Did you know that creativity can enhance your life in many ways? According to a Forbes article entitled, “Here’s how Creativity Improves Your Health,” by Ashley Stahl of Forbes, being creative has many benefits. These benefits include: improving your mood, reducing stress, and improving cognitive function since your right and left hemispheres to work together when you are creating.
It doesn’t matter what form creativity takes to get these benefits. Some different creative activities such as sewing, coloring in a coloring book, etc. Join me this summer in my Continuing Landscapes in Pastel to improve the quality of your life on many levels and make time for creativity in your life! To learn more, visit https://delaplaine.org/.
There are still some spots available for my upcoming, Continuing Landscapes in Pastel at the Delaplaine Art Center. If you are an oil painter or love to work in color, but would like to try out a new medium, this might be a great course for you.
Or, if you want to work in a more forgiving art medium than watercolor, pastel could be the perfect choice for you! It’s a wonderful medium that combines all the characteristics of drawing which is generally a dry media, with the painterly characteristics of color and texture, such as oil painting, but in contrast, pastels have no drying time.
Working in soft pastels also doesn’t require a full complement of art supplies, such as pallets, brushes, or water jars. Instead, you can get started with just some soft pastels, erasers, pastel pencils, and pastel paper to begin your creative journey. Easy to set up and easy to clean up. No brushes or palettes to clean! And it’s so easy to correct your mistakes, with a kneaded eraser. What could be better? Here’s a sneak peek at some of the projects we will work on colorful meadows, fall scenes, and even a mixed media garden landscape. Please visit: https://delaplaine.org/ to sign up or learn more about this wonderful course!
In my experience as an artist and teacher, I have learned how important it is to incorporate a wide range of value in my own artwork and art demonstrations. Test the truth of this insight by joining my art course, Continuing Landscapes at the Delaplaine art center this July! We will start with pastel techniques, and then work our way through the elements of art, such as value and color, etc. to build successful landscape pastel paintings. To learn more, visit https://delaplaine.org/.
Don’t miss out on a chance to take my intermediate pastel course for landscapes! Pastel is a forgiving medium and it allows you to experience the best of both worlds with drawing and painting. With pastel, you can create colorful drawings that are easy to revise and there is no drying time to wait for, as with other art media, such as watercolor, acrylic, and oil. Also, this medium can be used in conjunction with other media, such as watercolor for painterly effects! To learn more, please visit https://delaplaine.org/.
This summer I am teaching two great art courses at the Delaplaine Art Center in Frederick, MD! The first course begins on June 22nd, and it’s called, Drawing into Calm: A mixed media survey course. In this course, you will learn how to work in a variety of media from watercolor and pen to acrylic and pastel. We will explore which media are compatible, such as watercolor and ink pen, and gain inspiration from a variety of famous artists, such as Monet, Paul Klee, and Odilon Redon, among others! It’s a course that is perfect for beginner artists and will explore both drawing demonstrations and painting demonstrations, as well as collages. If you want to try new media or love art history, this might be the perfect course for you! Visit the Delaplaine website at: https://delaplaine.org/, to register or learn more.
The other course I am teaching is called, Continuing Landscapes in Pastel, and it’s perfect for experienced pastel artists who would like to learn more about color and value in the context of the four seasons. This course is geared toward more experienced artists who have some drawing experience. The four seasons, summer, autumn, winter, and spring will provide a context for exploring the elements of art, value, and color, such as using cool colors like blue or violet to depict snow, and warmer color palettes to illustrate fall foliage. Both courses are designed for adults. To learn more, visit https://delaplaine.org/instruction/classes-workshops/.
