More fish!

acryclic background with pencil detail. A1 size.

Missing days and found cat

A whole week off between Christmas and new Year - a whole week to do nothing but paint!! Nah. Once in the glorious stupor of Christmas socialising, over eating and generally chilling out it's been pretty hard motivating myself to paint. But I have had a goal - the deadlines for Show me the Monet and the Towner submissions are looming so I've been preparing. I wanted to paint 5 new works but have plumped for 2 (maybe 3 by the end of tomorrow) - one woodland scene and another fish painting . I was lucky enough to receive a pack of coloured pencils for a Christmas present from number 3 son and enjoyed working curled up on the sofa in front of the fire, instead of at an easel in the chilly 'studio'.

Cat stopped play though as we have an unexpected visitor in the shape of a large and smelly ginger cat, a Tom I presume as it seems to be a 'sprayer'. He's a beauty but not friendly, hisses whenever we go near and I think he's either ill or hurt. He's made himself at home on some old curtains in the garage. Cats Protection League are sending someone to scan him for a chip tomorrow and I went round all of the neighours houses this afternoon with photos so hope he'll be moving on soon! Our poor cat prefers to hide outside under the car and the dog is showing an unhealthy interest in the litter tray.

He may be inspiration for another painting..

Pastels and perspex

When uninspired, grab some old toot and draw a still life. In true Cezanne style I deliberately twist perspective to see the most interesting bits and make a better composition - I don't stop to plan, I just start drawing and see what looks good. Chalk pastel pencils on smooth grey paper.
In another style I was experimenting with painting on the back of a sheet of perspex/acrylic (from an abandoned old clip frame I found) then scraping off and repainting the back to pick out colours - light shining through works well so I'll probably work on this technique a bit more.

Acorns, Sat Navs and a cart load of monkeys

On Wednesday I travelled to Worthing to give a demonstration to the Acorn Painting Group.
I never know what to expect when I go to a new group, and mostly they've no idea what they're letting themselves in for! Thanks to a SatNav and the online wonder of Google Maps Street View I found the venue with no problems, arrived in plenty of time to set up, take a breather and have a welcome strong cup of tea.

The group were very welcoming and helpful which makes SUCH a difference when you have travelled a way. I've no idea how many were in the audience, somewhere between 20 and 30 I guess, and they were very appreciative and vocal, talking informally to me all the time. I was animated and managed to keep talking, moving all the time, showing different techniques on different pictures, constantly referring back to samples I brought with me, books and other bits and pieces that influence and inspire me.

I felt relaxed and produced a half finished painting of Koi that I'm very pleased with and will continue to work on. Many of them came up to me at the end of the session to say how much they enjoyed watching something so different from their usual watercolour demonstrations, and they want me back next year which is great.

On leaving, I was recommended to go back along the seafront rather than the way the Sat Nav would send me, but as soon as I hit the front the fuel light came on and I realised I had no idea where the nearest garage was. SatNav to the rescue - up popped a Texaco logo! I clicked the screen and I was directed to the garage just around the corner.  Magic.


So, the next Arty bit of my life was the Arlington Art Group on Thursday night which is gradually expanding. We rarely have less than 12 people painting which is a good number. This week the theme was Mathematics so I tried out my new Black Gesso on a canvas sheet (lovely matt solid finish) then used an angle finder I found in the hall cupboard to make some random-ish marks, joined the dots, painted the resulting negative shapes with graduated tints of orange and white.. and it's taking interesting shape.

And so to the Hailsham High Street Windows.
Scaffolding has gone up along the front of 3 of the available windows which was going to make it difficult for an artist with a lot of work to park and load up on the agreed Saturday morning, so an arrangement was made for 2 of us to remove our work on Friday evening when the High Street would be quieter so there should be parking space opposite. Not so. The High Street was blocked by Fire Engines and what looked like hundreds of people for, what I assume was a Children In Need event. Consequently one artist did some unconventional manouvering on the one way road to get close. I chickened out and went for the walk-a-long-way-and-do-several-trips option to get my work to the car.

