Spending the Week With Julie

Julie Ford Oliver
teaching at Tessera Fine Art Gallery
Wichita, Kansas

What an amazing week it was spent with my dear friend and artist Julie Ford Oliver.  She arrived safely in Wichita last Monday, and a whirlwind of fun, laughter and learning started the second she stepped off the plane.  We did so much during the week and I will try to just highlight our week for you.

Julie Ford Oliver teaching her fracturing technique
Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita, KS

 The fracturing workshop was a big hit with all the artists that attended.  Many were there with the hopes to loosen up on their technique and Julie's fracturing helps do just that.  Most were working with oil paints, but there were two artists that worked in acrylic.  We were mesmerized watching Julie paint her demos and truly in awe of her natural knack for color.  She made it all look so easy, but it really isn't.  I was glad we had three days to work at it.  

Julie making the rounds with each artist
Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita, KS

 We spent time at our easels and Julie made the rounds to help us along.  She limits the number of attendees in her workshops for this very reason.  It's important to her to give individual attention so that everyone can walk away feeling they have really learned something.  Her teaching spirit was such a gift to all of us.

Lunch break

 The class went from 9 am to 4 pm for three days...though we went later every single day.  We took much-needed lunch breaks each day.  It is exhausting to engage your mind in such a way for so long.

Our class minus two

There were eight students one day and seven the other days of the workshop...one student could not attend all three days.  We had a blast together and of course everyone adored Julie like I do.  

cup
oil on canvas
about 5 x 7

 We all painted an imaginary cup using the fracturing technique.  I lost my fracturing lines in this one, but I was happy with the colors.

backyard
oil on canvas panel
9 x 12 inch

 We each also brought an old painting that we wanted to fix.  My backyard painting was the first painting I ever did in oil.  I worked on it for a while, but it still is not finished.

rose
oil on panel
6 x 6 inch

   Julie advised all of us to "stop right there!"  at one point or another on our paintings...some listened...some didn't.  There was a point when this rose looked better and Julie advised me to stop.  But being the poor listener that I am, I just kept on painting and almost ruined it completely. 

vase of flowers
oil on panel
6 x 8 inch

 I listened on my vase of flowers.  :)

river scene
oil on panel

 The above painting was done on a panel primed with bright pink.  Julie gave us all pink panels to paint on and the exercise was to allow some of the pink to show through.    It's a pretty neat effect.  Who would have thought?

 living room
oil on panel
6 x 8 inch

My living room painting was my favorite of all the paintings I did during the workshop.  I love that you can see the fracturing in it and the light in the windows turned out well.  Values are something I am working on right now, and Julie is big on values.  It is very evident in her work.  

Flint Hills
Kansas
photo taken by Julie Ford Oliver

 The workshop filled the bulk of Julie's visit, but there was time to play also.  One afternoon we took the 1 1/2 hour drive on highway 177 to the Flint Hills.  Julie said it looked a lot like parts of England, which is where she is from.  We saw the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve which is the only national park in Kansas.  On the way we stopped near Matfield Green (population 47!) and looked at all the wildflowers blooming.  We saw beautiful farms, barns, bridges, buildings and even saw a cowboy rounding up cattle.  It was a real day in Kansas for sure...filled with green grass and big blue skies.  Then we finished the day with dinner at the Grand Central Hotel in Cottonwood Falls.

Wichita Wagonmaster tour boat on the Arkansas River

  Julie's visit was during Wichita's annual Riverfest so we saw the tour boat going back and forth one evening as we walked.  We watched a couple of movies too...About a Boy and Miss Potter.

sunset near the Arkansas River
Wichita

For those of you that already know Julie, it won't surprise you that a sunset like this one makes her pretty happy.

Me and Julie
on our last evening

 We really had such a beautiful week, and I don't feel like I've done it justice in my writings here.  Julie has an abundance of energy like me, so we click together very well.  I loved learning from her and listening to her stories about art and life during the week.   She has a wealth of information and knowledge tucked into her pretty head.    My only complaint about the week is that it went way too fast!

I am so grateful for Julie coming to visit us, and for teaching her workshop here in Wichita.  It was a gift to have her here and I know I speak on behalf of everyone else in the class.  They are already talking about her coming back.

I hope you all are well.  I will probably take a break from blogging.  There are paintings dancing in my head and I need to focus for a while.  I will still try to pay some visits as I am long overdue to see what you have been up to.

Happiness to all of you!

♥ Lisa

Guess Who's Coming to Wichita

watercolor on yupo

Last year you may remember that I took a trip to visit Julie Ford Oliver in her hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico.  It was a very special time spent with her...a time of friendship, art and healing for me as I had just lost my mother.  During my visit, I invited her to Kansas any time she could make the trip and today she arrives here in Wichita!  I have been so excited about her visit, I just cannot express how much!!  During her stay, she will also be teaching her amazing and sought after fracturing technique at a three day workshop located in the classroom at Tessera Fine Art Gallery.  The class filled up right away of course and everyone is really looking forward to it.  

