colored pencil, 4″ x 6″ *SOLD*
Yesterday I visited a Japanese store that sells slightly defective ceramics for cheap (we ran out of small bowls again, and I refuse to buy real stuff when it gets destroyed so quickly). They had a lot of new designs with pale colors, not all of them even looked like traditional Japanese ware. This is a loose collective impression of what I saw but had absolutely no reason to buy. Yes, I wanted to. I behaved.
I will participate in this event with the Fine Arts League of Cupertino. Look for a large setup with 24 panels and several canopies!
The event features over 100 local artists. There will be live music and some great food.
Date: June 26, 2010
Hours: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Address: on the grounds of Triton Museum of Art, 1505 Warburton Ave. Santa Clara, CA 95050
Silicon Valley Open Studios will take place during the first three weekends of May. All sites open 11 a.m. till 5 p.m.
Visit me at the following locations to see new small art (4″ x 6″), tiny miniatures, and bigger pieces:
May 1 – 2, Site 179
5 other artists are showing at this location: Janki Chokshi, Iona Ezaki, Belinda Lima, Slava Shabrov, and Nina Uppaluru.
21471 Columbus Avenue, Cupertino, CA 95014-4972
May 8 – 9, Site 364
4 other artists are showing at this location: Amanda Krauss, Sally Rayn, Slava Shabrov, Nance Wheeler
16060 Skyline Blvd, Woodside, CA 94062-4420
May 15 – 16, Site 440
4 other artists are showing at this location: April Maiten, Angela Sanders, Scott Schilling, Slava Shabrov
23442 Toyonita Road, Los Altos Hills, CA 94024
Pacific Art League holds the juried competition and exhibition, In the Garden. Fortitude was juried in and is on display on the 1st floor at PAL from April 2 till April 29.
Dates: April 2-29, 2010
Hours: Monday – Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Address: 668 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301
3.5″ x 2.5″, colored pencil on canvas
I really like working that tiny. The stretched canvas make it easy to draw anywhere, without any support. A canvas and a few pencils fit into my smallest purse, and apparently a grip of a shopping cart is good enough to rest the canvas on when you stand in a long line (Costco has no equivalents of a “3 is a crowd” rule, and sometimes it can be a long wait). Drawing to the rescue.
“Out of the Dark” will be on display at the Cupertino Library. The heme of the show is “Graduations.” It has been created in cooperation with the Fine Arts League of Cupertino and sponsored by the Cupertino Library Foundation.
Dates: April 1, 2010 – June 20, 2010.
Hours: Mon. – Thurs. 01:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Fri. – Sun. 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Address: 10800 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, California, 95014-3254
Following up on my initial idea of trying colored pencils on a canvas, I bought a pack of 5 2.5″ x 3.5″ primed canvases in Aaron Brothers and started with the first canvas the same day. It’s a remarkable thing for me; usually it takes days, if not weeks, to progress from an idea to something material. Here is the result:
It’s doable! And I like the effect that the rough support gives to the drawing. It reminds me of heavy cold pressed watercolor paper. Just like with that paper, canvas is lead hungry. It gobbles up serious amounts of colored pencil in no time at all, and I had to sharpen pencils more often than with most types of paper. On a positive side, a canvas leaves more room for mixing colors. A few things that I didn’t like I was able to scratch off with a fingernail and cover with new layers. No ill effects of doing so; the canvas does not seem to wear out at all.
I still need to get a better grasp of the whole thing, but when i am through this pack of canvases I think I will move to a bigger size. My first ides that never came to fruition was to wrap cold pressed watercolor paper around the stretcher. I even bought the small stretcher, and that was it. Wetting the paper, stretching it, drying it, seeing if drawing on that was plausible, and dealing with a possible fail was too much trouble. I wonder why I didn’t think of the canvas back then.
Speaking of the packs: not a single one in the store had 5 more or less rectangular canvases. A common case was 2-3 arbitrary quadrangles per pack that just look bad, so ordering online is not an option. I do want to continue with these tiny drawings.
