New Pastel Painting Burrero Beach

Playa del Burrero (Burrero Beach) in winter.

oil pastel, 32 x 24 cm Feb 19, 2015 by Birsen Ozbilge

 Available @ SHOP

Yesterday's oil pastel painting from the view point in Burrero. Around 6:30 pm the sky had beautiful colored clouds. Every minute the colors were changing, I try to get the closest tones quickly in order to finish the painting properly in the studio. It took me several hours to complete the pastel painting, hope you enjoy it...

Last Wednesday I went to see two fantastic exhibitions in Las Palmas. The first one was "Los Caprichos de Goya" from a famous Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828). My friend and I participated to the special guided tour about this exhibition. It took about half an hour, It was really informative and interesting. I love to learn the art history this way. Goya was such a rebel  artist of his time... He still influences many contemporary artists with his art. For example, did you know that, the film director Christopher Nolan while he was writing the story of "Inception"movie, he was investigating these etchings and he got inspired by Goya's Caprichos.

The image on the wall is "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" from "Los Caprichos de Goya" exhibition. 

Afterwards we headed to another good exhibition at Vegueta. This time we saw a Canarian sculpture artist's works, Placído Fleitas (1915 - 1972) at San Martin Cultural Center. I had seen his artwork in public places, parks before. He used lava rock material on some of his art pieces. I like those ones very much. But I didn't know he had done beautiful wood bas relief (pine tree) artworks, see photo below.

Bas Relief (Pine tree) by Placído Fleitas

Beautiful sculpture in the public park (by Placído Fleitas)

The weather is still chilly and very windy which should be less windy and cold in this season. It makes plein air painting process very difficult. Anyway, last week on Thursday, it seemed like a nice day, so we took advantage of it and we went out. I had a plein air session in Parque Cruce de Arinaga, Aguimes for about 1 hour. I enjoyed being able to putting so much light and shadows in the composition but they were moving constantly while the clouds changing their positions. So, I decided to call the day off at this moment, It was better to comeback another day to continue this painting. I will show you once it finished. It's finally Friday, Have a good weekend! See you soon. Please share the blogpost @ G+, fb, twitter and leave a comment. 

Work in progress, plein air painting in Parque Cruce de Arinaga

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New PDF e-book "Ars Longa Vita Brevis"

We are having one of the coldest winter weather in Gran Canaria (considering Canary Islands standards). I never have to put this much layers of clothing. Still no need for the heating, We are fine with hot water bags for the nights. Since the weather is so grey and chilly out there, Today I am drawing with my Prisma color pencils in my studio. 

I have been working on an e-book project on and off for a couple of months and finally  it's finished. In this e-book, presenting the complete artworks of "Ars Longa Vita Brevis" (Art is long but life is short) with addition of an introduction by expalaining the process of the artworks for your curiousity.

Have a great week!

e-book Ars Longa Vita Brevis by Birsen Ozbilge

(English/Turkish, 54 pages, 4 mb)

"Ars Longa Vita Brevis" (Art is long but life is short) 

Coloured pencil on paper with mixed media, 40 x 30 cm., 2009

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Plein air pastel painting

Last Saturday the weather was a little bit chilly but warm enough for me to paint outside for about 1,5 hours. I did drawing and painting with oil pastels by the seaside in El Burrero, the closest neighbor town to our place . I was surprised to see our friend surfing by himself in this green grayish sea, in a not really windy weather. Anyway, he was happy seeing me drawing out there, when I was asked him "how was it?", he said; "the wind is nothing crazy today but I did some exercise." What a positive attitude! I like to see more people like him, enjoying sports, outdoors in summer and winter! Our live is so precious we must enjoy and appreciate each moment of it.

Where I was working by the little port, there is a beautiful sculpture, called "Monumento al pescador", a siting fisherman is holding a big fish and he has a boat paddle. This sculpture was here close to 10 years, I think. It is a mystery a little bit, when I searched online, I was able to find only the photos of it but not much information about the author. It's a shame... Do you know about the artist of this sculpure? If yes, put on the comments please.

Later on, a teenage girl came and set down on the sculpture's base without moving just focusing to her mobile and she was a perfect model. It's a bit sad seeing the youngsters how they addicted to their cell phones all the time. I personally blame their parents and our society. 

