This drawing is dedicated to dramatic sunsets between Newberg and Salem that I can never capture because there is no place to stop and I am driving. The trees are real, they exist somewhere in that area. The skies have no reference. They are just my memories of of rain-soaked sunsets when colors diffuse and blend together in wet air.
A few years ago, I created a series of foal drawings for the Art for the Heart Gala at The Arts Center in Corvallis. One piece didn’t make it because I didn’t have enough time to meet the deadline, and since then I completely forgot about it.
Last year, as I was packing and sorting everything for the move to the new place, it briefly reminded about itself, but so much was happening at once that only now I finally had time to finish it. Just in time for the upcoming “Annual Color Show: Green” show at the Keizer Art Association!
This little foal is looking for a loving home. The rest of the series has been sold, but reproductions are available:
My 8″ x 8″ piece, “Conversation”, is a part of this year’s Art for the Heart Gala at The Arts Center in Corvallis. The opening reception is on Thursday, September 28, 2023, 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m. There are 150 small artworks to choose from. All sales benefit The Arts Center that does a lot of good work for the community.
All artwork will go on sale after the reception through the Art for the Heart 2023 Catalog. Preview price is $75. You can get the event or free online catalog tickets to purchase your favorite artworks at 8 p.m. on September 28 (following the reception). For those pieces that do not find their collector during the preview period, the art will be for sale at the Gala for $40 starting October 7.
Sent my 7″ x 5″ contribution off to Canada today. It is colored pencil and black ink on mixed media paper. It will benefit Urban Native Youth Association. UNYA has a philanthropic goal of $6 million to build the Native Youth Centre. Every contribution they receive will help them create a community of caring in support of Indigenous youth.
If you are in Vancouver, BC, or close enough to make a trip, here are the dates for the live TAE show at The Pipe Shop:
Opening Reception: June 24, 1-8 pm PDT
Exhibition Continues: June 25, 11 am-6 pm PDT
Please head to TAE’s RSVP page if you plan to attend either day.
Online Sale will be held Jun 26 – Jul 24, 2023, at https://www.twitterartexhibit.org/.
And no, I am not a sunrise person, so my knowledge of that time of the day is mostly theoretical. I was planning a sunset, but the drawing had its own idea, and I went with that. Arguments usually do not lead to a good result.
This year’s beneficiary of the Twitter Art Exhibit is Urban Native Youth Association.
We strive to empower Indigenous youth to make positive changes in their lives by offering a wide range of services, resources, and opportunities.
In everything we do here at UNYA, we take into account an understanding of trauma, aim to accept youth without judgment, and respect youth as experts in their own lives.
Got a word yesterday that my 12 x 16 cm drawing made it to the 10th Twitter Art Exhibit that this year is helping Horry County Disabilities & Special Needs.
The show was going to be held in Myrtle Beach, SC but is now in limbo due to the COVID-19 outbreak. I do hope that there still be an option to buy the cards online like in previous years, no matter what the fate of the live show. Then we still do good and all is as well as it can be.
Every volunteer who helped with the show is very much appreciated, as are many artists who sent in their little creations.
My card for the Twitter Art Exhibit 2021 has been sold! The live one-day show happened later than originally placed, it happened the Cheltenham Racecourse and was a big success. There are still cards available at https://www.twitterartexhibit.org/shop. 100% of proceeds from TAE21 Postcards goes to The Leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy Fund – LINC. (http://www.lincfund.org/)
“End of Day” is a short series of three 6″ x 6″ drawings on clear gessoed wood created for the 6x6x6 Community Art Show at the Alberta Street Gallery. As it often happens, small format lends itself nicely to experiments, and the main thing I wanted to find out here was how well multiple layers of colored pencil on a primed wooden panel would accept ink.
The answer is: not really well if it is a felt tip pen, better if the tip is a soft brush, but an actual brush dipped into India ink is the easiest way. Really, should’ve used a brush or at least a brush pen from the beginning, but I wanted to exhaust all available pen options first. And no, this is not an exaggeration: I went through dozens of different pen brands before one finally sort of worked.
It may be that I didn’t sand the clear gesso enough and that made the texture get in the way of pens. I am going to try the same combination of colored pencils and black pen on clear wood to be sure.
Dropped my contribution to the Art Gallery for Art for the Heart that benefits Center for the Arts in Corvallis. I am not sure if the show will be an actual physical one or online only like many others. I haven’t been to the place since way before the pandemic, and it was so nice to walk in and enjoy the current show and new things in their gift shop. It was almost normal. Almost.
