Rose Painting Demo With Katie Whipple

Over the winter I got to spend a dreary, rainy day in the best way possible:  watching Katie Whipple demonstrate painting a rose.  If you are not familiar with Katie's work, she is the best floral painter out there.  I was lucky enough to take a floral class with her a few years ago ( see here and here ) and I learned so much.

The demo took place at Grand Central Atelier, and was an all day event.  In addition to the demo, Katie brought some of her floral paintings to show us, as well as her supplies and the products she uses to keep her flowers going for the duration of painting time.

The demo was a single rose.  It's hard to see in the picture, but it was a white rose with pink and yellow undertones.

This is where she left off at the end of the day.  To me, the rose looks done, but Katie said that under normal circumstances, she would have worked on this much longer.

Aren't these paintings amazing?  Katie was so generous to bring these in for us to see.

I have a workshop with Katie coming up this summer and I can't wait.  Thanks to Katie and Grand Central for a great day!

Big News: Prints Of My Work Are Now Available At Blake And Taylor!

I'm very excited to announce that prints of my work are now available at the Blake And Taylor shop in Brisbane, Australia!

Let me back up a bit and tell you how this all came to be.  Last winter, Ellie Ramsay, the owner of Blake and Taylor found me on Instagram and as she was visiting New York City, inquired about setting up a studio visit.

Though I live in New York City, my studio is on Long Island.  Ellie, along with her husband and daughter, took the train out to see me.  We had such a fun day together.  They selected five of my paintings to be shipped to Australia, so that Ellie could turn them into art prints and greeting cards for sale through her shop.

These are the five paintings available as art prints and greeting cards.  Ellie has a great eye and we tried out different combinations until she found a grouping that worked together.

If you click over to Blake and Taylor, you will see the prints for sale (with FREE worldwide shipping!).  I also wrote a short piece for each one describing the inspiration behind each painting.  I'm always interested in the creative process, so I hope you will enjoy reading about mine.

I hope you will check out my prints and if you are local to Brisbane, please stop in to Ellie's shop.  It is a wonderful, creative place.

I have met so many wonderful people through Instagram, both online and in person.  It's amazing to me that a few years ago, none of us would know about each other, and now we can connect with people around the world!

How To Set Up For A Floral Painting Workshop

Last month Gregg Kreutz was back at The Art Guild Of Port Washington, this time for a two day floral workshop.

We had a sold out class, so we needed fourteen floral set ups.  Thirteen for the students and one for Gregg.  My studio mate is a very talented floral designer and we worked together to get everything done for the workshop.

We gathered a ton of flowers, fruit and various vases and objects and got to work.

Once we had everything gathered, we began to do the set ups.  As you can see, the beginnings of a still life set up are not very glamorous.  Several weeks before the workshop, we began collecting milk crates to use as a base.  A few days prior to the workshop, we got the wooden shelves at Home Depot. You just tell them the size you want and how many and they cut them right there.  We then stained them using Minwax Dark Walnut, the same color I stained the shelves in my studio.

My bud Ilene and I work very well together, so we always have fun setting up.  I'm good with still lifes and she is great with flowers, so between us we get it done.

After placing the wooden shelves on top of the milk crates, we put a presentation board behind the crate in order to hold the fabric.  We got these from Staples, but the party store near my house carries them as well.  We draped the fabric over the board and then secured it in place with large clips.

It was then time to get to the flowers and fruit.  We started by picking out a vase that worked with the particular fabric we were working on.  We would then choose flowers that complimented them both and then we would decide if the set up needed anything else.  Some we left with flowers only, others we added fruit, petals, another object or something else.  You can't really decide in advance what you will do.  Once you have your main pieces in place you have to experiment a bit to see what looks the best.

Here are some of our set ups.

This is the set up that I painted

You'll notice in the photo above that there are post it notes on the shelf.  Due to the fact that we did the set ups the day before the workshop, we did not want to leave cut up fruit or petals out an extra night, so we used the post it notes as reminders of what needed to be done the next morning.  They were very specific - "apple slice", "rose petal", "green leaf".  The first morning of a workshop can be a little chaotic and you don't want to have to try and remember what you wanted for the set up.  With the reminder notes you can just get down to business without having to think about it too much.

