A sketch a day: horse in the water
Artist trading card exchange at CAG
Yesterday at the meeting in the Campbell Artists’ Guild we had an artist trading card exchange. This is what I brought, they are my experiments with metal pens and markers combined with colored pencils:
And this is what I got in return:
Pretty wonderful extra gifts for my Birthday! 🙂
On the Way series at the KALEID Gallery
The new three piece series, On the Way, and another small work, Gathering I, will be a part of the upcoming annual HARK! exhibit and sale at the KALEID Gallery.
The On the Way series is my exploration of people in transit, both literally, on foot, and metaphorically as a state of mind, the experience. I kept the details to the minimum because they would be a distraction to the notion of “here and now” that in this case was more important to me then particular surroundings or the final destination. Oil pastel is a perfect medium for this; it does not eagerly land itself for a lot of details, so staying vague is pretty easy.
The opening reception will be held during the San Jose First Friday, on December 6th, 2013 from 7 pm till 11 pm. If you are in the area, stop by to see high quality art of amazing variety and to chat with the artists.
The exhibition will continue until January 18th, 2014.
KALEID Gallery is located at 88 S 4th St, San Jose, CA 95112.
Open Tuesday – Friday from 12:00 pm till 7:00 pm, Saturday from 12:00 pm till 5:00 pm.
The originals of “On the Way I” and “On the Way II” went to their new good homes!
A new piece at the Art Under $200 exhibit at the Pacific Art League
I am pleased to announce that both my pieces submitted to the Art Under $200 exhibit at the Pacific Art League have been accepted.
You probably saw this one already:
And this is a new artwork that was not shown anywhere else yet:
The opening reception for the exhibit will be a part of the Palo Alto First Friday, on December 6th, 2013, from 5:30 pm till 8:00 pm.
The exhibit will stay open till December 24th.
Pacific Art League is located at 668 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA 94301.
Open Monday – Friday from 9:00 am till 5:00 pm
River of Light
This is another piece in the “small landscapes” series that was started long time ago, survived a two year interruption, and is finally getting done. It’s always difficult to pick the pencils again when you almost don’t remember what you had in mind in the beginning. But as a nice exception to the rule, this little drawing was finished relatively easily. It was almost all about playing with colors and almost no struggling through the process.
The first piece in the series was Open Space, and if all goes well there will be three more.
The original ($140.00), greeting cards, and prints are available in my Pastel Pencil online gallery.
Glowing mountains – miniature
I have so many pieces in progress that each one seems to be a never ending drawing journey. It’s good to switch gears between subjects and media all the time, but at the same time I would really love to finish at least something already. So, a something finally got finished:
The original is available in my Miniatures online gallery for $35.00
Gathering (a rocky one)
This one started as an exercise after I haven’t done any pointillism in more than a year. In the process of getting the feel of the pen again I began to see a composition in the bunch of rock textures and from that point treated the small drawing more seriously.
The horses came into the picture last to make things more interesting. I thought of lighter-colored petroglyphs etched on a dark rock surface and decided to reverse colors. That seemed to work better with the rest of my rocks.
There is another Gathering piece in the making already. Turned out playing with rocks in black and white is just as exiting as doing it in color.
Explorations in Colored Pencil II
Today the San Francisco Chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America had an opening reception for their annual juried show, Explorations in Colored Pencil II. We drove down to the Coastal Arts League Gallery in downtown Half Moon Bay hoping to make it in time, and luckily for us the traffic was very bearable.
The show is great, and I am not saying this because I am very partial to the medium. It’s really a strong collection of different styles, techniques, and subjects.
The show will be open till October 6, 2013.
Malibu Succulents, by Phillip Zubiate III
Malay Lacewing, by Denise J Howard
Inspiration is for amateurs…
There was a quote from Chuck Close on A.C.T. Art MArketing Blog part of which rang true to me:
If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
I don’t put the entire quote here because I am not all that sure about the beginning which is about inspiration being for amateurs and because the rest merely expands on the excerpt above.
