New Colored Pencil Tutorial!

I am excited to announce my new colored pencil In Depth Tutorial created through the Ann Kullberg Team. Have you wanted to try drawing luscious candy apples in colored pencil? This 28-step tutorial will help you to learn one color at a time. 

Download the tutorial here, the cost is only $12.99

 

Two New Workshops!

I am teaching two workshops:

UPCYCLED BOOK SCULPTURE WORKSHOP 

Tuesday & Wednesday July 13 - 14, 2021, 10 am to 4 pm

Warwick Center for the Arts

3259 Post Road, Warwick, Rhode Island 02886 • (401) 737-0010

Members: $130 / Non-Members $150

In this 2-day workshop we will transform your book into a unique piece of artwork. There are endless possibilities of ideas for repurposing books into something fun and imaginative. A book sculpture can create a special memory or just a fun piece to embellish you home. Students will learn about techniques for altering books, folding pages and adding embellishments such as collage and color to pages.

This will be an in-person program, so we will be taking covid precautions. 

SESASIDE TREASURES IN WATERCOLOR PENCIL WORKSHOP 

Saturday, June 26, 2021, 10 am to 4 pm

Warwick Center for the Arts

3259 Post Road, Warwick, Rhode Island 02886 • (401) 737-0010

Members: $90 / Non-Members $125

In this one-day workshop we will be capturing the essence of the coastline by drawing and painting shells and other seaside treasures. Artists of all levels can discover the versatility when working with watercolor pencils. We will learn about tips and techniques on how to manage the color wet or dry as well as how to mix and layer colors, create washes and textures. Watercolor pencils are portable, versatile and great for travel, quick sketching or a detailed drawing. They can be used alone or combined with other mediums.  This will be an in-person program, so we will be taking covid precautions. 

For More Information Click HERE for the WCFA website

Image Transfer on Pottery

Creating image transfer in just black and white, experimenting with pattern.

Here is one of the forms I use to press into the clay to create the dish/tray form. 

Lemon drawing just after being transferred. I still need to clean up edges.

Image has just been transferred on the clay. This is going to be a little octopus dish after I press it into the form. 

Here I am working on a clay form, this is a container I handbuilt from coils and added image transfers of the nautilis shells on the three sides. 

On this platter I decided to get more illustrative with the sea coral and shells. 

 

Colorful Candy Apple Drawing!

Here is my most recent drawing, I chose to draw colorful candy apples because I love bright colors especially reds! I worked on Strathmore 500 illustration board using Prismacolor and Caran d'Ache Luminance colored pencils. The drawing is 15x15" and I use my own photo reference. I make lots of candy apples and then photograph them for later use. I would prefer to draw from life but they begin to melt and change color and texture rather quickly. So ... we eat them instead! Feel free to ask questions or comment!

Here are just some of the colored pencils I used. Notice the candy apple surfaces don't look smooth. The texture of the paper is showing though the pencil.

In this photo, I used the small bristle brush to burnish color into the paper and create the smooth surface in the apples. I also used the white colored pencil to burnish the light reflected areas by applying white on top of color.

 

Image Transfer Drawing on Clay

We've been lucky to have been able to spend the winter in Jupiter, Florida and I have been taking Image Transfer on Clay & Handbuilding Ceramics classes at the Lighthouse Art Center in Tequesta, Florida. I chose to try a new medium which is working with clay and really am enjoying another method of drawing and transferring the drawings onto clay. The drawing is done on newsprint with needle tipped bottles of underglaze and then colors are painted on with colored slip (liquefied suspension of clay particles in water). I have been using white slip as the background.

The slightly wet drawing is then transferred (rubbed) onto slightly wet clay. I am using a red Hawaiian clay because I like the contrast of the dark clay against the light colored and white slip on the drawings. I then press the clay into a form to create the dish or tray and clean up the edges. 

I always think it's such a great learning experience to experiment with new mediums and techniques.

Drawing on paper with the underglaze.

Finished turtle dish

Transferring the (underglaze and colored slip) drawing from the newsprint onto the clay

Finished lobster dish after being kiln fired. Colors aren't perfect, the white slip is varied in thickness which makes it more interesting.

New dish in progress and before kiln firing. Cleaning up edges next.

Little fish dish, the only piece that has come out perfectly formed and painted! Wow!
But I'm still learning.

Little octopus dish in the making

Pot  and saucer I made for my orchid with a ginko leaf design.

Round fish dish with a crack! But still fun to display or use.

