Turtle Vase acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 x 1.5 inches 2019
Had a great time last Thursday at my live painting event, the happy hour happening at Earl's Restaurant in Square One, Mississauga, ON with Collective Arts Brewing. Thanks to everyone who came out, bought raffle tickets, said nice things, asked questions and requested photos with the artist (aw 💚 ). I don't know who ended up with the piece but would love to know and see pictures of it hanging. I know there were a lot of excited raffle ticket buyers hovering around the end there, anticipating if it would fit in their car and asking when the raffle would be drawn. Sorry I would have loved to have taken my time to meet everyone for chat and photos etc., but I was in a bit of a time crunch! Well I left out some art cards for people to take to contact me if they wanted to. We raised a little over a hundred dollars for Sick Kids Hospital too.
A little about the piece, this was a bit of a departure from my regular work that has a hundred details in the foreground and background and takes forever. I had 2 hours to produce something from beginning to end that people could watch in the restaurant, this ended up being closer to 2.5 hours. Prior to arriving at the restaurant, it took 3 hours of prep work, 1 to brainstorm and draw the idea out, another to transfer the idea on canvas and finally another to premix the colours so that I would be all ready to go when I got to the restaurant. I chose a more simplistic background with slight textured embellishments and went with one strong concept to complete the picture. The most popular question was, "Where did you find the inspiration for this piece?" My best answer, sometimes I like to combine 2 things that make me happy. In this case a cute happy turtle with a vase of flowers to crawl around and spread joy and freshness to the world 🐢
Below is the work in progress:
My initial set up, all tidy and neat.
First half hour in, some of the shapes outlined.
Filling in the colours.
I could feel people starting to get excited and buying raffle tickets behind me by this point.
Details from the finished piece, lighting got a little dark as I was 30 minutes over already and the lights had dimmed for their dinner hour.
Pretty happy with the textured petal which is a departure from my regular flat paint application that takes forever.
Cute little flowers I was able to execute quickly and a textured background too.
The shadows were my favourite part to paint and it took me awhile to decide where to sign it, but I did it.
Got a dragon roll out of it too, thanks!
The after math, I used flyers I get in my mail box as palette paper for economical reasons and all the rags I used from cleaning paint brushes and palette knives. Had to mix a few colours on the spot as I executed the piece, you never can plan for everything!
Available art cards to the interested public, they took quite a few and I am glad. Not everyone realized they were available for the taking though so unfortunately I missed a few. Next time maybe I should make a sign. Anyway people were so nice in that if there was only 1 left of a certain picture they would leave it just so that others could see it at least. I love my art fans, they are so lovely and considerate of others like that 🌼🌸
