SEWPS Meeting Highlights

We're now a member with IAPS, International Association of Pastel Societies, which is bringing in additional opportunities such as the IAPS 2009 Calender Competition, the IAPS Catalog Cover Competition and the opportunity to attend their May 2009 Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We're changing our name to WPA, Wisconsin Pastel Artists, to more inclusive and include the whole state, plus it's easier to say. I really like this group. There's a lot of energy. We range from total beginners like me to established artists.

Talked to some people about how to get my artwork framed and one uses a person who moved to a frame shop in the greendale village center, but she doesn't remember the name of the shop.

Dates for upcoming events:

• Vanishing Farm Exhibit: Entry Deadline 6/2/08, Deliver pieces 7/6, pickup pieces 8/16, Opening Reception 7/11, 6-8pm at the One Way Cafe in Wauwautosa, 1425 N. Underwood Ave.
• Jack Richeson Tour 6/30/08, tour in morning, pleine air in the afternoon
• WPA (Wisconsin Pastel Artists) meeting - 7/2/08
  
• Open Door Gallery - United Methodist Church, Whitefish Bay, August 18- October 15, 2008
• Schauer Art Center - Hartford WI April 4-May 17, 2009
• Plymouth Arts Center - Gallery 110 North - 8/14-10/4, 2009

Announcements by members to check out

Plein Air Painting Competion - sponsored by The League of Milwaukee Artists, Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors and the Downer Avenue merchants Association in the historic Downer Avenue neighborhood. 30% of all sales goes to Artists Working in Education. For more info call Marie myler 414-649-8168

• 5/23-6/1/08 Plein Air
• 5/31/08 Silent Auction & Reception, Quick Paint Event
• 6/1/08 Juried Exhibition Open Art Sale & Reception

The Bayview Arts Guild - www.BayViewArts.org

• 5/12/08 guest speaker Colette Odya Smith

Running out of time will do a separate post about Terry.

Artist & Display Face Class #2 - Faces in Clay

Pam talked a little bit of art to answer someone's question. Black & white tends to be thoughtful while color is more about feelings, emotion. You can work intuitively or think what your motivation is for a piece, color and application. Backgrounds are important. One of her college drawing teachers made the students do a whole semester of straight lines while looking at the positive and negative shapes. Don't know if I mentioned this in a previous blog or not, but one of her college assignments was to do 20 self portraits.

The lesson today was making faces in an air dried clay called Marblex. (She loosely wrapped our pieces in saran wrap to slow down the dry time so everything would dry more even.)

First we got a rectangle of clay. Rolled it to about 1/2" thickness. Then lightly drew with a round toothpick and egg shape which we then cut out with a plastic tool. Best to score where you want to cut & make repeated passes till you're through? We rolled up the clay pieces in a ball to keep them from drying out so fast.

Then we used our hands to carefully work the piece so it was cupped like a bowl on the back yet keeping the face shape. Then we lightly drew vertical and horizontal guidelines down the center with a toothpick.

Using the end of the roller we made light depressions for the eyesockets and also measured with it the center between the eyes. Then fingers were used to deepen the eyesockets.

Then we measured the space from the center of the face to the edge of the eye and made a rectangular piece of clay to glue on for the nose. The technique for attaching to pieces of clay together so they dry together, not separately and to prevent popping off; is to score and wet both sides with water, push them together then smooth them together with fingers and/or tools. This is called Score & Glue.

Then we made 2 eyeshaped cups of clay to attach for the eyelids. After they were attached a slit was cut and they were formed into eyelids. Then the next part was difficult, you take a flat piece of clay, attach it on the back for the eyes and draw the iris and pupil with a toothpick.

Then we pushed out the cheeks, made lips, pushed out the chin. I was too enthusiastic and made my piece too thin in places so we'll see if it survives the drying.

Last step before drying was to attach a rectangular piece in back to hang it on a wall and draw hair.

