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FRIDAY FEATURE: Featured Artist ~ Ian Ramsay

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Repblished. Original blog post published on 5/22/15 __________________________________ Ian Ramsay ~  "I love to paint scruffy farms." I'm so excited for this featured artist post! My husband and I are collectors of Ian Ramsay's work and, to date, own at least eight of his paintings. He has an incredible talent for luminosity and seeing beauty in the every day things that most people might take for granted. Kudos to my husband for making the first purchase! But, I too love Ian's work and enjoy looking at the paintings hanging in our home daily as well.  "Capestrano, Abruzzo, Italy"   ©Ian Ramsay. This painting  is presently at the High Country Summer  Exhibition  at Trailside Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY I was privileged to take a workshop with Ian about a year and a half ago. He was so open with teaching his technique for building layers of watercolor in order to achieve the beautiful painti

Busy, Busy Summer!

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Besides working on new paintings for next March's Art & Soup event and trying to coordinate the many spinning cogs and wheels of the Utah Watercolor Society as we started our 2017-2018 UWS year, I was also able to take a couple of days in early August to attend a plein air workshop in Logan, UT with the incredibly talented Brienne Brown . Now, as you know if you've followed my blog for a while, I am not much of a plein air painter. But, it was lovely to get outside for a couple of days and to spend time with Brienne and the other participating artists. What a beautiful state we have here! Here is my plein air setup and the little sketch I did for my painting on the second day (the painting didn't turn out so well!) Here is the wonderfully talented Brienne... In mid-August, I also attempted to take my family camping in a cabin at Moon Lake Resort in the Ashley National Forest. As it turns out, my husband and sons are not so into the "great outdoors&qu

Video link - Social Media for Artists - April 2017

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Here is the video link for my presentation "Social Media for Artists" - April 11, 2017 at the Utah Watercolor Society Cache Valley Chapter meeting. Thanks to UWS-CVC for having me! It was great fun, and I got a loaf of YUM-MMMM lemon bread as a thank you. Sweet!! Click here to see the video on YouTube (or click on the video below to play it now). :) Thanks for stopping by my blog! Have a great day.

FRIDAY FEATURE: Featured Artist ~ Sherry Meidell

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Originally published 5/8/15... ________________________________ Friday Feature:  Sherry Meidell I have only recently become acquainted with Sherry as we served together on the Board of the Utah Watercolor Society this past year. Even in that short time, I have learned that she is a delightful person to know. Sherry is an incredibly talented artist with a witty sense of humor!  As the mother of five boys (now young men), a sense of humor and adventure are obviously a must-have for this fun lady!  In her own words... "My husband and I have raised five sons in Utah. When the boys were little they would bring home an assortment of wild creatures, such as a mother snake that surprised everybody the next morning with a large number of baby snakes. Frogs and dogs and iguanas would escape and be discovered in the upper reaches of their mother’s bedroom closet. The iguana got bigger and so did the boys."  ~ Sherry Meidell  (from TeeterTotterTales )

Consistency - a good reminder

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Originally published 8/7/12, a few updates made for republication. ___________________ Kokopelli Conga  ©Jennifer Love I am a fan of Jason Horejs' book, Starving to Successful , and am represented by his gallery, Xanadu (brick and mortar gallery located in Scottsdale, AZ), in their Studio Artists section online. ( Click here to go to my Xanadu page.)  I receive email with info and blog articles from Jason and Xanadu gallery quite frequently. This blog article , written by Jason - from a gallery owner's perspective, is a good reminder about consistency in work (whether style or subject matter). As artists, I think we don't always remember to think of ourselves as a business. We need to create a marketable product and inspire confidence in the gallery owners who carry our work. They need to know that they can replenish our sold pieces with other pieces that are easy for their clientele to recognize as being our work. Kokopelli Circle Dance  ©Jen

FRIDAY FEATURE: Featured Artist ~ Lester B. Lee

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Here is a re-post of my  Friday Feature of artist  Lester B. Lee (first published 5/1/15). Enjoy! ________________________________________________ Lester Bird Lee...from the "Old School" I met Lester B. Lee on my first day of art class in 8th grade. Fresh out of graduate school and already an amazing artist, he took my art education to an entirely new level. "Mr. Lee" was (and still is) a natural teacher - motivating, great at constructive criticism, and he never made you feel that you weren't good enough or talented enough to learn the fundamentals of art - even though I'm sure our 14-year-old art skills were seriously lacking! He used a systematic approach to teach art basics to his students for the first half of the year. Then, after having introduced a variety of mediums and techniques, he allowed the students to write a contract with him to complete a certain number of assignments of their choice for the remainder of the year. Some of those

Inspiration and Blooming Aloe Vera

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Re-post (first published 4/29/12).  ______________________________________ Inspiration! One thing that is wise for an artist these days is to have plenty of your very own, original reference photos whenever possible. It's also good for an artist to plaint en plein air when you can to just get a good reference on color and how light and color intermix in nature rather than a camera interpretation. I don't paint en plein air a lot, so I am trying to do that more often to let my brain work on the color theory. So, while we were out of town visiting Mesquite, NV last weekend, I painted my little "Bottle Bush" painting en plein air one morning. I also took some good reference photos of the Bottle Bush and also an Aloe Vera plant that is about to bloom to add to my reference photo file. (I've never seen a blooming Aloe Vera before - have you?)