Have a great week!

Drawing in open air

A winter afternoon in El Burrero, Jan 31, 2015, oil pastel, 11" x 8"
Available click on SHOP to purchase

Detail

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"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment". Claude Monet

Willows in Spring, Claude Monet, 1886

After I started to paint at outdoors, I did a research about art history of famous plein air painters and found a fantastic series of documentary about the impressionists by Waldemar Januszczak . In my collage years, our art history teacher used to show us diapositive slides in the dark classroom. Each slide displayed for aprox.10 seconds and hundreds of painting, after a while it was getting very boring. Us, trying to see the notebook to take notes in the dark room, mostly missing her conversations. Students didn't have a fixed art history book neighter, the art books of the school library were almost impossible to get it, the most incredible and of course there was NOT internet in the early 90's. I failed 2 times from art history class, because I didn't like to memorize all this artist names, years, it was nonsense to me... Well, I passed this class repeating after few times and left it all behind with my nightmare of school memories. It's true that I was not a good student but I was very curious about art. That's why, the second year of my collage, as soon as I had enough money to travel, I bought an interrail ticket (an unlimited train ride pass, valid for a month in Europe) to see the real artworks. Starting to my journey from Istanbul, I visited, Austria, Italy, France, Spain and Hungary, I visited museums and art galleries in Paris, Rome, Firenze, Madrid. In Musée D'Orsay I saw these fabulous impressionist paintings of Courbet, Monet, Manet, Pizarro, Bazille, Cézanne, you name it... The influences of impressionism was very important in my early artworks, even though still my favorite artists are the expressionist... See below

Kabatas parki, oil pastel on craft paper, 1991 by Birsen Ozbilge

Today , I drew a lonely tree in our neighborhood, this little sidewalk park by the side of the highway has a great view. The winter is a little bit chilly this year, I am waiting for the good weather for plein air painting. Follow me at google.com/+BirsenozbilgeArtistPainter I am building a new page there. Please leave a comment if you liked my artworks and share with your fb, twitter etc. 

See you soon, have a great weekend!

View from Centro de Salud Carrizal, pencil on paper, Jan 30, 2015

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Plein air painting with sea breeze

Plein Air Working in Progress

Yesterday afternoon the weather was beautiful. My husband and I took advantage of it and made a plein air set up by the coast close to our place. I worked with acrylic paintings this time. They have some advantages and disadvantages to paint. The advantages; the acrylic dries very quick, they are water based paints, so it's easy to clean afterwards and they are non-toxic. It's not too difficult to handle mistakes if you are not used to it, you cover the colors and create different layers. Most colors get much darker once they dried. You have to have some experience and patience with it. Disadvantage is blending them can create muddy tones and the texture is not the same like oil colors but many people cannot distinguish from oils if expertly painted.

I enjoyed painting in plein air, directly looking to the peaceful sea landscape. I admit that I am very fortunate to live in Gran Canaria island, We have year around good weather and beautiful nature. Of course the good weather by itself is not enough. Painting is an expensive job. You have to sell in order to get good quality materials.  The appreciation for the hard work which is a necessity for any artist and more important than that is the support from art lovers which will help to keep creating new artworks. 

If I had a normal 9 to 5 job or not even needed to go to work, you know what would I do? I would collect artworks to support living artists. All I had to do not buying that brand name accessory which I did not need it really. And believe me it will be enough to support a living artist... And I would feel myself such  a generous and a good person. Contact me if you are interested in with any of my artworks. Too see them visit my website at www.birsenozbilge.com 

View to city of Las Palmas from Las Terrazas

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A pastel sketch from dunes

The weather was great today, so we took advantage of it and we visited a seaside town close to our place. Just out of the town there is a protected area covered by dunes where I chose to set my portable chair and started to paint. Oil pastel is a wonderful material (cray-pas Expressionist) for outdoor painting. All you need is a hard cardboard to back up the paper and a small box to put your pastels along on your lap. 

Painting with oil pastels

Tufia shore

Thanks for supporting by reading and sharing my blog. I wish you a Happy Holiday Season and a Happy New Year. 

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