I am calling the one “Wind Tomorrow” since I have heard that saying about “red sky at night; sailor’s delight…” meaning there will be wind for the sails the next day…The other is the river at sundown in early December and you can probably figure out there is going to be some sort of storm from the looks of the sky..
I wanted to do something with a good rural feeling to it for the Custer County Art and Heritage Center auction in MT that takes place the latter part of September. It’s a fund raiser for the center so I am hoping these will bring them a good chunk of change for their cause. They have one of the nicest art centers around and they do tons of great things for education of youth, etc.
Something to note…some of the heavy pastel papers like Wallis and Art Spectrum and Pastelbord to name a few let you rework paintings. If you hate them and you haven’t totally destroyed your surface with fixatives, you can often brush, wipe and wash off the surface and repaint it. It’s a good solution to last weeks “hissy fit” of being so disgusted with the piece you pitch it in the garbage can. Some times it’s probably best to do that and just take your loss, but other times it can be salvaged and reworked into something good. I have used the old pastel for an underpainting of a new one, first by getting rid of excess pigment and then wetting the surface with alcohol and using that as a colored base. Of course colors needs to be something compatible with what your new painting is…and that makes it work!
I am getting ready to start working on some pieces for a show in Sandpoint, ID in November. It is an invitational show and will be at the Sandpoint Center where I showed for ArtWalk. The criteria is that the work is to be landscapes of the northern ID. I have some great reference photos to start working with of that area. It is truly beautiful in that part of the world. There is lots of water and mountains. Color isn’t hard to find and it’s really an artist’s paradise. I am also working on pieces for September Walla Walla ArtWalk and I will be showing work at Williams Team Homes office. they have a wonderful office and good space for art. Chris has been working on another show space in MT that may come together in October as well. So I do believe that I need to keep painting!!
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Pastel Skies
It is good after having a major failure/melt down to have something come off the easel that you can feel ok about. I always challenge myself with water. It is one of those things that if I start to battle with it; nothing works. Waterfalls are fun and I have taken several reference photos of huge falls and small ones like this. The other challenge with something like this one is the rocks. You can put a lot of different colors in rocks because there are! I finished some of these with a quick wisp of a metallic gold. I don’t think the photo does it justice; it makes them really come to life (if you can make a rock do that, that is!) and look dimensional.
I posted “The Creek” on my Facebook “Like” page and my friend Idalee who is the best ballet instructor around says “where is that? I need to take my dancers there for a photo shoot.” Oh, oh…this one is basically in my brain – which is what I told her and said, I just didn’t think her dancers would all fit in there! I had gotten to inspiration (as I told her) from sitting in front of my daughter’s doctor’s office waiting for her to finish an appointment. It’s a newer southwest style architectural designed building with a nicely landscaped front including a pond, waterfall, rocks and vegetation. But I think there are places like this on the Walla Walla River and it’s tributaries or Blue Creek or Mill Creek and probably would have plenty of room for all the dancers!!
I like to leave a painting hanging on the board for a few days after I deem it finished. Then keep giving it the eye every time I walk by it and make sure there is nothing I am dissatisfied with. It’s much easier to change something before it is matted and framed, than after the fact!. If there is some that I can’t put my finger on as to which about the work is not setting right, I will take it and hold it in front of a mirror and look at the image in the mirror. If there is a major problem, you will typically see it!
So with that bit of info, I leave you to go do some sketching and maybe a painting! Happy painting…
Pastel Daze
Today
Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.
It’s all about taking one step at a time; always moving in a positive manner. You do what you have to do to stay on that path. And at the end of the day you can call it a victory…because it is.
a plein air sort of morning
Evening skies
I love to paint skies – storm skies, evening skies, wispy cloud skies….they say a lot and and can mean different things to different people.
When I was a kid, I liked to go out and lay down in the grass on a windy day and watch the clouds, ever changing, making cool formations as they moved with the currents of the air. Fortunately Where I lived you weren’t in danger or being run over or something while you were laying there in the grass day dreaming….guess that’s one of the perks to being a kid on some thousands of acres in the middle of Montana! Clouds are great. On my last trip to Montana, the skies were fabulous and I took a lot of reference photos of great skies. The skies in the three paintings today were two evening skies near Walla Walla. One evening as the sun was setting, there was this beautiful golden-pinkish glow. The large horizontal images above with the golden fields are pretty representational of that; however there is more of a pink tint to the actual paintings than is represented in the photo.
Regarding technique…I used the pastel boards from Art Spectrum for the fields with water and the hillside fields with trees in central part of painting. These are great to work with, have good tooth. I used the “elephant” colour boards….a nice purplish gray color. The other painting was done on a sanded paper from La Carte. I have not used this paper before, but it is very nice and it comes in a lot of great colors. I used an “earth” colored paper. I love Wallis, but this is great paper as well.
