Two More Miniatures

Here's two more miniatures for the Holiday Miniature Show at the Sharon Art Center Gallery in Peterborough, NH. Both again are 2.5" x 3.5"

Did Big now SMALL

Well here's a big switch!

I will be participating in the Sharon Art Center Galleries annual miniature show this holiday season. I need 10 pieces for the show and have a few I did a while back, which leaves needing 7 more before Nov. 3rd.

They are both 2.5" x 3.5" on Wallis paper.

Large Apple Drawing

Buffet Table 12" x 36"

Here it is pretty much finished - I reserve the right to adjust things still. :-) All the items in the still-life are slightly larger than life-size. That coupled with the format makes the viewer scan from left to right like they are walking past the table. Actually I believe that is literally what people will do when they view it at the library. It will be placed on the wall just as they walk in the door and in that situation few people will be seeing it from a distance they can "take in" the entire piece at once. Instead they will be walking along with it as you would a time line tacked up on a wall.

I consider this my first experiment with working large. There were several things I was surprised that were difficult. It was very tempting to make everything detailed and sharp, but with the very shallow tabletop, I needed to make sure some objects had dominance, especially the peeled apple on the plate. Since my shading style requires me to work flat on a table or semi-flat on a table I had to switch gears every 10-15 minutes, prop up the piece and wotk with it inclined.

I hope to make more pieces in this size!

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.