Three 5” x 5” drawings make the “Delicate Beginnings” little series. It would be four, but the forth one became a casualty of forgetting to cover the ink drawing with final fixative before attempting to mount it on top of the tissue paper with pastels and powdered bone. It will require heavy touch-up and maybe adding some color to the foal. I am not sure about color yet, but it’s a possibility. Maybe all four would benefit from some color.
More details about the show: https://theartscenter.net/call-for-artists-8×8-art-gallery-for-art-for-the-heart/
The Art for the Heart 8×8 Gallery is going up in the Corrine Woodman Gallery tomorrow.
The show will be up from September 26th till October 8th, 2020.
The current hours of The Arts Center are Thursday – Saturday, 12 pm – 5 pm.
Masks and Social Distancing Required
Virtual Reception
The 8×8 Gallery reception will be held on October 1, 2020 at 6 pm online. It will be the first chance to purchase any artwork in this gallery.
Register for Art for the Heart by clicking here. Registration is free. Also visit The Arts Center’s Facebook page by clicking here for more info.
Digital collage with a blackbird, a joint effort of ArtFlow and Painter (both are Android drawing apps) and Photoshop. The bird took forever and some to get right. I could draw it on paper times faster, but somehow “digital” translated into “quick” in my mind. It’s not quick, at least not if you were born way before computers, tablets, and digital pens.
Got a word yesterday that my 12 x 16 cm drawing made it to the 10th Twitter Art Exhibit that this year is helping Horry County Disabilities & Special Needs.
The show was going to be held in Myrtle Beach, SC but is now in limbo due to the COVID-19 outbreak. I do hope that there still be an option to buy the cards online like in previous years, no matter what the fate of the live show. Then we still do good and all is as well as it can be.
Every volunteer who helped with the show is very much appreciated, as are many artists who sent in their little creations.
These two new artworks were delivered yesterday to the 6 x 6 x 6 art show at the Alberta Street Gallery. Artists were free to create whatever they wanted as long as their art fit within 6″ x 6″ x 6″, and my choice was to do something related to spring that was all around me already.
I’ve spent more time experimenting with background collages than actually drawing and had to stop experiments at some point while I still had time to finish the pieces. It was fun, and I now have notes to continue playing with new ideas as time permits.
The Alberta Street Gallery is located at 1829 NE Alberta Street, Portland, OR (directions)
The show is open March 1-22, 2020, Monday – Friday 11 am – 7 pm, Saturdays 9 am – 9 pm, Sundays 9 am – 5 pm.
If you can, stop by for the opening reception on March 1st.
Got notified that my card for Twitter Art Exhibit 2019 safely arrived at Edinburgh, UK. Phew! I was so unbelievably late this year that I was not even sure it would make it in time for the opening night on May 11.
For my artist friends who would like to participate next year, here is the TAE website: http://twitterartexhibit.org. This year they support an Edinburgh based charity, Art in Healthcare, that organizes workshop programs for patients.
Just got notified that my card has been sold! Yay!
The live Twitter Art Exhibit is over, but their fundraising for Art in Healthcare continues at https://www.artinhealthcare.org.uk/tae19.php
@YelenaArt Congrats your #TAE19 card has been sold https://t.co/3HhiMtyDBE Fantabulous news and thanks again for supporting #twitterartexhibit fundraising for @artinhealthcare
— Twitrartexhibit 🌏 (@twitrartexhibit) May 15, 2019
My little Jay that got sold at #TAE19 looks all pretty in its new happy home. Thank you for sharing the photo, Sharon! Great choice of frame!
Delivered my latest drawing to the Sequoia Gallery today. It is for the HIP 2B Square show that benefits this nice and cozy cooperative gallery and its artist studios. The show opens on April 2nd with a reception and award announcements and runs through May 3.
Sequoia Gallery is located at 136 SE 3rd Avenue, Hillsboro, OR 97123. Hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 10 am – 5 pm.
The gallery provided an option of a 12″ x 12″ Blick canvas or primed and cradled wood panel, and I chose the panel.
After the fiasco with an Ampersand panel it was interesting to try something different. To my delight, the texture of the gessoed wooden surface was strong but pretty even and was almost as easy to work with as good textured paper. I will do more with it, just maybe without cradles. Not a big fan of working edges of those things.
