Box canvas, often called stretched box canvas is very popular in the art world today, as they do not need to be framed, so the artist can save the cost of framing. most galleries and exhibitions allow them unframed. However sometimes the artist may feel his painting would be improved with a frame. Box canvas do not lend themselves to normal framing systems because of their depth, so frame makers have introduced a step frame which the canvas can be fastened to, then it is the step frame that gets framed.
Dundee gardens and Allotment Competition
Anna won gold for best front garden in Dundee and I got silver for second best allotment in Dundee.
Winter Exhibition at Roseangle Gallery in Dundee
Dundee Art Society and Broughty Ferry Art Society are getting together for their joint Winter Art Exhibition to be held in Roseangle Gallery.
It starts on Saturday 2nd December and runs daily till Saturday 9th December open each day from 11am to 5pm with a late night on Tuesday 5th December open till 9pm. Free parking in the new large car park. Visitors are welcome to pop in and see some fantastic paintings.
Art Discounts for the Festive Season
John is happy to offer a 20% discount on all paintings and prints purchased from now till end of December. The wide variety of landscape paintings, snow scene winter landscape paintings, romantic and figurative paintings can all be seen on his website pages.
Allotment paintings
I have had two interests to pursue since childhood. I have always been interested in growing plants as I needed to be outdoors in all seasons, but then in winter I still needed something to keep me active. So painting was my perfect winter hobby. I took a career in horticulture as my day job, then painting was my main interest in evenings.
My love of growing plants was so strong that even with a big garden, I still needed more land so getting an allotment was always essential. However while looking after my allotment growing vegetables, fruit and flowers, the artist eyes were always finding interesting places that would make the perfect allotment painting. It was the untidy corner full of pots, boxes, pallets, wheelbarrows, ramshackle sheds and broken fences. So it started with my neighbor, Arthur’s plot in summer, then lets try it as a winter landscape painting, and before long where ever I went there was a perfect image needing to be captured on canvas. I have now completed nearly 30 allotment paintings, most of which are now sold, but I still have a few in the artist studio. See below and more information on my website at https://johnstoa.com/landscape-paintings-1
6 Ways to Make the Most of Edible Landscaping
Megan Cooper shows us how to integrate edible plants into our garden.
By cultivating an edible landscape in your own yard, you can liven up your recipes with fresh, high-quality produce and beautify your property at the same time! Edible landscaping is an art form, and if you’d like to capture your garden in a painting, you can commission an artist like John Stoa. These tips will walk you through the process of planting an edible landscape, including choosing your crops, designing an outdoor dining space, inviting your loved ones over for meals, and even teaching other people about these practices.
Choose Tasty Fruits, Vegetables, and Herbs
As you decide what to plant, try to focus on produce you like to eat, as well as what will brighten up your yard. Treehugger recommends planting asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, rose hips, common figs, chives, elderberries, and pansies.
Plan Your Garden Lay Out
The way you lay out your garden is just as important as what you decide to plant. Assess how much space you have, and then ensure that your plants will receive enough light. Keep in mind that building raised beds can maximize your space. Think about how you can rotate crops as seasons change as well.
Set Up an Outdoor Dining Space
As you lay out your edible landscape and designate where you’ll plant certain crops, figure out if you can leave room for a cozy outdoor dining space. By adding an outdoor dining table and chairs, you’ll be able to indulge in the fruits of your labor right where you grew it! Keep in mind that major upgrades to your yard could actually raise the value of your home.
Care for Your Garden
To properly care for your garden, you’ll need to check your plants daily for any signs of pests and address problems with insects or animals as quickly as possible. Gather and Grow also states that you’ll want to keep up with weeding, water your plants properly based on your local rainfall levels, fertilize your plants frequently, and harvest and prune your plants at the right time. For instance, you prune herbs after their first flowering to encourage more growth and harvest fruits and vegetables when they are ripe.
Share Education on Edible Landscaping
As you plant, cultivate, and harvest from your edible landscape, you’ll inevitably learn lots about gardening through trial and error! You can share tips and tricks with other people who are interested in edible landscaping by starting a YouTube channel. This is a great way to demonstrate the ins and outs of growing an edible landscape.
Host Meals With Friends and Family
When you’ve harvested from your landscape, and your kitchen is overflowing with fresh produce, why not invite your loved ones over to enjoy it together? You can show off your beautiful landscape, too!
Edible landscaping can be a fulfilling hobby. You’ll get in touch with the natural world and master valuable new skills. By following these tips, you’ll be ready to plant your garden, incorporate an outdoor dining space, host your loved ones for dinner, and share your knowledge with others.
