over and over

Some paintings practically paint themselves - and some definitely do not! This seemingly simple subject and composition began as a plein air sketch at the Elizabeth Mowry workshop a couple weeks ago. Back in the studio, I thought I could finish it quickly but the challenge was in the lighting.

I declared it done and photographed it (twice!) but I still had a nagging feeling about it so it went back onto my easel. I'm happy with it now to tell the story of the approaching storm that summery day, and of the change of seasons.

daily walk

This view of the Cedar River from the walk-across bridge is now part of my weekday walk with Annie because it is how we get to the off-leash dog park. We started Home Obedience classes last night so today's walk was slower - not so much pulling. We are learning. And as I mentioned in my last post, thanks to Elizabeth Mowry, I am looking around with new eyes and I see several dog-park scenes for future paintings.

Elizabeth Mowry Workshop

I have owned Elizabeth Mowry's books for years, reading bits and pieces here and there; always pleased to revisit images of her art but more importantly for me, to read her words of wisdom. In my limited experience with pastel artists who also teach, I am so pleased when their attitude matches the beauty of their art.

Last weekend I had the good fortune to take her workshop. Elizabeth's kind, gentle nature enabled me to be my best-self painter for a few days. I slowed down, became more thoughtful and took more care in selection of my colors and strokes. Even as I stood at my own easel, hearing her voice as she worked with others in the group of very creative artists kept me on track.

Back home, I am looking at trees, bushes, and skies with new eyes and as I paint, I am inspired by Elizabeth's serenity and focus.

meadow prayer

I think I have pushed this painting as far as I can without losing my vision for it. Funny (well, NOT funny) how quickly a painting can turn to ... where are all those crazy symbols? I've had a week of hot weather, beans and cucumbers galore, almost constant watering of the gardens and visits to the dog park every day with puppy Annie. But, I've also managed to get three paintings done by not cleaning house or making dinner. Click the image to enlarge.

summer evening

A textured gesso surface can help tell your story (click image to enlarge). This is a detail slice of "Summer Evening." To see the entire painting, CLICK HERE.

out with the old

Today I unframed a piece that was painted six years ago - almost to the day. Looking at all those roundish, controlled strokes I couldn't resist a little rework. The detail at the left is the old painting, the detail below is the rework. I am pleased to see that my stroke has become more spontaneous and that I have managed a more subtle story of the scene. To see the entire reworked painting, "Daily Grace II", CLICK HERE.

Northwest Pastel Society August Editorial

The August Editorial about framing pastels has been posted. To read the editorial, CLICK HERE to go to the Northwest Pastel Society homepage then select "editorial" under "News & Minutes" in the left hand column.

potpourri

more value play

the value of value

Early one evening over the hot weekend we took a refreshing walk in the shallow part of the Cedar River near our home. Lazy-summer memories of swimming in the Green River as a child came back to me. A magical time involving all the senses.

Back in the studio I wanted a pastel sketch of the river scene in preparation for a larger painting. For me to paint a scene more than once, there has to be some additional challenge or experiment involved or I quickly become bored.

This time I focused on value as I mindfully selected colors based on value first and color second. To help me stay on track, I inserted a piece of slick, non-archival foam core into an unused metal frame and divided it into five values. Then, as I selected and used pastels, I placed them in their appropriate slot on the value palette. Working this way instead of intuitively picking up many many pastels to see which ones work limits the number of pastels I use. I don't know if that is good or bad but I do know it is fewer pastels to clean and put away when the painting is complete and the slick foam core cleans up with a damp wipe.

spellbound

This painting is on blue Canson Mi-Teintes paper.  I prefer the "soft" side because I don't want the pattern of the paper to be a part of my painting. Canson Mi-Teintes holds much LESS pastel than my favorite sanded surface, Wallis. There is not much room for playing around with colors and shapes because the tooth of the paper is full before you know it and won't hold any additional color. When I taught workshops, this is the paper I started my students on and using it again was a good exercise for me because I was forced to work slowly and more thoughtfully.

back to painting

Back to painting and working larger. I hang my Totobobo mask from my light after each painting session so I remember to put it on, as well as turning on my air filter that sits on the counter to the right. This painting-in-progress is on Canson Mi Teintes.

editorial time

These August mornings are beginning to feel like Fall though I hope we are in for an Indian summer. The activities of summer are winding down for me and it is time to get back to painting and the business of art.