Finally mailed my postcard art to the Twitter Art Exhibit (TAE) today. I blame Creatacolor pencils for the delay. It was my first time trying oil-based colored pencils, and as a Prismacolor/Derwent girl I found their behavior way too different.
This year TAE helps an Australian charity, Pegasus Riding For The Disabled of ACT Inc., http://www.pegasusact.com.au/. All proceeds from postcard art sales go to the charity. If you feel like helping out, the deadline for submissions is March 19, 2018: http://twitterartexhibit.org/call-for-artists/
Here is how “Character” came to be.
This series started with a title, and that almost never happens to me. By the time I sketched the very first piece I could not remember how exactly I came up with “Stories of the Forest,” but the initial idea was to make ink drawings of groups of trees and shrubs that would gradually fade into the paper collage background to showcase the beauty of common plant inhabitants of Western Oregon forests where I often hike. Every little plant, every shrub and tree have a story to tell if we look close, and together they weave a more complicated story that makes some unassuming spot in the forest look amazing.
It all looked good in pencil, but moving forward with inking was a different story. It looked too busy. Varying density of strokes and dots didn’t really work, so two ruined drawings I decided to change the approach. Maybe pen and ink was not the right choice for what I wanted to achieve, or maybe (and more likely) I failed to collaborate with my pens properly.
So I started to remove details that were less essential from my sketches, starting with varied growth under and behind tree branches, then with nonessential branches themselves. I do all corrections on tracing paper laid on top of the original sketch that needs to be improved. This considerably speeds up the process and keeps new ideas flowing without interruption of redrawing the same parts of a sketch.
And that’s how I’ve ended up with just a few leaves and scarcely spaced branches, letting the gently colored background to hint at whatever a viewer wants to see in the finished piece. There is special beauty in simplicity, and that old saying “less is more” gave me exactly what I wanted.
Updated 6/6/17: My Golden Lilies are now coming back to their new (hopefully happy) US home because somebody saw them online and in their words, could not resist. Funny how art travels sometimes 🙂
An experiment with gel pens. It will be a part of the Twitter Art Exhibit that this year supports Molly Olly’s Wishes. Mailed it to UK today and hope it will get there safely.
This is my first semi-serious drawing in gel pens. I did sketches before, but they were line works, never pointillism. Turns out it’s more enjoyable to stipple, I just need to get a better grasp of color and opacity changes as gel inks dry and remembering how different pens interact when placed on top of each other.
Did a sketch for a girl who loves horses (should probably be in all capitals and blinking) and dreams of riding her own horse one day. Until then, a very own drawing of her favorite 4-H equine will have to suffice. This is a Birthday gift to her from her big sister.
A kind visitor at the third weekend of recent Open Studios came up with the title, not me. I often draw during SVOS. People like to see how art is created, and whatever I am working on easily becomes a conversation piece. Sometimes I get a free benefit of getting stuff named for me.
This last little drawing completes the “Gathering” series. It going to be a while before I want to anything other than single drawings.
See the first four pieces in this series:
The fourth piece in the “Gathering” series got no horses, it is dedicated to the beauty of many rock patterns.
I think I will do the final piece the same way, without any representative images. Most comments that I get about this series is about the beauty of rocks themselves it seems fitting to get back to the original idea and focus on that.
As usual, the ATC exchange at CAG today was a lot of fun. Here are my contributions to the event:
I love how the fall edition of the ATC exchange happens around my Birthday. This year it’s on a day before, so I got four early Birthday gifts:
Here is my newest tiny digital canvas. I haven’t done any for a few months and completely forgot my past experience with colored pencil on this kind of surface. It is a bit slippery and does not allow to build up really dark darks unless you carefully plan for them from the beginning and use very sharp pencils all the time. Unlike with paper or traditional linen canvas it is not possible to start with lighter colors everywhere and then go darker in as many layers as necessary. Darker colors on a digital canvas start to chip off relatively quickly if you are not careful.
So with a refreshed memory, I am now going to use digital canvas with soft graphite pencils only and leave colors to linen ones. Or maybe it’s worth trying to gesso a digital canvas and see if it becomes more tolerant to dark colored pencils.
The original miniature ($35.00) is available in my Miniatures online gallery.
Updated: October 26, 2014
It’s finished. I like how it turned out more than the first two pieces in the series.
Updated: October 17, 2014
So most of my ideas are not suitable for small shapes and have to be put aside for now. I think there is a larger rocky piece in my feature; meanwhile this one continues to take shape.
