Back in the saddle…..

I’m trying to get started painting again, but I’m finding I’ve lost my confidence and it’s difficult to get something going. I texturized and underpainted some canvases, researched and printed some new images for inspiration, but just couldn’t get anything serious started.

Timothy Leary

Then I saw this image in a video that a friend posted about Timothy Leary, and then my massage therapist posted a photo of her most recent vision board. I was inspired.

So I started a painting JUST FOR ME. No pressure. Just trying to get those creative juices flowing. I underpainted a piece of watercolour paper red, and then started blocking out shapes to make a bicycle, but I didn’t like that. So I started a funky face…..which turned into a bike RIDER. The bicycle tires were still faintly on my paper so I turned them into shapes reminiscent of wheels and sprockets. Colour, colour, colour.

Step 1 – pretty bright

Then I got out the magazines and added some vision boarding-type words and some bike parts to my painting. Fun. Fun.

In Progress

In the middle of this project (because this is happening over a couple of weeks), mountain biking season started and I got out for my first totally awesome, totally muddy, totally hilly, totally exhilarating ride with some great riding friends. This made me even more excited about my painting. So I added some more words.

I realized the Timothy Leary pic (above) is oil pastel, but I use acrylic paint and wanted it to stick, so I went to my box of soft pastels and started adding some dimension to my painting. What a mess! But it started to look interesting. I used some workable fixatif over the pastel to set it, then another layer of pastel, and more fixatif.

Then came the fluid acrylic…..which gave me a little grief, but I’m mostly happy with how it came out. My family suggested I splatter some “mud” on the picture, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So my mountain biker painting/vision board is complete. I’m happy. Creative juices are flowing……but I need to go out for another ride now.

Live Your Ride

Come on out an see some of my non-biking works of art at the Oakville Artists Group Spring Show and Sale this weekend. http://katherinemjames.com/pages/events-showings

Riding Makes Me Happy

The painting is on the wall…..

I know it’s supposed to be “the writing is on wall”, but that just wouldn’t work for me…….since I paint……and my writing is on a WordPress blog.

This blog is sort of a continuation of the “Paint it Black” post, because the black was partially the inspiration for these paintings too.

A while ago, I was at Chapters with the kids and I was browsing through the bargain books, when I came upon a book about street art all over the world. It featured different kinds of street art (postering, stencils, and traditional graffiti), and was truly inspirational. Obviously, I bought the book, and so many of the works inspired me to try something in a street art/graffiti style. I am a brush painter (mostly), and I don’t own a paint gun and compressor (although I’m thinking about it now), so I wasn’t completely sure how I was going to start a painting like this.

Then I painted a bunch of canvasses black, and they just called out for graffiti-style art to be painted on them. They had a lot of texture from previously painted art, and the black was a great backdrop. I decided to use my crappy pig hair brushes and dry brush……and my favourite subject……women. I had an old newspaper article from when Lindsay Lohan was being taken to court, or something tragic like that. I kept the picture because I loved the angle of her head and the scraggly hair. This was my starting point.

Lindsay became Graffiti Girl 1 and then I felt I had to do more. I also felt it was important to pick up the texture of the canvas, so I used my speedball roller and some fluid acrylic to pop out the texture, then painted 3 more “girls”. I added some gobs of paint with my palette knife and some black fluid acrylic for some interesting squiggles. And of course, I had to go back to the Lindsay painting and add some of that interesting stuff to make the collection more cohesive.

Eh, voila!! The Graffiti Girl collection.

You can see all of the Graffiti Girls at the Oakville Artists Spring Show and Sale on April 18th at the QE Park Cultural and Community Center, in Oakville, Ontario.

https://www.facebook.com/events/346181838825807/