Thank you to Mary Moquin for a lively and enlightening exploration         of color, shape and what it means to be an artist and for opening your studio and sharing your expertise with our members.

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                                                  Mary starts by choosing her color palette.

 

        In her journey to understand color, Mary has created dozens of                  color wheels and charts.  She uses these to choose her palette, know          how one color combines with another, and to remember how she             made certain colors.

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        Mary advises using a limited palette and often uses analogous or                complementary colors.

 

 

 

 

                                                                      She began by sketching with oil or                                                                       water based crayons (Caran d'Ache                                                                     available on amazon) 

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        Mary often uses a computer program like

       “Pixelmator” to experiment with blocks or color.

 

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                                                   She started, as she often does, with the                                                               color   thesky. But she never “always” does                                                       anyhing.

 

      Next she began to fill in the basic shapes with acrylic mixed with               Liquitex clear gesso.

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    Over the next several days, she will finish this painting in oil mixed          with cold wax.  Though she begins with a yellow sky, she expects to          finish with a lavender one.

 

    Mary likes to paint on plastic in part because of the ease of cutting it        to the size.  But she has used a variety of different materials including      papers and canvas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   She makes her own frames from specially milled maple to create a             simple and elegant effect.  By framing all her paintings in the same           way, her shows have a cohesive overall appearance, and she avoids           those tiresome requests to “just swap” frames.  Check out Mary’s               video on making your own frames on Youtube.

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   Mary doesn’t clean her oil brushes, just wipes them off and stores             them in a sealed plastic container in a mixture of safflower and clove       oil.  The clove oil, about 10%, keeps the mixture from thickening.

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Thank you, Mary, for a wonderful presentation.