For the past 18 months I have had the opportunity to contribute a quarterly editorial to the Northwest Pastel Society website. This month's editorial will be about framing pastels. I thought you might be interested in reading some of the past editorials. You can access them from the NWPS website.

On the homepage, look in the left column for this text and click "editorial." From there, you should be able to access any of the seven editorials that have been posted.

May 2011 Shipping Pastel Art
February 2011 Make Your Own Pastel Surface
November 2010 Commission Work
August 2010 My Workshop Experience
May 2010 Leap of Faith
February 2010 Business of Art
November 2009 Hello

partial rework

"Sky View Meadow II" is a partial rework of the original painting (see original below). In the original, I believe the eye bounces from the yellow area in lower right foreground to the orange area directly above. I want the viewer to have an expanded journey through this scene so I put more detail and less mass in the lower right (the entry point into the scene). From here there are a couple paths around the painting but the one my eye takes is to the continued detail on the left and up to taller pink grasses along the hilltop. Added blue to carry the eye along the treeline to the right, to the orange spot and back to foreground detail. I added detail to the trees and softened the blue hills in the distance.

dream maker

Just when I thought my life as I knew it was over and that I would be a puppy play-and-potty-slave forever, I took advantage of a short time in the Studio last night and "Dream Maker" came into being. Annie was surprisingly patient as I worked at the easel but it might have been my Totobobo mask that made her keep her distance. Finishing touches with CarbOthello pencils made a scratchy sound too tempting to resist and she was suddenly right there to investigate.

At the moment.

annie bo bannie

My distraction from painting is 10 week old Australian Shepherd,  Morning Mist's Annie Bo Bannie. Here she is in her vehicle safety restraint going for a ride in the car. We've had her just a week and after being without a dog for a dozen years, we are exhausted new parents. It gets easier each day. Today Annie made the choice - without prompting - to go off the deck onto the grass to go potty. Yay! No painting getting done but lots of smiling and laughing.

june

This painting began as part of the five-artist demo at the American Art Company Gallery. I have been looking at it on my studio easel for a week. There was a one square inch area that bothered me (unfortunately, I don't have a photo of how it looked) so last night I began to paint on it again. The longer I worked on it, the more I felt the life of it slip away. I don't know how else to describe the feeling...it wasn't alive to me any longer - it was just a surface of unrelated marks and color so I washed it off and began again.

I wouldn't say I brought the original painting back to life, I would say a new painting, with a new message, was born.

This morning I ran across an explanation of painting on fb that rings true for me from artist Dan McCaw:

'I think about painting like sculpting, you add, you take away until you feel some connection, something that feels right, something that helps tie one thing to another and starts to hold your interest, something that surprises and makes you engage.'

five-artist demo

Join us noon to 4 pm, Saturday, June 18th at American Art Company, 1126 Broadway, Tacoma, WA for a five-artist demo. Brenda Boylan, Reni Moriarity, Misty Martin, Neil Andersson and me. We're havin' a demo-party!

two gallery reworks

I spent today sitting the Women Painters of Washington Gallery in downtown Seattle. I took with me two 8 x 10 panels that I washed off to paint again at the gallery to entertain myself when there weren't many visitors. Here are the finished paintings and below them is the way they looked before and after their bath (on left the original, on right the ghost). I guess I turned the lower one upside down from the way it was first painted.

I had a very limited number of pastel sticks with me + gloves + an apron. I worked flat on a card table with the little paintings spread on a towel to catch excess pastel.

thank you Ken!

A huge thank you to Ken at Comcast Security for fixing my seven week blog problem.