Book Sculptures at Providence Art Club

 Pictured here are the twelve upcycled book sculptures that I made this year and are currently on display at the Providence Art Club Little Picture Holiday Show, Providence, Rhode Island. Over 100 artists are displaying small pieces of artwork in all different mediums and all under $300. This year I decided to add my book sculptures to this exhibit. The exhibit is open until December 23 and is open every day from noon to 5 pm. 

In the past I have shown my colored pencil works but this year I had been creating book sculptures and decided to enter these pieces of art into the holiday show. 

The Swirl

This is a new piece I just finished titled The Swirl. I had been sketching shells in a small sketchbook and thought I might put several together in one interesting type of still life. I chose and positioned the shells on a white board secured with putty. I drew each one individually. But first I started with an underpainting in Derivan Liquid Pencil diluted with water applied using a small watercolor brush. I worked on Strathmore 500 Series Illustration Board which is very sturdy and could hold the water and liquid graphite pencil without buckling. I worked tones/values in black and white and then layered colored pencil on top of the graphite when it had dried. 

This shell (top) has only two colors of blue applied over the graphite. The liquid graphite underpainting helps me establish tones of gray and characteristics within each shell before adding color. My brush and the tube of liquid pencil is pictured below.

Below is how I worked on the piece, adding all of the underpainting in liquid pencil before adding color. I did skip around a bit to draw different shells. My reason for working with these two mediums is to experiment with combining the mediums and also I have been curious about adding an underpainting to the colored pencil. To draw each shell I used a variety of colored pencils: Prismacolor, Caran d'Ache Luminance, Faber Castell Polychromos and Prismacolor Verithin. 

Two Prize Winners & One Happy Artist!

I am really excited because two of my works of art have received recognition in art competitions in November! I've been staying home so much more this past year due to Covid as I know everyone else has been doing. No traveling and social distancing has given me much more time to focus on creating art in my studio. As I mentioned previously, I have been focusing on my collection of tea cups and setting them up in different ways in which to draw.

My colored pencil drawing A Fresh Start (left) was accepted into the Colored Pencil Society of America 28th Annual International Exhibition in the summer and in November it was also accepted into American Artist Professional League 92nd Grand National Exhibition. I was even more thrilled when I learned that it had also been awarded the Alma M. Preede Memorial Award for Graphics in the exhibit. 

There are some incredible works of art in the AAPL 92nd Exhibition in all different mediums. You can link and view the exhibit here. You can link to all of the award winners here.

This past week I learned that my colored pencil piece Hot Spots (right) was one of only 25 pieces accepted into the UArt 2020 on line Colored Pencil Competition. The contest is sponsored by UArt Sanded Paper Company and was open to any artist working with colored pencil on UArt sanded paper. You can view the 25 accepted entries here.

I send my congratulations to all other artists accepted into art competitions, working hard to create and exhibit!

A Book Sculpture Inspired by Autumn

I created this book sculpture from an old medical book that someone gave me. The pages are cut and made into a half flower vase glued onto the binding. I created the piece using decorative paper, an orange paste paper I had leftover and hand watercolored book pages. I watercolor the pages first before cutting and folding them into the flower and leaf shapes. 

I keep all kinds of scraps of paper and book pages for use in future creations, I have a big bin of all kinds of materials to use! The butterflies came from a butterfly book that I created awhile ago and kept the remainder of the pages. 

I really have fun with these book sculptures. This particular sculpture took me several days as I will cut and place shapes on the vase before gluing so I can view and contemplate if I want changes as I go. In between book sculptures I work on my colored pencil drawings. After sitting and drawing for several hours, I find it relaxing to cut and create something three dimensional! 

 

Newport Art Museum Tiny Tours Feature

I posted and wrote about my handmade book Amsterdam earlier in the year (blog link here) when it was accepted into the Newport Art Museum Annual Juried Member Exhibit in January. Unfortunately, the exhibition was unable to be viewed when the Art Museum closed for several months due to Covid. So the folks at Newport Art Museum created what they called Tiny Tours, one for each exhibiting artist in the exhibit. Each Tiny Tour is a narrated and recorded video so folks could still view and enjoy all of the artwork on-line on Vimeo. NAM is also using these videos as teaching and learning resources for students. I am really thrilled to be a part of this sampling or artworks!

I am sharing a link to the tours here, scroll down to find my tour. Hope you enjoy viewing them:

Newport Art Museum Tiny Tours

Balancing My Tea Cups

I haven't been writing on my blog too much lately and mainly because I have been working on my colored pencil drawings and a few other things. Since the Covid began and I found myself spending more time in the studio, I decided to work on a series of drawings using tea cups as my subjects. I am working these drawings where I am stacking tea cups and also another group of drawings where tea cups are reflecting polka dots, linking to a previous post here.