I cannot wait to see this beautiful person again...her arrival is literally hours away so I had better sign off and do some tidying up around the house.  I will post about our week after she leaves on Saturday.  Have a great week everyone!  

Julie Ford Oliver
2014

Spending Time With Julie Ford Oliver

Untitled
watercolor on Yupo

I met Julie Ford Oliver through blogging two years ago and if memory serves me right, we had an instant connection.  I fell in love with her exquisite and highly technical paintings and she seemed to really like the stories in my art.  She often offered praise and insight that fed my desire to continue to paint.  Like any artist, I sometimes question my skills, my subjects, all of it really, and it has been the seasoned and experienced artists like Julie who come along and lift me up and help me push forward.  Through our numerous emails, I not only had come to appreciate having a mentor, but had made a dear friend.

So long story short, last Spring Julie invited me to come to New Mexico to paint with her at her studio. After losing my mother in early July, this invitation became something I felt I really had to do. So I packed my bags and my paints and headed to Las Cruces. 

The week was FULL of happy moments.

New Mexico

Like walks in the desert.

White Sands National Monument

Riding down the sand dunes on a sled!  Wee!

Pasture in Lincoln Forest

Visiting Julie's friends in the mountains.

New Mexico skies

Marveling at the frequent changes in the sky.

Stormy New Mexico sky

Sunset in New Mexico

 Watching the sunrise and sunset.  Each one was different.

Old building in Mesilla, New Mexico

Walking around looking at blue doors and wonderful New Mexico architecture.  

Blue garden gate

It was like walking into a Julie Ford Oliver Painting!

Julie Ford Oliver in front of her studio

Then we headed for Julie's studio where she teaches.  

oil on 8 x 8 inch canvas

I painted on black canvas for the first time.  It makes it so easy to outline the work...it seemed to really help with the drawing  The little blue vase is one of Julie's still life objects...I just had to paint it. 

oil on 10 x 10 inch canvas

Julie talked a lot about design and use of color...I tried to think about both in the above piece.  The above drippy marks are from a wash with oil and mineral spirits.  I let them be, so the white is raw canvas showing through.  We thought it looked neat, so I left it that way.

oil on 9 x 12 inch oil primed linen

All the vibrant colors of New Mexico obviously inspired the above piece.  I didn't have time to finish it, but I was happy with where it was going.  Oil primed linen is nice to paint on.  It seemed to grab the colors off the brush more easily than gesso primed canvas.

I had two other paintings, a pear and a cityscape, but the photos are too blurry.  In those I visited the use of color again and did some negative painting which was pretty fun to do.

Julie Ford Oliver and me

The week was amazing.  It was so full of beauty....the landscape...the incredible people I met...the food...the art...the sunsets...the warm sun...the rain.

But the best part was Julie.  Hands down.  Julie.  A gem of a lady.

 Julie is a mega-talented artist and a sought-after teacher.  Her paintings have been published in books and magazines and have sold world wide.  She won't tell you any of this though...she is quite humble about it all. If you don't know her art, do yourself a favor and  visit her here. I highly recommend her very inexpensive fracturing technique video.  It is what gives her art that special look...like it's been broken and put back together.  Kind of like this past week did for me...I was broken...and now I am a little more together.

Thank you, thank you Julie.

xoxo

This Hat Needs a Flower

This Hat Needs a Flower
11 x 14 inch oil on canvas panel
SOLD

This painting was done almost entirely with palette knives including her face, although I did use a brush here and there.  I used the fracturing technique I learned from Julie Ford Oliver's class.  My overall goal here was to really loosen up, however as you can see, her facial features are still tight with visible lines.  When I leave out the lines or wipe them away it never looks right to me, so back in they go.  This is my favorite thing about working in oils...it is so easy to redraw or blend away areas.  

Here are a couple of close-up photos so you can see the details a little better.  

Thank you so much for looking!  Have a great day!

Giving Julie's Fracturing Technique a Try

Girl in Striped Scarf
9 x 12 oil on stretched canvas

     Last week Julie Ford Oliver released her video showing the fracturing technique she uses in her oil paintings.  It's such a beautiful effect and something I've wanted to learn more about.  Of course Julie makes it look very easy, but for me it was not. And of course I expected this since Julie is a professional and extremely good at what she does.

  Here's my first attempt at using the fracturing technique...done in oil paints which is not my usual medium of choice, though they are really nice.  I ended up softening her face and not "fracturing" it.  It started out fractured which you will see below, but I messed up and just could not achieve that look again, so I left it soft.

I highly recommend this video if you want to loosen up in your art work or if you just love to learn new things.

Here are some photos to show the process of this painting and the sketch I used to go by.  It was a lot of fun and I want to give this a go with acrylics, though I think it will be a lot harder to do since they dry so fast.  Julie talks about that in her video.

first layer of color

more colors, details and "fractures"

I wish I would have left it at this stage...I like her face, but the background needed work.  I ended up changing the whole thing because I accidentally got paint on her face which of course forced me to change it.

Sketch used
Graphite and Watercolor  on ivory paper