Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sunday, January 22, 2012

White Moon Blue Night oil painting finished

White Moon Blue Night by Hellenne Vermillion
www.hellennevermillion.com
30" x 24" oil on canvas

SOLD!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Seeing the Light Abstract Oil Painting

This is a 24" x 36" abstract oil painting depicting the emotional turmoil in one's life that twists and turns, but seeing and knowing that there is the lightness beyond all this underneath it all.  The turmoil and the emotions move through life, fluxing and undulating but the lightness of being is always there in the background helping dissolve the negativity. Let the emotions pass through knowing that they are just doing that - passing through.

Detail of "Seeing the Light"

Monday, January 16, 2012

Sashiko Workshop Coming Up

I'll be teaching a basic Sashiko workshop at Intown Quilters in Atlanta January 29th Sunday.
We'll be hand stitching simple cell phone or eyeglass cases
with Sashiko stitching and adding little strips of Japanese print fabric for embellishment,
or in my case, to cover those spots I messed up - we call that design opportunity.
Come join me for the fun!
Click here to sign up!

Monday, January 9, 2012

Painting Process





Just for fun I thought I'd show you how I took an old unfinished canvas and am painting over it. Many times the painting underneath will influence the painting I'm working on which I find to be both challenging and inspiring. Because of the interference of the original half finished painting underneath, it can give ideas either for use now or for future reference, ideas that I may not have thought of.

The plan is to have white-ish tree trunks and branches against a dark night sky. I like to play with the negative spaces, those spaces in between that we think we don't see when looking at an actual treescape. The plan was to have different colors painted in these negative spaces, but after having done some of that I didn't like the effect and painted it all in in blues.

As I worked the trunks and branches the painting "speaks" and there is an urge to put a full moon in the background.

As the moon gets painted in, I feel that many of the lower branches need to be painted over and the tree trunks need slimming and  be muted to give a more mystical feeling to the work.

At this point I stop and hang the painting on the wall and let it rest. I want to see it with fresh eyes days or weeks later and make sure this the "feeling" I want to convey through this painting is happening. I will be changing things around and fine tuning certain areas.

The painting below is nowhere near finished but now the basic overall part is done for now. Now comes the "real" fun of finishing it, which may take days or weeks.