Hello and welcome to the new monthly letter! There is a celebration gift for you at the end of this letter :)
I’ve been thinking lately about how could be a nice way to be connected, to stay in touch on a regular basis, without spamming you and outside social media. I realized that even if I have that feeling that the newsletter form is kind of a 2000’s thing, I ended up by creating one because social media goes very fast and I think this is a nice way to share with you what I’ve been working on. So here we are. Thank you for subscribing and for taking your time to read this letter.
If you don’t know that much about me, I am an spanish painter based in Belgium. I learned how to oil paint when I was a kid (9-12 yo) and for three years I went to oil classes two times per week. One day, my teacher had to retire once for good (he was an already retired fine arts teacher when I began to study with him) and I didn’t like the new teacher so I quit. After high school I went to university for study Sociology and studied abroad. After 20 years, I started again to oil paint when my daughter was born. I speak four languages and I also like to read every day. I just finished Dune by Frank Herbert and in the pasts months I enjoyed so much Agatha Christie Poirot series, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov and titles of Jules Verne like The Mysterious Island or Around the World in Eighty Days among others titles.
My work focuses on daily life painting and the experiences that I live. I don’t plan my paintings as I work from moments that catches my attention. I also love to work on my sketchbook with acrylic painting. I do not work anymore with any tupertine and I replace the stage of the underpainting with acrylic painting.
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You can find my work on Instagram, Tik Tok, Youtube and Patreon.
On my Youtube channel you can find some videos where I share my work and my process in oil and in acrylic painting. Check out the last video! It is a mix of works from this past summer and about an oil painting workshop that I hosted.
I just spent some beautiful days in the Belgian Ardennes and worked on some new content, I took a lot of pictures and videos. What do you like to do when traveling? I feel happy when I can create and when there is a swimming pool :) This time I did some mega quick pencil sketches and I painted on my Royal Talens A6 sketchbook inspired by a local landscape. When I was drawing I focused on the big lines of my composition, trying to not overwork any of the lines. Taking notes. Also when painting: the main focus was in the big masses of color, trying to not do so many brushstrokes at the same place and taking better decisions. I try to be smart with color mixing and with the way in how I actually put the paint down, the pressure exerted on the brush is very important to me. Working with a big brush help with this. I know this can be challenging because of all tiny details we see and that we want to paint right away. Working on smaller supports can help to be familiarized with this. You just have to adjust the size of your brush. For a bigger canvas a bigger brush.
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WORKSHOPS
During the last summer I also hosted two workshops. One day acrylic painting Sketchbook workshop and a 5 day oil painting workshop. What a beautiful experience! For this year 2023-2024 I am hosting two times per month oil painting classes in and if you are interested there is still some places available (they are limited). The classes will be in french in Liege Province and in person. Please let me know via email.
Let me show you two of the 5 paintings that I did during the oil workshop in August:
September marks the first anniversary of my Patreon page! So one year ago I was enjoying some other creators on Patreon and I started to think about the idea of creating my own. I knew that it was going to be a little bit difficult in terms of grow and support because I do not have a big amount of followers on my social media to spread the word and let others that I am on Patreon. But, I did it anyway! I jumped. And (I didn’t expect that) I got actual patrons! which I feel so grateful for. So if you don’t know what Patreon is, it is a platform where you can support (by a monthly subscription) an artist that you like and have some nice rewards in return. In my case, I create two video process per month where I talk and made comments about my work in a more exclusive way that I do on my social media. I already started to do some voice over videos :)
To celebrate the anniversary I would love to offer you a special gift:
Join my video tier on Patreon for free for 7 days!
(This offer will be available only during 24h after the reception of this letter :) 10:30pm GTM+2 during the 1st September to the 2nd)
All you have to do is to join the 1€ VIDEO TIER and enjoy all the content that already is on the platform +25 video process. After the trial period of 7 days you can leave or stay. It’s up to you! I hope you enjoy it!
Please, feel free to contact me if you have any question.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope you enjoyed being here. Please leave me a comment or share this monthly painting letter to someone who may like this :) See you in October 💌
Elena.