I used a variety of pastels, but did hone in on several of the Diane Townsend earthy colors as well as Unison and some Schmincke. I love the Terrage’ sticks Diane Townsend has. They are big and gritty and are great to add that sparkle as last minute touch to a painting…and…there are some good bold colors that I like!
Looking forward to a trip early to the farmer’s market in the morning, early – to beat the heat. Our weather has reached the 100 degree range now, so being outside midday and working in the heat is not the most pleasant, so it’s better to paint early and late in the day. But, that’s summer and I do enjoy it.
I ordered some plein air frames for some paintings. Awaiting their arrival and am anxious to see how the pastels look in them. These are about 4 inch frames that have a deep enough rabbet to accommodate a spacer between the pastel and the glass. With this system, you don’t mat the painting. So the finished product has the look of an oil painting. It’s is a very classy look, so we will see how this goes. Even though the framing material is a little more expensive, there is not the expense of mat and because there is no mat the overall glass size is less, so that saves something. I will post some images of framed work once I get them completed.
So in the meantime…happy painting and stay cool in the heat of the summer!!
Hunting to win???
Hunting to win…what does that mean? Just something to get you to read this blog about entering competitions or not to enter competitions and jurying of art and such stuff.
I am competitive. I like to win. I like to do things well enough to win. Seems like that has always been that way.
As a kid, my family raised horses and cattle in central Montana. At a pretty early age, I got introduced to competitions such as horse shows and rodeos. My first horse show had my Mom fixing me up so I looked presentable – that meant your hair combed and braided, shirt tucked in your Wranglers, your pant legs over the tops of your boots and wearing a hat. Some of this just made a kid itchy, but I did it and rode my gray horse into the area for the western pleasure class. My mom had coached me to the etiquette of the event and I figured I was doing everything great. The ring steward for the events was a family friend, Owen, and with each loop around the arena he encouraged. I figured I must be doing great! then they lined the riders up and the judge walked up and down the line of riders (all under the age of 12; I am 6) and motioned for six riders to move forward. I wasn’t one of them! What??? (My mom always told the story with great animation). I stand up in my stirrups and holler “Hey!! Where do I come in at???” Owen happened to be standing near me and walked up and calmly reached in his pocket and gave me a silver dollar. WHOA!!! I hit the pay! No one, even with their trophies and ribbons was a bigger winner than I was that day! Then I became an artist and entered some juried shows…Whoa! Sometimes you get accepted and sometimes you don’t. I have participated in a variety of competitions from horse shows to rodeos to trap shooting and did a fair share of winning; same with juried shows. So this is my theory on juried shows…
I like to enter shows. I opt for a piece or pieces that I think are of good quality and maybe have a little edge on composition and interest; a piece that “speaks” to me. Once you do all the required things for submitting the entry you wait to hear…One thing of importance and this is speaking from working in an art center on the gallery committee and hanging shows…do what is asked in the guidelines – from the image submission to the hanger for the art. So then you wait and finally you get the notice – your piece is accepted. that’s great! If it wasn’t accepted…why? I think the first thing one needs to consider is that the if you have submitted a great quality painting and it didn’t get into the show it 1) did not catch the eye and the like of the juror 2) it didn’t fit what the juror was trying to say with his/her selection. One is not going to get every painting into every show. Maybe that juror was really partial to figurative painting, realistic and you paint abstract form…I usually check who the juror is and see what they do in their own world. I have passed up a few competitions just because I didn’t think my work would jury well and since there is a fee for jury process…it’s being somewhat sensible, I think. So if a piece is rejected, it may just mean it didn’t fit the bill for that show.
I have a friend who does watercolors and does them well. She had tried for years to achieve signature status with her state’s watercolor society and could never get a piece to make that happen. Just one of those things that you can sit around and talk about over coffee. So, you don’t get accepted; not a reason for sorrow. Enter another show. When you do have a piece accepted, you’re happy and that is great…THEN if you get lucky enough to have really got the juror’s attention and they award you with one of the prizes for the show that’s the ICING ON THE CAKE!!
I have entered the same piece in different shows; winning the best of show at one; an honorable mention at another and not making the juror’s cut in another. So what’s it all mean…the jurying process is an opinion of one person. Not being accepted or not winning a prize is not the end of the world or reason to feel rejection.
Recently someone said they would not want to physically go to a show that they had a piece accepted in and be there when the juror announces the winners and then not be one of the winners. WHAT??? Be proud that you had a piece accepted; go and enjoy the other art and study what won! You might learn something…and it might be just that your style wasn’t what the juror picked for winning pieces. Sometimes just being there is (should be) enough! And there are jurors that I have heard say and then choose work for shock factor…that’s sad, I think. But just like the juror’s are but one opinion; these are my takes on entering shows. I enter because I like to see if my work will be accepted and just to get accepted into some of the higher end shows is really enough. Think I have learned some humility over the past 50 years!!! Where do I come in at? Just glad to be here!
keep painting…