iPad Art

Posted on February 4, 2015 by OpusPlus

I’m a big fan of my iPad. I’m always looking for new ways to put it to use, and drawing on it seemed like a possibility. From my early iPad days I purchased apps like Brushes and Sketchbook Pro. More recently I got Procreate. Mostly, I would tinker around with them but I’d get frustrated before getting too far.

Last spring I took a four-hour class through Falls Church Arts from Bobbi Pratte. Bobbi is a wonderful landscape artist and I’m going to take an afternoon painting class from her in May. I’m looking forward to learning a lot.

In the class we experimented with Zen Brush, Sketch Club and Brushes. After we’d done some experimenting with each Bobbi gave us each a photo of a flower and we “painted” them using Sketch Club. I got a good start but ran out of time and had to finish my painting after class. The most important thing I learned was to use lots of layers! Below is my iris.

I was pleased with the results and since then II have gone on to do several more iPad “paintings”. Some have been studies that I did in conjunction with actual paintings, but others I just did for fun. I will save the studies to discuss with the associated paintings.

Mostly I use Procreate. I’m more comfortable with that than Sketch Club. I have tried several types of stylus — my favorite for painting on the iPad is the Sensu Solo.

As you know, I’m a big fan of butterflies, so I needed to try that out. Here is my monarch on pink pansies.

After some time of not doing much iPad art I was worried I’d lose my knack, so I took on something pretty challenging. I drew the post office building from Nimrod Hall. (Nimrod Hall is an art retreat in Bath County VA. We’ll talk about that in a future post)

Finally, what’s really fun is that most of the apps record your brush strokes (mistakes and all) and you can play them back as a movie. Below is the movie showing the strokes involved in me drawing the butterfly. It’s 3 minutes and 16 seconds long.

Green Show at Falls Church Arts

Posted on January 31, 2015 by OpusPlus

Two of my submissions to the upcoming Green Show at Falls Church Arts have been accepted. The interpretation of “green” is left up to the artist. I chose landscapes, although one of them is not very green. I also consider my paintings to be eco-friendly because I use water mixable oils.

The first I painted last Spring. It’s a view from the Devil’s Knob overlook in Wintergreen where everything was green and the red buds were blooming.

The second is a painting I did a few months ago from a photo I took on the Skyline Drive in the Fall of 2013.

The show is at Art Space in Falls Church located at 410 South Maple Avenue, Falls Church, VA 22046. It opens on February 12th and I plan to attend the opening night reception. It runs through March 8th.

Classes with Jean Barrett and My First Show

Posted on January 25, 2015 by OpusPlus

Around the time I got serious about starting to paint again I met my friend Dede Haas for drinks. I knew Dede through my networking activities while I was running my company. She is a consultant to technology companies specializing in channel sales, but she took a couple of years off while back to explore her love of photography. Her work is fabulous. Dede also lives near me and when we met she told me I should get involved with Falls Church Arts.

I decided to enroll in a class taught by Jean Marie Barrett called painting from the inside out. The premise was painting scenes looking out through windows and doors. It was a fun and challenging class and served the purpose of getting me back into painting again. Painting with Jean also served to build my confidence. Whenever I would cower in my lack of ability she would simply tell me I had the skills to do something and I should just do it.

I painted two paintings in that class. Interestingly enough, they were both from photos taken at Il Casale di Mele on a trip to Umbria Italy a few years ago. The first one is looking out the kitchen window. That’s my friend Sophie at the counter. This was my first painting in the class. In my opinion it’s not very good, but it did serve to get me back into practice.

The second piece I did is one of my best paintings ever. I’m not sure I would have even attempted it if it had not been for the confidence Jean instilled in me. This was done from a favorite photograph from the trip looking out a huge plate glass window from the dining room into the garden.

At Jean’s suggestion, I timidly entered it into the Falls Church Arts All Members Show (Spring 2014). It didn’t win anything, but I was quite proud. This was my first show.

Classes with Jennifer

Posted on January 11, 2015 by OpusPlus

In 2002 I decided that I needed to take some basic art classes. I was in the middle of starting my own company, so I had my hands full, but somehow I found time to sign up for a drawing class with the county adult education program. It was called Drawing to Paint, and the teacher was Jennifer Schoechle. I expected to do to class to learn to sketch so I could paint better. It was quite different from what I expected, but it was very useful.

