"Windsong, Nantucket" 12x9"

I'm on my way today to visit daughter Emily in Boston.  I've convinced her that a trip to the Isabella Gardner museum is a "must" on our itinerary!  I will show you highlights of our visit, if I'm allowed to photograph there.

"Windsong, Nantucket" is in the East End Gallery in Nantucket.

"Turnip Tempest", 12x12"

If you've  had a chance to check out my Youtube video, you know how much I love to fracture and destroy my paintings as I create them!  This painting is about as close to complete abstraction as I've ever come.  The world hasn't ended as a result, so I think I'll do some more of these.

"Turnip Tempest" is available through the East End Gallery in Nantucket.

"Echoes of Innocence", 18x24" And A New YouTube

And now for a little exciting news: I have just finished my very first Youtube!  It is titled "Impressionistic Painting Techniques with Ann Feldman".  I hope that if you have a few minutes, you'll take a look.  Click on Ann Feldman Youtube to visit.  And please feel free to share it with other artists and friends!

Here's a little story behind this painting.  A few months ago, I was playing tennis with my usual vigor and abandon.  All of a sudden, the ball was coming straight at me, and I had a "deer in the headlights" moment.  At the last instant, I put my hand out to block the ball and ended up breaking my finger and knuckle in several places.  Naturally, it was my ring finger, so the wedding ring ended up getting sawed off in the ER.  After forgetting the ring in the examining room, I was reunited with it again later that day.

To say that my tennis friend felt bad for what I went through that day is an understatement!  OK, so here's where the painting comes in:  she sent me these beautiful flowers to speed my recovery, so I decided to paint them.  And here they are!  This painting is available through the Button Petter Gallery in Saugatuck, Michigan.

"Job Well Done", 14x11"

Volkening Heritage Farm in Schaumburg, Illinois is an artist's dream locale.  The farm is kept as it was in the 1800's, and all the workers do their jobs in period costume.  I feel just like one of the kids that arrive in droves in school buses when I'm there.  When I catch a scene like this one, my heart skips a beat and I feel very lucky indeed.

This painting is in Saugatuck, Michigan at the Button Petter Gallery.

"Paulette", 12x16" Painting with Three Colors

Last week, I taught a two day workshop in Huntley, Illinois on Color.  We worked with a limited palette of red, yellow, and blue to really learn the properties of the colors and how to mix them effectively.  On the evening between the two classes, I went to open studio to paint.  All I had on my palette were my three colors, so I decided to put my theory to the test and paint only with what I had.  This portrait is the result.

Paulette is a student of mine who has just graduated from high school.  We will miss her so much when she leaves to go to college.  An accomplished artist who will go on to do fabulous things with her life.

Below, you can see the color wheel that we mixed in class.  (My students were MUCH neater than I was).  Three colors can go a long way, and can eliminate a lot of confusion along the way.  Once we have a really good understanding of the primary properties, we can go on to add other colors to our palette.

"Reflections in Blue", 20x24"

Once again, I took a perfectly fine and "normal" looking painting and fractured it to make it more interesting (at least to me).  This one is on its way to the East End Gallery in Nantucket.  I hope it's happy there!

Tomorrow, I'll be giving my very first workshop on Color in Huntley, Illinois to the Pencil and Palette Club.  I've been having many requests for this workshop, and will be offering it in the fall at Mainstreet Art Centre.  The first day of the workshop, we'll concentrate on mixing pure, vivid colors, and the second day, we will be working in the "mud".  I'm looking forward to it!

Teaching Notes: It's Not Easy Being Green!

Over the weekend, I spent some time at Crabtree Nature Preserve with some intrepid landscape enthusiasts.  Our mission: to paint a predominantly green landscape with interesting color and solid values (like us!).

We started our very green project with a bright red wash. Red, as we know, is the complement of green, so we had a nice color vibration underneath our painting from the outset.  We then drew in the major shapes of the landscape using the same bright red color on our drawing brushes.

