Waterhouse Shaker Village

"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter." Henri Matisse

This quote reminds me of Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, a truly lovely place. I love drawing there - it's so peaceful. The waterhouse is one of my favorite buildings and I've drawn it many time which is why I thought it would be fun to use it for the demonstration for my pastel workshop on Saturday. I'll post the "step by step" tomorrow.

If you remember my drawing of the waterhouse from last year you'll notice that this version is stylized as more of a children's book illustration than a realistic drawing. It's fun to change subject matter and make it your own. The little colored dots at the top of the drawing are part of the instructional demo for my class but I like the dots, so maybe I'll expand the dots all the way across the top and bottom.

"Waterhouse" 12"x8" on sanded pastel paper

Winter Scene oil painting

"Sometimes imagination pounces; mostly it sleeps soundly in the corner, purring."  Terri Guillemets

I attended a wonderful oil painting workshop conducted by Dan McGrath at Artists' Attic this past Saturday.

Here's the finished 8"x10" oil from the day of work. I started another one but it's only 1/2 finished and not "ready for prime time" yet.

I"m also going to try this scene in pastels. Bet it'll be better than this -- hope so, but the class was great fun to share time with other artists and be the student instead of the teacher.

"Dogwood Creek - winter morning" 8"x10" oil

"The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real." Lucian Freud

The three biggies for a successful painting are 1) Composition  2) Color  3) Content

Today I worked controlling a mood through color choices.

The first of "Frank's Sheds" is suppose to convey a bright sunny morning with an upbeat mood using analagous colors of blue/green/yellow/orange range.

In the second one I tried to convey a quiet, hazy, thoughtful mood by using grayed colors in a split-complement color combination of blue/purple and a gray-green and a bit of accent color pink.

"Frank's Sheds 1" 12" x 8" on LaCarte sanded paper

"Frank's Sheds 2" 12" x 8" on LaCarte sanded paper

Going Down to Mingo

"If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint." Edward Hopper

Today I attended a "Winter Images" oil painting workshop with Dan McGrath held at Artists' Attic in Lexington, KY. Wow, that was a powerful workshop and Dan's a great teacher.

But because I was painting in oils all day, I don't have a "Pastel A Day" to post.

Instead I'll post an image of the piece I have donated to the Living Arts and Science Center's fundraiser which will be held at Big Ass Fan's home office on February 11.

"Going Down to Mingo" 16" x 24" framed pastel to be auctioned at LASC fundraiser

Pleasant Valley demonstration

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."  - Mark Twain

I'll be teaching a pastel workshop at Artists' Attic next weekend. In preparation for the class I create an image in advance and take digital photos to provide a step by step hand-out for the class. This is the landscape image for the class.

"Pleasant Valley demo" 8"x12" on LaCarte sanded paper

Pisgah Pike Sketches

"Don't expect anything original from an echo."  -Author Unknown

Funny quote. Here are the black and white thumbnail sketches that I drew to explore the composition. Then I created color thumbnails, actually about 3" x 5", sketches to explore color relationships.

Notice that in the final pieces, which I posted in last night's blog, I left out the telephone pole. It was too dominate as an element and took the viewer's attention away from the road.

Pisgah Pike - Three Studies

"He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet."  -Joseph Joubert

"The well laid plans of mice and men." I don't know who said that but it explains my "Pastel a Day" concept falling flat after just one day. So tonight I'm posting 3 images to make up for my laziness last night.

I recently watched a wonderful video by Colleen Howe who talks about preplanning your pastel and we all know how important thumbnail studies are but so few of us do them. These 3 pastels were created after I did color thumbnails which are creatively freeing. As an artists you have only time invested because no one is going to see them, so you can be more free to experiment with color. I actually like the little studies even more than these 3 but I'll have to post the studies tomorrow.

Which one do you like better?

"Pisgah Pike 3" pastel on Wallis sanded paper

"Pisgah Pike 2" 8" x 11" pastel on Wallis sanded paper

"Pisgah Pike 1" 8" x 12" pastel on sanded paper