kcp – Artblog

I’m so thrilled! This September I’m starting to give oil painting classes in a near-by community centre. I wanted to get a job like this for a long time. I been teaching cartoon illustration to kids in various community centres in the last few years, in hopes to make myself known and work my way up but I’ve found that it doesn’t quite work that way. Most centres that have painting classes serve a clientele that can afford them and the materials. Also, often the painting teachers at those centres have been there for a long time and aren’t likely to quit… I don’t blame them ;)

So I kept sending resumes until luck finally struck, when this community centre in my neighbourhood called me up. They didn’t have a painting/Art teacher and they were looking for one, and get this: they’re buying all the materials, brushes, paint tubes, easels… you name it! I was blown away but it’s a really great thing. You see, there’s lots of poverty in this neighbourhood and for a lot of people it is unthinkable that they can afford the materials plus the cost of the painting lessons. So this community centre buys the materials and offers classes at a reasonable cost. And, it gets even better; their philosophy is to never refuse someone who wish to participate to an activity because he can’t afford it. They’ll work something out instead.

That is so fantastic I think! Painting is such a beautiful discipline and it wouldn’t be fair to deprive people of it just because they are poor. It isn’t just a creative discipline, it is also an opportunity for people to go out, meet others, share and explore together, and not to forget relaxation and other “therapeutic” benefits of painting.

I want to give my students the choice of working from photos, from model or from imagination, so I been preparing, gathering photos, pictures of Great Master’s paintings, old illustration books and props to bring over there to make still lives. Anyway, I’m really, really excited and looking forward to start teaching my first painting class in a couple of weeks.

There’s a French nursery rhyme that goes: “La peinture à l’huile c’est bien difficile, mais c’est bien plus beau que la peinture à l’eau.” – This translates to: Oil painting is very difficult, but it is much prettier than water paint – In which case “water paint” could be interpreted as watercolours or again, water soluble paint, like acrylic.

I don’t know how much this nursery rhyme has contributed to the belief that oil painting is hard but there sure seem to be a lot of people that think so – I met countless of acrylic painters that say that they can’t do oils to save their lives – Well if you are one of those folks, it might interest you to know that I can’t paint in acrylic to save my life –I bet you didn’t suspect me to say that but there, I said it.

So is oil more difficult than acrylic, really? I think it is more a matter of personality. I find that acrylic dries too fast – Yes I know, there’s some medium you can mix with acrylic paint to slow down its drying process but that still dries too fast for my tastes – You see, I like to play with the paint, mix the colours on the canvas. I’m quite an Introvert type of person, my best virtues are patience and persistence, and according to some cognitive tests I undergone a couple years ago, it does indeed seem that my brain is strongly wired to “favour precision over rapidity of execution”.

I used to think that people that don’t have the patience to sit still and do only one thing for several hours non stop until it’s completed, don’t have what it takes to do a decent painting or drawing – But that has changed when I met Guy, the painting teacher at one of the community centre where I teach drawing classes. Guy is an Extrovert, very out going, generous and expressive person – Guy teaches both acrylic and oils but says he prefers acrylics because he doesn’t like waiting 3 or 4 days for the paint to dry. He says: “Things have got to get going with me, continuously.”

He also told me that sometimes his oil students are making him impatient because they spend a long time painting their sky, chitchatting with each other, then get up, grab a cup of coffee, chitchat some more, then get back into class and continue working slowly on their skies – Guy said: “That takes forever and ever, my gosh it’s driving me crazy!” – That made me chuckle – I realized that his oil students must alienate him just as much as those of my students that hurry to complete their drawings alienate me.

Which medium is better suited for you? If you like to work slowly, focussing on one thing at a time, if you like to experiment, play with colours on the canvas and don’t mind waiting a long time before seeing some results, oil may just be the perfect medium for you – On the other hand, action going, multi tasking, spontaneous types will very much prefer acrylics – This said however, it doesn’t solve the problem of beginner painters who have not yet gained the experience and confidence in their skill to work fast – Because acrylic paint dries fast, beginners might find it disabling. So please, do yourself a favour and give oils a chance.