It's hard to see the forest for the trees!  In order to see the major value areas and shapes, we turned our reference photos upside down. This forces our minds to quiet down and stop commanding us to paint in a certain way.  We can more easily observe our subject as puzzle pieces of value and color.

Instead of painting our landscape in green, green, and more green, we asked ourselves, "what other colors can be used in this value area?" Out came surprising combinations of purple, orange, and blue, just to name a few.

A few of the finished products!  Way to go, artists!!!

AND NOW FOR A PROGRAMMING NOTE:

I'm putting together my teaching schedule at Mainstreet in Lake Zurich, IL for next year, so I'd love to know if there is a workshop or class you'd be interested in.  So far, I've had requests for Palette Knife, Fracturing, and Color Workshops.  The Portrait and Impressionism Classes have also been popular, but I want to offer what YOU are interested in, so if you have any thoughts, shoot me an email or leave me a comment here.

And thank you!

"The Poetry of Abstraction" 18x24"

Sometimes, when a painting is going nowhere, the more I try to make it work, the worse it looks.  At that point, the best thing to do is to admit that it's a loss and hack away at it with abandon.  It's ruined anyway, so why not?

That is exactly what happened with this painting.  The original version is below, and I hated it.  So I put fresh paint over the whole thing, then took a palette knife to it, fractured it, and painted it again.  I think the new version is more interesting to look at, and the color is fresher.  And what the heck, it's something different!

"The Logic of a Summer Garden II" 20x16"

I had so much fun fracturing my last piece, I decided to do it again!  This painting went with us to Saugatuck and is happily hanging at the Button Petter Gallery.  (Can a painting be happy?  Well, I'm happy that it's there!)

"The Logic of a Summer Garden I" 20x16"

This is an example of the "Fracturing" technique that I've been experimenting with lately.  I had my paintings lined up at the studio for framing the other day, and a young boy pointed at this one and said,"It looks shattered!" Made me happy to know that my intention was understood by one so young.

This painting is shown at the Button Petter Gallery in Saugatuck, Michigan.

"Expectant Spring II" 11x14"

In an attempt to keep the lessons I learned in Carolyn Anderson's class fresh in my mind, I painted another pastoral scene today.  This time, I "bounced" a bit of red into my greens to be sure that my color was harmonized throughout.  

And here is another scene from New Harmony Indiana that I thought you might enjoy.  Painters were descending on the town in preparation for the "First Brush of Spring" plein air paintout, and so many people were happy to chat with them and see their latest works.

"Expectant Spring" 11x14", And some thoughts on Carolyn Anderson's Workshop

I'm just back from another whirlwind week in New Harmony, Indiana, where I attended a workshop with Carolyn Anderson.  What an eye-opening experience! Here are some highlights of what I learned from Carolyn:


Try not to paint "things".  Instead, focus on line, value, color, and shape.

When painting from a photo, try not to go too dark.  As we know, photos lie, and darks can get darker, lights get lighter.  We have to adjust for this.

Pay close attention to color harmony and temperature.  In the painting above, I didn't have a good temperature balance. Carolyn showed me how to "bounce" a cool blueish/green color throughout the painting to make it seem more cohesive.


I'll have some more thoughts on my time with Carolyn in future posts.  In the meantime, here are a couple of photos from the idyllic town of New Harmony!

"Aspen Season" 5x7" And thoughts on palette knife painting

This tiny painting was created using only a palette knife.  It can be pretty intimidating to try to paint with a knife and lots of thick, uncontrollable paint, but I've found that if you keep a few things in mind as you paint, the process can be simplified and made a lot less scary.

First, start with a really good "map" underneath your painting.  The drawing below is what I had underneath my painting.  Each area is labeled with an L (for light), M (for middle), or D (for dark).  These are reminders for my values (light vs dark) as I paint.  The sky, yellow trees, and the foreground are labeled "L" because they are the lightest areas of the painting.  Background trees are "D" because they are dark, and the hillside is labeled "M" because it falls in the middle value range.

