"Wondering" 18" X 24" watercolor

"Wondering" 18" X 24" watercolor © April M Rimpo

Wondering is an exploration into telling a story, about a moment in a person's life and what I image may be her thought, through colors, lighting, and shapes. Leveraging full strength, non-representational, wet-into-wet watercolors for the shaded side of her face, I then juxtaposed this strength with very pale natural colored washes on the brightly lit side of her face. Hard lines add texture to her hair, along with a few touches of splatter, mimic the splatter that forms the feathers in her hair. The addition of some geometric shapes in her face, in the foreground and background contrast with highly organic blends surrounding her. These organic blends are repeated in the squares on the left side of the painting, serving as a means to pull together the organic and geometric contracts found elsewhere. 

I'm delighted that "Wondering" was selected by juror, Joseph Becherer, for the International Society of Experimental Artists International Exhibition. Joseph Becherer is the director of the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame and formerly founding director and curator of the sculpture program at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This exhibit will run from September 7 - October 26, 2019. 

This painting is available on April's website, where you can see a larger image.

Interested in April's artwork or taking one of her classes? Consider becoming a Studio Friend by signing up for her twice-monthly email. April segments her newsletter so you can select topics you'd like to hear about when you sign up. For those who Select the General Interest topic you will receive emails about twice-monthly. If you are only interested in classes, then the emails will be much less frequent discussing upcoming classes and how to register. Select as many topics as sound of interest. Thank you for your support of April M Rimpo Art.

Contact April and see more of her art on her website

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

Creative ART Coaching - How did we get here?

Elaine Weiner-Reed and I met nearly 20 years ago in an art workshop sponsored by the Laurel Art Guild and taught by Joe Mayer. He was a very well known and accomplished artist in Maryland. I don't recall the exact title of his workshop, but in essence his workshop was about finding your artistic voice. He had images of a wide variety of famous artists posted on the wall. He had us decide which of these images spoke to us the most and told us to think about why. He, of course, gave a great deal of other input that day. We were to do a painting from our own reference material in a style consistent with the image we selected.

Elaine and I were sitting near each other and interacted a little during the day. By the end of class I remember Elaine looking at my painting and commenting that I should definitely pursue that direction in my art because she loved the result. 

It turns out that Elaine and I supported the same customer in our day jobs, but we didn't discuss that at that first meeting, nor did we have any interaction with each other in a business relationship.  Our only continuing connection was through the Baltimore Watercolor Society, since we were both members.  Even that connection was fairly superficial, but I knew I really enjoyed her company from the beginning. It wasn't until about 5 years ago that we reconnected and became friends. 

At that time I had retired to pursue my art full time and she was planning to do the same. We spoke one day at an exhibit reception and discovered our common backgrounds and paths forward. We started to meet with each other periodically and a great camaraderie began.

Our paths into art and our direction in our work are extremely different but we are equally driven by our new art career paths and give ourselves wholeheartedly into this adventure. 

Our endeavors overlap in our desire to share our art and expertise through our blogs. We've both participated in numerous National, International, and solo exhibitions. I spent the first four years in my full time art career refining my skills by painting five days per week, spending countless hours reading art marketing and business blogs, attending art business webinars, and participating in a two year Art Business Academy lead by Jason Horejs of RedDotBlog. Apparently the results of this hard work were noticed.

Over time organizations have reached out to me to give presentations on a variety of art business topics. I recognized that the time spent preparing to do a better job on the business-side of an art career positioned me to help other artists.  I designed a few two-hour presentations and full day course, which has morphed itself into a course with three, half-day sessions. 

Elaine has been called a critical thinker, problem-solver, and "idea person." One of her strengths lies in helping others discern and fine-tune their unique voice, personal style, and creative vision. Elaine is a contributing author for the creative living-focused blog Live An Artful Life, her art-related blog posts include a three-part piece From Artist to Art to Art Shows, Building Bridges with Art, and Risking Everything For A Great Painting. She has participated in over thirty five International and National exhibitions.