4″ x 6″, ink *SOLD*
This is a quick study for a horse head that will be done in pastel pencil. I like the shape of the head in the reference photo, but it lacks contrast terribly. And the horse is milky-gray which does not help 🙂 The sketch is my attempt to place the darks where I believe they should be.
4″ x 6″, colored pencil.
This is a rendering of one of my bokeh photos. I think colored pencils lend themselves nicely to this job.
Fortitude is a part of the 2010 From the Heart show at the Main Street Cafe and Books in Los Altos from February 1 till February 28.
The show features wonderful works of 36 members of the Fine Arts League of Cupertino.
Main Street Cafe and Books is located at 134 Main St., Los Altos, CA 94022 and is open Mon-Sat. 6:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Sun. 7:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.:
This one started out relatively smoothly until I realized that the background was anything but what I wanted it to be. Several attempts to solve the problem were unsuccessful, and for about a month I used every excuse to work on something else instead in hopes that the solution materializes in my head on its own. Before that happened, help came in the form of a demo by a very talented watercolorist, Terri Hill who gave a demo at FALC earlier this week. Just watching her do her magic got me out of the fog. The background is far from being finished, but at least we are moving again:
I am not sure how I ended up with the painterly background. It certainly was not a conscious decision, but I like the look:
Almost there:
Updated January 17, 2010
And I am going to call it done, nothing else to add to it:
4″ x 6″, pastel pencil, China marker *SOLD*
Today’s small discovery: China marker works way better as a highlight preserver than white charcoal or pastel (I made trunks and branches with it). Also, some Dervent pastel pencils of earthy variety act more like colored pencils then pastel. Since this sketch was done mainly by blending colors with a dry brush, the second discovery was not pleasant. Moral: test on scrap paper first (yeah, fresh idea, I know).
6″ x 4″, charcoal *SOLD*
I wanted to see how Prismacolor charcoal pencils will play with the mysterious cardstock that I got at Michaels long time ago. I say”mysterious” because the package is long gone, and I have no idea what the brand is. It turned out better than I expected – apparently, the paper is quite durable and allows for many layers of blending and crosshatching.
It was Cherri’s and Brian’s idea to gather KALEID artists, their friend and families together and help everyone put names to faces. That really worked out great while I was there, but now I look back and realize that in many cases all I remember is faces. Oh well, hopefully all I will need next time I walk by someone’s display there is to see the name and my memory supply the face.
It was so much nicer to walk around without hurry and take time to see who is doing what. When I come to make changes to my display there is never enough time for that.
The best part of the party was the gift exchange between artists. Every artist was asked to bring a wrapped artwork made for the occasion, and everyone got a tag with a number as they arrive and put their gifts under the Christmas tree. Then Cherri called the numbers one by one, and artists came to the tree and picked whatever they wanted. Note to self: come earlier next year. There will be more choices.
This was my gift, and it was picked by a horse person, Jessica Beerli:
Way cool. I had my doubts about making another horse – after all, not everyone would appreciate a gift like that. But since I was not in the mood for anything else, a horse it was. We had a nice chat with Jessica about almost everything after the gift exchange. I really like her portraits that she now has in the gallery.
And this is the gift I got:
Linda Ritter of Visual Confections made these pretty little ornaments. I should have the Christmas tree up tomorrow, and all three of them go right on it!
Graphite Pencil Drawing Tutorial: Female Eye
A step by step with large images. Yes, it’s photo realism that I am not crazy about, but there is something about that gaze that makes me want to take another look and then yet another one. I wonder: if the whole face was there, would the effect be lost?
Colored Pencil: The Only 4 Tips You Really Need
All four tips are what works wonderfully for me: work slow, keep your pencils sharp (and may I add, if you don’t need sharp use Prismacolor art sticks), layer colors, work on colored paper. And the author is a Prismacolor person too 🙂
It’s a very simple tutorial, but the final image is charming: Colored Pencil: techniques & tutorial
