Where Does the Time Go?

Since my last post, I have been busy. I can't believe it has been almost two weeks. I have almost finished another large 4'x3' oil painting on a birch cradled panel. It has been sitting on the easel for the final touches. I do have photos of it and plan to show them here. Here is one photo, and there might have been a few touches more done.

I have also participated in a model session every Thursday evening -- most of the time they are nude models. But, a week ago, we had a Santa sit for us in all his attire! It was much fun. The sketches and paintings were shown this last Friday evening at Woodstock First Friday! Santa and his wife even came back to see all the work that was created. What fun!

I was able to do a nice graphite sketch which I framed in a wonderful antique frame that I had been hording for awhile. It did lend itself to the Santa because there was a red velvet liner as part of the ornate gold frame. It does make a statement. It looks good because there is no color in the sketch and the frame gives it that "red" it did need.

I was also able to do a little 7" x 5" oil painting on a gallery wrap canvas. This took the rest of the evening though I thought it would be a fairly quick thing to do. Boy, was I wrong. It took me much longer than I expected. But, I think it is a hit. I did not want to do a larger painting, because what do you do with a large painting of Santa?

I have also been chosen to be one of three judges for the first ever Art Challenge Competition on Facebook! What an honor. I will be the judge for the pastels and drawing mediums. Also I will participate with the other judges to choose a "Best In Show" from all the entries regardless of medium used. We are in that process right now.

It is very difficult as there were almost 1000 entries. I narrowed it down to just over 100 entries to chose 10 from to put with 10 from each of the other two judges. These 30 pieces are what we will choose the Best in Show from. After this process, we each will then choose the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and two Honorable Mention pieces in our category. The categories are: (1) oil and acrylic; (2) watercolor; (3) mixed media; and (4) pastel (soft or oil) and drawing mediums.

After the decision for each category, we will then choose the next 15 best pieces to go along with the winners. There will be some wonderful award prizes and best of all, there will be a show in Bucks County, PA. The Bucks County Gallery of Fine Art, New Hope, Pa will be presenting an Art Exhibit of the TOP 30 winning entries/artists of the competition either Februry or March, 2010. The judges and the three administrators will also have the opportunity to put a piece into the show.

Saturday, I was in Blue Ridge, GA doing a demonstration in my gallery -- High Country Art & Antique Gallery. The best gallery in Blue Ridge! I always meet some wonderful people -- talk about my art and my process. There are also many who talk to me about taking classes or workshops. I hope some of them will contact me!

And all this does not even take into account the time I spent cooking a Birthday dinner for my daughter and all the family, taking tennis lessons, going to a tennis luncheon, a tennis practice, housework, time with hubby . . . etc.

So . . . I will try to do better and not let two weeks go by without posting on my blog. If you have something art related that you would like for me to discuss, please let me know.

Classical Painting Atelier by Juliette Aristides – from the Introduction

I was surfing through some links today and found a book I want to order. It allowed me to read the introduction and I was so taken by the words, I wanted to put them here for you to read. The subject line of this post is the name of the book and author.

People are always asking me what I paint and I tell them mostly landscapes -- but this introduction says more about what I paint than anything I could come up with. That thing is "beauty". I think there is enough other things in this world to worry about, and don't want it to be art!

The copied text is here:
“While people share much with other living creatures, the desire for beauty, the capacity for self-reflection, and the longing for eternity are distinctively human qualities. On some subconscious level we need beauty, despite its perceived lack of function. If we were to give a horse a diamond ring, it assess it only on the basis of its utlity, essentially asking the question, 'Can I eat it?' In contrast, the human being has the elevated option to ask not only 'Is it useful?' but 'Is it beautiful?' The enormity of human suffering in the world does not render this question, or the desire to ask it, trivial. Rather, it affirms an appreciation of aesthetics as fundamental to our nature.

Artists help us see the surprising beauty that breaks into our daily lives by celebrating that which might otherwise pass by unnoticed. Artists are in a unique position to leave an intimate record of human life, as they give us the opportunity to see not only through their eyes but also through their thoughts and emotions. One could say that the greater the art, the more clearly we experience this communication of souls. Artists remind us that despite the pain and ugliness in the world, something deeper exists-a beauty that peeks through the drudgery of life, whispering that there is more just beneath the surface. We see a landscape filled with longing and loss or a figure filled with love and empathy. These images enable us to long and love with the creators.

Nature shows us one kind of beauty, such as the way the light falls through the tree canopy, speckling the forest floor where I now sit and write. Occasionally, an unusually insightful individual is able to capture this kind of beauty in art. This is why Mozart's Requiem Mass still moves people to tears in packed orchestra halls or why people are willing to wait in line for hours to see an exhibition of works by Vermeer. Despite all appearances and talk to the contrary, we crave art that captures truth and remains powerfully and beautifully relevant long past the time of its creation. This sort of art is not just pretty or made up of the hollow aesthetic beauty that changes with the eye of the beholder. It is not sentimental, for sentiment is fleeting. The sort of art that lives eternally is that which captures astonishing, spine-chilling, breathtaking beauty that heightens our senses and floods us with transforming thought and emotion. In this work, we hear a whisper from another world saying, "It's all real." The ache to last means you were meant to last; the longing for beauty calls to you because beauty marks a reality that actually exists.

The contemporary artist in this book lived parallel to the rages of modern and postmodern art; they saw the same grimy buses pass by, the same soggy newspapers and cigarette butts in the gutter, the same horrors on the news, but they saw in these things an alternate reality of meaning-one that they communicate in their work. The topics they choose to express are not always comfortable to look at, but, through the artist's vision, they are infused with pity, compassion, and insight that express a kind of beauty that transcends even the thorniest subject matter. The art portrayed in this book shows the courageous path followed by visionaries who are strangers in their own times, looking ahead to a land not yet found to capture a hope that, through beauty, can fight its way back into our world.”

