Robin Cheers - A Painter's Journal: moses botkin challenge

Showing posts with label moses botkin challenge. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

Well - this was hard to try to depict - Wisdom. I love the idea of an older person like Suzanne painted (beautifully) and the wonderful idea of finding guidance in the good book, or in nature.
I went with the idea of learning from the past... the best way I could depict it was representing a visit to a working pioneer farm near us. It was a stretch, I know.

Helping Hands
10x8 oil on panel
© Robin Cheers

Seek and You Will Find

8x6 oil on hardboard

Wisdom
3x4 pastel on paper
©2011 Vicki Ross

Wisdom
20x16 oil on canvas
©2011 Suzanne Berry

Morning Watch - The Innate Wisdom of Animals
6x6 oil on canvas
©2011 Ruth Andre

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

This month it was my turn to pick our challenge! I thought it would be good to paint from a grayscale photo reference - but in color. The idea is to use the black and white photo to gauge your values as you choose color. You can see that for some reason, I gravitated to the purple and green again - just like the paintings in my last two posts! I have to put those colors aside - and yesterday I consciously kept them off my palette.
This was a good exercise. If you get your values correct and have a good composition, then you can really paint any color scheme you want and the painting will work.

Summer Chores
11x14 oil on panel
©2011 Robin Cheers

Below I thought I'd show my painting next to my photo reference. You can see that I did not get dark enough on the sheet in shadow or the shadow on the ground. But overall I did pretty well.

And here are the paintings done by my brave challenge cohorts. I think most enjoyed it. :-)

Fresh Sheets
14x11 watercolor on Aquaboard
©2011 Vicki Ross

It's A Wash
8x6 oil on canvas
©2011 Ruth Andre

Fetching
10x8 oil on hardboard
©2011 Diana Moses Botkin

Untitled
8x10 oil on canvas
©2011 Sharman Owings

Thursday
16x20 oil on canvas
©2011 Suzanne Berry

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

Grab your pearls and put on your party dress! This was a fun challenge. I had to try a couple of different set ups and dresses, the first being a pale pink that was really difficult to paint. Having donated my daughter's other dressy dress, (she doesn't wear ANY dresses if she can help it and I don't have any party clothes) I ended up painting a Halloween costume which has a renaissance feel to it. It was fun. Might be something I want to paint again.

Faire Dress
16x12 oil on panel
©2011 Robin Cheers

Stephanie
12x6 oil on canvas
©2011 Ruth Andre

Party Dress on the Beach
9x12 pastel on paper
©2011 Vicki Ross

That Party Dress
24x18 oil on canvas
©2011 Suzanne Berry

New Dress
10x12 oil on hardboard
©2011 Diana Moses Botkin

Monday, August 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

Really? Something in or on our car?
Ok - I looked around, even staged a Starbucks cup in my cupholder which would be pretty authentic, but the angles were all wrong. Then I see the beautiful lines of my husband's car. He has had sexy, beautiful cars since I've known him and he races them. They aren't just pretty faces, he goes to the track regularly for high performance driving. Hence the special after-market wing on the back. Can you guess what the car is? And no, I do not drive it.

Aerodynamics
5x7 oil on panel
©2011 Robin Cheers

Just Working
6x6 oil on canvas
©2011 Ruth Andre

Rocket Girl
7x5 oil on hardboard

Cherry
5x5 oil on panel
©2011 Vicki Ross

Old Mobile
6x6 oil on panel
©2011 Sharman Owings

Our challenge was Sharman's brainchild. I can't wait to see what is on for next month! My schedule is about to return to more regular programming as school starts in 8 days!

Friday, July 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

Back from NY and right to work! Barely got this done. I could plan ahead of course, but that would just not be me. Below are some really nice paintings on the challenging subject of eyes. I couldn't focus on this challenge, which probably was good for me.
I find that the less I focus, the better I paint. ;-)
My daughter's reaction to posing, rolling those big brown eyes. And to seeing it painted, "freaky."