Gregg starting the workshop with a demo

One tip, make sure you have extra fruit and flowers for the second or third days of the workshop.  Things often have to be replaced, usually cut fruit or some of the stems, and you don't want to be caught short.

Setting up a still life is a lot like being a stylist.  There are two guidelines that I follow:  You want the shape to be triangular and the set up should read from left to right.  After that, it is really a matter of using your eye to see what works.  This takes some time, so don't rush it and don't worry if you don't get it right the first time.  After we set everything up, we went back around to each still life and double checked that everything was in order.  Sometimes things stayed the same, others we adjusted by either adding something or taking something out.  On one of them, we spent some time deciding if we were going to use one grape or two on the shelf.  There was a guy in the office fixing the computer and I'm sure he thought we had gone completely off the deep end, but these tiny details matter.  You don't want a boring or incomplete still life set up, not for yourself and certainly not for a workshop.

We had a great two days painting flowers and the students raved about the set ups.  I was so happy that people really liked them because you want to do the best for your workshop participants. As for my painting, I decided to use a 16x20 canvas so I didn't get very far, but I did manage to get the whole canvas covered and I am working on it now.  Luckily, my floral designer is right across the hall :)

Have any questions about  setting up?  Leave me a comment!

My Orange And Yellow Roses, Up For Auction!

I'm very excited to let everyone know that my painting, Orange And Yellow Roses, will be up for auction tomorrow night to benefit the education fund of The Art Guild Of Port Washington.  The Art Lovers Fling will take place tomorrow night at 7 pm at The Village Club of Sands Point (LI).

The Guild will be honoring its founding members, as well as artist Antonio Masi, president of the American Watercolor Society.

There are many other works of art available in addition to show tickets, museum passes, a golf outing at The Village club, art lessons with various teachers and many more auction items.  If you are in the NYC/LI area and are interested in attending, you can purchase tickets on the website or pay at the door tomorrow evening.  It promises to be a fun night for a good cause.  Hope to see you there!

New Paintings Added To The Site

Hey Everyone.  I'm back.  After a less than pleasant few weeks I am back in my studio.  I finished one painting today and another is well on the way.  I will have a post up tomorrow about the finished painting, but for now, here are some paintings that I have added to my drop down menus.

Orange And Yellow Roses, 9x12, oil

Valentine's Day Roses, 16x20, oil

Peonies In A Blue And White Pot, 12x16, oil

Brass Pot With Peaches, 16x20, oil

Orchids, 18x24, oil

See you next time with the new painting.  Happy to be back!

Two New Shows

Hi Everyone.  I thought I would have two new paintings to show you today, but my plan didn't quite work out.  I finished up a new still life on Monday, but I have found it impossible to get a decent photo of the completed painting.  I used a black background for the first time and it is just not photographing well.  If I can't get a good one today, I'll show you the painting with a less than perfect photo :).  I've also been working very hard on a second still life, but I have made the difficult decision that this one is just not going to work and needs to be wiped out.  I've been working on it for a few weeks so it is hard to do that, but after having a dream about the whole situation the other night I know that is what has to be done.

However, there is some good news to report.  My pink roses were chosen for the "A Rose By Any Other Name" show at the Huntington Arts Council.  I drove myself (and everyone else) nuts with this painting, so I was thrilled when it was entered into the show.  And... I got a lovely surprise when the publicity card was emailed to me.  My roses were chosen as one of the paintings for the card!  This is the first time one of my works has been used for publicity and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Valentine's Day Roses, 16x20, oil

The reception is tonight from 6-8pm.  If you are in the Huntington (LI) area, please come by and check out all the roses!

