Pauline Agnew | Sheila's Corner Studio

This is a quick one, as I am on my way to meet a friend. Pauline Agnew’s Open Studio has started, and I am always so inspired by her. She asked us to take a look at her Pinterest landscapes board and choose one that spoke to us. The one I found… made me want to play with color too.

Here is my painting for day 13. Watercolor and gouache on Yupo. Took less than 10 minutes.

Blue. Watercolor and gouache on Yupo. 4.5 x 6 © 2014 Sheila Delgado

Don’t you just love how the green is pulled towards the blue? I took a quick photo of that, I was afraid it would dry differently. This is saved at 72 dpi, so I apologize, some of the fine detail is lost,

The painting below was my inspiration. Completely different look and feel, due to the difference in mediums. I was not trying to copy… I just had to play with the blue. The blue is gouache, and the green is watercolor, and that may be why this happened. I am going to play some more with these two colors.

landscape-72 Beautiful, no? I love the small bit of light, and there is a bit of turquoise in the sky at that point in the horizon, but it is not showing here. The link for this does not credit the artist, has only – Chicago contemporary artists, photo by Kathleen Patrick 2010(Flickr).

Hope you are having a super weekend. It is a HOT one here. If you love to look at art as much as I do, be sure and check out Pauline’s board… she has a lot of great boards. And take a look at today’s creations here.

Mixed media on acid free paper.

This weekend I participated in Pauline’s OPENSTUDIO taster class. A sample of her “Draw and Paint what you Love” course. The event took place both on her website seedbedstudio, and on Facebook over two days. Pauline provided fantastic videos, both for instruction and for inspiration.

Pauline Agnew is an artist with a Degree in Fine Art, a Masters in Multimedia, and lots of experience in teaching art from Primary to University levels. Her work has been seen in public and private galleries, and she had an artists residency in The Irish Museum of Modern Art and was chosen as an artist in residence also for Cork City’s year as European capital of culture in 2005.

Seeds of Inspiration

Quick sketch

I found this class by accident, and I am so glad I did! I was visiting Lucy Chen’s website late at night, watching her self-portrait video. Thank You Lucy! Lucy works in oils, and she has only been an artist since 2011. Before that she worked in finance! Her work is really amazing and I hope you will take a look! I was so inspired to start this class, I had to wet my brush and spread some paint before going to bed. So I did this quick sketch. Horrible I admit. But I felt better having moved some color around.

First layers

The next two days, I painted. Making marks as Pauline suggested. I painted with a twig, swizzle stick, a couple of nail heads, a toothbrush, foam rubber, and a few brushes. I used acrylics, Inktense watercolor pencils, and pens.

Ideas Germinate

Not only is Pauline a wonderful instructor, but she was also immensely supportive of our efforts. The conversations and feedback from the other participants was such a blessing to take part in! When I started, I had no intentions of painting a particular, anything. I was not thinking about a finished landscape, or portrait. For a while in the middle of the process, I was pretty sure I was not going to have a piece worth showing. But I kept on. Added more bits here and there. When I flipped the paper around to see if I had something to build on, I saw a neck, and a bit of a head wrap.

I really am so pleased with this. It was a surprise. I think that is why I like it so much, I wasn’t trying to paint her. I was just painting. I spoke with a couple of the artists in class, and they suggest that I leave her faceless. I can almost see her features, but they have not quite revealed themselves to me. So for now, this is how she will stay. Let me know what you think!

I feel this is one of the best paintings I have ever done. I am so thankful I found this introduction. Thank You Pauline for an enlightening weekend!