I've been working in a studio on the third floor of my condo for three years now, sharing the space with my husband (hi, sweets) and numerous cats. This has become problematic, not just because together Jim and I have too much stuff, but also because some of what I do is not meant for cats to eat. It's lovely to have a cat on your lap while you're at your computer blogging, but less lovely to have a cat leave paw prints across your pastel, over the drafting table and onto the floor. So, since I have a fairy godmother (thanks, Mom!), we're building a new studio!
We have a large barn, formerly a commercial chicken coop, that's been home to our horses for about 12 years now. I cannot begin to describe to you how dirty this building was when we first tackled it. It took several dumpsters, a 7 foot tall burn pile and endless showers (for us, not the barn) to get it reasonably clean. Then, my mom's antique home restoration business took it over for lumber storage for many years. Finally, with mom retiring (yeah, right), we decided to clean it again and renovate it to include a workshop and office for the hubs and an art studio for me, a room for storage and space for the antique barn loom we've been given (more on that in another post), and a tack area to store all the horsey stuff. Like I said, it's a large barn. We started the rehab back in late February, and we're now almost ready to move in. So now that I know that we're actually going to live through the ordeal, I thought I'd share some pics. I'm going to spread this out over a few posts, finishing with the move in, kind of like teaser trailers....
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I'm honored to have had a pastel painting chosen for inclusion in the exhibition For Pastel Only by the Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod! This is my first juried show, and the selection juror was an artist I really admire, Marla Baggetta. (http://www.marlabaggetta.com/ ) Thank you, Marla! **happy dance** I'll be taking my painting, Silo, down to South Yarmouth on June 14. I'm framing it in a gold leaf frame (another first for me), without a mat, with clear acrylic spacers to separate the pastel from the glass and create a gutter for pastel dust to fall without sticking to the glass. Here are the details about the show (I'll post a reminder in June, closer to the show date) :
I'm proud to be a part of a new group show at NOA Gallery in Groton, featuring the wonderful work of local MA artists! This is an outstanding collection of contemporary art that revels in the riot of springtime colors--which we really need after the winter we've had! We're having receptions on April 19 and June 6--hope you can come join the party!
NOA Gallery 113 Main Street, Groton, MA www.noagallery.com I'm delighted to be part of a group show of work by the six instructors from NOA School of Fine Art this month at the Parish Center for the Arts in Westford, MA. It's a beautiful space, a renovated church in scenic Westford Center, and all the work looks wonderful! We're having a reception on Sunday, January 18, noon to 3 pm.
Oh boy, it's Christmas. I decided that I needed to expand my selection of pastels, and with back-to-school sales at most of the art supply stores, I hoped for a good deal. I shopped around pretty obsessively for almost two weeks, and finally took the plunge. An investment for the future, as they say. So now, in addition to my 30+ year old Yarkas, a surprisingly versatile Mungyo Gallery set, some Charvin and NuPastels for fine lines and blending and my Sennelier starter set, I now have Sennelier landscape colors and the lovely Terry Ludwig grays collection inspired by Maggie Price. All of which necessitated some new storage! I know some folks like to keep their precious pastels safely entombed in the little individual foam pockets they arrive in, but honestly, what a pain. If I keep all the pastels in their separate boxes on layers of foam, how will I choose colors? How can I compare a gray green from the Mungyo set to one from the Sennelier or Ludwig sets? And where will I put all those little foam trays? How will I even remember what I have, enough to go digging for the proper box? So, off I went to the interwebs to find a tray that could hold all the colors, with minimal compartmentalization--just enough for broad categories: reds, yellows, blues and grays. Ideally, I wanted something that I could use at home in my studio, but would also be portable when I decided to paint outside--without having to choose and repack everything each time. And I found some that were perfect...except for the price! Really, hundreds of dollars for wooden boxes of the right depth, without any padding to prevent breakage, and without any way to coordinate with my plein air setup. If I had the bucks to buy everything new, I would be home free--but I haven't been buying lottery tickets lately! I have an ancient Grumbacher pochade box given to me by a friend--sturdy and classic--and a really nice heavy duty tripod that I bought for my professional video camera when I was in grad school. That setup has served me well for oil painting, so I wanted to build a special tray insert so I could use it with the pastels. Long story short, I found a custom foam company online where I could order high density polyethylene foam sheets, cut to my specs for thickness and size! The foam arrived the other day, along with special glue, and after a little bit of work with an exacto knife I have a foam insert that fits snugly into the main compartment of the pochade box. I made dividers out of foam core, and I use a styrofoam butcher's tray to pull out a subset of my colors for each painting. There's a lid for the lower compartment to hold all the pastels in place when the box is closed. I make my own substrates for pastel painting too, using Golden's Acrylic Pastel Ground over either cold press watercolor paper (the less expensive option) or Arches oil paper (my favorite paper, but a little pricier at $7/sheet). In this photo you can see a sheet of prepared paper taped with acid free masking tape to a cardboard support that fits in the slots in the pochade box lid. When I go outside to paint, I'll bring sheets of glassine, tape, more cardboard and butterfly clips to make a 'painting sandwich' that will protect my work while I carry it home. Phew! I'm sure there are some kinks to work out, but I'm excited to give it a try! Well, this is better, right? Sometimes bigger is better. This acrylic painting on paper is 22" x 30"-- a full sheet. Thanks to Mr. Ryder's video advice, I kept at the versions of the painting until my brain could get out of its own way and think more about the form and the brushstrokes than the details. I also love the bright red that draws the eye up the coastline and balances the softer grays of the fog--this was achieved using Mr. Ryder's trick of laying down a layer of oil bar pigment and painting over it with acrylic. Then, since acrylic won't really stick to oil, you can come back in with a palette knife and scrape away the top layer to let the depth of the rich oil color come through. I did this also with the grassy area on the far left. Loads of fun, and well worth the effort of repeated studies! I'll definitely keep working on this technique!