The other big news is that two of my paintings were chosen for the Richeson75 Still Life and Floral online show.  It just went live a few hours ago, and my painting,  Blue And White Vase With Fruit, was chosen as a finalist! My Sunflowers were also selected to be in the exhibit.   You can click on the link to see the entire show, but I'll post my two paintings here.

Sunflowers And Apples, 14x18, oil

Blue And White Vase With Fruit, 12x16, oil

After a less than optimal few weeks, I'm so happy and excited to be in these shows.  I'll be back with my new still life soon.  Have a great weekend!

Every Rose Has It's Thorn

Hello everyone.  I'm happy to be back to blogging after a crazy four weeks in which I painted five paintings!  As everyone knows, I am a pretty slow painter, so this was quite a feat.

The reason behind this craziness is that I got two artist calls for shows that I wanted to enter.  Usually, shows are pretty generic.  It will be a landscape show or a still life show and I always have something to enter.  This time the calls were for a travel and destinations show and a roses show.  They both came at the same time so I had no choice but to lock myself in the studio for a month and get to work.

Today I will show you the roses.  I always like to enter at least two paintings into a show as I feel there is just too much pressure with a single entry.  If the juror does not like it, you are out.  With two there is a better chance.  At least that is what I tell myself :)

I knew I would be under a time crunch with the roses, so before I even went to the flower shop, I got out two canvases and prepped them the best that I could.  I put in the background, the still life shelf and the vases for both paintings.  Of course, this is not the proper way to do a painting.  You should be working on the entire painting at once, but in this circumstance, I felt this would be the most efficient way to do things.

The first painting was a bouquet of orange and yellow roses in a glass vase.  The canvas is small, 9x12, so this was an easy painting to complete.  The painting just flowed off of my brush and I was done in two days.

The still life set up

  At the end of day one.  When the first day goes well, things usually go well for the rest of the painting.

Orange And Yellow Roses In A Glass Vase, 9x12, oil

This is the finished painting at the end of the second painting day.  I was so relieved that this one went well.  I usually take a day in between paintings just to have a fresh start, but I turned right around and began painting number two the next day.

Luckily, it was the Friday before Valentine's Day and a box of two dozen pink roses showed up at my house (a gift from my husband).  I immediately took those over to my studio and got to work.  Unfortunately, this painting did not go quite as smoothly.

I had the shape of my vase and the background already done, so it should have been a straightforward process to paint in the flowers, but it was tough from the beginning.

I think I ran into problems because this was really crunch time.  I'm better off when I can spend some time thinking about what I'm painting and work things out as I need to.  There was no time for that with this painting so I just had to keep moving.  The second problem is that roses are very hard to paint.  Flowers are my favorite thing to paint, but roses are so difficult for me that I rarely do them.

This was the first day.  Not horrible, but looking back I can see where my problem started.  I did not paint the shadows in a uniform fashion.  That is something that is second nature to me at this point, but with roses it can be very hard to see and I went down the rabbit hole for a time.

This is a photo of day three.  Sorry it is so dark.  I was painting during that crazy snow storm we had on Monday and it was very dark in the studio.  As you can see, the shadows are done correctly here so that made dealing with the flowers easier, but then I decided that there were problems with the vase!

If you look at Chinese blue and white porcelain, the colors are not as dark and thick as I have them here.  It should be much more subtle.  So what did I do at the end of day four?  Painted it out, of course!  Everyone in my studio thought I was nuts, but I just could not leave it knowing it was not right.

Here is the vase with the original pattern wiped out.  Also, as you can see in the photo above, I decided to add some more roses to the rest of the painting.  My original vision for this painting was an "explosion" of roses.  This isn't quite that, but the new additions really turned the painting around.  At this point all that was left to do was put in the pattern again and add some pink into the still life shelf.

Valentine's Day Roses, 16x20, oil

This is the finished painting.  I finished up the pattern Wednesday evening, then photographed it Thursday, and submitted both paintings on Friday.  I was so happy to be done!  Whether I get into the show or not, I'm very happy with how both of these paintings turned out.  In my next post I'll show you the travel paintings.  Happy Sunday, everybody!