Once I have my map ready, I start to lay in my paint with my knife.  Another rule that I live by is to paint the areas farthest away and work up to the closest areas.  In this case, the sky is where I started, then I moved to the background trees, then the hill, then the foreground.  The yellow trees and the trunks were the last things to be touched. When I do this, I lay paint on top of paint, and I don't have  to paint around anything.  It also keeps my paint areas fresh and clean.

I hope that you try to paint with a palette knife-- it is a guaranteed way to loosen up your paintings!

For purchase information, please click on "Ann Feldman Aspen Season".

"Abstracted Flowers", 9x12"

I was in the mood this morning to throw some paint around, so I took out my palette knife and went to town.  Is this too much?  Did I go too far?  I confess that this was the most I've enjoyed a painting session in quite some time.  Sometimes a pleasant morning should be the only goal, so I guess in that, I've succeeded.

"Just A Thought" 9x12", And a Lesson in Painting the Eye

Terry stopped in to pose for our Open Studio session last night.  Since I had been painting all that day, I was warmed up and ready to go.  I put down thick paint with a bare minimum of detail.  I decided to stop painting as soon as I had a good gesture.  If I noodled it with it any more, I think I would have killed the spontaneity.

In my Monday Evening Portrait class, we have been working on painting features.  Here is my method for painting an eye ( I used a #2 filbert brush for the entire process):

 We will use a photo of Christy for our model.

 After putting down a base of light skin tone, I find the entire shadow area of the eye socket.  I put this in with a middle value of purple warmed with a bit of cadmium red.

 On the top of the shadow form, I paint in the brow with a dark mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna.

 Once the brow is in, I can see where the iris belongs.  Using the same mixture as the brow, I loosely paint in the iris.

I add the lash line with the same dark mixture.

 I add the "white" of the eye, which in reality is a very light gray.  I find the lid crease and darken it.

 And now for the fun part-- the details!  I highlighted the lid and the brow bone.  I darkened the shadow underneath the eye to give it more dimension.  Then I added a hint of red in the tear duct and placed a tiny highlight on the eye between the pupil and the colored area of the eye.  I lightened the eye color on the bottom half of the iris.  Voila!

A Portrait in Progress

I thought it might be interesting to show the process behind painting this portrait from life.  The painting on the left shows the stage where I am thinking about putting down lots of color and finding the planes of the face and features.  In the painting on the right, I've taken my trusty Langenickel soft brush and softened everything I did in the first stage, then added a few details like nostrils and highlights to bring it all together.

Here are the colors that I used in the light areas of her face.  I begin by mixing Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Scarlet, and Titanium White for a basic warm skin tone.  Then I added a drop of green, then Cerulean Blue, then Quinacridone Rose, then more Cadmium Yellow to change the color of the skin ever so slightly.

For the shadows on her face and neck, I started with a mixture of Ultramarine Blue with Quinacridone Rose and Titanium White.  To this mixture, I added Cadmium Scarlet, then a medium value green, then Cerulean Blue, and lastly I mixed Yellow Ochre to my basic purple color.  This gave me a nice range of shadow colors to play with.

When I softened her face, I tried to let the colors stay separated just a bit.  I have a tendency to over blend and lose the color excitement.  When I find a good balance, I put my brush down and walk away quickly!

"Her Favorite Scarf", 9x12"

Last night, we gathered at Mainstreet Studio to paint Brittany.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to forge out into the Polar Vortex to paint into the night?  I am so glad that there are other hardy souls who are determined to paint from life on a regular basis, no matter what Mother Nature throws at us.  Not to mention our intrepid model, who could have been at home watching "Idol" or something!

I decided to try to keep this one pretty loose, and didn't worry too much about getting a perfect likeness.  I was more interested in pushing the color and putting down some really thick paint.

Grapefruit, Orange, Lime 12x9"

This week's Daily Paintworks Challenge is to paint some citrus fruits.  So I painted some.  Then I destroyed my painting with a dry paintbrush and repainted it.  Then I did it again.  Each time, I tried to leave some edges soft, and I tried to vary the color with each brush stroke. This "destroy and rebuild" technique is pretty fun-- you never really know how things will turn out!