The class was based on chiaroscuro, which is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark. We used primarily charcoal and usually began by covering the entire paper with a charcoal base and then using erasers and more charcoal to establish the lights and darks. We also worked on perspective. As it turns out, Jennifer was a gifted portrait painter, and chiaroscuro is a common technique in figure drawing.

While the class was very different than I expected, it was very good for me because it taught me to see contrast and value. We also learned some basic techniques like drawing the negative space, which is sometimes very helpful, especially with composition.

I went on to take a second class through the county with Jennifer in figure drawing and painting and then a third where she had a group of students take a portrait painting class in her home. I never imagined myself painting portraits, but it was a very good experience. It was also my first exposure to oil painting – I had always used acrylics before that point. Below is the portrait I painted in Jennifer’s private class.

Sadly, I haven’t done anything in portrait painting since. When I picked up my paintbrushes again in 2013 I thought I might try to take another class from her. I looked her up and learned that she passed away in 2010 at the age of 61, far too young to lose such a gifted artist. Below is the only example I could find of Jennifer’s work on Google.

Butterflies

Posted on January 3, 2015 by OpusPlus

Butterflies inspire me. They are delicate and colorful and beautiful. When I started painting I had some photographs of butterflies and decided they would be great subjects. I did my very first butterfly pictures in regular acrylic paints on paper. Acrylic was all I had and I hadn’t really explored other alternatives. They came out well, but the acrylic paint was heavy on the paper.

Around the same time, my sister told me about gouache. She had done a painting for me from a trip we took together to Germany and it is gouache and pencil. I’ve always loved the look and thought the paint looked sheer and classy. I decided to try my next butterfly in gouache.

What is so fun about painting a butterfly is getting into the patterns on the wings. The good news is that they don’t match exactly. If they did, my engineer’s brain would obsess about getting them to match and I’d never be able to finish the painting. I really liked my swallowtail that I did in gouache. I scanned it in and still use it as letterhead for my personal stationery and cards.

A few years ago after several years of not painting at all I was struggling to get my eye and my technique back. I decided that I needed to do some butterflies. The good news is that there’s not a huge time commitment. The gouache is tidy so there’s minimal set up and clean up and you can focus your time on doing the painting. For these more recent butterflies I used gouache but did most of the black on the wings with ink. I recently entered these in the Loving Life show (October 2014) at Falls Church Arts. They did not win anything nor did they sell, but they got a nice spot right by the door. I was also proud that they were selected, as this was my first curated show.

In the beginning…

Posted on December 30, 2014 by OpusPlus

In 1998, I decided I wanted to try my hand at painting. I actually don’t recall what led me to this idea, but I tend to be a bit impulsive, so if the idea popped into my head I probably acted on it. At the time, I was a co-founder and Vice President for an Internet startup. We were still trying to figure out exactly what the company would do, so I had some free time on my hands.

I had taken art classes in high school and showed some aptitude. My older sister is an artist and I was always intimidated by my inability to keep up with her so I never pursued art outside of the classroom. I also never attempted anything as ambitious as painting with oils or acrylics.

As I said in my “about me”, I’m an engineer by training. More specifically, I’m a computer scientist — some engineers would take issue with me calling myself an engineer, but you get the idea. I’m a logical thinker and I approach problems in a specific way. Painting was no different. I went to a local craft store and bought some acrylic paints, brushes and canvas paper. I think I also bought a plastic palette that was covered and would keep paints wet for a few days. I didn’t know if I would be any good at painting so investing in actual stretched canvases seemed frivolous. I then began to experiment to see how paints worked.

I had a photograph I’d recently taken of a dogwood blossom. I decided that would be my subject. I practiced mixing colors and testing brush strokes. I wasn’t sure how to capture the background. The photo was focused on the blossom so the background was blurry. I decided to just paint it dark green with some slightly contrasting leaves. The leaves and the blossom in the foreground I painted in more detail. Interestingly enough, I ended up liking the painting, and I was encouraged to continue. I guess that’s a good thing because I now derive great pleasure from painting.

At some point later I actually had that first painting framed and gave it to my mother as a gift. Because it was on cheap canvas paper I had to have it mounted on a board. It ended up looking pretty nice as you can see from the photograph. Both digital photography and my skills at photographing paintings have improved a lot since the 1990s, but you get the idea.

So this is how my journey from engineer to artist began and it continues…

Cynthia Gilmer Fine Art

…a former entrepreneur's search for her new passion as an artist

Category Archives: Paintings