Emails from my blog couldn't get through the Comcast spam filter because one or more subscribers reported the posts as spam instead of UNsubscribing. I'll be posting more art soon.

what happened in the studio

If I find myself loving one area of a painting early in the process, it usually ends in having to say goodbye to the whole image. That's what happened to this painting. Back in the studio after the demo, I worked on the row of trees until I liked them a lot but the rest of the painting never came together so I washed it all off, turned it right-side up (same as the original painting in my previous post) and began again with a white NuPastel. This time, without a precious area to guard, the painting evolved all over simultaneously and came to rest as "Pond Dream II."

what happened at the demo

This is how far I got on one of the Leap-of-Faith-Abstracting paintings at the PSWC demo. I'll let you know what happens from here.

upside down before the brush-off

original painting to be brushed off

pswc demo

I'm back from my Leap-of-Faith Abstracting Demo for the Pastel Society of the West Coast at the Haggin Museum in Stockton, CA. If you are anywhere in the area, I encourage you to see the show - every piece is worthy of an award, I'm honored to have been included in the show and to have received the Atlantic Papers Award.

shipping time

Spring is a busy shipping time. This is "The Tender Hour," snugly sandwiched in my good old (and I do mean OLD) Strongbox® for the journey to the IAPS 18th Juried Exhibition in Albuquerque, NM. If you'd like to read a short article on shipping pastel art, it will be posted as an editorial on the Northwest Pastel Society website soon.

pastel demo

I was surprised and pleased to receive this postcard in yesterday's mail. If you are in the Stockton, CA area, please join me for my demo at the Haggin Museum, 1-4 PM, May 22. I'll be washing off a couple paintings and taking a leap of faith that I can turn them into successful abstracted work.

Before you leave this postcard image, take a moment to appreciate how the person who designed it related these three images. The tree in the upper right corner of my painting repeats the tree in the barn image by Kim Lordier  then the barnyard flows into the vineyard of the third painting by Dug Waggoner. To do this, images might have been cropped but I think it is a thoughtfully designed postcard - and I am pleased to be on it with these two outstanding painters.

my blue heaven

This is the finished painting based on the under-painting I posted yesterday. I'm loving all that blue!

demo candidates

These are my candidates to be washed off Sunday, May 22nd at a demo I'll be doing for the Pastel Society of the West Coast in Stockton, CA. Right now, these are framed so I'll have to go through my art data base to see what surface each was painted on. My first choice would be Wallis paper because I could just blast it with a hose. But, if it is Canson Mi-Teintes, I'll have to brush it off...not nearly as dramatic.

high country test

The second of the five paintings I brought back from a gallery yesterday was unframed this morning. This was one of the Sky View Meadow series of 2009 -  I brushed it off and began again. Now it is called High Country. It will also serve as a test to see if I will receive this post through a gmail account instead of Comcast. Thanks to all who have taken a moment to let me know that you have (or haven't) been receiving these posts in the past 3 weeks. Interesting that the people who aren't receiving it anymore are those with Comcast email addresses. Original painting is shown below.

promises

Promises is the new rendition of a 2007 painting that has been shown at three of my galleries and a couple shows without selling. A sale is usually one of the goals of a painting but I've always been fond of this one and happy to have it back in my studio. However...today I unframed it, painted on it some more, cropped it into a slightly new composition and retitled it. I'll probably send it out into the world again but I won't mind if it comes back home.

group show

I am pleased to be included in a group show at American Art Company, Tacoma, WA, May 14 through June 25th. Other artists in the show are Neil Andersson, Brenda Boylan, Fumiko Kimura, Misty Martin, Reni Moriarity and Ann Stockdale.

If this post doesn't go out automatically to email subscribers, I will send it to the list myself. Still testing...testing...

blue monday

The title says it all. After a beautiful spring day yesterday, today it's raining again. I'm going to bake a chocolate cake.

value addition/subtraction

Today's post is about making decisions. I've been reworking a painting and getting nowhere so I decided to eliminate the color decisions and work in value only.  I took a photo of the washed-off-painting, printed it out in grayscale and added and subtracted value with pencil and eraser on the printout until I got to a composition and value story I could live with. Then, I printed this image on paper and put it on my easel next to the painting. Next I will select colors to match these values and begin painting again. See below for the visual journey to this point.

Gray scale of painting waiting for decisions.

Washed off, reworked, washed off, reworked, washed off.

This was Simplicity completed last December.