on a sunflower, a flower in a glass and another cupcake.  A couple of the photographs were upside down......they always say you can trick your brain into seeing the shapes not knowing what it is....next week is the HOOT (Heart of Ohio Tole) Convention. I will be teaching 3 classes, plus a demo on Wednesday on Color Theory.  This will be my 20th year teaching....where has the time gone?  Thanks to a wonderful lady and teacher Betty Denton. After I had been painting for about 2 years I got to take a class with her and it changed...

8" x  8" Oil on Board Dreama's Blue Ball Jar This was our first project in Dreama's Workshop.....I started this one in class but had to switch to another board....this was a masonite board, very slick, the second layer of paint wouldn't stick.  Surface too wet.  Dreama's process is to first add Transparent Paint, kinda mapping out your design.  Next you go back in with your opaque colors.  It was a total mess!!!!!  no drawing, just a few marks to show you placement of the subject.  Soooooo much fun!!!! I love the looseness of the process.....the intimidation of the white surface was gone.  I finished this painting the last day of the workshop when we had time to try out the technique on our photographs.  Everyone in the class got great paintings. Tomorrow I will post the "round about"?  What's a round about?  Stop by tomorrow to find out.

Dreama Tolle Perry with Class Project Workshop Dates were July 16-18th in Paris, Ky.  I can't begin to tell you how good this workshop was.  Dreama is a wonderful teacher, very sharing, wants to  give you all the tools so you can be successful in completion of your workshop painting.  I was blow away with just the first 3 hours of her demoing her first piece.  We had 18 wonderful students who also shared in put.   Dreama made sure she got to give everyone individual attention....it was the  BEST EVER!

Sold Green Apples 4" x 4" Oil on Board FYI - I had a few problems with my blog (internet explorer had an error that I still can't fix!!)  the last couple of months post did not post...... so to catch you up.....I will re-post what's been going on! I was in the German Village Art Crawl in July.  This is an annual event where artist display in residents garage.  Local restaurants also have samples of their menus.  I shared the space with two great artist and friends,  Annette Simon and Judy Hazen.

10 x 8 Oil on Board I love painting the complementary palette......the orange just pops in this one. This is one of the times when you need to paint from life as the elispe is very important to get correct.  Of course I got to eat the orange after I finished, but it was a little dried out!

7" x 7" Collage on Paper What a fun projcet!  I can't remember the last time I had sooooo much fun with tearing paper and glue!!!!!  As most of you guys know I have been playing around with collage for a few years......Like the one of Georgia O'keefe that I did in Sante Fe about 10 years ago......WOW....how time flies!