It’s a fact, at least for me, that waiting around for an idea or looking at work of others gets me nowhere and eventually it feels like I’ve got a solid brick in my brain that makes it impossible to create anything. I do enjoy looking at what other artists do, by the way. I could do it all day long, it just does not help with the problem at hand. Drawing without much expectation is far better. I can abandon the original idea before I get too far, change it while it’s still changeable, throw the entire thing away because it refuses to cooperate, or base another drawing on the original failure. All of it is still more productive than waiting for a miracle to happen on its own.
There is no shortage of advice on getting inspired and getting over a creative block; I trust it makes a real difference for others, but for some reason it’s not doing much to me. Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way?
March 13, 2013 sketch
Long time ago I was asked for a commission of a black cat, but the reference photo provided consisted mostly of beautiful amber eyes and some very dark blobs that suggested the cat surely was somewhere there in the almost black surrounding. I could not even guess the rest of his face, so asked for a better photo and never heard back. But what was not good enough for a commission once, could work for my own amusement. This is a different cat, and I am not sure how so much of it besides the eyes got into the sketch. It was not planned for.
colored pencil on colored paper, 6″ x 4″
Sketchy horse
“Sketchy” is a style in Harmony that I like the most. Besides being imprecise and somewhat unpredictable by nature, it does not take kindly to thinking as you draw. The result is always a disaster, and the later in the process it happens the worse it looks. Since this is my first attempt to draw a horse in Harmony, disasters happened more than once. Luckily, I only use black and white, so for the most part when black gets out of control I managed to offset it with white. It’s not exactly erasing, but I think it works.
Other things I learned:
– colors in the color wheel come out anything but what I select and what shows in the preview square. Grays always have some odd tint, so I had to drop the idea of using them, or this would be one psychedelic horse head. I was not in the mood for psychedelic at all.
– apparently just because you can draw on the sides of the toolbox that is centered at the top of the page, it does not mean that you can draw behind it too; that’s how the horse lost nice pointy ears that I was going to give her
Coloured Pencil Lightfastness, from Coloured Pencil Society of Canada
Why do your own tests? Because sometimes it’s not clear which technical standards manufacturers use, how much their ratings differ from other brands, and depending on the type of pencils the available information may not be clear. Case in point: watercolor pencils. Often, you can’t tell if the information applies to the dry or diluted state of the pencil.
Some manufacturers like Caran d’Ache thoughtfully indicate resistance to light right on their pencils, Lyra puts it in a slip inside their pencil boxes, so if you are married to one of those brands and don’t use any others, choosing your pencils by those marks is all you have to do to insure that your work will stay vibrant for decades to come. That is, until you run into a situation where you really want to use this particular color, but its resistance to light is so low that you have to look at other manufacturers for something similar and more durable.
The next best thing a manufacturer can do after marking their pencils is to put lightfastness information into one document.
Manon did a wonderful job researching documents related to lightfastness of Derwent, Prismacolor, and seven other brands of colored pencils, gathering results in one article, and posting links for each brand.
Derwent makes charts for all their lines easy to find. The article mentiones some of them but the links changed since the article was published, so here are updated ones: Artists, Studio, Coloursoft, Drawing, Graphitint, Aquatone, Inktense, Watercolour. The full list of documents for pencils and blocks can be found here: http://www.pencils.co.uk/search.aspx?s=lightfastness.
My dear Prismacolor only makes this information readily available for Premier Watercolor Colored Pencils, Premier Soft Core Colored Pencils and Premier Art Stix, and Premier Verithin Colored Pencils. Their web site does not offer search, and I lack time and determination to hunt down the rest of their lines. Some day. Maybe.
Referencing the charts is a little more of leg work but still convenient. These two brands are the ones I use the most, so links to their charts go here as much for my own convenience as to benefit another fellow artist.
Still, nothing beats your own testing that allows you to see real results, not some printed or online images. Manor guides you through such testing and discusses the results that can be quite surprising.
A growing… something
I haven’t visited Harmony for a long time, not even sure why. It’s a great place to get unstuck (and I am stuck thoroughly with an abstract piece right now), to unwind after a stressful day, and to doodle away no matter what your circumstances are.
Harmony is perfectly capable of helping you make realistic art, but that I could do on my own, right? So for the most part me and Harmony create strange things like this one.