I decided to try some abstract landscapes this week, inspired by a fabulous video series by UK painter Brian Ryder, available at the North Light Shop. What a terrific pair of videos! Usually when you see an instructional video with an artist doing a demo, there's a rehearsed feel to the art, and you get the sense that the artist is showing you a repeat of a painting he/she has done before--all the kinks are worked out, all the decisions made, everything tried and true. But Mr. Ryder simply lets us watch while he paints, narrating his process and his choices and showing us how he gets from initial studies in watercolor and oil to a large scale abstract landscape in acrylic. He lets us see him consider his options and work through the painting in a completely fresh first pass. The only thing practiced is his technique, which has obviously been honed through years of painting. This has to be one of my favorite resources from a great artist! (The other being a stellar video from Marshall Arisman, I'll link to that in a separate post!) So, starry-eyed and excited, I decided to try an abstract version of a recent pastel landscape study...and I have to say it's really not ready for prime time! But in the interest of hopefully showing improvement and steadily gaining a new skill, I'll show you what it looked like: On the left is the full study, 12" x 12" (Not sure why it appears rectangular here; the painting is square, so I guess Weebly has some format restraints on the gallery images). There are some things I like about it: the sky and fog, the sense of motion of the water hitting the shore line, and some of the foreground brush strokes. But the composition is awkward and the color scheme is not right (this is acrylic, by the way, though the first study was pastel). The setting was supposed to be Blueberry Hill in Acadia National Park, and the reference photos I took were on a foggy cool day...my abstract somehow looks to me like Barbados before a storm. ;-/ The pic on the right is a cropped version, which I think somewhat improves the composition. What do you think? Anyway, clearly I have to practice this abstract stuff...poor me.
I recently came across an older series of posts from James Gurney about relative neutral grays and using gamut masking to tailor your color choices with a limited palette.
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2011/09/part-1-gamut-masking-method.html I decided to give it a try, and used my pocket color wheel to choose limited palettes for two small pastel studies. For the first, a harmonious range of yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green and green, plus just a bit of complementary violet and pink (red tint); for the second, a range of blue-green through red-violet with a pretty strong complementary yellow-orange. (Yes, OK, those are pretty big ranges for a limited palette, but I'm a color nut and find it VERY hard to limit my colors in pastels!) OK, I just have to share these pics of some of my students' work! These are just a few that I snapped with my iPhone, so not great photos...but great work by the students! After our early skill lessons, these first two projects have been still lifes and florals. Take a look! Aren't they wonderful? We've covered oil painting materials, color theory and mixing, glazing and alla prima techniques--and it shows! I'm really proud of them! Next week we're starting landscapes...I can't wait to see what they create! (And by the way, if this looks like fun to you, come check out some art classes at NOA Gallery! www.noagallery.com
Today, during yet another snowstorm, I spent a quiet day indoors planning and preparing for my spring term oil painting course at NOA Gallery in Groton, MA. I'm quite excited to start this course again; it's been a while since it was offered and I've revamped it and modernized it. That sounds odd, but the fact is that a few years ago I didn't have an iPad, and while I've always made use of the internet in the classroom to show images (thank you, Google Art Project!), there are a few ways that I use digital media now that I didn't before. Primarily, I now have an extensive library of excerpts and tutorials from Artist Daily and the North Light Shop, and several really super instructional videos. I'm also getting more into blogging, which is to say that along with becoming increasingly verbose, I've also found some wonderful, wonderful art blogs. I've already mentioned James Gurney's blog, gurneyjourney.blogspot.com (worth mentioning again); today I direct you to Ann Trusty and John Hulsey's blog The Artist's Road http://www.theartistsroad.net/ . If you love being outdoors, and painting, then check out this generous collection of advice about plein air painting.
Anyway, when I got to the end of my syllabus, to my last topic, Mixed Media--in which I get to throw out all the conventions and play around with all the amazing materials available now--I revisited the website of one of my favorite mixed media artists, Nick Bantock. Remember the craze of the Griffin and Sabine trilogy? Well, I was delighted to discover that Mr. Bantock has a blog, so please check it out: http://nick-bantock.blogspot.com/ . His unique voice is such fun to read! |
Alexia Rosoff Wilber
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