Pet Portrait and Printmakers Portfolio

 Here is Mylo's finished portrait which is 6x8" colored pencil on Rtistx board. I used the Icarus board to warm the pencil and smooth it out on the surface.

Below: I have been part of a collaborative effort of thirty one printmakers at the Providence Art Club and Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA, to create forty five portfolios of 5x7" prints. Each artist receives a portfolio and we sell the remaining portfolios. I believe there are only a few left for purchase. My print is below and is titled "Through the Reeds". My processes are solar print etching (turtles) and linoleum cut (reeds) then hand colored with colored pencils. We've been working on this portfolio project for a few years and are very excited to have it completed and opening this weekend.

Pet Portrait of Mylo

I've been working on a 6x8" commissioned colored pencil portrait of this little dog, Mylo. I am working on Rtistx RTX300 board which has a nice tooth to accept the colored pencil and a surface I can varnish later. I can also cut the board and have nice smooth edges which I need because I'm going to frame this piece in a floater frame when it is completed.

For the first several layers of colored pencil I am working on the heated Icarus board in order to melt the pencil and have it go on smoothly and fill in the textured surface of the board where I need it. I can add more layers of pencil and build up the dogs fur with color and texture without too much of the textured board showing through. The Icarus board also helps mesh the pencil into the surface so I can build layers quicker. In these photos, the background hasn't been worked at all yet.

I'll post more photos when I have the portrait completed.

Beach Stones and Water are Finally Finished

I finally finished this piece and I'm almost reluctant to say that it has taken me two months to complete. I started the piece in January just before my father went into the hospital with the flu and fluid in his lungs. He stayed for a week and then went into a nursing home where he has been since but will be coming home next week. I've been running back and forth first to the hospital and then to the nursing home almost daily. Now I am setting up the 24-hour care he will need when he comes home. He didn't want to have to go to the nursing home and now he doesn't want to pay for care thus, we've been arguing that this has to happen. What do you do when a parent becomes like a child and is totally dependent on you? It's overwhelming. I had been involved in his care previously but now it's become physically and emotionally draining. However, I have worked to get him back to walking, in better spirits and at a point where he can come home with care. Unfortunately, my art took the back seat for the last two months. I taught some classes and tried to get some work done but emotionally it was difficult. Besides this piece, I have also started a large piece on mylar and am going to be handmaking a book with small drawings. I'm excited about both projects and really need to start working on a regular basis, when I get away from my art I feel somewhat lost and very irritable!

Just to review, this drawing is 18x24" on Rtistx 300 Board. I used Prismacolor, Lyra Rembrandt and Faber Polychromos pencils. I wrote details on how I worked the rocks in this previous post. My next step was to continue upward and put in suggestions of more rocks and the sea foam encroaching the rocks. I decided to leave the top left predominantly white, I wanted to keep it somewhat abstract with just suggestions of rocks underneath the flowing water. This piece will be one of the entries I submit to the CPSA national exhibition but I have to title it first. Right now it's untitled and I'm in the though process.

Working on the Beach Stones

I'm continuing my work on the beach stones drawing which is 18x24" on Rtistx board. I've finished the foreground stones, which took me a few weeks because I found I could only concentrate for a few hours at a time because of all the elements and detail. I've been using Polychromos, Prismacolor and Lyra Rembrandt pencils for the rocks. Let me tell you why and what my technique is. The Rtistx board is a sanded surface and I find the Polychromos work best for the first layer of color. After I apply the color, I burnish it with a bristle brush to even out the tone. Polychromos aren't as waxy as other brands so they tend to rub into the paper almost as a pastel stick would. Next I apply layers of Prismacolor and Lyra Rembrandt. The Lyras have an oil base so they don't crumble as much as the Prismacolors. However, I also have to choose my pencils according to the colors I need for the rocks. Because I'm working from the bottom upwards and leaning on my drawing, I will put a piece of clean paper under my arm so I won't smudge the drawing I've already done. I also spray with workable fixative between layers of colored pencil to keep the pencil from lifting or smudging on the board.

After I've applied the color, there are still some areas I want to look smooth but sometimes doesn't because of the sanded board surface. If the rocks look too textured, I hit the surface with a soft brush and some odorless mineral spirits which dissolves the pencil pigment so it moves like paint. I brush it lightly so I get the effect of watercolor paint. One of the brushes I like to use is a Mongolian Sable 1/4" flat from Dynasty Brush Company.

My next step is to continue working towards the top of the drawing where the waves and white foam are encroaching on the stones. The easy part about the top is that much of the board will be left white to show the lightness of the foam.

