UNDECIDED!

I finished this piece and started another.  I wanted to see the lines more varied and less prominent.  I messed up the ink lines on the second piece.  Now I have to figure out what to do to camouflage  the bad drawing.  I have set it aside while I ruminate.  In the meantime, I am doing the exercises in a very old 

Charles Reid book on portraiture.  His style has changed quite a bit over the years.  This portraits in this earlier book seem more impressionistic.  They seem simple! Ha!  Simple is never easy. 

KEEP THE PEN MOVING

Yesterday I took my turn sitting at the Rose Shensen Gallery on the grounds of the Triton Museum.  Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society  has their annual show up.  I wasn't able to attend the reception and awards ceremony because I was  in La Crosse, Wisconsin.  I would have liked to have been there.  They always have an overflow crowd with great food and lively conversation, not to mention the suspense of finding out if  you won an award.  I was honored to receive second place!  with my painting "Bleeding Heart".  As always, there are some fabulous pieces in the show.  They also have the juror's comments next to the winning pieces.  I wish  more shows would include this kind of information.  In fact, the juror has agreed to come on the pick up day and give a critique for any of the participating artists that would like one. 

The drawings above are one of the pages in my sketchbook that I drew while sitting at the gallery.  It is fun trying to figure out how to fill up the page with multiple faces,  

LA CROSSE WORKSHOP SLIDE SHOW #2

Here are the rest of the paintings I photographed days 3 and 4 from the workshop.  Day five I shared lots of ways to make stamps and create texture.   Everyone spent the rest of the time focusing on making samples for future reference.  Friday is always a challenging day for workshops.  Many need to pack up and get a head start on the weekend.

BACK TO WORK!

 I am still putting things away after my return from LaCrosse.  The studio is finally looking like I can work out there again.  After a little editing, I will show another slide show from the workshop.  In the meantime, I came across some drawings I had done on tissue paper and a sheet of watercolor paper that ad a layer of colorful collage covering a failed painting.  I decided to collage the drawings on top of the paper leaving a nice colorful border around each one.  I managed to get three of the six images completed.  It felt good to paint again.  I hope to complete the painting tomorrow.

LA CROSSE DAY 3 DEMO: LINE

I have been admiring Norman Laliberte's work lately.  This is my tribute to him.  Torn black paper silhouette and white and black ink with some matalic paper collage.  Everyone is really in the spirit of the workshop and all are having fun.  

SHAPE DEMO FOR LA CROSSE WORKSHOP!

With a roll of the dice, each participant discovered which element of design they would be working with along with Shape.  Can you guess which one I rolled?  This was done on photo paper using analogous colors Blue, Blue Green and Blue Violet.  Here is the slide show of student work.  Be sure and click on the little x in the right hand corner of the box to get rid of the stupid annoying "pet" ad.

ANOTHER VIEW!

Where have I been and where am I going?  Stuff happens!  The hard drive n my computer died in the middle of preparing a presentation for my workshop in LaCrosse and then my wrist and thumb joint on my right hand went!  Of course I am right handed.  Lots of time running around getting these problems resolved.  Now I am in LaCrosse and starting the workshop this morning.  Yesterday I had some time to check out this beautiful area along the Mighty Mississippi River.  One of the places we went was the Omni Center where I will be teaching today.  There was a quilt show going on.  It was wonderful to check out a traditional art form.   A very talented young man (16 years old)  had set up an easel and was doing caricatures.   I thought it would be fun to see someone else's interpretation of my face.  Here is the result!  He was much more flattering but I love the glamourous view.  Check out Mike Kuznar at www.sirdrawzalot.com and give him encouragement with his future art career!

IN THE MEANTIME...

I am frustrated that I don't have time to work on some painting.  I have managed to do some work in my sketchbook but mostly I am doing catch up activities, office tasks and other uninteresting but necessary activities.  I am preparing for a workshop in LaCrosse next week and converting my clip files of examples to a digital presentation.  I am anxious to see if this will be as helpful to the students.  In the meantime, I found this amazing video of Vincent VanGogh's portraits morphing one into the other.  I don't know how to resize it to fit better on the blog, but you can see most of the image and the startling effect! If you double click on the screen, it will open up and you will be able to see the entire image full size.

 One artist. one face and so much difference in each image.  Will the real Vincent please stand up.  It makes me wonder which image comes closest to his actual appearance.  I would love to know how this smooth morphing technique is done.  It would be fun to apply it to my own self portraits.

SAN DIEGO NEWS!

I am finally back from San Diego.  The Watercolor Society had a wonderful Preview Party for their International Show on Thursday. I received my signature and was awarded the second highest award!!  What an amazing honor.  The next night was the opening reception and Saturday morning they had a breakfast for the artists.  We each had an opportunity to talk about our paintings.  This was so interesting....the stories behind each one and the techniques were described.  I took lots of photos but the website is up with all of the winning paintings.  Each can be enlarged so you see fantastic detail.

Click on the link  and enjoy this fantastic show.

There were some wonderful exhibits in Balboa Park at the art museum.  I went to see the Henri Toulouse Lautrec drawing and poster exhibit.  When we arrived I discovered there was a show of Zandra Rhodes, Brittish iconic designer of fabrics and incredible clothing in another building.    In the eighties, I was very involved with fiber art and art to wear.  I had the most fabulous book on Zandra Rhodes.
I absolutely loved this exhibit and am inspired to created some paintings based on the photographs I took.  Here are some pages from her sketchbooks.  I spent an hour tonight going through 4 cartons of books from my fiber art days and I can't find that book on Zandra Rhodes.  It has to be here somewhere.  In the meantime I found the first art book I ever purchased at the age of 16 with my babysitting money.  I still remember the thrilling feeling of discovering this book and purchasing it.  I knew I would never have given it away but it was missing for many years.  The book?   A 1958 hardbound edition of The Complete Guide to Drawing from Life  by George Bridgeman.
    As you can see, this book is a classic and still in print at a very inexpensive price.