Welcome to my new self-hosted Wordpress template which combines this blog and my personal website – One single URL for everything: kimcpelletier.com ! – I hope you like it :)

Blog:  While the posts from my old blog were successfully transferred, there are still some images that need to be fixed or resized in some of the posts – Apologies for that, I will fix them within the next couple of weeks.

You’ll see there are new neat gadgets on the blog, among other:

• A random picture from the portefolio gallery uploads at the top right corner of each blog page – You can click on it to see an enlarged version and click on the X to close the lightbox and return to the blog page you were previously viewing – Cool, uh? :)
• You can subscribe to my blog using the subscribe tool at the far right sidebar to receive email notifications whenever this blog is updated and/or for you techno-geeks out there; receive notifications on your cell phone or on whatever mobile-device-du-jour is your thing :)
• Comments on the blog only are enabled – I may enable comments on the portfolio gallery page eventually (that is when I figure out how to make this work)

Website:  There is still much to be added on the website – Right now there is only one gallery on the portefolio gallery page; more galleries to be added soon – Among other they’ll be a gallery for paintings in progress.

• The website will be bilingual so English speaking visitors should expect to have to click on the “English” link there will be – The blog will only be in English – Apologies to my fellow francophone (most of you understand English anyway) translating is very much time consuming and if I’d have to write blog posts in both languages that would take me for ever while I feel that updating and maintaining this blog and website is already using a bit too much time to my tastes and which I should be using to paint and work on other projects.
• For my Sax On the Web friends, they’ll soon be a saxophone page with photos, mp3s and videos of myself, my saxophone quartet and other sax stuff, I promise :)

Enjoy! :)

Did you know that you could have prints of my artwork on Greeting Cards? The Holidays are coming and my Still Lives will add a touch of class to your dinner and cocktail parties invitations, Season’s Greetings and Best Wishes cards.

That doesn’t look very “Merry Christmas” you say? – Come on dare to be different! Aren’t you tired of the same cliché greeting cards featuring little angels, winter sceneries and Santa Clauses?

I make it a point to cook something different each year for Thanksgiving and Christmas because every place you’re invited to during the holidays you eat turkey, meat pie and meatballs stew until you cannot stand it anymore and you keep hearing aunt Nellie’s voice echoing in the back of your mind “Would you like to have some yams with that?” until it causes permanent collateral damages – So, much in the same way, why not send a different kind of greeting card this year for a change? ;) – Still not convinced? Well, it doesn’t have to be for Christmas if you don’t want to but my still lives definitely would make great, classy, delightful invitations for different sorts of occasions.

Ok so, ordering Greeting cards is easy. Here’s how:

• Go to my Imagekind Art Gallery and select the artwork of your choice. Then Select “Cards From” from the Buying Options menu”

• Then go to the second step: “Tailor Options” where you can select from three fine art quality papers; Satin, Matte or Magnolia (Click on the little + sign to read fine art paper’s details) and finally, choose quantity and go to third step “Add to Cart” to proceed to checkout.

Merry Holidays & Cheers to all!
-Kim

Hi and welcome to my blog!

I began with drawing and pastel at age six and moved on to oil painting at age seven until I reached about eleven years old. After what school, other interests and more and more responsibilities took over, but I never really abandoned drawing. In fact, I studied graphic design and later traditional cartoon animation techniques. Finally, a little over two years ago I decided to begin painting again. I paint mostly as a hobby but have for project to produce more paintings to hold a small exhibit eventually – I also opened an online gallery where folks can buy greeting cards and Art Prints of my artwork at: http://kcpelletier.imagekind.com/

I’m working on two more painting projects at the moment. One is yet another Still Life which I named “La Collation” (that’s Canadian French for “snack”) – It portrays a cookie jar, a French strawberry jam jar and some exotic (and other not so exotic) fruits – As you can see from the picture below, it is almost done; there are few grapes to add here and there and I must finish the earth cherries on the lower right end.

The other painting I’m working on portrays white philadelphus flowers. I’m about halfway through. I have no pictures of it yet but will post some soon now that I have bought a new digital camera to replace the one I accidentally broke a few months ago.

So that’s that. I hope you enjoy my paintings and my blog – I also plan to post some tips about framing and caring for artwork, buying art prints online and other useful online resources.