Beach Stones

I've started working on a new large colored pencil piece, it is going to be a vertical 18x24" and I'm working it on Rtistx 300 board. I chose that surface because I wanted to work on a white board in which I could use solvent and also varnish at the end. I like the Rtistx because it can stand up to both. For this piece I am using a mixture of Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils and my stiff bristle brushes to burnish the pencil pigment into the paper.

The picture at the top is of just the bottom of the beginning of my drawing. The photo beneath is the reference photo for the bottom area. I am using three reference photos of the scene for the entire 18x24 drawing, the middle reference photo will be of smaller, more distant rocks and the top of the photo will be mostly the waves and foam washing over the rocks. I couldn't find one photo of the scene that I liked so I am going to combine at least the three and work the water into the rocks using some of my imagination.

I began drawing the rocks with three Prismacolor pencils: Indigo Blue, Warm Grey 50% and Warm Grey 70% working in the darks with indigo and parts of the other rocks with the grays. I'm working this way to hopefully simplify the drawing before adding all of the other colors. It has already taken me many hours to get this far so I think this drawing is going to take me a while. Stay tuned for upcoming posts on this drawing.

Angel's Trumpets & Chinese Lantern

I've been on hiatus with my art and my blog writing because we just moved. We only moved to the next town but we downsized from a house to a condo and the whole downsizing process happened during the holidays as we signed the contract to sell our house the day before Thanksgiving. Our move also consisted of helping two of our sons move from our house into their own apartments so it was almost three moves in one. I can't tell you how much stuff I gave away or threw away and we still have a storage unit that is chocked full of Ferreira "treasure" but for now we're settled in and adjusted to our new condo and town. What I like the most is living in downtown Bristol, being able to walk everywhere with many shops and restaurants only a few blocks away (dangerous!). I also like the ease of taking care of a condo as opposed to the house; the trash and recycling chute right in the hallway vs. driving everything to the dump; and on days like this, not having to plow the driveway and shovel the walks. What I miss the most is being able to just let the dog out the door with his invisible fence as now we have to walk him outside on the leash every time he has to go.

Now I'm hoping I'll have more time to spend on art. I've been working on the piece of artwork that I created for the RI Blood Center but I can't show it because it needs to be kept secret and unveiled by the Blood Center in March. I've also been working on this unfinished piece that I blogged about last September and October. I thought I should finish the drawing in honor of Chinese New Year which is this coming Monday. This is just a portion of the piece which fit into my scanner, there is more to the left, to the right, and on the bottom. It's drawn on Rtistx board using Prismacolor and Coloursoft pencils. I needed to smooth out the pencil because of the texture in the board and I didn't want to add solvents so I used the heated Icarus drawing board to soften and melt some of the pencil allowing me to add more pencil layers and smooth them out. What I did find is that the Rtistx board warps when it is heated, thus I had to work on small areas and try to hold the board flat. However, it does flatten out again when it cools.

Working on the Angel's Trumpets

One negative aspect of taking a long vacation is that when I come home it can take me up to a week to get myself mentally back into my work. At first there are tedious duties to attend to such as unpacking suitcases and restocking the refrigerator and then frustration when I try to sit down to draw. I finally eased into my work again yesterday and I began by studying my Angel Trumpet flower drawing and deciding to add more flowers and foliage to the composition. I am adding a large blossom at the top left corner and four more flowers at the bottom, varying size. I've decided to leave the flowers and leaves for now and start to work on the Chinese lantern on the right.

I am very excited to learn that this piece "Round About" won the Martin Hannon Memorial Award in the Salmagundi Club Fall Auction and Exhibition in NYC. It's very small, 8x9" but has been one of my favorites. I submitted three pieces to the auction and all three currently have bids. If you'd like to view the on-line auctions here is the link.

So Much I Want To Do and Just So Many Hours in a Day!

The current drawing I have been working on is a composition Angel Trumpet flowers and Chinese landern on Rtistx white board. Above is a portion of the drawing which wouldn't fit in my scanner, the size is approximately 11x15". Below I have put my reference photo so you can see the basic composition although I am planning to make some changes, mainly simplifying the background (no bricks) and changing all the dark greens in the bottom third of the drawing perhaps one or more flowers. The elements in the photo which enticed me to draw this scene are the sunlit flowers and the blue/orange complimentary colors of flowers and lantern. I started with the Angel Trumpets (my focal points) and then letting the drawing evolve around them.
The image below is one of my printmaking experimentations. As I mentioned in the previous blog entry I have been taking a solar printmaking class one day a week for a year now. There are 6 students and the instructor in the printmaking room and we literally shut ourselves off from the world and print to our hearts' content. I enjoy it so much because the printing process is a completely different than working on my colored pencil drawings and sometimes I just want to try another form of art that is different and hands-on.

