Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Newport Artists' Guild Demo



On Sunday I gave a colored pencil demo & talk for the Artists' Guild at the Newport Art Museum. The photo on the left is the drawing that I used to demonstrate my technique. The board I am working on is Ampersand Gessoboard with a layer of terra cotta Colourfix Primer on the surface. You can see the drawing that I did in white pencil and how I began with laying in the highlights on the cherries and the shadows around the fruit and the plate. 

In my demo, I worked on the cherries using colored pencils and solvent intermittently. The solvent will dissolve the colored pencil so it is applied more like paint. When I have time, I take oil painting classes and often find myself struggling to mix the paints on the palate first. I'm so used to applying the colored pencil directly to my surface and allowing the colors to mix on the surface as I layer them. From the oil painting classes, I have learned to paint with colored pencil!

The Artists' Guild was a great group of artists and asked many questions about my work and my techniques. Some of these questions I had to think about before answering. It is always interesting to talk to an audience because I always end up learning things from them as well as they learn things from me.

2 comments:

Kathy said...

Looks like you had no problem getting back into teaching/demonstrating. I like how you worked on a piece primed in a darker color and pulled the whites out of it. I think a lot of people aren't sure how you keep light/bright colors on a dark background.

Unknown said...

Congratulations on getting your new blog up and running!

Love the piece that you demonstrated.

See you in Seattle I hope...