Susan Kennedy Art

see all of my show paintings                                                                or check out my website You guys, come out to The Vine Community Church this coming weekend (Dec 5 and 6) for the Art and Soul show and fundraiser...I'll have ton of stuff there! 30% of every sale goes toward some of our ministries for women and children: Abba House, Vijiji House of Light orphanage in Kenya, and The Hope Tree Adoption ministry here in Cumming. The art show and sale will be open Friday night from 4-10 P.M. and Saturday from 10  A.M. to 6 P.M. There are also speakers and a jazz concert and dinner Friday evening, so check out http://www.artandsoulnga.com/about-the-show/ to find out more. The Vine is at  4655 Bethelview Rd, Cumming GA I'll have a rather large pile of paintings here, first time in...

This beautiful watercolor sketch was done by a beautiful lady I met in my watercolor class today. I have never been so inspired and touched by the courage and determination of a person walking in those doors.  Kathy (I don't even know if I'm spelling her name correctly) came in with a friend. They sat down together to work on the exercises I showed the students in my class and it was apparent that Kathy had trouble handling brushes and difficulty speaking. I thought that perhaps she had had a stroke and was very moved by her determination to mix washes and put brush to paper. But when her friend started Kathy's story from this difficult year - and Kathy finished it in her halting voice, I was blown away that this strong woman was sitting in front of me. Debbie  (the friend) told me that Kathy started out the spring of 2014 with the loss of her mother, and then in the summer began to have symptoms and was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). In the space ...

Well, a bit cleaning out of the closets is way way overdue, so if you want to see paintings I've clearanced at 25 to 50% off, check out my  listings I'm about to throw a dozen or so watercolors in there too, so check back in a few days. The ones shown below are a couple of these. Thanks for checking out work  Herevare my items on  Ebay!

There are some upcoming Easy One Day Workshops this summer! You can sign up at Parks and Rec you guys, or call 770 781-2215. I hope to have even more new paintings for private painting parties and Parks workshops this fall and winter.  Workshops Flier   The cost is $39 and it includes all of the materials, so come and have fun checking out the painting scene! I've been painting more and more, I'm dividing my time between abstraction and realism, I guess I'll never grow up and pick one or the other! I've also been teaching small painting workshops at senior centers in the Johns Creek and Alpharetta area. It's been quite a learning curve!  With a family wedding coming up in two weeks, I'm snowed for a little while, but hope to hear from you and list about a million paintings on ebay and elsewhere this summer. Send me a note and have a terrific summer! Susan www.susankennedy.com www.facebook.com/susankennedyart

Also a new session in Oils here in Forsyth County at Fowler Park!! It will be on Thursday mornings this winter from 10 AM to Noon, beginning January 9. You can see the four reference photos for the four oil paintings we'll be working on in January if you click  here. Here are some of my demo paintings from recent sessions which show you the way I paint when I work from reference photos, and this semi-layered technique is how I work in class: We have lots of fun painting in oil class and you can choose from among several different types of Oil Paints: I use alkyds (Winsor and Newton "Griffin" fast drying Oil Colors) see the  company's info here . Some of my students use water mixable oils like  these , and still others use traditional slow drying oils like Winton or Gamblin brands. A list of these types of oils, the colors you might want to bring to class, and other needed supplies can be found  here .  I hope you come and join us, and ma...

Winter Watercolor Session is coming up!! I can't wait, and I've written a doc which has the landscapes we'll be using  which you can find here. I find that things work out best if we focus on some small "mini exercises" in the first hour of class: a piece of fruit, a wood texture, a tree, a mountain ridge...something simple which gives us the steam to do a small landscape painting in the second hour. A mini exercise is like this: or this: And a typical painting which we'll do in the second hour of class is like this: A little more involved: maybe some trees, some sky, some water, a few landscape elements which exist together on a page. We work on concepts like wet-into-wet vs. wet-on-dry, and we practice color mixing, how to handle your brushes, how to use enough paint and enough pigment in your paint, all of the basics. And, it's a blast! Come join us! You can call 770 781-2215 to sign up, and you can even just show up and pay $20...

I am crazy about this photo and feel that it's a good example of how painting from photos can be helpful!  The main advantage of taking lots of reference photos, for you as an artist, is that so many unplanned but beautiful compositions jump out at you if you browse through them and crop. You limit what you will consider for a composition when you lift your camera to a scene: you've got compositional rules in your head, and you're looking at a favored focal point. But when you flip through - and crop - your photos later on, those ideas will have faded and the flat images themselves will present new and fresh ideas to you. This particular shot, taken by me, a tourist in London, was not well planned or composed. But not only an interesting crop, but even some water which spilled and spattered this particular print and faded and blended some colors made me look at it in a different way. The colors which faded and ran together made the scene have a very otherworld...