So after a year of classes I have ended up with many experimental etchings in all different colors and styles, particularly etchings of my Koi fish prints which I experimented on for the portfolio project. I took my various prints and cut them up into different shapes and sizes then gluing the prints onto notecards. This card below is an etching with textured rice paper chiné colléd onto my printing paper and then painted with watercolor on the fish when the print was dry. Thus I have a group of little handmade notecards in which I can to people who will hopefully enjoy them!
While putting together notecards, I got to thinking about art and how I can spend hour upon hour creating (when I have the free time), thus I am never bored. I recently had dinner with two of my close friends who both work in another industry other than art. My two friends were discussing being "empty nesters" with adolescent children going to college or having graduated from college hereby leaving my friends with less household duties and more free time. Both were contemplating what they were going to do with all their time. Of course my first (selfish) thought was ... hmmm, can I put them to work helping me? I did suggest they come to my studio and try their hand at some form of art.

After the conversation, I thought about how lucky I am that I will never be bored because there are several types of art mediums I would like to try and several more I would like to be proficient at. Even when I'm not creating, I'm teaching art classes or looking at art at galleries, exhibits and museums. And I can do all this for the rest of my life, so how lucky am I?

With that being said, I am off to Paris tomorrow and will be towing my somewhat reluctant husband to all the art museums I can see in a week.

Beginning and Finishing

I have started a new piece, another drawing of tulips. I seem to be attracted to them lately. This photo I took on my deck of beautiful orange tulips in the blue glass vase. I'm going to add a background which will be a simple band of landscape and a lot of pale blue sky. And once the background is drawn, I will have to readjust color in the tulips so they will come forward. The surface is Rtistx and I am using Prismacolors, Verithins and Lyra Rembrandts.

Here is my paint tube drawing nearly completed. I have stood the drawing up in my studio so I can walk by for the next few days, look at the piece, and decide if it needs anything else. I am usually critical of my own work but I really love this piece and had so much fun portraying the crinkly old tubes of paint.

Splendor

Splendor is the title I chose for my "bowl of cherries" colored pencil piece. I've been working on and off for a month, especially on intricate patterns in the glass dish. As I mentioned previously, I used several brands of pencils; Prismacolor, Derwent Coloursoft, Luminance, Lyra Rembrandt and Prismacolor Verithin. The surface is Rtistx board which is a sanded surface so I began with the Prismacolor and Coloursoft pencils which are softer, especially the reds which are very soft pigment. On top of the softer pencils I filled in the textured surface and burnished with the Lyra Rembrandt pencils and Luminance. I especially liked the Luminance white for burnishing the white patterns in the dish. It was just hard enough and opaque enough to cover the surface perfectly. I used some of the Verithin pencils, especially the Tuscan Red to burnish the dark shadowed area behind the cherries.

I needed to render the cherries in a slightly different way to make them pop off the surface and not compete with the intricate dish pattern so I added solvent to the pencil. By adding solvent I dissolved layers of pencil so that it is applied in a thick layer. When it was dry, I added a top layer of lighter red Prismacolor and Coloursoft pencils to really make those cherries pop.

The finished size is 14x17", varnished and framed without glass in a warm silver frame and linen liner. This piece is going to Bristol Art Gallery for my solo exhibit Eye Candy 2 opening this Saturday, April 9.

New Hampshire Workshop

I drove up to New Hampshire on Friday afternoon and stayed with an artist friend I haven't seen in many years, Mary Jane Cross, who paints in oils. We had long conversations about art and she cooked me a delicious dinner and breakfast the next morning. Saturday morning I woke up to 11º weather. Who would have thought it would be so cold at the end of March? Fortunately, at least the days are longer. I then drove to Keene where I taught a one-day colored pencil workshop for the Monadnock Area Artist Association. Fifteen students attended the workshop and it was a nice day. The range of expertise was from beginner to advanced, and several work in other mediums (pastel, watercolor, decorative painting) so colored pencil was somewhat new for them. I enjoyed it, I think they did also, and I'm honored that MAAA asked me to teach a workshop.

After talking about materials and having students do some practice exercises, I set out a variety of still life subjects for the students choose from for their drawings. The surface I chose to bring the students to work on was Rtistx board 300 for colored pencil. Here are some photos.

These two ladies chose a small grouping of shells to draw. Also shown is the apple drawing I had them practice on before starting.