Gerber Jar Daisies, 6x6"

I painted this little piece for the Daily Paintworks Challenge this week.  The challenge was to change your color with every brush stroke, using very large flat brushes.  Keeps one from becoming too fussy!

Woodstock Courthouse Show

Have you considered owning a larger piece of original art but balked at the mind-boggling prices?  I've got some pieces in the Woodstock Courthouse Art Gallery for a show through February with prices that are a fraction of my usual gallery prices.  They are all framed in black or dark bronze frames, ready for hanging. The sizes listed below are for the pieces without frames.

Contact Vicky at the Woodstock Courthouse Art Center for details and shipping.  I'll give you details about the upcoming reception on February 15th, too.  I'd love to see you there!

 "DeLawn", Oil Painted OnThick Gesso On Canvas, 22x24", $425

 "Red Scarf", Oil on Canvas, 12x16",  (SOLD)

 "San Diego Morning", Oil on Gesso Board, 14x11", $225

 "La Señora", Oil on Canvas, 12x9", $185

"The Visitor", 16x12", $325 

January Sunset, 8x8"

Here in Illinois, there isn't a whole lot to look at other than snow these days.  Sometimes the sunlight makes wonderful patterns that are quite dazzling.  This is the scene outside my back window today.

Daisy Glow, 10x8"

Here in the Midwest, we are starved for sunshine.  As we prepare for the next arctic blast, I thought I'd prop some sunny daisies next to the window and simulate a little springtime!

Annie on the Veranda, 12x9"

I caught my sister-in-law Annie during a rare moment of tranquility in Jamaica.  I knew I had to paint this scene-- the sunlight streaking across the floor was irresistible!

For purchase information, please click on Ann Feldman Veranda.  Thank you!

"Claire, Freedom 58 Project" 11x14"

I was contacted by Bob Swenson, former NFL player for the Denver Broncos to help with a project that he and his wife have started, titled "Freedom 58 Project".  They are asking artists to paint portraits of freed slaves which will be on display to raise awareness of the huge problem of slavery and human trafficking worldwide.  I was more than happy to lend a hand, and I chose to paint Claire.  Her strong, optimistic spirit spoke to me, and she was a joy to paint.

Laura, 12x16"

Laura is a very special student of mine.  She started in my teen class when she was in middle school, and now here we are, several years later, and she's become a wonderful artist and a lovely young lady on the brink of adulthood.  I look at "my kids" sometimes and wonder how it's possible that they've grown before my very eyes and I don't feel a moment older.  But I also feel very lucky for having known each of them.

Jose, 12x16"

First, let me say that Jose is a very very nice man. He provides many of our frames at the studio, and was gracious enough to sit for us for a couple of hours yesterday.  He looks slightly menacing because I decided to paint him that way.  The direct stare and lowered lids can give the viewer an uneasy feeling. As a contrast, I painted the background in "friendly" pastel shades to try to lighten the mood!

"Still Water", 7x5"

Don't worry folks, the snow hasn't hit Illinois already.  I painted this one from a photo that one of my students brought in to class.  Thanks, Dixie!  Once again, I painted on top of thick gesso applied to a hardboard which gave wonderful rough textures.  Another painting with a mind of its own!

For purchase information, please click on Ann Feldman Still Water.

"Red Scarf", 12x16"

The last session of my portrait class at Mainstreet was last Monday.  We spent six weeks together, going over the fundamentals of portrait drawing and painting.  We started out drawing portraits in charcoal, and then progressed to painting with a limited palette of colors.  The painting above was painted with Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red Medium, and Cadmium Yellow Pale--  that was it!  So interesting to see how many colors can be made using just the three "primaries".

We ended the session with a live model sitting.  Nerves gave way to intense concentration, and some wonderful paintings were produced!  I was so proud of my class!!!

For purchase information, please click on Ann Feldman Red Scarf.