Come Saturday morning and I arrived at Gallery North at 9.30 to meet up with the artists who were either removing work or putting new work in the windows. I had tried to co-ordinate with all involved via email (and has posted detailed information online) to make sure everyone had access to a suitable space at a suitable time and that the keys would be available but on Friday we heard that the key for one of the shops that currently has work in wasn't going to be available til Monday. Hence I had to re-jig and re-allocate space.

By the time I left them to it this morning over 2 hours later, having walked about a mile hopping between all the different venues, one of the expected artists still hadn't arrived, one artist had arrived without any work so was going to have to arrange another day to get access, Jenny and I had to take down the work of 2 artists who didn't arrive to remove it, 2 windows remained unchanged as the artists didn't arrive, and one artist was waiting for a locksmith because the key was stuck in the lock. Talk about a cart load of monkeys!
But 3 shops looked great and another was shaping up to be spectacular - I am sure the others will look good some time soon...
Think I'll step out of any future (altruistic) co-ordination role this one as it really didn't seem to be appreciated much. I make sure that for ANY art event I take part in, I let the organiser know how much I appreciate what they do and all of the work involved as sadly, it seems to be a generally thankless task. Especially working with artists who sometimes have egos much bigger than their talents warrant - the majority of them are lovely and modest, but sadly the diva few can really get your back up!

The great news is that I have got a lovely little Pet Portrait Commission to get on with (it's a Christmas present so I won't be able to post it on here til the New Year) and possibly another one on the way. I also have a meeting to schedule in Eastbourne with a cafe owner regarding displaying my work there, via a contact from the Athena Ladies Networking group.

Influenced by Poppies, Mandelbrot and Gaudier-Brzeska

This week at art group our theme was 11/11/11 - remembrance day the obvious conclusion. Next week our theme is Mathematics, being the anniversary of the birth of August Mobius in 1790. This got me thinking about the mathematics of 11/11/11 and I started a design of 11 poppies each with 11 filaments and anthers, each of them with 11 extra anthers, a bit Mandelbrot (Benoit Mandelbrot)  inspired. Fractals and all mathematical images can be stunningly beautiful - have a look, google Mandelbrot and click 'images'. 

 I was talking yesterday about Henri Gaudier-Brzeska who was sadly killed in the trenches in 1915 just 4 years after he started to develop his art. I saw some of his sculpural work at the Vorticist exhibition at the Tate easrlier this year. I loved a small bronze carving of a fish and have done several designs blending this style with the 'fish in movement' paintings I have been working on.

I'll continue with my Mandelbrot Poppies next Thursday then post them on here when finished!

Bexhill workshop

Members of the Bexhill Art Society show off what they produced at my workshop today - lovely selection of styles and techniques!

What's coming up?

Have a look at the details of the Arlington Arts Group Christmas open Evening http://www.arlingtonartsgroup.co.uk/#!/2011/10/christmas-open-evening.html

and the latest competition - deadline 31st March 2012
http://www.arlingtonartsgroup.co.uk/#!/2011/10/competitions.html

and remember that the Winter Exhibition is now on at Gallery North in Hailshan High Street until 23rd December. Pop in and have a look between 10 and 4 Tuesdays to Saturdays.

Smokin!

Today I have been trying to catch the delicate and transient feel of smoke using mixed media - acrylic, acrylic glaze, chalk pastel and pencil. Still needs some work but think 1 and 2 work well - in 3 I was thinking nicotine hence the color but think the randomness of shape hasn't really happened - it's looking a bit too much like last week's squid picture!!

You can't really see the subtleties of colour in this photo - pink and blue match smoke

Pet Portraits in time for Christmas

If you are panicking about what to give someone for Christmas and are worried that it's too late to organise a Pet Portrait, never fear - I do Gift Vouchers!
The 'giftee' can then look at their leisure for their own favourite photos and make those difficult decisions about what style and medium to choose. 