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did!

Sunday (October 25) is International Artist Day

Sunday (October 25) is International Artist Day

I was reading from the ArtBizBlog.com web site and saw this post about International Artist Day and thought I would share the post here on my blog. Enjoy it!

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Ann Templeton Workshop

I was honored to be able to take a 3-day workshop from a master painter -- Ann Templeton. She is an exceptionally giving person, has a wonderful personality and humor -- and knowledgeable, oh my goodness, I can't say enough!

I do think it is the very best workshop I have ever taken. I look forward to taking another one from her. I rarely take from the same teacher twice. I do think she has so much to give, and I could learn from her no matter how many times I took a class or workshop.

I know your mind is only ready for certain knowledge at any given time. So . . . I can't wait until the next time . . . and hope that will be next year in October at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.

The photo is of Ann and I with her Day Two Demo. I was lucky enough to be able to buy this one! I can't wait to frame it and hang it in my home or studio. It will always remind me of the words of wisdom I heard from her. Thank you Ann!!!!

Final of Ponderosa Pines

So, here is the finished painting. I had to turn off the overhead light on the easel because it caused a glare on the dark part of the limbs. The light you do see is from our canned lights in the ceiling. So, sorry there is not a perfect light on the painting.

I added some "stuff" in the center of the drive -- a few leaves, rocks, etc. Want it to look like a gravel road, and not a paved one.

Also the bottom left corner still had some of the original orange underpainting showing and I thought it was distracting, so I added darks. The foliage on the ground also had too many different "stripes" of light and dark, so I created a larger area of light and this helped. The largest tree trunk in the foreground needed a little grounding to the earth, so I added a highlight on the bottom of the trunk, and flared it out a little. Just touches of stuff here and there to help me like the painting more.

Yesterday I put a stain around the outer edge wood -- rather than paint the scene on the sides! Today I signed the painting, sprayed a little Kamar Varnish to even out some of the dull spots, and put the hanging wire on the back. It is ready to deliver! I took some photos up close of the bottom and the top, but they are blurred. I will try to get a better photo of the sections as it shows the bits and pieces I did at the end. I remember a wonderful workshop instructor, Frank Federico, saying one time -- add those dots and dashes that make the painting sing! Hope I did that.

Grey Scale of Ponderosa Pine

Today I will be working on the last bit of the painting -- hopefully!

This is the grey scale of the previous post. This will help me determine where I need to make any changes. This is not the same grey scale you see in the previous post.

I know that the bottom left corner has been left in a very early stage with much of the orange underpainting showing. I like the contrast, but know it is the only spot like that. Sometimes when you have a spot like that, you need to determine if it detracts from the painting as a whole. When I say contrast, I am not talking value. This spot is a contrast of temperature and color. So . . . now I have to decide what more I need to do to that section.

The rest of work will be just tweaking where limbs will make sense and patches of light. Some of the tree trunks are a little hard edges and I need to also figure out a way to make them softer. That will require a stretch for me since I tend to make many of my edges too hard. I have been told by a wonderful artist that is the thing I need to work on the most -- my edges. Which told me I have too many hard edges! Thanks Terry and Elsie!

I'll post later today the results of what I do! Come back and see.

Another Day With Ponderosa Pines

I have done a lot of work on the painting and did not take any photos of the the process for a couple of days. Here is a view with most of the panel covered now. At this point I am seeing that leaving any of the wood showing is probably not going to happen. I think the scene was too complicated for me to figure out where it would work to leave the wood grain showing. Oh well, next time!

But, you can see I have laid in all the various foliages, background through the trees and layers of light showing thru the tree branches.

To the right, I have turned the photo to a grey scale so I can see what the values are doing. As you know the colors can sometimes confuse the issue and you think you have made a good choice, but not.

I enjoy using the paints straight from the tube and mixing them as I paint on the surface. Greens are mostly mixed, but not the other colors. There are also tube paints by Gamblin called "Radiants" -- they have Radiant Blue, Radiant Green, Radiant Red, Radiant Turquoise, Radiant Violet, Radiant Yellow, Radiant Lemon -- and there are a couple more I can't think of the names, one being a different type of red. I use these paints to lighten my other colors instead of using white. This allows me to use the correct temperature to lighten rather than the cool white.  Of course you can always use a color around the color wheel to lighten or darken your colors which is a great way to do so. No black and no white! But that is just my thought on it. Also, these Radiant colors are good "straight from the tube" for creating those background colors peeking thru the tree trunks!

On the left is the next photo I took after a couple of hours of work. I have started adjusting the branches to look believeable and added some branches with no foliage. I can still see there are a few branches with foliage that don't make sense, so I will have to assess those.

Also, I'm creating the light thru the branches with colors of the sky (which is yellow), but I am adding a light blue at the edges of the yellow next to the branches to create the look you see when the dark of the branch makes the sky area a little darker. This is called "simultaneous contrast" -- at least that is the term that is coming to mind. So, there is a transition color and value from the light of the sky and the dark of the branches and foliage!

I have also changed the roadway from a paved one to a gravel road. This allows me to create a more interesting road in my opinion.

Next I will be working on the tree trunks and deciding which ones need more color, and which ones need to recede. I remember being told once by a teacher the trunks are either "grey" trunks or "red" trunks. I don't think those were the exact terms he used, but that was the gist. Variety is the best way in my opinion. Not all tree trunks should be a reddish brown! So . . . we shall see what I come up with. Let me know what you think.