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

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