Gallery Additions

I have added my newest paintings to the gallery.

Federation of Canadian Artist (FCA) & Exhibit Entry

It has been a couple of exciting weeks. First Dianna’s workshop that taught me so much about pastels. Then, with Dianna’s guidance, I was juried into the Federation of Canadian Artists.

More than anything it gives a feeling of being part of the artists community instead of just being a part time artist. I hope I can really make use of the membership.

I entered three paintings into a juried show called "Red & Gold". All mediums are accepted, the only caveat is that the painting must contain red or gold or both. A pretty easy requirement. So as you can imagine I have entered the candy apple, now officially titled "Luscious".

The two others are "Desire" and "One Voice". I will post a follow up on whether or not any of the three gets accepted.

 

Candy Apple 01 Painting WIP

Here is my latest work in progress. As promised in a previous post, I have started to paint the Candy Apples I photographed a couple months ago. So far I have about 4 hours into it.

Everything is progressing relatively well. Taking regular breaks has been the key with this painting as when I come back to it I always find something to correct.

I have been using Unison pastels for most of it but yern for some pastel pencils to get in all the detail I would like. It is 9×12″ on sanded LeCarte paper.

I will post more later…

 

UPDATE: added newest image.

Ponting Workshop

I have been waiting patiently for the end of October, not for Halloween but for a Dianna Ponting workshop in Nanaimo over on Vancouver Island. I headed over on Friday evening so I could wake up and be fresh at the start of the session instead of rushing to get an early ferry over and stressing over the time schedule. The plan worked well. Saturday morning came and I arrived with time to spare, set up my easel and laid out everything I was going to need. Believe it or not the first thing we were shown was how to tape your pastel paper to the support board. "Ingenious" was the first thought that came to mind. The secret? Since sanded paper doesn’t hold tape too well, she demonstrated that you should place a piece of tape on the back side of the paper overlapping the edge 50:50. Do this for both the top and bottom edges. Now flip your paper over so the sanded surface is up and lay it in position on your board. Now apply tape to the exposed overlapping tape and the board. Not only is your paper secure, but you can paint right to the edge of the paper with no border!! After all this it was revealed to us what our demo piece was going to be… a salt shaker, an egg in a cup and a spoon placed upon a checkered tea towel that overhand the edge of a table. (Sorry for the bad picture)

Great piece now that I think of it, as it has a simple background, glass, reflections, subtle tones, a subtle colour reflecting (on the egg and spoon) and a patterned fabric.

We started by transferring the drawing onto the sanded paper by chalking the back of the sketch (done a a different piece of paper) and tracing over the front of the sketch.

Next we moved to the background by laying in three different colours, a light blue, a dark blue and a black. I have never seen someone put so much pastel on before. It really opened my eyes on how much is needed to really fill in an area.

The three colours were blended together, trying to keep the silhouette of the objects untouched. If we did happen to get pastel into the silhouette we carefully erased as much as we could without disturbing the background.

 

As you can see, my dark blue was eaten by the black. :) Lesson learnt.

Moving onto the salt shaker was exciting as it was my first time attempting glass. During her demo all I could think was, "Oh, how easy is that." And really, it is.

The egg and cup were next with the subtle gradations and reflecting deep orange colour. Surprisingly, it provided more of a challenge than the salt shaker did. Dianna came over and used her magic finger to blend the bright left edge and the dark core together to alleviated a stark edge I had. She was also able to touch up the shape of the egg as I had widened it a little to much.

That was it for the Saturday portion of the workshop… Phew, my mind was tired.

Sunday we dove right into it, finished the egg, cup and added in the spoon. The spoon was the easiest of all the element. Chrome was the easiest element to do - just black and white.

As you can see in the image below it was time to tackle the checkered cloth. Dianna demonstrated the cloth in one fell swoop with all of us eagerly watching and reviewing. It took her a full hour to finish most of the cloth, but it felt like only 10 minutes. After we all went to our perspective easels and got to work. My initial result is below.

My intention with the cloth was to use it as an experience so I completed it in earnest as I wanted to move onto a study of a candy apple that I brought.

The finished piece is below and for all intended purposes I think it turned out well. Sure, if I did it again I would do a few things different, but you know, I am ready to move on and learn more from a new painting experience.

The following are detail, close up shots of Dianna’s finished work. Something to aspire to.

And finally, her completed painting…

Pastels in the Mail

I had a nice surprise this week. My order of Unison Pastels came in the mail. Always a good day when a package arrives. The sticks are soft and silky but do not melt like butter like a Schminke. The colours are brilliant and vibrant, apply well and smudge nicely. I look forward to completing a painting with them.