Keene, NH Pumpkin Festival Tommorrow

I haven't done more on the giant piece except for toning down the color in the background and stretching it all the way to the right so I won't bother with an updated post of that.

All day today I've been getting ready for the Keene, NH Pumpkin Festival tomorrow. Our little town of 30,000 people have a festival every year with thousands of lit jack-olanterns (over 24,000 last year) and even more people strolling the streets looking at them (80,000 people last year attended the festival). Needless to say it is a favorite family day of the year. So today we carved loads of pumpkins, painted some, and I made a princess cape for my daughter. Now we're making gingerbread leaf cookies to bring to the school I teach I at tomorrow.

I won't bore you with all 6 of the pumpkins we made, but I will show you all my silly Hedwig/Harry Potter pumpkin. It has to be a jack-o-lantern to be included in the count so I drilled holes around the sides and back for the light to come through.

So no drawing tomorrow either! We'll be at the festival most of the day and then back at night to see them lit up!

Take 2 - WIP

Click the image to see it larger

Here's where I'm at on the monster piece today. I'm having a bit of trouble with the background. The color I was planning for didn't look so good after seeing it on the final piece. I think the one I have now is coming forward a bit but I'm not too sure about greying it down too much. I could add blue to it like there is on the left - light or dark grey blue - which would seriously change the mood of the piece. I wanted to keep it light and cheery.

Really Wide Still-life

I stopped by the Amherst, NH library this past weekend where I will be having my artwork shown next month. I wanted to see the hanging space and found that it would be a benefit to have a large piece just as you walk into the library to grab people's attention.
I had custom ordered a bunch of Pastelbord to the size of 12" x 36" which is the same proportions as my 6" x 18" boards. When I got them though I was actually quite surprised how big 36 inches is!

So here is the beginning of this monster piece.

Hydrangeas 11x 14"

OK finished! Whew! It took 3 times the amount of time as I usually spend. Plus I had a bit of a bug this week and then had a wonderful weekend with my husband while the kids stayed at their grandparents house.

I stopped by t the Amherst Library in Amherst, NH to see the space for my show there next month. As soon as you walk into the library there is space to hang a large wide piece, so I've decided to spend the rest of the time I have working on a wide drawing. I have a bunch of 12 x 36" boards, so I will be using one of them. Basically it is the same format as my 6" x 18" pieces but SUPERSIZED! :D

Here's what my living room looked like while I was setting up and photographing the composition for that wide piece. I'm still cleaning it up!

Hydrangeas Work in Progress

Woo! What did I get myself into? I love hydrangeas and now that they have changed to their fall colors, I snuck back over to my neighbors yard and cut some to draw.

I'm posting the work in progress because they just take so long to draw! I'll be shifting the values on some of the groups - darkening some and lightening others after I get all the bunches in and can see how they affect each other.