Want to commission original art for your edible landscape? Turn to John Stoa! Fill out the contact form on our website today to learn more about ordering a commission.
An Artist's Life
The Autumn Exhibition at Roseangle Gallery ran for a week showing 124 paintings, but we only sold 4. Not a great result, but then we were hit by storm force winds and very heavy rainfall with so much flooding and weather alerts for folk to stay at home, so no wonder footfall was very low.
However we keep going. My next exhibition hope was the Meffan Winter Exhibition in Forfar. I submitted two of my best paintings, Lady with a Diamond Earring and the Whisky Tasting with a fee costing £20, but they both got rejected, and no reason given.
Evening Art Classes in Dundee Autumn Session
Dundee artist John Stoa is now looking for anyone with an interest in art to come along and join his Monday evening art class. It is held in his studio at 17a Menzieshill Road starting at 7pm and ends at 9pm, with a break at 8pm for tea, coffee a biscuit and wander around the studio to chat with fellow artists and see a huge variety of paintings.
For more information check out the art classes page.
Falls of Dochart near Killin
Artists have a need to travel to seek out the best images for a good landscape painting.
In Scotland we are blessed with plenty small towns and villages full of character, rivers, lochs, the highlands, beaches along the coastline and castles everywhere. It was on such an exploration looking for the next view that I came across the Falls of Dochart at Killin. It is very well known with the best view looking upstream from the bridge. However we artists are always looking for something different so I wondered if I could get a better view down at the waters edge rather than the obvious safe one from the top of the bridge. I wanted to get close to the river as it thundered under the bridge, so I had to travel a bit up the road to gain access to the river bank, then carefully make my way down towards the bridge without falling into the water. As I got nearer the water soaked rocks got a bit slippy, but I was a bit younger in them days and had little fear. However visitors to the area got quite alarmed at this young fella scrambling over the rocks at the waters edge as it was running at full spate. Once I reached my best position I had to crouch low to get the full effect of the turbulence of the raging river. The things we artists do to get the best view!!! However after taking a few photos I managed to clamber back over the rocks to safety. Back home I had some cracking images for a great oil painting of the Falls of Dochart. We artists are always a bit critical of our own efforts and never know when to stop as the painting is finished. When down under the bridge looking up stream I noticed a young pine tree growing on top of a large rock in the middle of the river. My painting did not show this wee pine tree to good effect, so I decided to make another painting but this time in acrylics, but to show my wee pine tree as a focal point. It meant a total change of appearance for this location, but then its what we do to create variety.
The Story Behind the Painting
Arthurs Plot
Life has been very kind to me. I arrived at a very early age with an interest in drawing and painting, encouraged by my father who trained in art in Poland. Then my grannie took me in hand to show me how to grow good roses. I was hooked and eventually took a career in horticulture with art as my hobby. Things went well till redundancy loomed as the Government decided to wind up all the New Towns. I worked in Landscape and Forestry in Livingston new town, so took redundancy in 1992 and changed career to a full time artist, and horticulture became the hobby, but then I discovered saskatoons on a holiday in Canada. I got hooked on this new fruit which was unheard of in UK. Got myself some seeds and tried them out. Starting with about 10 seedlings of Smoky and Thiessen I needed an allotment to grow them so ended up at City Road allotments. Saskatoons took off and as I collected my own seeds for propagation before long I was growing them by the hundreds and selling all over the UK. However the artist in me continually saw potential paintings amongst all the dilapidated sheds, falling down fences, pallets, wheelbarrows, tubs, pots and a massive variety of plants. Arthur, my neighbour had a fantastic collection of garden debris, but the gardeners nightmare plot was the artists dream. Asked Arthur if he minded me taking a few photos. He said to hang on a bit till he tidied it up. I thought, no, I just loved it as it were in the run down dilapidated unkept condition. My first painting of Arthurs Plot in Summer was the start, but then in autumn and winter I got more ideas for further wee masterpieces. The artist brain keeps asking the question, what if this or that were to change we could come up with a massive variety of different images. Today reality in art takes a back-seat to allow our creativity to take us into unknown areas, and colour and composition become more important if they make a better image. So I just could not resist adding red flowers to the potatoes. I must now have painted a dozen images of Arthurs Plot.
Another Mild Winter
Snow never arrived in Dundee this mild dry winter so thought I would post a few of my winter landscape snow scenes just in case we forget what snow looks like.
The Creative Journey
The path through creativity is not a straight line. An artist tends to paint a very wide range of topics both to gain experience but also to find his favourite topics. Then there is the problem of style to work out. Should I paint reality, abstract or something in between. We can study numerous other artists and gain knowledge of composition, colour, drama, tone, reflected lights, which medium suits us, and how loose to finish off a painting.
