Recent Travels and Art Shows

October is turning out to be my busiest month in awhile.

Paintin' the Town- College Park, GA

In late September it was great to be a part of an invitational plein air event in Atlanta in the suburb inside the beltway called, Historic College Park. Artist Millie Gosch did a great job putting this together and we all had a blast. I sold three of my paintings to collectors and received another commission. Thank you to all who turned out to volunteer and host. It was great meting up with artist friends as well!

Cumberland Society National Juried Competition:

Honored! On October 3rd, I was excited to travel to Nashville to the Cumberland Society National Opening and Awards Ceremony at Richland Fine Art where I received an Honorable Mention - a $500 award for my painting, Back-lit Trees, Oil, 12x16 from judge Peggi Kroll Roberts of

Here is my winning painting at the Cumberland Society National Exhibition at Richland Fine Art in Nashville, TN
 ©2013 Dot Courson
SEE A DEMO OF ME PAINTING  Backlit Trees  HERE !

 Paintings that SOLD:

SOLD! My painting of the men, "Making Molasses" sold at Richland Fine Art in Nashville, TN.
©2013 Dot Courson 

And below is the painting by my daughter, artist Susan Patton from Mississippi who was in the same show SOLD... We love seeing "red dots"!!  Susan recently won a major prize recently in the MGAL National juried exhibit in Memphis. She has been in two national shows recently, and has done very well this year! 

SOLD! Thrilled to see a "red dot" showing that Susan's painting "Bales of Fun" sold prior to the show opening!
©2013 Susan Patton

Caron Gallery Demo

On Saturday Oct 12th,  I will be at Caron Gallery doing a demo of Main Street in downtown Tupelo, Mississippi. I love the downtown area and hope to see anyone there who wants to come watch me paint form 11 until 3 PM inside or outside the gallery!

Dawn Whitelaw will be here again, teaching another sold out 3-day plein air workshop at Dot Courson Workshops on October 14-16! We have students from 4 states coming to this!

Dawn Whitelaw on stage doing a portrait demonstration at the Portrait Society of America in March, 2013

Gallery Visits - and Plein Air Painting- on schedule for the rest of October!

I will be on the road traveling and visiting  galleries that have expressed that they are interested in representing me between now and when we have Artist Becky Joy here teaching the first week of November. Becky is a wonderful teacher and friend. 

There are a couple spots left, so if someone wants in please let us know at Dot Courson Workshops! 

Thanks for reading!

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Making and Recycling Art Panels

Art supplies are expensive: oil paints, brushes, canvas and  frames. I look for ways to keep the quality up, and expenses down in order to be able to afford the very best products. I also want to paint like I am rich - uninhibited! - and feel it is better to paint with abandon than to paint uptight and worried about the cost of supplies.

Recycling your bad paintings:

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” - Vincent van Gogh

Sometimes paintings fail. Recycling panels is easy. I destroy bad paintings by covering them up in order to re-use or "recycle" the canvas. Every painting simply does not work out... and sometimes I wipe the paint off immediately (recommended) and just start over. At other times I set them aside and later decide that the painting is not making me feel good or is not something that I want to keep or offer for sale.

 “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” - Vincent van  Gogh

Some artist friends of mine choose to have a ritual burning of their "bad" paintings, and I guess that is good for the psyche too. It feels good to "clean out the studio" and not have a lot of bad paintings around to remind you of past failures. Seems all artists have them, no matter the level of the artist!

Today I am recycling my canvases using Gamblin Ground. These are what is left of about 25 "bad" paintings that I did that were completely dried,  Today Jackie and I sanded them down slightly and I covered them up with white ground in order to re-use the canvas panel.

Step 1- Sanding.

Step 2 Covering with Gamblin Ground.

Step 3 Covering the paintings that will never see the light of day again! Whew! That feels good! 

Step 4. Lay the new white panels out to dry.

  

Step 5 - A blank canvas again!(Note: Sometimes it is rough, but that is okay with some paintings!)

 Making Linen Panels

Now for how to make some panels from scratch...
Some of my panels are bought already made just for the convenience.  I love Ray Mar, Source Tek and other brands of quality linen pre-made products but I don't always buy them because Jackie makes most of mine for me in his shop. It saves a lot of money.
To make our own panels we buy Claessens Belgium Linen #66 single primed that is great for landscape paintings. It is in 82 inch rolls from Jerry's Artorama.

The cost: An 82" long roll has 6 yards on it, which converts to over 117 sq ft. and it costs around $300 so that means a 12x12 section costs about $3.00 each. But of course we make  various sized panels that he cuts and uses Miracle Muck to adhere them to 1/4" tempered  hardboard- smooth or sealed on both sides for small panels. It is sometimes referred to as Masonite. Miracle Muck is about $14 a liter. A 4'x8' sheet only costs about $14!  So a  homemade 12x12 linen on panel costs around $3.50!

