Brenda Hozjan – Friday Night Guest – May 2, 2025
(Submitted by Taline Kavoukian)
Brenda Hozjan is based in Kingston, Ontario and has been painting since a young age. She took a break when she went to graduate school and began to raise her family. She chose to work in acrylics at this time and has been doing so for the last ten years. She paints wildlife, birds, plein air and still life. Her painting has evolved to become more realistic, complex, nuanced and detailed over time. She has full permission to use the photographs of the photographers whose work she uses as a reference for her work. Her love for her subject matter shows in the care and attention to her paintings.
Materials include a unique and portable palette using16 Golden acrylic colours, Posca Markers and variety of brushes made by companies such as Rosemary, Princeton, Michael’s stencil brushes. Brenda uses a textured canvas surface and paints on a copper coloured Golden iridescent ground, and then draws on a grid to work with.
Brenda blocks in the shapes with “average” local colours which she finds by squinting at her subject. Her grid marks will show as a way for her to check her shapes and angles until she feels confident that everything is in its place. Using a “scruffy” brush, she works using a drybrush technique to create the illusion of softness, working from the average colour and up to get lighter, and then down from the average colour to get darker. Rubbing off paint helps to keep transitions and edges soft.
Brenda emphasized the importance of values in her work. She uses different colours side by side as long as the value of those colours is the same. This is the principle of broken colour used by the Impressionists who placed different colours close in value next to each other to create optical blending. Using many circular strokes and wiping away as she goes, Brenda works up thick layers with increasing depth and softness. The final step is to use a “sharper” brush to add the hard edges for eyes, feathers, etc.
Brenda had many valuable painting tips for us. She suggests keeping colours in the same position in her palette, and finds that it is easier to work this way over time. More layers of value/colour will increase the realism of the work. She uses a bit of quinacridone crimson to the black of the eye in order to avoid a black hole effect.
Thank you, Brenda, for a wonderful evening!
Brenda can be reached at:
https://www.brendahozjanart.com