Looking back over the years of my own journey, I have had numerous changes of travel as new ideas and experiences guide my progress. In childhood I just loved bright colours and this continued for many years, but as I began to mix with other amateur artists I started to feel bright colours were very unprofessional, so I slowly went into my grey period. This continued for many years till a one lady said she recognized one of my paintings in a gallery. She new it was mine as she said it was very grey. That moment changed my outlook. I went back into colour, and paintings began to sell a lot better. However my wish to improve my artwork got hampered with the need to paint accurately. If I painted a beech tree, it had to look like a beech tree and not an oak, ash or chestnut. I got bogged down with reality. It took a long time to come off that road. It was during my Loch Ard project (well over twenty images) looking for something different that I decided to paint a willow tree with bright red paint and purple and blue stems. It was very popular much to my amazement. So reality was no longer important, but it has been very hard to stay on that road as you know what things look like.
A walk around the garden
The sun came out on a bright late February day so decided to explore the garden and greenhouse to see how plants are growing and early bulbs are flowering.
Framed original art on video
Thought I would create a video to show some of my framed paintings, but as a complete beginner with videos I would appreciate any help offered.
Framed original art
Thought it would be a good idea to let prospective buyers see paintings in their frames so added a few photos here but more can be seen on my paintings pages
Latest Paintings for February
Short days in winter gives the artist plenty of time in the studio to get in front of the easel. so it was a very mixed session of one summer landscape beach painting of Broughty Ferry Beach in Dundee, another white Phalanopsis orchid painting on a box canvas, then back to a winter landscape snow scene painting of Glen Doll. I have started to show my paintings in their frames so please check them out on the paintings pages.
Templeton Woods on television with Amelia Fox
Templeton Woods will be the focus this week on television as Amelia Fox investigates the Templeton Woods murders many years ago.
As a kid growing up in St Marys Woods in Dundee I spent a lot of time playing in the woods, so have many great childhood memories. Many years ago I decided to paint a snow scene winter landscape in oils. So one winters day I drove up into Templeton Woods and took several pictures of the trees under a blanket of snow. I needed a big canvas for this woodland painting, but recently used a large canvas for a figure study. It never worked out so it got panted over and my young lady got buried under a carpet of snow in Templeton Woods. My snow scene winter landscape painting of Templeton Woods worked out perfectly, and you would not know that a young lady lies underneath the snow.
Festive season ends so Scottish artist gets back to work
New Scottish Beach paintings for 2023
Scottish artist John Stoa from Dundee has been busy over the festive season, so three Scottish beach landscape paintings for 2023 are Coral Beach and Taliskar Beach on Isle of Skye and another beach painting of the Silver Sands of Morar. These paintings are also shown on the landscape paintings page on the website. The Isle of Skye has always been a favourite place for John with fantastic scenery all round the island. He always comes back with plenty photos of mountains, lochs, waterfalls, harbours, boats, woodlands and clean sandy beaches. Then back to Dundee for a local landscape painting of Camperdown House from the pond which is also shown on the page of romantic paintings.
The Big Picture with Large Wall Paintings
Large Wall Paintings for Sale
Artists always get that urge to go big just for once, so when an idea for a big picture emerges just go for it. It is often a town center image with loads of detail, or just a need to use those big brushes you bought ages ago but never had a need for them, until now. The artist is forever looking at topics for his next painting. It could be a beautiful flower in the garden, a peaceful snow covered landscape or allotment shed, fence and wheelbarrow, a busy town centre, especially Edinburgh or Dundee. When deciding how to paint them, some have so much interest in them that they demand the bigger canvas. Fortunately it is now in fashion to hang a large wall art painting as the focal point in a living room. All these large paintings are available so if you wish to purchase or inquire or see them in my studio please contact me.
Allotment paintings add variety with a vibrant imagination
Allotment painting allow artists to explore their creativity by taking one topic (this one is Arthurs Plot) and seeing how many different paintings they can create. Let the imagination wander free. Nothing is off limits, not even my potatoes with bright red flowers during the summer on the allotment but then when winter arrives it is snow scene winter landscape paintings down on Arthurs plot. Then of course once we have completed an interesting range of normal sized canvases we can take the best of them to create larger wall art paintings as this market is growing stronger. Arthurs plot up at City Road Allotments in Dundee was a mess with pots, boxes, barrels, pallets, wooden planks, tiles and other allotment plot debris scattered all over the place. From the gardening point of view it was derelict, but as the artist it was fantastic as it gave us the opportunity for numerous studies as debris got moved around and in winter a covering of snow added a new dimension.
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