Art from week ending 27/5/2013

sold

Hi Blog readers, I painted this today so it really is hot off the press. Beautiful weather so was able to paint in the garden where the light is better. I did get in trouble for splashing paint every where but I can live with it. I just finished my Ou assignment today so the fact that I have painted is a small miracle. I have crammed a lot of things into 24 hours. I got up and wrote my essay for 3 hours, went for a long walk along the canal with a camera and my family. Took lots of interesting shots for painting material. I came home and painted for a few hours in the sun, cooked a Chinese meal, mowed the grass, played table tennis in our local park with my daughter ,tidied some of the house, the rest is saying clean me now! Alas I am too tired.  My bed is calling me. Will try to write more tomorrow. Goodnight    Carolyn

Art from week ending 19/05/2013

                                                     Elegance 4 by Carolyn Boddy sold

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171043637343?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_272wt_958


This is my artwork from this week! I decided to paint this elegant lady with a pink classic car, she took a good few hours of my time. Time is valuable as I am in the middle of an Open University assignment  so there is little time for painting.  I feel most pleased with the car especially the headlights.
I also posted off my commissioned piece this week ,which was well received and that is a relief to me as you never know if the persons expectations and your artwork are one and the same, however I have had positive results so far. Enough about me!
 The artist's work that I want to share this week is Freda Kahlo a Mexican Artist born July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954. Her self portrait is below and she was a remarkable woman. Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist  Diego Rivero. She suffered lifelong health problems. Many of her health problems were the result of a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.
I love the animals in this painting but struggle to understand the necklace and what it symbolises. I admire the honesty in her features but it always bemuses me that if she knew she had a monobrow why did she not deal with it . I am only kidding really she is brave to have painted herself and that is something very difficult to do well. I may challenge myself to have a go at that. I would be tempted to embellish my finer points and air brush out the wrinkles .
I shall sign off now as it is twenty five to one in the morning but if you like my work do follow the link if you wish to buy it. Thanks for reading the blog, viewers are reading from all over the world now which is amazing. More to come next week.

Art week ending 12/05/2013
              Hi Blog readers, just checking in with this weeks update.

                                            High Street ,Stony Stratford by Carolyn Boddy
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171039836191?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
This painting took some time to do and was from a photograph of Stony High street. The town is very famous as it was an old coaching town and still has many historical features like the cock hotel and the bull public house which is just down the road. This is where the saying cock and bull story came from as by the time a slightly drunken person had wandered from the cock hotel to the bull public house, what ever gossip  they'd picked up had become distorted somewhat. This painting shows the art gallery ( a favourite place of mine) and the estate agents with the road curving round.
   This week I did a small bit of painting and a lot of studying plus I Spent some time away from home at a Hotel in Bedford. I chose it for its Tudor beams and for the fact that it overlooked the river. Very nice hide away for myself and my husband to go to as we celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary. 
Last Thursday evening I met with fellow artists and I really enjoyed our evening together which was fun because we painted portraits of each other on large paper with large brushes and limited colours.
Time was limited to ten minuets per picture which meant we had to work fast. We had a real laugh
trying to capture a likeness but the experience was liberating as there was no time  for fine detail. As a rule I do faff about with tiny brushes and small detail but these portraits lacked features that you would ideally capture( like eyes, noses etc.). I feel I can not share the outcome  which in part could be giggled at yet all seven of us had a go and each picture held a special quality and I really enjoyed the company of my fellow artists and the experience of doing something different.
As you know I have started to write a bit in my blog about other artists because I feel the blog will be more interesting if its not just about me. This week I want to mention a surreal artist called Leonora Carrington. I am interested in her work as she is a woman artist and was very famous although not in her home country. She was born and grew up in England but was not really recognised here but was in Mexico where she was a bit of a hero. I am not really a fan of surrealism in general but her work is intriguing, resembling images from a dream.

The Licentiate by Leonora Carrington
Her work is quite amazing don't you think? Anyway she was very unhappy in parts of her life and lived as a recluse after breaking from her German lover around the time of the war. I do think that artists live on the edge a bit and that the part of them that allows them to feel and paint what they feel is also a quality which means they feel too much and as such are very sensitive people. That's just my opinion and I think it applies to musicians as well. Any way thanks for reading and if you do wish to you can follow the link to buy this weeks art and keep a look out on this site for more artwork and news from the art world.

week starting 5th May 2013

Hi Blog readers, this week I am going to share some art that I did a while ago because I haven't painted this week, apart from some work on my commissioned piece which is nearly finished I am glad to say. I have been quite poorly for a couple of days and wasn't really up to painting and I have an assignment that I am reading up for which is stealing my creative time. Anyway I looked back through my work and decided to share this piece which is sold.

I am fond of this painting because it shows the working men's club that is situated in a street near my house and is struggling to keep going in an age where people get their beer cheap in the supermarket. It really is a lovely building that I have always admired. In this painting, have moved it near a corner shop that is also in my town. I used to get my children sweets there on the way home from school.
   I like that I can take a building from one place and a tree from another e.c.t and make a whole new setting. Not only do I take buildings and move them around, I also take people and the other thing I like about this painting is that the man with the dog and the lady with the blue scarf are people that I really saw while on a day out in Oxford. I like interesting looking people and they sometimes end up in a painting. Some characters I make up like the post box lady, the old man with a walking stick and the lady with a pram and the cyclist but now and then I do put in the people I see while out and about. I  am also inspired by looking at the work of other artists and try to get to galleries quite often.

Did anyone see the new impressionist painting of the queen by  Artist Dan Llywelyn Hall?
Some people like it and some have criticised it. I myself like it and I think he has a good likeness to the good lady. It is very hard to paint a person and one should remember that a painting will be the artists own impression . Each Artist would see something different and pick out different features that appeal to them.

 I  would like to share my own painting of the Queen that I painted  to see if I could get a real likeness to a person. I really enjoyed doing it although I am more comfortable doing street scenes, they are more forgiving. She looks younger in Dan' painting than in mine

sold

I hope to do some more art next week so if you enjoy this blog,  look  out on Sunday when I usually update the blog. Thanks for reading Carolyn.