My Daughter's Eyes
5x7 oil on panel - nfs

Just Thinking About You
4x4 oil on canvas board
©2011 Ruth Andre

Eye of the Storm

5x3.5 oil on hardboard

Helen's Eyes
12x12 oil on canvas
©2011 Suzanne Berry

Lashing Out
5x5 oil on board
©2011 Sharman Owings

Brothers
8x10 each oil on canvas
©2011 Vicki Ross

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

Self portraits. I'd rather be tied to a fire ant hill, I've decided. There couldn't be a less interesting subject for me. I started with the best of ideas and enthusiasm. But after 3 false starts, missing a massage appointment and sweltering in my hot studio space (need to move downstairs), I finally made one that was tolerable. But I still didn't do what I wanted to do. Maybe I will keep working on it. But I doubt it. I was hoping to paint myself doing what I do - sketching in a cafe. Then I would have had the cafe scenes that I love to paint, and me as the near subject... but the size of the panels I tried made the other elements much too small. I am at a weird angle too, owing to it being a photograph I set up with the camera balanced on my yogurt cup. And my red color is my heat rash that I've been enjoying for a week or so. I'm guessing on that... could be that I did lay in fire ants.

Anyway - this was a challenge in every respect. When you paint a face that you are so used to seeing, I think it is almost impossible to see it just as shapes of color/value... I couldn't see the forest for the trees so to speak. I think the others did beautifully creative paintings. I'm most impressed.

Today I'm going to work on a scene from Lake Michigan where I could barely dip my toes into the frigid water. But how yummy that would feel today in Texas.

Yours Truly
10x10 oil on linen board
(to be set in a corner and forgotten)

"Vicki - 2011"
14x11 oil on panel
©2011 Vicki Ross

"Morning Light"
10x8 oil on canvas
©2011 Ruth Andre

"Lady In Red - aka Me at 60”
8x8 oil on hardboard
©2011 Sharman Owings

"Suzanne"
10x10 oil on linen
©2011 Suzanne Berry

"Mirror"
7x8 Oil on canvas board

Monday, May 16, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

I'm a day late. My apologies to my challenge partners. I've just been kind of avoiding the studio lately. First it was intentional. And now its been a slump of epic proportions. Even the challenge didn't get me motivated. It was the first one I missed though and I felt badly. So I wanted to share the others work at the very least. I'm warming up again finally and enjoyed trying a little watercolor sketch. I felt I owed it to my camera too. I'd be lost without it and I like the idea of paying homage to this wonderful artist's tool.

watercolor pencil on paper
©2011 Robin Cheers

Friday, April 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

It was my turn to pick a challenge and I think I might have made some enemies this time around! jk - LOL
I certainly stirred up a lot of questions.
I wanted to practice the idea of limited strokes and decided we should paint something with just 15 strokes. The idea of this is to make you think ahead. You need to plan each stroke, mix enough color, load your brush and make that color last for the length of your stroke. Peggi Kroll Roberts has a video on this specific challenge and my friend V....Vaughan frequently practices this (both with much better results.)
I did a couple this week when I went to paint with some friends at a local farm/market. You will see my scene more fleshed out very soon.

7-stroke to Place
9x13 oil on canvas

7 Stroke Apple

4x 4.5 oil on canvas

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

This month's challenge was to paint on black. Now, I used to do this regularly for awhile. I think I got the idea from Karin Jurick and I did like the drama of the color on it. But once its painted over, there isn't much point really. Then I began to paint mostly on a grayed surface, sometimes gessoing many panels at one time in a nice latex house paint actually (idea from Ken Auster) which gives a nice smooth surface. But lately I've been painting mostly onto white linen or gessoboard and using thin washes and wiping back some too to achieve more transparent passages. Its funny how my own techniques vary widely depending on my mood and subject.
This time I let the black be, and I painted only the areas of light, so the black is the clayboard surface (only thing I had in black.) It was interesting to paint only the color areas, leaving his eye sockets empty and his shoulder and her shirt and hair just unpainted essentially. All the negative space is untouched. It was a neat experiment. Now, the clayboard is thirsty, so I had to paint some of those passages several times to make the color sing. I'm curious how the others got their very dense black grounds. Will have to read on... follow their links to read more with me!

Sweet Reflections