You can order Gift Vouchers via  my www.petsbyjosie.co.uk website. I can send them direct too, if you would prefer.
If you would like me to post you a brochure which includes examples of work and a comprehensive price list, please send an email

You can view examples of my work on the SAA site (www.saa.co.uk) and on my own website (www.josietipler.co.uk)

Gift vouchers are available for £10, £20 and £50.

All good publicity!

I made page 6 of issue 35 of the Wealden Business Focus (well, my work did!) - shame Gallery North's involvement wasn't mentioned, nor the Hailsham Arts Festival.

Birth and Dragons

Seeking inspiration for my 'painting day' - 

yes, Monday is my day a week set aside for painting, which of course means I spend half the day painting the other half walking the dog, fiddling around with paperwork, doing laundry and hoovering looking at Facebook and watching TV 

 - I came across the latest Hubble Telescope image of the birth of a star. It is a stunning image: /http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1144a/ 

and I did my best to recreate the feel of it using acrylic and pastel. I didn't try to be accurate with star positioning etc, I just wanted to get the sense of the brilliance of the star and the soft swirl of the dust particles. I was pretty pleased with the reults though I can't claim it as original as I could not have produced it without seeing the Hubble photo.

I then went on to try out another Nebulae image, it started life as a simple dust cloud which then started to look like a dancer but prettty soon became a dragon - I added a little more yellow and red into the space around the nebula and am happy with it. Dragon Nebula, of course.

In the first painting I masked out the stars then painted a blend of black, yellow, blue and red gradually smudging in white and opaque yellow then finally adding the white pastel halo around the stars and the highlights on the dust cloud. In the second one, I had already got a piece of watercolour paper that I had used up my palette contents on last week so masked out the orange and yellow stars, painted flat black over it, added some white and yellow smudges then used a mapping pen and white acrylic ink to mark in the other stars, again using pastel for the clouds and halos. The first technique worked better.

Of squid, silhouettes and bluebells.

It's been a busy few weeks in my creative world.

I took on the challenge of running a 4 week workshop, on Animals in Movement, with the Wilmington Art Group - it's an unusual format but seems to work. They hire a tutor to come along to their friday sessions, which run from 10-2, to work on a particular theme. The tutor comes for 2 fridays, the group then works on their own on the 3rd friday, the tutor returns on the 4th friday and ends the session with a critique.

Now, all members have their own favourite media so, although I was demonstrating on the first week how I portray swimming koi in Acrylics, the group then translated the techniques to watercolour, pencil, inks and chalk pastels with interesting effect. In each session I covered a different topic -fish in water using the 'background' of the water as part of the image to create the sense of movement,  birds in flight using blurring of wings and extending lines, and finally  swimming turtles, concentrating on colour and light contrasts.

The results from the group were amazing - doing a critique was difficult, as usual, but there were so many strong paintings that the hardest thing was not talking about each one for too long!

 

I now, of course, have several unfinished paintings that I started for the demonstration part of the workshops - 2 koi, one bluetits, one turtles. Peversely I want to do something different but keep to the 'animals in movement' theme so have started a painting of Squid. Searching the internet I found some lovely video footage which I'm using for my inspiration. Alive, they are strange but beautiful and graceful creatures. I'm just strugglng a bit to stop them looking too cute and catoon-like as they have quite large boggley eyes

And I am finally getting to do some more design work with Hailsham Creative - having taken on the burden of the interminable admin, coupled with the fact that I have my own office with a PC (tut!) in it rather than a MAC, I rarely get to actually do any of the creative stuff. But, our lovely local vet wants their branding looked at so I have been given the task of drawing silhouettes of horse, cow, cat and dog - not in movement, sadly. I also designed the latest Gallery North flier, for their upcoming Winter Exhibtion and drew bluebells for the 2012 Arlington Bluebell Walk brochures.

Talking of bluebells, I also finally managed to find time to pop round to the Arlington Village Hall to re-paint the bluebells on the hall sign - a pleasant hour spent in the sunshine on Monday with birds singing all around me. 