Updated: October 2, 2014
I have more ideas for rock textures that are going to fit into this small piece, and not all of them are going to play nicely together. Decisions – they are very time consuming.
Original post: September 9, 2014
For the third piece in the “Gathering” series I decided to start with the horses instead of smaller rocks. Apparently it is easier to complete more critical parts of the drawing first than worry about ruining the entire thing if something in the horse does not look right. Who knew! So, outlines are done, one foal is completed but may need some touch-ups when I get to its rock, the other one is not giving me problems so far.
You can see the first two drawings in the series here and here.
I was asked more than once why I don’t draw owls, and given the fact that they are my next favorite animals after horses it really begs the question. My explanation so far was that it’s far easier to obtain my own horse reference which is always preferred over free and inexpensive options that can be used by somebody else too.
However, the time keeps marching by, and my own supply of owl photos stays at zero. I do see owls every now and then which is very nice, but the lighting conditions are such that even the best camera in the world will not help my shaky coffee hands to make even a semi-decent shot. So I finally looked for other options.
So now I have my very own owl peaking out of a crumbling wall. Thank you, Lynton Bolton, for a great reference photo.
An observation: if an owl has light, fluffy feathers they will do everything they can to turn out a mess. They observe no rules, no order, nothing of what fur usually does.
Squirrels are our little chatty neighbors who dig out everything I ever tried to plant in the patio. Even garlic is not safe with them. I would never believe that a squirrel can be interested in garlic cloves if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes how a squirrel hurries up a tree with a freshly dug-out clove in his teeth.
I suspect that at least some odd grasses, bushes, and trees that grow all by themselves are actually squirrels’ work. We never planted any of that, and nothing similar grows nearby. It has to come from what squirrels hide around the patio.
Raccoons are adorable as long as you do not stand between them and what they think is their food or keep a healthy distance from them in general. I imagine gardeners don’t appreciate living side by side with them, but not being one I enjoy every encounter, be it in the wilderness or in the city.
This is a Russian raccoon who looks exactly as his American relatives and can be just as feisty. I met him and his family in the Moscow Zoo more than a decade ago.
University Art carries something I never saw before: a canvas mounted on a cardboard. 5″ x 7″ pieces are sold unprotected, unlike canvases and real sturdy canvas boards. They come in white and black versions. Naturally, I had to buy both to see what can be done with them.
This white horse was done on a black one. Even though the canvas accepts many layers of color the result is not purely white (hence the “ghostly” reference). Alas, colored pencils are not completely opaque.
The original drawing found a new home at the Midsummer Art Festival 2014, but greeting cards, and prints are available in my online shop as a part of the “Colored Pencil” collection.
Into the Woods (Miniature) – colored pencil on canvas, 3.5" x 2.5"
The original miniature ($35.00) is available in my Miniatures online gallery.
As busy as this year’s Silicon Valley Open Studios were, I managed to snatch up some time for drawing. The result is the second piece in the “Gatherings” series that was finished yesterday a couple of hours before the last day of Open Studios in front of the Cupertino Library was over.
Thank you everybody who came to see my art, to ask questions, share your stories, and support what I enjoy to do so much. Those were three wonderful weekends!
I planned to try something new with ATC for this exchange at CAG: galloping horse hooves, parts of horse faces, or something like that. Instead, I ended up with four whole horse heads.
Maybe the fact that Newborn is taking longer than anticipated to get finished has something to do with it, I don’t know.
Here are the heads:
And this is what I got from my wonderful fellow artists:
Lady’s smock (cuckoo flowers) are tiny and very unassuming when we walk past them or over them. Their beautiful purple, lilac, and whitish colors is about all that can be easily appreciated when they form a patch. I love shooting and drawing little things like these and then look closely at the shapes, lines, and colors that make them up and draw it all bigger than in real life.
This was my first attempt to use colored pencils on wood and do a three-dimensional piece. While it was an interesting experience spreading a drawing over more than one plane I think I will stick to my usual two dimensions. But I do want to continue experimenting with drawing on wood. It adds a unique glow that shines through pencilwork and makes it look quite different. I like that.
As it turned out, I need to be careful placing strokes over wood; the same color will look differently as wooden textures change over the board, as strokes are laid along the fibers, across them, or at an angle. And forget about scanning the finished piece. A lot of fine color details get lost along with the wonderful glowing effect of the wood.
The original is available in my Colored Pencil online gallery for $45.00