"Flora's Field Morning"

"Morning dawns rosy fingers...." anonymous
The Bluegrass Plain Air Painters met at Flora's farm for a Wednesday paint-out and of course I took my pastels instead of paint - they let me be a member anyway. :-)
I created a small sketch on Uart sanded paper to which I had applied a golden orange underpainting. The sketch was more horizontal and the format of the trees needed to be more square, so the next day I created a new larger version on a square format. The original little sketch is my favorite of the summer, so far, and I'm not going to sell it. I have a closet full of favorites and one of these days that closet is going to get too full......
I'll be showing this piece as well as lots of other new pieces at Francisco's Farm Art Fair, at Equus Run Vineyard, 1280 Moore's Mill Rd. Midway, KY June 25-26.

"Flora's Field Morning" 22" x 24" framed $650

"Woodford County Purple Barn"

"When I grow old, I'll wear a purple hat." or was it "I'll wear a red hat and purple shoes."

Whichever, I love purple and many of my customers ask, "Was that barn really purple?" Well, no, but it feels purple and beside black barns are boring.

I'll have this barn at Summerfair along with 2 other purple barns all lined up on the same wall. Hoping to get some attention. :-)

If the posting of this info and image isn't looking correct when it gets to my website I may have to start using ArtSpan's blogging site. Oh goody, something new to learn.
Between learning my new iphone and The Square which is a merchant credit card processor that hooks into the iphone (and yes, it's really something else!) my poor little brain is about fried on learning new things.
Back to the best part of my job, creating new pastels for my next show.
 I'll have 2 more shows in June. June 17-19, I'll be at Nashville's Centennial Park with the American Artisans Art Fair and June 25-26 I'll be back in my home territory at Francisco's Farm Art Fair at it's new location of Equus Run Vineyard in Midway. Wine to enhance your art experience - now that kind of change I can go with.

"Woodford County Barn" 16" x 20" framed on textured sanded paper

Tuscany images

"Good things come in small packages"

o.k this site isn't working quite right. I don't know what happened to my previous posts. So I'm going to add another post to see if it links ok. yep, I love changes.

At my art fairs I like to have a good range of sizes and prices. These are little framed 10" x 10" images from my trip to Italy last fall.

"Dogwood Creek Morning"

"When morning glides the sky, my heart awakening cries" hymn

It's been awhile since my last blog partly because something has changed with eblogger from Google and I had trouble finding it and signing in. Love changes.

So I'm off to Summerfair in Cincinnati at Coney Island off I-275 and Kellogg Ave. Booth 29K. The breeze will be blowing cool off the river and I have 2 great little fans that run on 18 volt rechargeable batteries from Home Depot.

This creek runs through our park which I run/walk through in the early morning and on this morning it was so beautiful that I had to walk back home, sweating all the way, and grab my camera and sketch book. Later in the week at my studio in Artists Attic using these two references I created "Dogwood Creek Morning." 

I'm still in a quandary about the best approach - pure plein air-creating the piece entirely on site or using reference photos and black and white sketches to help me capture the essence of the scene. I'll continue to battle with plein air to get that interpretation of the scene instead of just reporting what I'm viewing. On this piece I used an oil wash for the initial underpainting which is another goal - to be able to create an underpainting that is satisfying in it's own right, so I don't end up covering up all the underpainting with pastel.

"Dogwood Creek Morning" oil wash and pastel, framed 24" x 30"  $850