There was no Art Goup this week, but we will be back in session next week - the theme, strangely enough is 'All Hallowe's Eve'  now, how to make squid fit the bill...

The finished Squid (31/10/11)

Hailsham High Street Exhibition

These pictures are currently in an exhibition in 'Wear Else' in Hailsham High Street.

Closing date for the Exhibition is 6th January 2012

New window display

Thanks to selling one of the pictures on show in the Wear Else window in Hailsham High Street, I have had a change around so you can now see more of my animal portraits including 'Picatso'.Pop along and have a look, there are plenty more art displays in other shop windows including Jingles, Smiles and Apollo.

Week of workshops

Well, not a whole week, but a few hour's worth! I'm doing a demo and workshop to the East Dean and Friston Art Group on Tuesday, and almost a whole day's workshop with the Wilmington Art Group on Friday - both will have the same subject, whichh is handy, of animals in movement. Although most of my paintings which I usually take along as examples are now either sold or on display in Hailsham High Street, I do have a couple to take with me plus I'll eally enjoy creating some new examples!
Having visited the Towner in Eastbourne today and seen the John Piper exhibition, I'm feeling inspired to do a bit more collage work.

Offers on printing Calendars and diaries

From our business, Hailsham Creative (Hailsham printing.com). If you're thinking of producing a calendar have a look as the prices as reduced in September.
http://myemail.constantcontact.com/September-offers-on-print---Festive-promotions.html?soid=1101574907783&aid=rIgaNyj8NH0

Arty Tip - Acrylic and Texture

Quick Arty tip of the day: Acrylic paints go nicely over tissue paper. Apply a thin layer of watered down PVA to the surface you are gluing onto (ideally board or mount card), lay the tissue on top and quickly slap on more watered down PVA, smoothing out air bubbles (but not creases!) as you go. Once dried, paint acrylic over the top. Lovely textures - try pastel over the top afterwards (when dry), this will really lift out the texture! If the board warps as the tissue shrinks, turn it over and glue more tissue or newspaper to the back.

Hailsham High Street show

Good old Hailsham Town Council are finally doing something to improve the look of the High Street - they organised a clean-up day where volunteers went in and cleaned inside and out of many of the shops that have been sitting empty for too long. Sadly someone thought it was a good idea to then plaster masses of posters for a monster truck show at Arlington Stadium all over the windows so they'll need cleaning again!  But, I digress - the idea is now for artists to show their work in the windows until the shops are let. The council have agreed this with the owners and agents and are collaborating with individual artist and local groups as well as Gallery North. Details of all of the works of art will be in a catalogue in Gallery North, who will aslo handle any sales commission free. This should prove to be a great community initiative - the shop fronts will look used and cared for (artists will keep the windows cleaned) and the appearance of the High Street will be greatly improved, viewers will be attracted into the town - especially as this starts just before the Hailsham Arts Festival week  - which in turn should attract potential businesses into the area and into the empty shops.

I will be showing some of my paintings of animals in the unlikely location of Sovereign Meats, the empty butchers shop in Vicarage Fields. I like the irony :)[This was changed to the Wear Else shop as the keys for the butchers went missing]

Work goes into various shops on 3rd September - my exhibition runs until 3rd January unless the shop is let before then.

Open Studio - August Weekends

Well this all went swimmingly. I had 45 visitors over the 3 weekends, not bad as I was only open for 3 hours each day, and I sold 3 framed pictures and 3 unframed browser pics - not vastly priced, but good to see people liking something enough to want to buy it and take it home! I only put up a few road signs, A3 size - one at Wilmington crossroads, one at the Berwick / Common lane crossroads, one at Milton Hyde, one at the end of Bayleys Lane and one at the end of my lane. Most visitors came because they got the email or my texts or saw the signs. Only a few had picked up the leaflets or seen the ad in the AAF brochure - he rest were all word of mouth visitors or those who were there for my art classes in the week.

 

Come and see all of my work from 1-4pm every weekend in August.

