Saturday, April 15, 2017

New Work: A Green Strategy / "Trees in Half Shade II", oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

Trees in Half Shade II, oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches
$10950. framed
Exhibiting: Arden's Gallery, Houston, TX

Trees in a green park, with green grass - green everywhere.

It's a balancing act to handle that much green. For many landscape artists, green creates a lot of difficulty - myself included for many years.

This oil is the larger version of a 36 x 36 oil completed in late 2015. The play of light from left to right is the obvious part and it sets up the entire painting, but the background (pun) story here is how to use a larger number of greens and keep everything fresh.

Here's a green strategy:

For this work, I started with a number of greens and blue-greens on the palette, along with light, medium and dark grays. Virtually all of the greens were mixed with one of those grays, yielding an interesting group of colors without that out-of-the tube look. The greens also got a lot of support from the blues, purples, pinks and the dark contrasts.

I just kept pushing the colors with brighter blues, aquas and mauves to take the painting further. Once it was done... it wasn't done. I continued to tune it for another two weeks, very small touches of a couple of minutes each. There is a lot of surface area here and I made sure that every part of the canvas was alive and radiant.

There was never any pressure to finish, only to make a large and compelling work. Once it was completed, it felt like a full orchestra played the last bar, packed and left the studio. There was that empty spot in the room for a short time and then new starts began to fill the space.





Friday, April 14, 2017

Art Workshop Schedule, 2017

2017
Visit the Workshops page on my website for complete information and registration.


GATHERING LIGHT II
oil on canvas, 48 X 48 $8950 framed
Exhibiting: Governor's Art Show and Sale at the Loveland Museum, Loveland, CO



Where The Wild Things Are, Texas
9" x 8"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

May 15-18, 2017
Casey Klahn and I will be holding a 4-day intensive art workshop at my home / studio in Castle Rock, CO (Denver metro)
This class is almost at the limit of 8 students, $690 each.
The class has filled. Contact Ken about a possible new Castle Rock date in late summer or early fall.

Open to artists in all media. This is a two-instructor workshop for artists wanting to make advancements in their techniques and strategies. Casey and Ken will have ample time to give very focused attention to individuals and offer a number of provoking ideas to the group. Also, Ken will present simple Photoshop techniques for taking your works to the next level and creating better pathways for finishing your artworks. You will be given a Photoshop instruction guide and have access to Ken's personal photo file of over 1500 inspiring images by various artists. Register here


Ken Elliott
Late Palette II
oil on canvas 36 x 60

Denver, CO, 2017
Fri-Sat, Sept 22-23

Making it Fine Art Advanced Strategies
2 1/2-Day Workshop with Ken Elliott in his Castle Rock home/studio

$390 per person
Workshop Flyer  Contact Ken
Complete information and registration

Fri-Sat, 9am-4 pm
Sat evening after break, 4:30 -6, Photoshop Tools

Open to artists in all media.
.
This is a new, advanced version of Ken's Making it Fine Art Workshop. We will be going deeper into making better and more appealing artworks with a variety of strategies and with Photoshop insights made easy.


Denver, CO, Fall 2017
Tentative planning:
Making it Fine Art Workshops / Advanced Strategies 2 1/2-Day Workshops with Ken Elliott

Open to artists in all media. This is a new, advanced version of Ken's Making it Fine Art Workshop. We will be going deeper into making better and more appealing artworks with a variety of strategies and with Photoshop insights made easy..
Complete information on the Workshop page  Contact Ken to schedule a workshop in your area.

I hope to see you there!
Ken



Denver, CO, Fall 2017
Tentative planning:
Making it Fine Art Workshops / Advanced Strategies 2 1/2-Day Workshops with Ken Elliott

Open to artists in all media. This is a new, advanced version of Ken's Making it Fine Art Workshop. We will be going deeper into making better and more appealing artworks with a variety of strategies and with Photoshop insights made easy..
Complete information on the Workshop page Contact Ken to schedule a workshop in your area.