Harmonizing on a Line, Mixed media collage, Jodie Schmidt, 2022. Mixed Media Cow Collage, Mixed Media: torn papers, metallic wrapper, painted papers, watercolor, crayon, ink, and colored pencils, Jodie Schmidt, 2022.Odilon Redon Knock off, Pastel on paper, Jodie Schmidt, 2022. Pizza Painting, Acrylic Paint on canvas board, Jodie Schmidt, 2022. Mosaic Magazine Collage: Grand Canyon, Magazine papers, and pastel on paper, 2022, Jodie Schmidt.Child at the Beach, Pastel on paper, Jodie Schmidt after Rebecca Le Mendonca, 2022.Creating Depth, Jodie Schmidt after Marla Bagetta, Pastel on paper, Jodie Schmidt, 2022. Rocky Tor, Jodie Schmidt after Rebecca Le Mendonca, Pastel on paper, 2020.The Birches, Jodie Schmidt after Rebecca Le Mendonca, Pastel on paper, 2022.
Do you have an interest in telling your family history through mixed media collage art? I have just the course for you! It’s called, Your Family Story through Collage art and will begin on May 4th from 6-8pm at the Adams County Arts Council in Gettysbn. Take your artwork to the next level and create content-based work that tells a story, using a variety of media such as photography from your family collection, old drawings, card stock, acrylic paint, charcoal, and more! We will upcycle old sketches from your sketchbook to create new and unique artwork! Click here to learn more: https://www.adamsarts.org/portfolio-item/your-family-story-through-collage-art/.
The good news is that my art courses at the Delaplaine are filling up! And, the good news for you is that there are a few more spots left! The three courses I will be teaching are Classic Drawing, a beginner drawing course, Drawing into Calm: A Mixed Media survey course, and Landscapes in Pastel: The Four Seasons.
The drawing course is great for those who have always wanted to draw but did not know where to begin, and I will teach you four different drawing modalities such as contour drawing, and using shapes to construct forms. With so many options, you are bound to find a method that brings you excellent results!
The next two courses, Drawing into Calm and Continuing Landscapes are a bit more advanced. In the former, we will study a variety of different art media such s watercolor, pastel, collage, and much more! It’s a veritable buffet of art media to try each week with lessons on collage and painting with subject matter that includes, animals and landscape. You will learn what media works best together in combinations that you wouldn’t have imagined, such as wax resist and collage!
And in the course of the landscape, we will explore a variety of light and color effects such as filtered light to imitate the qualities of the four seasons, such as spring, summer, fall, and winter! Soft pastel is perfect for those who love to paint, but don’t want to wait for it to dry! The elements of art, such as color, shape, form, and value will inform each lesson, and you’ll learn valuable skills such as how to mix colors to get the exact color you want! To learn more, visit https://delaplaine.org/instruction/classes-workshops/. Thanks for stopping by!
Goldfinch collage, Mixed Media, 9.5 x 12 inches, 2022, Jodie Schmidt. Jodie Schmidt after Karen Margulis, Using a Tunnel Composition, pastel on paper, 2022. This painting was entirely based on a youtube tutorial by Karen Margulis, a pastel teacher extraordinaire, whose art tutorials are available on youtube. Jodie Schmidt after Walter Foster, Still Lifes, pencil on paper, 2022. These drawings are based on art tutorials from one of my favorite drawing textbooks, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Drawing: More than 200 Drawing techniques, tips, and lessons, Walter Foster, 2016.
My beginner drawing course is now officially full! I am so excited, but there are still some open spots in my mixed media survey course, Drawing into Calm, and Continuing Landscapes, The Four Seasons. To learn more, visit http://www.delaplaine.org. Here are some photos of the artwork I plan to demonstrate for these courses, to give you a sneak preview!
Grocery List Doodle, Mixed Media, 2022, Jodie Schmidt. Midnight Crow, Mixed Media, 2021, Jodie Schmidt. Rocky Tor, After Mendonca, Pastel on paper, 2020, Jodie Schmidt. Aspens, After Mendonca, pastel on paper, 2020.The Four Seasons, Watercolor with pastel, 2022, Jodie Schmidt.
