Open And Learning - An Oil Pastel Tutorial

Hello friends! I am super excited to share all of this with you! 

 To find out more you can check it out here or purchase withPayPal.

Oil Pastel Inspiration

I've been really enjoying using magazine pages as part of my daily practice for enhancing my painting and drawing skills. I was inspired to experiment with this process after discovering Guim Tió Zarraluki a Barcelona based artist on Pinterest. He is best known for using oil pastels to alter fashion magazine images and he has perfected a technique and style for recreating the most interesting abstracted makeovers I've ever seen. 

My initial effort was to sketch out my own version of his completed makeovers then use acrylic paint to enhance them. Like this one here with blue hair :)  Very fun and an excellent drawing challenge! 

But then I wanted to try the oil pastels directly on a magazine image. My first effort was not at all what I had in mind.  I began with the magazine image below and ended up with the image on the left. Interesting but not what I was going for.

The challenge is how to create images that reflect my own aesthetic of drama and expressiveness with subtlety and detail. So I started experimenting and I am happy to say I have come up with a way to do just that and much much more! Along the way many friends on Facebook have shown interest in trying this out themselves.  As I was reading the comments I was writing down the questions and decided the best way to explain is to demonstrate and show exactly what it is I am doing.  So I created a video lesson that you can watch and learn from. It's actually 2 videos because I couldn't resist adding ideas and techniques for using a more mixed media approach and for creating interesting backgrounds. I'm thrilled to share this with you! 

Love, Robin

The Storyteller's Art

Class Opens March 4th 2016

So the day has arrived and I couldn't  be more excited! I am excited to share what I've been learning and discovering about the power of using our voice in tandem with our art!

Come join me on a week long journey into the magical realm of storytelling and art! This unique class will focus on developing your storytelling voice so that you can create art that is compelling and rich with imagination! Fun and deep is where we are going in this class my friends!

We will create 3 projects that are tied together with the glorious thread of story. I am excited to watch and assist all of you in uncovering your storytelling voice in the process! You will create expressive paintings that will mesmerize and engage your audience. Storyteller's need and audience so our work need to be dynamic and engaging! 

I am especially excited to gather together as seekers and  storytellers  in our Facebook Group! It is a bit of a dream come true for me to explore new ideas and share the experience of our journey in a safe and supportive little world of our own. Please join me for this adventure if you are even a little bit tempted to open up your heart and mind to a fresh and new way of expressing yourself with your art! 

Love, Robin








Failure Friday is an Adventure!

Put a Crown on It !

 This is an iPad painting out of my imagination. The fact I had no reference image is a factor in making this a candidate for a Failure Friday post. To be clear that is not because using a reference image would in any way have limited my imagination. On the contrary I think a reference image would have helped me create a similar painting but by a less circuitous route. I am never in a hurry when I am creating something but I find Ican get lost and do a lot of wandering about in the artful woods if I don't at least have some idea of the ultimate look I want to create.  For example am I interested in creating a male of a female, a face or a figure? Will  it be realistic or more abstracted? 

I mean really.... imagine if this had been on paper! I would have had to start over at least 16 times!  Or maybe she just would have had to wear a headress for a head or been stuck being a man in a broken fedora! Well anyway my  iPad has a way of turning failures into  valuable lessons with great comedy value!

So let's review the lesson. A reference image provides a framework and a guide. If I can't (and I never can) remember how to make a nose look three dimensional then the reference image gives me the opportunity to practice seeing the lights and darks and shapes that make up the nose rather than my mind trying to feed me some vague idea of what a nose is supposed to look like. Instead I am looking right at the real thing! duh :) Additionally using a reference will save me bushels of time! I can gain confidence simply from seeing that my drawing has relative accuracy. I have more fun as well because I like working on all the details and mark making rather than being so busy undoing or erasing!

Just for the record I am aware it is Saturday today an not Friday. It makes no difference though because this is still a Failure Friday post :) I'm really enjoying this visual blogging style even though words are one of my favorite art forms! If you want to learn more from me go to my classes page and see where I am teaching .

I'd love to hear what it is you gain from working from imagination as well as what you learn from using references.

Love, Robin xo

Paint and Pixels Self Study Program is Open!!

Ivy and I have been very busy in our creative little think tank with putting together this project! I am just so excited about opening our new self-study program that I can hardly sit still! Our students from the live class have told us over and over again that Paint and Pixels is an amazing and unique class! They tell us how much they have learned and they demonstrate this every day by creating more beautiful art! The flow of ever more sophisticated art work just keeps coming and we are just so delighted to watch our students grow and gain confidence. Our new self study students are so fortunate to be able to join this vibrant and active group of amazing artists!

See!? If you have watched the video above you will see what we are so excited about!

But I'm going to stop right here for a minute and add the learn more and purchase button so that if you would like to you can go straight to the classroom sales page on Ivy's website to sign up or read an extensive description of the class!