Many of these tea cups belonged to my (late) mother in law who had them displayed on a shelf in her dining room but later on dismantled the display and gave me the cups. I kept them wrapped and tucked away for many years with thoughts of drawing them in colored pencil. My favorite is the Dragon Tea Cup which is at the very top of the above drawing. Over the years I have collected several others including the colorful bull (just below) from Barcelona Spain and the butterfly cup sent to me by a favorite cousin. 

The first drawing A Fresh Start (19x11") was accepted into the Colored Pencil Society of America's 28th Annual International Exhibition (click on the link to see some incredible colored pencil artworks) and sold shortly after the exhibition came on-line. The second drawing (below) Precarious Balance (18x10") was shown at the Providence Art Club Fall Member Exhibit. 

Both drawings were worked on Strathmore Series 500 Illustration board using a mixture Prismacolor, Caran d'Ache Luminance and Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils. The Polychromos are a harder pencil and good for rendering smooth glassy surfaces by filling in the paper's "tooth". Prismacolor and Luminance have such rich color, Luminance being more fade resistant so I tend to use them more. 

Here I go again with a third drawing. This time I attempted to stack nine tea cups and photograph the stack. I use my hot glue gun and fishing line to hold the stack of cups in place. I glued the spools of thread between cups in order to give each one the correct height. As you can see, this group tumbled and I had to superglue one tea cup back together. As I draw, I work from my photos and shortened stacks of two or three cups to get perspective, color and shading. 

This is a quick photo of my start for this drawing, beginning with the top cups. I draw the design and shading on each but I will go back later to adjust and evaluate each cup before the drawing is finished. For this drawing I decided to try Arches Aquarelle Hot Press Watercolor Paper to see how it would compare to the Strathmore Illustration board. 

 

I am a Contributing Author of this New Book!

I was very excited when asked by GMC Publications to be included in the newly published Painting & Drawing Techniques and Tutorials for the Complete Beginner book. Some of my tutorials and lessons from my previous colored pencil book have been included with the works of five additional artist authors Paul Clark, Adrian Burrows, Noman Long and Richard Rochester. 

This book includes some really good information with beautiful illustrations and easy to follow steps about how to draw in charcoal and pencil, and how to paint in watercolor, acrylic and oil painting. It is a great resource for artists who wish to learn about these different mediums from supplies to lessons and it's all included in one book. 

This book is available through Amazon.com at this link.

 

Colored Pencil Shell Study on Wood Panel

I drew this colored pencil piece on an 8x10" Blick Studio Wood Panel  with a 7/8" thickness. I like the smooth surface of the wood and it does not have to be sanded or primed to accept colored pencil. I selected three shells with different shapes and colors and decided how to arrange them on the surface. It took a little bit of figuring how I wanted them to look compositionally. 

First I drew the outlines with lead pencil and added some of the details to help me when adding color. I used Caran d'Ache Luminance and Prismacolor colored pencils to create this piece. The wood is soft so a softer pencil works really well on the surface. I was also able to build up layers easily. 

My drawing kind of evolved, I intertwined the shells and later put in a soft background suggesting sand and sky. 

The fixative/varnish is a three-part process. First I spray the drawing with Krylon UV Resistant Clear, two coats letting the first dry for 15 minutes. Secondly I spray the drawing with two coats of Krylon Kamar Varnish letting each dry for about 30 minutes in between. You may stop here and perhaps spray one more coat. I like a glossier finish so I add a third step. that is to apply Golden Polymer Varnish with UVLS. I mix one part varnish with two parts of water to thin the varnish so it can be easily brushed on with a soft bristle brush. I work in one direction when brushing on varnish and let it sit for about two hours until completely dry before adding another layer. The layers are thin and I keep adding additional layers until I like the shine. This drawing probably has about 8 layers of the polymer varnish. 

 

New Studio!

I had to take a little break from creating art because we moved in June into a wonderful new house and I am even more excited because I was also able to move my art studio back and right in the lower level of our house. I have two big rooms and a covered patio outside. In the past two months, walls have been painted, cabinets and shelves installed and I have bright new lighting. I also have an inspiring view of the water and lots of inspiration in our yard. I'm hoping to offer small group art classes in the near future while still being careful during Covid.

Our dog Bandit is still a little unsure of the new space, I think he misses the old studio and seeing the other artists!

 

Other sources of inspiration - we have a koi pond and lots of colorful plants and flowers!