Here Ellen is drawing the bottles in the upper left.
Liz chose a cluster of tomatoes (not pictured here) and started with a beautiful rendering of the stems and leaves.
Here are a few of the pieces and the practice exercises when we were setting them up for a final critique.

Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries ... Or Not

I've been plunged into a situation that was totally unexpected only two months ago. My father was hospitalized for congestive heart failure about 3 weeks ago and while he's back at home now, he needs full time care. I've been living with him for the last two weeks and finding that he not only has heart problems but also memory problems and possibly dementia. I am taking care of his every need, including daily care, coordinating visiting nurses and physical therapy as well as doctor appointments, not to mention the finances and legal things that the artist in me knows little about. This is the second most challenging task I've ever had to do in my life (the first was surviving cancer) and I've had more than one meltdown. As if that wasn't enough, my dad's lady friend died last week so we've dealt with his grief as well as attending the funeral and consoling the family. I am hoping to set up care for my dad within the next week so I can return to teaching my classes and doing my artwork soon. But first I can't wait to just return HOME and sleep in my own BED without having to worry about sleeping with one ear listening to when he wakes up and wanders.

For now I am working on this one colored pencil drawing whenever I have a few hours alone. I should call this piece "My Sanity" because working with my colored pencils is keeping me sane. Right now it looks more like "ghostly" cherries because I am working on the background first. My surface is Rtistx board and I am using a variety of brands of pencils; Prismacolor, Prismacolor Verithin, Derwent Coloursoft, Luminance and Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils. I am not using solvent on the background so I am working first with the Prismacolor Premier Pencils and Derwent Coloursoft and then burnishing with the Lyras and Verithins in order to create a solid surface with none of the textured Rtistx board showing through. I've chosen to render the colorful glass dish and reflection first and when I'm satisfied, I will begin on the cherries. The cherries really have to "pop" off the intricate background so I am waiting until last to tackle them. I will list colors in my next entry.

Oh happy snow day!

Our New England weather has been cold and snowy and I haven't been to the studio to work on Elaina and so I started a new colored pencil piece over the weekend at home. I have some photos of beautiful red and yellow tulips in a glass vase in which I took on a gray day and have been thinking about them for a while. My idea and inspiration is to portray the vase of tulips as vibrant and bright against a quiet blue/gray background of a rainy day. The surface in which I'm working on 18x24" Rtistx board. This photo (above) isn't great, I took it inside in natural light and the brightness of snow out the window is graying everything in the front, however the tulips are still fairly bright enough to get the idea of my start.

The galleries are asking for my colored pencil work not to be framed under glass. The lighting from above reflects on the glass and the piece is difficult to see. So I have to rethink my surfaces. I Chose Rtistx for this piece because it can be varnished but also has less texture than the other boards I work on. I need a softer surface for the delicate petals and leaves, yet still a board that can withstand being varnished afterward.

After reading Paula Pertile's blog entry on colored pencil swatches for the various brands, I decided to give my Lyra Rembrandt pencils a workout on this piece. The Prismas and Coloursofts are softer and crumble a bit and flake off as I layer them. I'm still using them along with the Rembrandts which aren't as crumbly and can be applied a little more evenly. Paula is correct, they do go on like 'buttah'! The Rtistx is also wonderful for layering lights on top of darks and will take many layers of color. The white surface makes the color even more vibrant. I don't like to burnish much on my work, I like the texture of the surface and characteristics of the pencil to show through. If I do decide I need to cover some of the texture and solidify areas of the colored pencil, I will add solvent.
Here is the ad with my artwork that will appear in February issue of American Art Collector magazine. I also found out today that this piece "Red Reflections" was juried into CPSA's Explore This 7 Online Exhibition that will be on the website starting February 1. This is my 4th acceptance into the Explore This exhibitions. I'm also very excited because one of my c.p. students, Cheryl Borbone, had her piece "Cherry Martini" accepted into Explore This 7. While she worked on this piece independently, I am happy to have helped her develop her colored pencil skills over the last few years she has taken classes with me.

Cherries on Rtistx

Working on Rtistx Board

Rtistx company sent me a few of their different boards to experiment with so I pulled one from the pile and started a colored pencil piece. Its actually the RTX280 board for pastel but is accepting the pencil very well. I usually don't use black colored pencil, but I decided to begin with a black underpainting by varying the pressure of the strokes to create different shades of black values. I'm working the cherries from dark to light and using a variety of different brands of colored pencils including a small set of Caran d'Arche Luminance 6901 that I picked up in Italy. I am selecting colors and brands according to colorfastness and all of the different pencils are working just fine. This board can hold a quite a few layers.