Elaine and I have grown to understand that bringing our vision and expertise together results in a partnership that is greater than the individual pieces. Our different perspectives on art and the horizons that can be achieved allow us to offer a unique experience. We are now offering Creative ART Coaching.

Creative ART Coaching with Elaine Weiner-Reed and April Rimpo is designed to be an  interactive session focused on helping serious artists looking to bring their art and their art business to a new level.

If you feel stuck in achieving your professional goals, whether it is increasing your exposure through shows and exhibitions, planning a solo exhibition, building a portfolio, finding a gallery, or understanding what people mean when they say they are looking for "a consistent body of work," our goal is to provide you with insights on how to get beyond your current hurdles.

Our first Creative ART Coaching session is scheduled for May 15, from 1 - 3:30PM Eastern Time. This session will be held at Slayton House, 10400 Cross Fox Lane, Columbia, MD 21044, in the Bill White Conference Room. Click here learn more about our coaching session.

More information about these coaching sessions will be announced through my email newsletter. Sign-up here. April segments her newsletter so you can select topics you'd like to hear about when you sign up. For the Creative ART Coaching session, select Interested in Creative Coaching.

Contact April or see more of her art on her website

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Illumination" 36" X 20" Watercolor and Fluid Acrylic

The development of a painting can take a variety of paths. I generally have a mood I want to communicate which leads me to how I approach the work. However, many things can influence the approach you take to create a piece:

• A workshop you have taken may affect color choices, 
• An experimental painting you've finished gives you new ideas, or 
• A painting video you watched provides a new interesting way to create textures in the background and sparks an idea

Any of these can impact how you tackle a painting you've been planning for a long time but didn't know where to start. 

After Steps 1 and 2

I think all of these events initially impacted how I approached Illumination. With so many different ideas floating in my head I decided to put off the painting for a short time to see what bubbled up as the most important of these inspirations. I have to admit that I decided to discard the video idea for now until I try the approach on a few smaller works. However, some new color possibilities and recent experiments definitely came out to play while I created this painting.

At left is the result of the first two steps of the painting. Step 1 was applying mask over some highlight areas and the background wash.  I applied the colors in a swirly motion so they could create their own fantastic blends and resulted in color "stripes" in the shapes of the structure in which the woman is standing. I worked on her face and some clothing shadows during Step 2. My goal was to establish the focal point and work out the value range for the figure. 
                                                                        

Step 3 of Illumination

Step 4 of Illumination

In Step 3 I developed the lower shaded areas using a color combination I experimented with recently. The color triad for the darks is three grayed mixtures of Alizarin Crimson Permanent, Indigo, and Raw Sienna. Each gray uses one of these colors as the dominant color and the other two were used in small portions to just calm down the blend.

In Step 4, the mass of branches on the right side were fully developed by layering more of the gray blends and a nearly black blend.

Step 5 of Illumination

Although it was another hour and a half of work, Step 5 might look very much like Step 4. In it I added shadows under all the highly lit branches  and more dark shadows in the upper left and upper right. Also completed in Step 5 were the hands of the figure and some more darks on her face. 

Step 6 of Illumination

Step 6 is shown at right.
The painting is nearly complete, except for the branches across the bottom. They need soft transitions between the highlights and the shadows under the branches.

Below is the completed painting, Illumination.  Please share your feedback in the comments below.

Illumination by April M Rimpo

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Moving Up" 24" X 14" gallery wrapped fluid acrylic on paper

Moving Up by April M Rimpo

Moving Up

Fluid Acrylic on varnished gallery wrapped paper

24" X 14"

$925

Available for Purchase Here

Moving Up was created by pouring fluid acrylic paint on watercolor paper. This image was designed to be gallery wrapped, where the image of the cliffs wraps around the edges. As a result no frame should be used with this painting.  The artwork becomes part of your room as it projects 1.75" off the surface of the wall. 