How we make new linen panels:
Cover in Miracle Muck and smooth out with a sponge brush:

Covered completely in Miricle Muck and ready for the linen:

Linen is cut approx 1/4- 1/2 inch larger than each side of the panel. Shown is a 9x12 panel and the linen was cut larger to allow for shrinkage. The linen is placed with the white side (paint surface) down and raw linen up: Then roll on the back of the hardboard....

and then roll the front -linen side up- to remove air bubbles and smooth the surface.

 Then the wet panels are weighted down while they dry

Once they are dry they are trimmed from the back side with a Fisker round roller blade on a mat.

That's it! New canvases!

Thanks and please feel free to ask questions or offer your own ideas in the comments section below! 

Happy fearless painting, everybody! 

Workshop notes: Painting Landscapes

I recently taught a workshop on landscapes and wanted to share a few slides with you... 

 I LOVE teaching! I taught here in Pontotoc in January.The group was great and we had fun. Thank you to all the attendees.  Jackie helped me welcome 14 artists form TN, AL and MS.

My next workshop is in Greenville in May with the Delta Art Association. Hope you get to come! Here is a link to details.

Here are a few tips straight out of my workshop handbook that I use when I teach. I love to share, but all images are my paintings, and therefore are copyrighted ©2013  Dot Courson Workshops. So feel free to use and share these- I encourage it as a matter of fact! -  but I require you attribute the painting and slide images and painting to me please. : )

Value planes. ©2013 Dot Courson

Arial perspective. ©2013 Dot Courson

Movement in painting. ©2013Dot Courson

Please leave comments below. I love hearing from you! 

Happy Painting! ~ Dot

Traveling and Painting

This week I will be traveling to Richmond, VA!

Here is the flyer for Plein Air Richmond. I so honored and really looking forward to painting there! 

 

 On my trip, I'm taking a painting for Senator Roger Wicker's staff to come down and pick up in Richmond. It will be on loan to hang in the office of Senator Wicker in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC!  I'm honored to have The Natchez Trace there.

For almost 3 years it hung on the top floor of the Walter Sillers Building, Governor Haley Barbour's official capital offices in Jackson, MS.

Here is a photo of us. On it's last day there he signed it for me at my request- before I picked it up. This is funny now but I was initially mortified because somehow he was mis-directed and signed the front (rather prominently) instead of the back as I had asked - so I had to take his signature off! I hated to do it - I'd wanted his signature for the provenience of the painting. But guess what? It turns out that alcohol removes permanent magic markers! Who knew? 

 Before it was in Governor Barbour's office it hang for almost a year in the Tupelo Regional Airport terminal. Actually, that is why I painted such a large painting. The airport marketing manager (shown below) wanted a "really big regional work of art" and I made this from several other paintings I'd done.

Upcoming News: On my return from Plein Air Richmond, I'll be painting the Delta as I'm teaching a workshop for the Delta Artists Association in Greenville the 28- 30th of June.
Hopefully, I will post some photos maybe of all this on my next blog. 
Incidentally, this painting- The Natchez Trace Parkway is still for sale! Send inquiries to artist@dotcourson.com or visit Caron|Prince website for more information and pricing.

Knife Painting Techniques

Lately I have gotten interested in palette knife painting. Years ago I used to do some, and I still use a palette knife occasionally but it's mostly done along with brushwork. But nothing is "breaking the rules" in painting as far as I'm concerned. An artist can use anything- even elbows if they want to!

I recently saw Barbara Flowers doing her wonderful and inspiring palette knife painting demo in Florida during our Women Painters of the Southeast (WPSE) show and got interested in doing palette knife work again. Here is a beautiful loose painting by Barbara who served as our show judge just in case if you are not familiar with her work:

Teaching Pallet Knife Painting...
So this past week I brought fresh pears to my painting class and taught palette knife for this weeks lesson. I was not sure what the students would think as I have not even talked about palette knife painting with them. And since I have never taught this - I looked back to my painting image files to find some of my own works done in palette knife. Here are a few along with my thoughts about how I did them:

 I did this one in 2005. I used to sell wholesale to a decorator store in Tupelo- Staggs Interiors. Staggs sold my work exclusively somewhere from around 2002- 2006, and they  sold a LOT of my work. It was wonderful and I would produce many of these little 5x7 and larger paintings that they used in decorative frames. These little pear paintings look great stacked in dining rooms and above other larger paintings, and were reasonably priced and very affordable. 

