Jill
Segal's Newsletter
February,
2006
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Dear Friends & Visitors,
I’d like to wish you all a
very happy, healthy and creative New Year.
 I
spent three wonderful, restful and rejuvenating
weeks with my family in Jensen Beach, Florida.
The weather was warm and I was able to spend many
hours sitting mindfully, observing the ever changing
facets of the ocean, which I find fascinating,
energizing and inspirational
Nature is marvelous, and as artists we
can learn so much from taking time to observe
and contemplate what “Mother Nature”
offers us.
It “determines our accepted norms of beauty
and is the basis for our ideas of design. Through
a universe of shells, flowers, scales, crystals,
plumage, limbs, stones, rocks, landforms, to the
very ends of the heavens, we read and delight
in the creative hand of nature. Nature’s
structures have been actively appropriated since
the dawn of human art. Design within design is
the nature of nature. This raw material is a gift
to creators” (from www.painterskeys.com).
 Nature,
says biologist Hans Meinhardt, “has been
allowed to play.” Artists as creators need
to follow suit.
“Nature is a dictionary: one draws words
from it” (Eugene Delacroix).
“Nature is inside art as its content,
not outside as its model” (Northrop Frye).
The question that kept coming to my mind was:
 How
does one express in a painting, the essence of
the constantly, moving and changing ocean?
Since returning, I
have been experimenting with some painting techniques
in my search for a way to paint the ocean in a
non-representational manner. What an exciting
challenge!
Here are some techniques for you to try:
Pouring paint
Use heavy watercolour paper 300lb, or
Yupo paper. (It does not buckle when wet.)
- Wet both sides of the watercolour paper thoroughly
and place it on a plastic or wax paper, covered
board.
- Mix up your watercolours or fluid acrylic
in separate containers with water so that they
can be easily poured.
Some beautiful ocean colours in Golden acrylics
are Quinacridone nickel azo gold, Turquois (Pthalo),
Pthalo blue (green shade), Jenkins green, Quinacridone
crimson, Anthraquinone blue. The last three
colours mixed together create marvelous dark
colours.
Start pouring the paint one colour at a time,
then lift and tilt your board to direct the
paint flow.
- To create the feel of surf, mix up Titan
buff with fluid Matte medium, and pour this
onto the painting. It creates wonderful marbling
effects.
- Also try mixing Titanium white with fluid
Matte medium and pour some of this onto the
painting.
- Experiment with the amount of tilting, as
the colours merge into each other.
- Spattering white paint, or Titan buff onto
your under colours, also creates a surf like
effect.
- Experiment, have fun, as there are no mistakes.
Use heavy gel to
create ocean, sand, and rock textures
 Apply
this to your paper or canvas with a palette
knife.
- Create textures with a variety of scraping
tools.
- Sprinkle sand and salt onto the gel.
- Stick shells, stones and other found treasures
into the gel.
- Once the gel is completely dry, apply your
paint in thin washes, and watch the painting
paint itself.
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PAINTING/TRAVEL
ADVENTURES
We are now getting the "ball rolling"
for the Artist and Photographer’s
Journey to Machu Picchu. We do have quite
a few people interested, both artists and photographers.
So that is very exciting!
We are organizing a slide show and information
get together on Sunday Feb 19 at 2.00pm
at 176 St George St, (3rd Floor). Please let me
know if you would like to attend. (Daytime Telephone#
905-731-3834)
I am working with Doreen Rich, a travel agent
at Medallion travel 416-496-2659, on the air fares
and flight itinerary. The cost will be approximately
$1200 Canadian. If you want to use airmiles and/or
organize your own air travel please note that
we all need to meet in Cusco on the morning of
October 15, 2006.
In order to secure a place on the trip,
we are asking people to send in their registration
forms and a deposit of $500 as soon as possible.
For
more information on this Magical Journey
to Machu Picchu, and to get registration
forms, please click here.
