My Newest Book Sculptures

 I have been negligent about writing on my blog this past year. In May I was contacted by GMC Publications in London asking me to write a book on colored pencil for beginners. This book will consist of basic colored pencil information, step-by-step projects and a few focus features and should be published sometime by the end of 2019. In a period of six month, I have written all of the content, drawn all of the illustrations and diagrams which was quite a lot of work. But I was really excited to have been asked to write the book on colored pencil for GMC's fine art series of books! And will be more excited to see the finished project so bear with me as we are still in the editing phase.

Meanwhile ... I have also been working on a different sort of books ... recycled book sculptures.The top two photos are a sculpture (front and back) that I created from a sportfishing book I found in a flea market in Maine. I was intrigued by the illustrations of all of the different fish. I cut out fish from the pages and then folded the remaining pages and glued the fish back onto the sculpture with a few added extras including fishing line, netting, bobbers, flyfishing flies.

I am very excited because this book sculpture was accepted into the Newport Art Museum Annual Member Exhibit 2019. Only 90 entries were accepted out of 265 entered. The opening is Friday February 1 from 5-7 pm and I am excited to attend and see all of the works.

 This book sculpture is created from a book I found that is all about growing fruits in the garden. I liked the colorful illustrations of the different fruits. I cut out many of the fruit and leaves and folded the pages then glued the fruit back onto the pages.

I exhibited this book at Imago Gallery's Community Exhibit in January and was thrilled that it won a Recognition Award. 

 The two sculptures above, lady bugs and butterflies were created for two different ladies in memories of each one's mother. Every time Judy sees a lady bug it reminds her of her mother and every time Ann sees a butterfly it reminds her of her mother. These two books will be permanent memories to be displayed in their homes. Both the ladybugs and the butterflies were cut from book pages that I had watercolored in various colors. I added the black paper and cut out spots with a hole punch for the ladybugs. Some of the bugs and butterflies are suspended on wire and some are glued onto the pages.

If you look closely in this cabinet you will see my two masted sailing ship book sculpture (on the left). I created this book sculpture of a ship riding the waves and a whale diving into the waves. My customer who purchased the book sculpture is displaying it in this cabinet and I think it looks perfect with all of her lovely curios!

Student Work

I'm proud of my colored pencil students from my Newport Art Museum class who put work in the student exhibit at the museum's Coleman Center. The three pieces in which I've posted are also from three different lessons. Cindy's piece on the top is from our lesson that was drawing a variety of autumn leaves on colored paper. We used Canson Mi Tientes paper in which to work on.

The middle piece by Donna is from another lesson where we drew all white objects. The students had a set of 48 Prismacolor pencils in which to work and the 48 set contains only one or two grays so we mixed colors in order to achieve the values and color changes we needed.

The bottom piece is by Helen, our assignment was to work with colored pencil and odorless mineral spirits (solvent) on 5x7" Ampersand Pastelbord. I chose a simple still life of a few cherries on a colored surface so they could focus on the technique as well as the composition. Helen chose a fun frame for this piece also.

Colored Pencil Classes

I'm teaching one Colored Pencil Drawing class right now at Newport Art Museum in Newport, RI. Below are two of the class drawing assignments. We are using the Prismacolor 48 pencil set which limits the color range and is forcing us to mix colors to achieve a local color or value we may not have a pencil for. Below are my examples as I draw along with the class.

Drew autumn leaves on a colored background, using Canson Mi Tientes paper. Here I am allowing some of the yellow tones to show through my leaves and using limited colors. I haven't done much layering, just juxtaposing colors by laying them side by side.

This class assignment was to draw white objects on a blue gray background, also Canson Mi Tientes paper. It was a bit more challenging because the easiest thing to do would be to reach for a set of gray valued pencils to render a white object. We were  forced to create colorful grays with the pencils we had in our Prismacolor 48 color set. This is my small drawing of a milk carton and the colors I used along the bottom. For the lightest values I used White, Cream, Gingeroot and Light Cerulean Blue. Medium values I used  are Yellow Ochre and True Blue. For the darker values I used Burnt Ochre and Peacock Blue and for the darkest areas of value I used Indigo Blue.

All of these colors except Light Cerulean Blue are warm colors which worked well together, I chose Light Cerulean Blue because I needed a light blue value, but used it very lightly so it wouldn't stand out against the warm colors. The blue shades and yellow/orange/brown shades are complementaries and I layered to create colorful grays for the different values.

Exciting News, Colored Pencil Recognition!

As I mentioned previously, the Rhode Island Blood Center asked me to be their artist of the year for the Seasons Pass Program 2011/2012. The Seasons Pass Program is in its 10th year and each year a different artist is selected and asked to create a unique piece of art for the Blood Center. This piece of artwork is made into prints and prints are given to 4-time per year blood donors. I was introduced as the new artist last year at the press conference and yesterday at the press conference, my artwork was unveiled. I chose to create a scene of colorful sailboats for this year's print. It is different than anything previous artists have done and fitting since the America's Cup trials as well as the Tall Ships are coming to Newport this year. Living so close to Newport and the ocean, I can relate to sailing. As a previous blood recipient myself, I am happy to be able to give back to the community and hope that receiving a print will entice new donors to donate blood. Here is the paragraph written to go along with the painting:

The strength of an America’s Cup flotilla is powerful as it sails to face unpredictable waters. So it is with blood donors. Collectively, they are saving lives for individuals they will likely never meet, providing them with the strength on what is often an unpredictable journey to regain their health, a journey that would not otherwise be possible.

Second item of news: I am thrilled to be featured on February 29th on a fun Rhode Island blog called I(heart)Rhody which is all about arts, food, events, news and photography throughout Rhode Island. They have published an interview with me as well as photos of my work.

Thirdly, I was also excited today when another artist called me and gave me some news that I missed. I have a piece in the Newport Art Museum Annual Juried Member Exhibition and this year every piece of artwork was accepted and hung floor -to-ceiling salon style. I've heard quite a bit of grumbling from other artists because their work was hung up near the high ceilings, they feel it cannot be appreciated. Somehow I got lucky and my piece "Sea Foam" is hung perfectly at eye level in fabulous light. What more can an artist ask for? Well, one of my artist friends called today and said congratulations, it seems that my piece is in a tie for second place having received many votes for the People's Choice Award. I completely missed my name as I read through the list of awards. Viewers can vote until May 14 so I may or may not stay in the running, but for now I'm excited especially since there are so many many works to choose from and I like seeing my name on the awards list!