"Every once in a while Miracles Happen"

I have the wonderfully good fortune of being in (almost) daily contact with one of the finest Macro photographers out there.
Her name is Kristina (Tina) Kotarski also known as Hellfirediva.
She is an award winning photographer, and I must admit, I spend a lot of time as an artist looking at her site and drooling.
Luckily for me, (a miracle) Tina has given me permission to attempt to try and translate her work into my Medium of Acrylics.
This is my first attempt at doing this and I hope that some day I can do her work justice.
Please look at her work here....
http://www.hellfirediva.com/gallery/gallery.htm
This is my rendition of Tinas photograph of a tiny frog/toad sitting under a Toadstool and being dwarfed by the Morning Dew.


"Morning Dew"
30cm X 45cm
Acrylics on canvas

~~Kathleen

"I Have Arrived!"

This year in Southern Alberta, we have had a dismally cold and very long Winter.
By now, some branches usually have a couple of buds on them, but not this year.
Painting this canvas has given me great hope of the things to come.
I hope it is as pleasing to you as it is to me.
~~Kathleen

"After the Frost"

"After the Frost"

12" X 16"
Acrylics on canvas

I have finished this painting.
This took me a lot longer than I could have imagined.
As I said on a previous blog entry, this painting was (for me)
a totally new direction in style and execution.
I an quite pleased with the end result!
Hope you enjoy it.
~~Kathleen

"This is really Exciting" (UPDATED)

....Well, for me at least. I am trying a new style of painting. I am taking a class that is offered by one of my fellow posters @ Wet Canvas, and being that the class is about Abstract art, I am in a totally new Realm.
What I have learned to date, is that doing anything in art that is outside your comfort zone is very hard, but it can be done, and done well.
I took this photo last Fall when we had experienced a monumental Frost. The plants in the garden were all frozen except for this one. All that the frost had done was turn some of the leaves Pink.

The composition of the jumble of leaves was so very pleasing to me, and I kept the photo in my "For Painting File"
I looked at it so often wishing that I had the expertise to paint it as it looked.

What I learned (in the class) was that you can step out of your comfort zone and do anything as long as you knew colour and composition.
So I began to paint it yesterday.
This is how far I have gotten, and I must say, that I am pleased with my progress.
I tend to be a bit heavy handed with paint.

But this time the paint I am using is very watered down and, I am "Washing" it on as opposed using to solid colour.

"After the Frost"
12" X 16"
Acrylics on canvas
(Work in Progress)

The painting is slow, as I often have to leave it, go away and then go back to assess where I am.
Hope you like this so far.
~~Kathleen

Todays work....
After I painted in the last leaves in the upper left corner, I have begun to work on my colour Values.
This painting is all too much one hue.
I will have to add shadows and deepen the colour of some of the leaves.

But it is getting there.
Thanks for looking.
~~Kathleen

A new attempt & And "Hidden Lake" completed.

"Sunbeams, A Forrest and The Trees in Front"
Acrylics/Mixed Media on canvas
6" X 6"

What I have here is just a little Jewel.
With the help of Kathy @ Wet Canvas, I am learning a new technique and delving into a somewhat more abstract type of art here.
I have never understood a lot of abstract works. Yep I like Picasso and his contemporaries,
I like Cubism because I can see something in the paintings.
But blobs/lines and splotches were/are beyond my comprehension.
The above painting has used different techniques for the background that lent themselves to the final work.
The foreground was totally inspired by the background.
While doing the background, I had the brilliant idea of adding some Gold & Copper foil
bits that I had saved from an earlier work.
Unfortunately foil is almost impossible to photograph in a realistic manner, and it really throws the camera lens off with glare)
So the photo of this painting really does not do it justice.
Once the background had dried, and I scrubbed off the excess foil, I had a perfect pallet for trees, being visited by the rays of the sun (foil)
And that is how this work came to be.
I hope you like it......
On to
"Hidden Lake"

Acrylic on canvas
12" X 14"
Again, I had a lot of help with this one from my friends at Wet Canvas.
I was having a hard time depicting the drop from the viewers point of view to the lake below.
(Almost one kilometer)
Posing my problem there brought just a wealth of suggestions and offers of help.
It is a wonderful community, and I am proud to be a part of it.
I was being too technical (way too much detail for anything that far away) with the trees below, and originally I did not have the ledge in the front (bottom of the canvas) therefore no depth perception.
It is completed now, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.
You can compare this final work with where I decided I had problems in the previous blog entry.
Hope you like both these lovelies.
I am quite pleased with them myself.
~~Kathleen