 As I told my class, there are several thing that I love about palette knife painting:

• Mixing colors is easy. Piles of paint are easily blended on the palette - or even on the painting itself - to make loose layers that show the colors underneath.
• You can easily paint right over an existing painting that you dislike, because you are using thicker paint and texture just adds to it's visual appeal.
• Due to the thickness of the paint -it's easy to scrape out and re- apply another swipe of color on top of what you're correcting. 
• Adds detail and texture to the painting
• They are quick to do and studio clean up is easy
• Palette knife painting is a "natural" way to make very LOOSE paintings. 

 Here is another painting that I did around 8 years ago...

This was so much fun to do! I enjoyed doing the reflected lights by adding a  in the shadow area by mixing right into the paint on the canvas. Here is a detail of that:

Looking at the detail, it reminds me of pastel paintings that I used to do back then, the mixing of the colors directly on the surface of the painting and "smushing" borders of objects to soften the edges. This style painting is so natural, easy and almost intuitive for me to do for some reason. I don't know why I stopped.

I also used the end of the knife to add color to make the surface of the cantaloupe in the sunlight:

I believe that a palette knife exercise is good for artists to try occasionally. It gets you out of your comfort zone and opens your eyes to the wonderful freeing feeling of painting if you find yourself getting "tight" with your brush work. 

Here is another knife painting of mine...

And some detail:

The photo above was made prior to varnishing, but you get the idea. In this one I also used a brush to drag paint around on the painting. I like texture in my palette knife paintings that I don't usually put in my other works. It gives the observer some "up close" detail that they can enjoy. 

Here is my demo from my class last week. It is 5x7 and is available unframed for only $75 plus tax in MS -and actual shipping if anyone is interested.  It looks great framed!...But would also look good on an easel... I am going to start selling these small works on my own to raise money to be able to go to southern France to paint next year! Contact me at artist@dotcourson.com if you are interested in helping the me get to France! 

: )

Artist Workshops

My husband Jackie and I host workshops for artists. 

If you are an artist you understand about workshops. If you are not a painter, just think of it as education and continuing education for artists.

These workshops are for students, intermediate artists and professionals. Sometimes the students are professional artists studying with another artist that they admire. Sometimes even the professional artist instructors themselves study with the other professional artists that they admire! No artist ever stops learning and we all learn a lot from each other. 

I see lots of different styles of painting and work that I admire and their work styles range a lot. We recently invited and hosted a workshop with Anne Blair Brown. Her work is loose and she has beautiful sense of color relationships within her works. A lot of what I love about here work is the beautiful colorful "grays" she mixes. I also like the way she lays in the work on the canvas. She limits her brushstrokes and some of the exercises she had the students do was to "count" brushstrokes and to keep it under 40 strokes. What a challenge!

Anne talks with students at lunch break on the square in Pontotoc, MS

Anne's demo on the square.

Ann was so caring about her students needs. She is a good clear communicator and her demos also speak. She painted several demos at the student's request and had them painting some of the scenes in our little town that drew the mayor, editor of our newspaper and reporter, and the director of our chamber of commerce to our painting site in the middle of our little park area of our downtown square! One of the local opticians downtown also came out and even joined our group the last day of the workshop.

In June - a few days after the Plein Air Richmond, I will be teaching a workshop with the Delta Art Association. There are lots of great artists in the delta and I love to paint that area. Here are some of my paintings of the delta:

If you are interested in this workshop please contact Iris Mitchell at lilyiris@suddenlink.net for details. This is for the Delta Art Association in Greenville, MS and they may want to put you on a wait list until the members have a chance to register unless you are already a member. Not sure how that will work.

  In July we have artist Lori Putnam from Nashville here teaching her still life workshop. I like her work- especially her still life work and we are looking forward to hosting here here for the first time. This workshop is full for now- but do let me know if you want on the waiting list. There could be an opening last minute- you just never know! Here is a painting I did in Memphis when I took here workshop. It is very loose:

Sunflowers 20x 16 ©2011 Dot Courson, Oil

Here is one of Lori Putnam's works:

Painting ©Lori Putnam, Oil

New!
We have added another workshop this fall. Robert (Bob) Harper will be back again and we love Bob. He is one of the most energetic and funny and sharing instructors you will ever meet. Here is a painting of his behind country recording artist Amy Grant.

Amy Grant bought his painting - actually Vince Gill bought it for her --and she loved it so much that she put a larger copy of it on the stage for her DVD that won a Grammy. That is amazing to me to see Bob's beautiful painting that large. What a huge honor. That image had to help account for Grammy!

I have not started advertising spots for Bob's workshop yet but if you are reading this and want in to it please let us know. Dates are October 22-24- That is a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday-3 full days and is $295. Contact us at artist@dotcourson.com to register.