New England Miniatures

Every year at the National Colored Pencil Society's convention each of the chapters make a display board. This year the New England chapter decided to make miniatures to display that say something about the region. Here are my contributions - a miniature lobster and a miniature copy of John Singleton Copley's portrait of Paul Revere. They are both 2.5" x 3.5"

Where will you be from 5:30 - 7:30?

I will be outside of Creative Encounters in downtown Keene tonight from 5:30 - 7:30pm doing a free demo and doing preregistration for my Keene workshop in the Fall. If you can come by I'd love to see you. If you could come by with some chocolate and coffee, I'd love to see you even more!

Here's what I will be working on during the demo. I'm just about to start it, so it will have a little progress before I get there.

Hope to see you there!

To say that I am influenced by Giorgio Morandi would be an undestatement. I thought I only wanted to do pen and ink crosshatching for the rest of my life because of a tiny little image I saw of his in my drawing 101 course in college. His work seems so simple - but its not. I just love his use of negative shapes.
So I thought I'd just put a few images here of his and hopefully you can see how my work is influenced by them. :)

& then here is something fun. I've never seen any of his images that weren't bottles, boxes or bowls and I found a small shell piece by him. & what did I just finish working on? A little shell piece. I did it as a kit for Ann Kullberg's site, which if there aren't any snags, will be available soon for purchase. Its done on tan Pastelbord and is 5" x 7". Sorry for such a small pic, but this is just a sneak peak!

This is the first time I added steam! It just needed something in that open space behind the tea and I didn't want another object. I was worried about the composition thinking it would be weird with the flowers cut off but I'm pretty happy with it. The teacup is the obvious focal point with the steam and extra contrast. Also the eye seems to travel out with the flowers and tea pot sput but comes back in with the pitcher on the right and go right back to the tea.

Ooh as I'm writing this the buzz buzz buzz national weather service has just issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Amazing I'm not unloading groceries from the car as that's where I usually am during storms! Its been storming pretty much all day and is sticky hot outside while I've been happily sitting at the kitchen table drawing right next to the air conditioner in the window.... bliss...

This past week has been a bit difficult to get work done in! My husband stayed home from work M,T,W because of the holiday and then there were fireworks on the third and a party on the fourth. I finished the beach piece only by squeezing it in at night! Now I'm still recovering from a holiday week by catching up on the cleaning and laundry..

Yesterday was an errand day; stopping at the gallery in town, the photographers, the frame shop and then of course coffee and ice cream for the kids! They were not too happy with follwoing me all around downtown to do the errands.

So last night I started something new with blue and white pottery and a bit of yellow. I'll show it to you soon. I also have to work on another new kit for Ann Kullberg's site . This time it will be shells on Ampersand Pastelbord. I can't wait to sink my colored pencils into it! First though I am banished to a world of mating socks... such an unhappy place!