Pickhams, Hayreed Lane, Wilmington (follow the signs).

Parking, tea / coffee available, collection for Chestnut Tree House

Summer Art Workshop - details and booking info

Summer Art Workshops 2011

Open to all ages and abilities (under 16s accompanied by an adult), workshops aimed at beginners and improvers. Each workshop will run from 10 - 1 and will either be in the marquee or the gardens of Pickhams in Wimington.

Workshops will be based on views of the garden if the weather is fine but please bring a selection of suitable images to work from in case it is raining or windy.

Details below of what to bring for each workshop - if you have difficulty sourcing anything, let me know in advance and I may be able to provide some materials for an additional fee.

The workshops:

8th August - Pencils - getting to grip with tones, shades and colours

Bring: Sketching paper, cartridge paper, selection of different graphite pencils (HB, 2B, 6B, 9B) and a selection of coloured pencils, easel and / or board, tape, chair, drink

11th August - Chalk Pastels - 'painting' with pastels

Bring: Grey paper (not necessarily pastel paper but something with slightly rough surface), white cartridge paper, selection of soft chalk pastels including white, large sheets of newspaper or similar to protect work, easel and / or board, tape, chair, drink

15th August - Watercolours - 'drawing' with the paintbrush

Selection of different sized watercolour brushes including flat, round and rigger, watercolours and palette, cheap practice w/c paper, heavyweight w/c paper that does not need stretching (note - we won't be doing large wash areas), paper towel, tape, easel and / or board, chair, drink

18th August - Acrylics - on canvas or canvas board

Acrylics including white, selection of cheap watercolour or acrylic brushes including SOFT and BRISTLE, palette or disposable plate/s, pencil, a few sheets of acrylic paper of primed cartridge paper, largish primed canvas or canvas board (12 x 16 / 16 x 20"), easel and / or board, tape, chair, drink

22nd August - Mixed media - anything goes! Acrylic, Waterolour, pencil, pastel and ink.

Selection of acrylic and watercolour paints and brushes, a few mount card offcuts / heavyweight watercolour paper / canvas board, pencils, chalk / oil pastels, black ink (and white acrylic ink if you have it), dipping pen or rigger brush, easel and / or board, tape, chair, drink

25th August - Acrylics with Texture / mediums.

Selection of acrylic paints including white, brushes (soft and bristle), tube of matt acrylic glaze medium, ready-mixed polyfilla or acrylic texture paste, tissue paper, PVA glue and brush, jam jar with lid, fabric offcuts, palette knife, few mount card offcuts / heavyweight watercolour paper / canvas board, pencil, easel and / or board, tape, chair, drink

£6 per person per workshop/ £5 per workshop if booking for 3 or more.

To book please call Josie on 01323 485153 and email or post the following info:

Name, address, telephone, email

Which course/s are you booking for

Do you consider yourself: completer beginner, amateur trying out something new, more accomplished but trying something new, amateur trying to improve on existing skills, other

How did you hear about the workshops?

Would you like to go on my e-mailing list for details of other local arts events?

Cheques payable to J Tipler to be received one week before the workshop please, posted to

Pickhams, Wilmington, Polegate, BN26 6RR

See me at Arts Events this July

I will be showing work at the following Arts events this July:

8-17th July Uckfield Art Trail
9th & 10th July Arlington Arts Festival

If you want to promote yourself...

Leaflet Masterclass | printing.com

Selmeston Art Show

My latest collection of work (Light in the Darkness) will be on view on 30th April, 1st & 2nd May at Selmeston Village Hall, 11-4.30. £1 entry (under 16s free). There will be work from many other local professional and semi-professional artists, crafts, photography, needlework and refreshments.
Selmeston Village Hall is just off the A27 at Selmeston.

Summer Open Studio

Come and view my latest work as well as lots of my past work at Pickhams in Wilmington.
1-4pm, 13/14th Aug, 20/12 Aug, 27/28 Aug.


Cards on sale, refreshments. Collection in aid of Chestnut Tree House.
 MAP