I built up the depth of color of the cliff and the rock climber's form through progressively darker layers of poured acrylic.  I thin out the fluid acrylic to be much like a thin wash of watercolor so I can gradually build transparent layers. Masking fluid is applied to block out areas that I want to retain from each pouring. 

Detail of Cliff

I especially like areas where the difference in value (The lightness or darkness of tones or colors. White is the lightest value: black is the darkest.) is minuscule between layers allowing me to create very subtle and interesting patterns, like in this closeup detail of the cliff. 

At the bottom of the post I've added three photographs of the painting I took during its evolution so you can see how the painting changes from an abstract, to a shadow of the figure, to a more developed figure and cliff.  Three layers of mask and paint were applied when the third photograph was taken. An additional three or four layers were needed to finish the painting and add some finishing touches.

I'm very proud of the fact that Moving Up was accepted by juror Linda Doll in the
23rd Annual ISEA (International Society of Experimental Art) International Art Exhibition. You can see it from September 13th to October 12th, 2014 at the National Watercolor Society Gallery in San Pedro, CA. 

It was also included in North Light Publications Best of Acrylic book, AcrylicWorks3: Celebrating Textures.

  

  
You can see another painting of rock climber in my post The Apex.  That painting was created using fluid acrylic and watercolor, but the paint was not poured.

"Sunflower" acrylic on canvas

Sunflower, 12" X 12" acrylic on canvas by April M. Rimpo

Sunflower

acrylic on canvas

SOLD

Every now and then I have to try something new.  Sunflower is one of those experiments.  I've been combining fluid acrylic with watercolor for a while, but I've painted primarily on paper and occasionally on Aquabord.  Sometime in the last year or so I had purchased a few canvases thinking I would apply watercolor medium to the canvas and use them for watercolor paintings.  However, when looking at my canvases the other day I thought, "why bother with watercolor medium, why not just go ahead and do an acrylic painting on the canvas?".

I have never done a painting in only acrylic. My freshman year in college my roommate painted in acrylic and I was amazed at how quickly acrylic paintings dry. I felt like the edges were too hard for my taste.  At the time I was an oil painter used to having a wet canvas to return to the next day.  Watching her work I thought, "I'll never work in acrylic".

Well you know how they say, "Never say never".  Admittedly, she worked with tube acrylics and I use fluid acrylic by DaVinci.  I like fluid acrylic since I don't have to spend time diluting the tube paint to a water consistency and can work more like I do when painting in watercolor.  (As a side note: I haven't painted in oil in 15 years.  Once I discovered watercolor I haven't wanted to go back.  Although I'm not saying "Never" on that subject.)

I decided if I was experimenting, then I might as well do a subject I don't generally paint in watercolor either.  I reviewed my photographs of flowers and selected one of a bouquet with a large daisy.  As always I played around with the cropping and coloring  and created the composition you see above.  With my composition in hand, I put out small amounts of my paints and jumped in.  Since the paint dries so quickly, I worked small areas wet into wet to get soft edges like watercolors and gradually moved around the canvas.  I returned to areas to add very thin transparent washes as needed to either tame down the colors in the supporting cast or adding white (what a phenomenon for a watercolorist!) to areas that I wanted muted but light.  I wanted the flower in the box to be lighter and more realistic in color but with some pastel blues and green highlights, while the flowers outside the box are bolder in color and include darker blue accents.  Basically, I just had fun since it was an experiment, which meant no real pressure.  If it came out well that would be great, if it didn't that was OK too.

I think experimenting in art is important to foster new ideas in your work.  I'm not sure how often I'll work in acrylic and I don't know how often I'll include the variations of color within a single object as I did with the sunflower inside and outside the box.  However, I might try it again since I now have a little practice behind me.

I'd love to hear what you think about my little acrylic.  Is this a direction you think I should continue to explore or just an interesting diversion?