Kelly Creates Studio

Throwback Thursday - - one of my first acrylic paintings from a couple years ago🖼️ which I completed in our local art group with a demo & lesson from who showed us how to paint a landscape intuitively🥳I really admire the expressive freedom within Carol’s colourful paintings and how she surrenders to the creative process. 🎨

📚 Went sketching with my local group a few weeks ago. My first job at 14 was in our neighbourhood library. ❤️It wasn’t the dream job I expected because we mostly repaired books and sorted the “stacks” which basically meant we were assigned a section and then checked the dewey decimals of every book on the shelves to make sure they were in order🤪😑O might have been caught “reading on the job a few times” too🤫😉

🍅We painted tomatoes in art class last week with ❤️I’m learning about shadows…and patience. I like how the box and stems turned out …and someday red will be my friend😉

Here is what my January looked like🎉 Swipe to see close ups of some of my faves. 🍅I joined the with and decided to study painting small still life subjects with gouache. I’ve rarely used gouache and I learned a few things: I started a loose painting with washes. I painted with thick tube gouache for the final layers. Played around with different coloured backgrounds(which is probably not the best idea - should have set up real backgrounds but I wanted to make this doable and not a hassle). Stayed in my comfort zone with fruits and veggies which I love painting. Committing to daily painting has a huge impact on learning skills—highly recommend. Shadows and values are paramount and I’m still struggling. Sketching thumbnails before painting really helps. Anyway that’s a wrap! Thank you to for encouraging and motivating and advising us💕

🍓 Strawberries painted with gouache for the with -I will be sharing a few more that I completed in January. This challenge of painting daily really helped me understand colour theory and how creating contrast and highlights with red takes some practice. 😵‍💫❤️

Only a couple days left in our challenge with 🥳 Aside from learning more about painting with gouache, I’m definitely eating more fruit & veggies this month😆🙂

Here’s another still life in gouache for this month’s challenge with 🥳 It’s funny how I’m buying all kinds of fruit that I normally don’t eat just because I want to paint them. This mango was delicious😆and surprisingly one of my quickest paintings.

🍊 This month I’m doing a painting challenge with and every day I do a little study of still life with gouache. Marcella you have motivated me so much with daily prompts and emails - thank you! Mostly I paint fruit and vegetables. Let me tell ya that painting every day is a really intense helpful way to improve your skills. I’m pretty new to gouache but wanted to try it mostly because I love the art of whom I’ve followed for years. Her bright cheerful gouache still life paintings inspire me!

🐔 Just sitting in a cafe painting fun chickens today with a tutorial from .visser_art 🌟He has wonderful weekly “watercolour workout” emails with lots of good info and techniques!

🏰 Last weekend I was out sketching with my local group and we visited Craigdarroch Castle, which is actually just a 10 min drive from my house. It is an elaborate castle home built by the Dunsmuir family. They are Scottish so I used their plaid of blue-green to create the lettering. The decor inside was incredible and it really felt like stepping back in time into their living spaces and bedrooms. I felt quite overwhelmed trying to decide what to sketch so I ended up sitting inside the doorway of Jessie’s bedroom to sketch all the vintage furniture and the stained glass window which features provincial dogwood flowers. The last photo is a sketch I did a couple summers ago of the exterior of the castle. An amazing piece of history!

🌴☀️ 🇲🇽 Gracias Mexico! The sun and the sea have nourished me, and I am grateful to spend time in your beautiful country💚❤️