I have expanded my course offerings at the Adams County Arts Council in Gettysburg, PA, and am now offering a mixed media course that will combine genealogy and mixed media art! Click on the link below for details” https://www.adamsarts.org/portfolio-item/your-family-story-through-collage-art/. Pictured below is a photo of the final project, which focuses on telling a family story, combining paint, drawings, and photography!
If you are a creative type or if you like to make things, you have probably encountered the moment when the finished product you imagined, does not live up to your expectations. Creative types such as musicians, composers, producers, dancers, writers, artists, photographers, cooks, and makers of all types, can probably tell you what it feels like to hit a wall with a project, how it felt, and what they did to navigate that feeling of utter frustration. As an artist, I have experienced this frustration more times than I can count. Some paintings and drawings are simply learning projects and are difficult to salvage, while others can be fixed.
I know it’s been said that you learn more from your mistakes than your successes, but when I get to a point in a painting or drawing and I realize that the painting or drawing doesn’t look right, it can be really frustrating. I start doubting myself, feel like giving up, or doing something that I am not good at, like cooking or cleaning because I know that I am not good at these things, so my expectations of success in these domains are much lower than for painting or drawing since I have no training in cookery or housekeeping. Since I know I am not a good cook, if it doesn’t turn out so well, it’s a waste of ingredients but I don’t feel as emotionally attached to the outcome as I would to a painting or drawing.
Romola Illustration with Lillian Gish, Mixed Media, Jodie Schmidt, 2022.
I recently read a forum question on the website, Wet Canvas.com, and the question of the day was,” When should I stop working on a painting? I was intrigued by the question, and wondered how other artists dealt with paintings that can “look like a dog’s breakfast.” I read about a variety of solutions suggested by artists who had hit the wall creatively. Some were familiar to me, like my tendency to put the painting away and stop looking at it for a few days, weeks, months, or even longer. Others were not as familiar such as putting the painting somewhere where you can see it, such as on an easel in a living room, and then taking time to look at it from time to time to diagnose the problem. Another favorite technique is to write a list of things I want to change in the painting, be it the drawing, colors, value, edges, etc. In my case, some of the artwork I have abandoned was started about two years ago, and I am just now starting to look at the sketches and Photoshop files.
This week I took some time to work some more on my acrylic painting, Waiting: Creative Block. I realized that there were several things bothering me about it. The colors and values, and composition were some of the biggest glaring errors. I am realizing there are many reasons why this painting series of poetry illustration works have been abandoned. One of which was being too busy with other things to give the series the proper amount of time it requires to get things right, such as the composition and the drawing. Since I dropped out of the Social Work program at Frederick Community College, I do have more time to work on paintings.
And since I have deliberately looked at my schedule e and started marking studio days on the calendar, I have more “intentional “time. But I am also realizing just how hard this series is, as I am making some paintings almost entirely from scratch by combining different photo references in Photoshop and then drawing and painting them, with this technique, I do not have the luxury of working from reference photos already taken. I have to look for source material and then combine it to make it my own. This project is highlighting areas of weakness in me as an artist, and one of them is composition. I have a tendency to put everything in the middle and don’t often use more unconventional compositional styles. I want to change that and start looking to master artworks to try and broaden my skills in this area.
Another great way to improve your painting skills is to draw, yes draw. Regularly and in a sketchbook if you can, as much as you can so that you can practice things like composition, color, proportions, etc. It can also help you see patterns in your work, such as a favorite subject you return to, or a color palette. A sketchbook is also a great place to try out a variety of art media since it doesn’t feel as precious as a large painting can sometimes feel. This week I am featuring photos from my old sketchbook to show just how diverse you can be in art media. I include mixed-media collages and colored pencil drawings. The sky really is the limit with sketchbooks!
Lillian Gish as Romola, Mixed Media, Jodie Schmidt, 2022. Jodie Schmidt, After Alphonse Mucha, Mixed media, 2022.Fruit Bowl Drawing, Colored pencil, Jodie Schmidt, 2022. Radishes with paper bag, Colored Pencil, Jodie Schmidt, 2022.
Art of Schmidt 