Off for vacation

Well here I go off on another vacation. This time I'm going to the Chicago suburbs to visit my family for 2 1/2 weeks. I've tried bringing art supplies with me before but I never get around to doing artwork there so I am going to try and not stress over it and just have a good time with family.... even though I deadlines.... deadlines... ok I said I'm not going to stress.

Shadow's Bliss

Shadow's Bliss
What I was really trying to set up in this still-life is two distinct environments - the outside and the inside of the bag(light/dark). It doesn't mean anything... I mean it isn't supposed to represent "shelter" or anything like that. I just LOVE creating complex darks, so putting the apple in shadow allows me to explore that. In painting (as opposed to drawing) one technique is to have complex darks built up of many thin layers and simple thick lights. I just am so happy that colored pencil can do the same thing. I think the effect is fascinating. It gives the light an almost solid feel like it is an object in itself but the fun part is exploring the many colors in the darks.

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!