16 January 2015

5-day art challenge, day one


I have been nominated to participate in a Five-Day Art Challenge on Facebook, where artists are invited to share 3 pictures of their work per day for five days.

John Lokke
For my first day's post, I'm revisiting the Riverside Watercolor Society. I was first introduced to watercolor in 2007 by John Lokke who led this informal group meeting weekly in a church in the Riverside area of Wichita, KS. We usually painted a chosen weekly subject in our different styles, and gave ourselves the name just for fun.

The above painting of sunflowers was a "happy accident" on a practice page. It now hangs framed in our Texas cabin to remind us of Kansas.




Another of the things we did is to study famous watercolorists like Karl Bodmer, Winslow Homer, and  Charles Burchfield. This sketch was from a Winslow Homer painting.


The church we met in requested that we present a small show of our work. We were studying Charles Burchfield at the time, so we each chose one or two of his paintings to replicate in whatever way we wish. The above painting is after Burchfield's work, "Abandoned Farmhouse". The painting below is my interpretation of Burchfield's "The Three Trees".


8 comments:

  1. Lovely stuff, girl...wow. And I'm with you, I don't like the chain letter feel either.

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  2. Thanks, Kate. I have very happy memories of the RWS and first learning what watercolor can do.
    I decided to delete the comment about nominating another artist each day feeling a bit like chain letters. While I still think so, it sounded a bit judgmental. I noticed that when Richard Sheppard was nominated, he simply posted his daily stuff without the daily nominating thing , not commenting about it either.

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  3. Love those yellow sunflowers against the blue sky. Lovely!

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  4. Thanks, Sandy! It's a nice reminder of Kansas for us, though the huge fields of sunflowers were further west than we lived.

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  5. Wow, love that Winslow Homer copy. These are great for a beginner. He must have been quite a teacher.

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  6. John is indeed a wonderful, detailed teacher and gifted artist. I don't think he realizes how good he really is. I drew a lot as a child but then ignored it for 33 years; John helped reawaken what I had buried..

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  7. What a coincidence. I just (in December) took a 3-week watercolor class from John. Imagine my surprise when I saw his picture in your e-mail (post). I forget what the class was called—we learned to do a watercolor without drawing it first. Unfortunately I had to have surgery so I missed the last class, but my friend went. She said they went to the museum and half the students studied the paintings or played with their cell phone while the other half painted them, then they switched. Then they painted John sitting in a chair looking at a book. Her's turned out great. John is a really good teacher. He teaches at City Arts now. Another coincidence...I found out the first week of class that we both work at the same place, but different locations. :) I love your paintings.

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  8. Diane, I'm so glad you took time to comment . . . and that you were able to take one of John's classes! The RWS days were several years before he began teaching at City Arts. After he started teaching there, I would sometimes share in one of his sessions on keeping an artist sketchbook journal.

    Since moving to Texas, I really miss the opportunity to see John now and then, or take his classes -- I would take them repeatedly if I had the money. He's an excellent teacher and fabulously interesting person!

    I hope your surgery turned out well!

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