Further experimenting with canvases
Looking back at all my attempts to make colored pencils play nice with the digital canvas, I have to admit that they certainly prefer a traditional linen one. So the blank digital canvases that I still have will be used for other media. For example, a graphite pencil:
Miniature – graphite pencil on canvas, 3.5″ x 2.5″
Things learned with this one:
– only soft graphite works, harder grades scrape the priming off the canvas without leaving noticeable marks
– for blending, small sponge makeup applicators and bristle brushes work best
– common erasers are of little help when you need a highlight or to scrape off a mistake, but kneaded eraser works wonderfully (I am using a Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth eraser that comes with its own case and like it better than other brands I had before)
– an x-acto knife can be good for small bright highlights, but using it requires care because it easily gets deep into priming and scrapes it off
– areas treates with a x-acto knife are still good for blending tools, but pencil marks behave unpredictably, so better be avoided
My other canvas experiment that is yet to be finished is a mix of the black India ink and graphite. I am not sure how I like the result so far, but we’ll see.
Pinterest: an Opportunity for Creators – or a Threat?
Mark McGuinness posted a great article on the Pinterest for artists issue, Pinterest: an Opportunity for Creators – or a Threat?. A lot of good points there, but do not stop with the article itself or with links to posts in other art marketing blogs about Pinterest. There is a lengthy and insightful discussion in the comments very well worth reading (I could not help but add my $0.02 too).
To me, the amount of attention that Pinterest is getting is amazing. How comes that images of artworks have been shared everywhere for a long while now, from Facebook to Tumblr, often without artist’s consent, and nobody made a big deal out of it? Or did opponents of image sharing only now caught up to the new reality? Is it really such a big deal? Pins are small, unfit for reproduction, even on a very amateurish level. Plagiarism concerns? Artists risk that every time they put their creation on display. Traffic stealing? Now that was probably the most unusual claim I’ve heard, complete with the total lack of supporting facts. Puzzling…
Miniature on canvas with a boardwalk
This one was created with Derwent Coloursoft pencils, not my usual Prismacolor. The good thing is that these pencils are really, really soft and blend together easily. The bad thing is that in just a few layers it becomes impossible to add more color. The next stroke tries to lift off what’s already on the surface. This is not such a big deal with lighter colors, but getting good darks with Derwent on canvas (at least on a digital one that was used for this piece) turned into a challenge. The solution: use a softest graphite pencil you have. Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth 7B worked quite well for me.
How to pack, post and ship art – Resources for Artists
This Squidoo lens by makingamark has answers on all kinds of questions related to packing and shipping art: how to ship different kinds of art, how to ship to exhibitions, to overseas patrons, which materials and tools to use, tips from artist (with video even!), galleries, museums, and conservators: How to pack, post and ship art – Resources for Artists. Great resource!
New miniature on canvas
colored pencil on canvas, 3.5″ x 2.5″
Most of this one was done with an artificial light, and today I was going to put finishing touches on it while we were at the Pescadero Beach. But the sunlight showed me that more than just that was needed. Good thing that the weather was very warm and without strong winds, or the miniature would travel back home to be finished there. I must say though that colored pencils start to lay on the canvas in a funny way as humidity goes up. I think if I was working with water soluble ones, I would end up with a painting without adding water.
Two artworks at the National Competition & Exhibition “Ode to California,” July 1 – 28, 2011
Russian Ridge View and Summer Day in Santa Cruz Mountains were accepted into the juried exhibition at the Pacific Art League. The juror is Kenny Harris.
Commemorating PAL’s 90th anniversary, the exhibition “Ode to California” is about the historic transformation of the state, its people, place and culture.
Pacific Art League is located at 668 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301-2545.
The exhibit is open July 1 – 28, 2011.
You are invited to the reception which is on July 1, 5:30 pm – 8 pm.
Russian Ridge View – colored pencil on colored paper, 9″ x 6″
Summer Day in Santa Cruz Mountains – colored pencil on watercolor paper, 14.5″ x 10.5″
“Running Free” at “Fur, Feathers & Fins,” 6/3/2011 – 6/23/2011
One of my drawings, “Running Free,” was selected for a juried exhibition at the Pacific Art League. It is called “Fur, Feathers & Fins.”
The exhibition is open from June 3, 2011 till June 23, 2011.
Pacific Art League is located at 668 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301-2545.
I will be at the reception during the Palo Alto First Friday Art Walk. It’s on June 3, 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m.