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SPRING CLASSES
The
following Classes & Workshops
can also be viewed by clicking here
CREATIVE EXPLORATIONS WITH WATERMEDIA
(ADVANCED INDEPENDENT STUDIES)
In these classes students will work on projects
of their own choice. Individual instruction and
guidance will be given, as well as a group sharing
and critique.
Date: March 30 –May 11 6 classes (No Class
April 13)
Time: Thursday 9.30 -12.30
Fee $180
Location My studio
SPRING AND
SUMMER WORKSHOPS
Sign up soon for the
upcoming Spring and Summer workshops,
as these do fill up quickly.
FLUID ACRYLICS,
COLLAGE & MIXED MEDIA
Free your creative spirit, loosen up and have
fun! Learn to express yourself with colourful,
juicy, flowing, fluid acrylics, experimenting
with mediums, gels, pastels, watercolour crayons,
textural materials, collage. Paint exciting, expressionistic
landscapes, florals, and abstracts.
June 5 -9, Creativity Art Retreat, Dunedin,
Ontario
www.lynnconnellart.com
lynnconnell@sympatico.ca
(416) 531-6528 or (705) 466 5552
August 27-September 1, Bridgewater Retreat
Centre, Tweed, Ontario
www.Bridgewaterretreat.ca
office@bridgewaterretreat.ca
(613) 478-5502
WATERCOLOUR
EXPLORING ALTERNATIVE TECNIQUES
July 3-7, 2006 Haliburton School of
the Arts www.HaliburtonSchoolofTheArts.ca
This exciting, process-oriented, course is for
developing artists who are ready to break free
and explore new directions in watercolour painting
and self-expression. You will be encouraged to
loosen up and explore the interesting effects
and textures created by combining watercolour
with various mixed media, such as water-soluble
crayons, oil pastels, collage materials (tissue,
oriental rice papers, old watercolour paintings
to recycle and resurrect), black ink, wax and
gouache.
Using still life, landscape and non-objective
subject matter, you will be inspired to move beyond
pure representation to personal expression and
abstraction. Composition and design will be addressed.
Teaching methodology will include demonstrations,
group sharing, individual attention and critique.
Creativity, fun, and individual uniqueness will
be emphasized.
There will be a material fee of $10 payable to
the instructor.
PAINTING AND WRITING
- CREATIVE EXPLORATIONS
July 24-28, 2006 Haliburton School of
the Arts.
www.HaliburtonSchoolofTheArts.ca
Paint from words, words from paint: Spend a week
exploring with fluid acrylic paint, watercolour
crayons, oil pastels, collage, and with the powers
of words, character and story in order to expand
and deepen your creativity.
Have fun developing new skills and techniques
in a process-oriented course. This cross-pollination
course is suitable for both beginning and experienced
artists and writers. There will be a $5 material
fee payable to the instructors.
This painting and writing course is going to
be a real process oriented course, both in terms
of creative writing and painting. Our goal is
to enable students to use painting and writing
techniques to gain access to their own creative
material.
We will lead students through various exercises
to tap into their creativity:
Meditation, movement, character development,
collage etc- and use both painting and writing
to do this. We will paint to inspire writing and
engage in writing exercises to inspire painting.
A real cross pollination!
Jane will cover some of the principles of writing,
and I will cover some of the painting and design
techniques, but we are not aiming for finished
"products." Fluid acrylic paint will
be used and participants can bring watercolours
if they prefer.
I really enjoy working with Jane. She is a wonderful
creative person and lots of fun. We experimented
with a weekend workshop last year and were delighted
to hear that the participants thoroughly enjoyed
themselves. In addition, we were both teaching
at Bridgewater Retreat at the same time last August
and we did some cross-pollination activities with
the artists and writers, which they found intriguing.
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Some interesting
quotes to think about.
“Creativity is an adventure of
the soul in its quest for meaning in this earthly
life and all of us are called to create in different
ways”
Linda Schierse Leonard, The Call to Create.
When you are being truly creative, “you
have to leave the city of your comfort and go
into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll
discover will be wonderful. What you’ll
discover is yourself.”
Once
again, happy painting, and I look forward to hearing
from you and receiving your input.
Jill
Segal
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