So what does it mean exactly to be a student in the self study program? Trust me it's all good and students will have full access to the amazing and rich content Ivy and I have created! For many students the fact that it is self paced will be a huge advantage to working within the context of  a four week classroom. The main difference is that the self study students will need to have the determination, a stick-to-it attitude and the enthusiasm for learning as they work through the initial learning curve. We've created plenty of unique content and helpful guides for the self study students so they certainly will not be left on their own. And Ivy and I are still right here cheering everyone on and helping out when needed.

If you have followed along with Ivy and I on the Paint and Pixels journey you will already know how dedicated we are to spreading the word about this new art form! It's all been very thrilling and having more artists join us and our amazing graduates would be great fun indeed! Our students have inspired us so much more than they realize and we are as proud of their success as much as our own!

Love, Robin

Real Life Artist - The Learning Curve

Failure Friday - Learning From Failure

One of the things I like best about social media is the sharing that happens amongst the artist community. I gain a wealth of inspiration and knowledge from connecting and interacting. I love when I click the comment button on some intriguing work of art only to discover that there is a rich and energetic dialogue happening in real time with real people about art and life! I learn and grow from what others are studying or working on. I also get to hear about the amazing successes as well as the difficult challenges of the artists who are open to sharing their journeys. I feel encouraged in my own work with each story that is shared. Hearing about the struggles of an artist I admire helps me to be brave and to push myself out of my comfort zone. I tell myself that if they can do it I can too.

The last several months my creative focus has been painting on an ipad.  I have experienced success and a sense of deep satisfaction with some of the digital paintings I have created. I have loved the success and aknowledgement of my work and the growing sense of confidence that has developed as a result.

Starting from that position of strength and confidence it is time for a new challenge and to push myself beyond my comfort zone. So back to the drawing board I go using my traditional art materials, drawing large and using an easel.  This is a way for me to practice bravery and seek growth.  

I decided to share one of my recent, more challenging experiences. My goal is to maintain a positive perspective and evaluate my skills  to determine where I need to grow and how best to go about improving.  My intention is to be a problem solver rather than upset about my failures. I want to learn from them.  The reference image I used is on the left. 

I'm working on my easel and on large paper trying to stay loose. What that means is that I'm trying not to think too much but focus on getting the forms in and placing them accurately. I didn't do any measuring or comparing other than using my eye to gauge how the drawing matched up with the original and checking angles using my charcoal. I believed in general I was doing "ok". I told myself it was perhaps too wide at the cheek bones but that I could fix that later. A small voice was telling me the eyes were too far apart but I didn't listen. Being a relatively new artist I sometimes imagine I won't be able to repeat a feature and do better than the one I see in front of me. That right eye was shaped ok and I didn't want to move it. 

I can tell you now I should have stood back, looked carefully, measured and made corrections in placement of everything long before I started adding details.  Since I didn't do that things begin to go from ok to bad to worse quickly. The harder I worked the more confused I got because when I changed one eye the cheekbone looked off and vice versa.  I kept changing the shape of the face, moving the jawline up then down, wider then more narrow. I think I changed the mouth at least ten times. No matter what I did it just was "off". I was frustrated and discouraged and began using swear words... Time to take a break!

Instead of taking a break I decided to take a photo of the drawing and the original.  I loaded them both into my iPad and opened Procreate which is the painting app I use. Using layers I outlined the features on the original and  the features on my drawing. Then I overlaid the outline from my drawing over the original and guess what happened? The errors were revealed with ease. Very helpful information! The nose was too long, that right eye is too high and too far from the center line. Having the nose too long made everything below it wrong. In an effort to make it right I had over rendered the mouth and completely lost my way in terms of how to draw a mouth or the shape of the face. Lots of problems!

Once I saw what errors I had made I was able to try again. I stayed in the iPad and experimented. I still found it difficult to render the mouth properly and depicting how her head was tilted down slightly. All of the parts of the face are connected and each nuance of movement changes the relationship between structure and form so getting these things right were important. If I want to control the expressiveness of the face I need to be able to accurately recreate the form of the face in various positions and at various angles. 

 The lessons here are pretty obvious. Take my time, stand back OFTEN to check my work, render shapes not features. (My brain is tricky and will deceive me but I don't need that Information, it isn't helpful.)  I need to correct as you go and move on when things truthfully look to be in place not 'sort of in place'. Trust myself but don't trust myself!  Measure angles and relationships. Be careful and be loose about the drawing at the same time.  Its a lot to pull off but its worth it because in the end what I want is to do beautiful work! 

I've shared about the usefulness of the iPad as a learning tool many times as a teacher in Paint and Pixels  but I never tire of sharing how i use it as an essential tool for drawing.

 Below is a little video I did many months ago for Jeanne Oliver's Living Studio series. I basically talk through a charcoal drawing  where I find myself in a similar situation as the one I described above. I figure out the corrections and changes I want to make by taking a photograph and moving it into Procreate. In this case I go back to the easel and make the changes on paper. Its like magic and I LOVE using this tool! 

Ok back to the drawing board for more practice, practice practice!!

love, Robin