Artist & Display Face Class #1, Milwaukee Sketch Club notes

Attended 1st Face Class at Artist & Display taught by Pam Scesniak. We learned basic proportions for an average straight on view of a face. Here's what I remember. (She told us not to worry if we don't remember everything because we will be reviewing this info every week.) We looked into a tiny mirror to try to visualize what she was saying while using Canson eedition? paper & a 2B pencil. (She mentioned that softer pencils make a darker line and smudge, while harder pencils, used by illustrators and architects, make a fine gray line. From my previous life I know pencils range from hard, 6h-1h, hb, 1b-6b, softest.) Then after we got the basic proportions in we used conte sticks in white, light gray, reddish brown and black to shade in our picture, both face and background. She also showed us how to smear.

• 1st you start with a 1/4" dot about 2" over & up from center to make the pupil
  
• Then you draw overlapping 1/4" circles around pupil to get an average size of the iris.
• Draw rounded triangles on each side of the iris, one with a tear duct.
• Flatten top of iris slightly where upper lid touches it.
• Remember the eye sits in the eye socket, so lightly draw a circle using the whites as the diameter guide.
  
• The eyebrow generally sits on top of the eye socket.
• Draw the other eye, one eye width away. Remember no 2 eyes are exactly alike.
• Then the length of the nose to the septum is about 1.5 eye widths.
• Draw in the nostrils, the edges of the nose which line up with the inner corner of the eyes and the ball that sits on the nose.
• The distance to the upper lip is about 1 eye height?
• Draw the opening of the mouth (cupid's bow) and the bottom lip, then the circle of the chin.
• Then looking at the face draw the brow, the sides of the face, the hair on the top of the head. (Now the rest of the steps I'm a little fuzzy on.
  
• The ears are generally from the eyes to the nose long
• The neck starts down from the ears and is wider than you think
• The shoulders start higher up than you think.

This method actually worked fairly well, but I don't get much chance to do faces straight on in Sketch Club. Next week we're going to make a face in clay.

I'm still using the brown paper at Milwaukee Sketch club, it's tough with a nice texture, but now I've added General's compressed Pastel Chalk in earthtones.

• I worked first with the vine charcoal to put in the proportions and darks. Then put in the lights with white.
• Then I just worked back and forth between darks, black & brown; lights, white & pink?; and mediums, medium brown and reddish brown.
• I only managed 2 pictures, one unfinished. The first picture I smudged it and it looks very smooth. The second one I was trying to build up layers without smudging so the eye would blend the colors, a technique someone told me about. I would like to be able to draw faster.
  

Artist & Display Pastel Class #5 & misc notes

Last class with Pam yesterday. We learned about oil pastels which are oil paint in a stick form. One brand is craypas. There are different grades, the cheaper student grades have a different binder to pigment ratio then the "artist" grades which use a higher quality of pigment. Also was introduced to Strathmore's Acrylic textured linen surface paper. Very durable. Can scrape on it and really work it. We painted 3 cups with saucers stacked vertically on 2 books.

You can work dark to light, layering in to reveal canvas under neath. A plastic card or palette knive can be used to scrape off thick layers, then the scrapings can be reapplied. (Scraping is fun.) Can use white or a lighter color on top to lighten. Going from dark to light, hard to get an absolute white, so...

You can work light to dark, laying down your highlights and light areas first.

Oil pastels can be blended with your hand or a paper towel. One lady in my class uses baby oil to blend it for a softer look.

Oil pastels seem cheaper than regular pastels, so I bought 2 Strathmore Acrylic textured linen surface pads and different quality paste sets; Pentel Arts Oil Pastels 25 colors, Cray-pas Expressionist 16 colors and Cray-pas Specialist 12 colors. Messed around with it last night before bed. Seems to be a pretty forgiving medium.

Vine charcoal and white charcoal on brown paper sketches working very well.

Artist & Display Pastel Class #4 & misc notes

Pastel Class #4

Instead of doing the traditional linear method (Draw with hard pastel, fill in with hard then soft pastel, then draw lines with hard pastel) we did a draw the value shapes method. Worked all around the paper by filling in first the darks, then the mediums and last the light values. Edges were formed when 2 shapes met each other. Concentrate on the mass of shapes and forms.

She also discussed the geometry of some flowers.

• A tulip is basically shaped like a teacup with an ellipse on the top and bottom. Petals fit in around the ellipse. All petals start from the same place on the stem.
• For an iris, just draw the shapes that you see
• The middle part of a daffodil is basically a cylinder with frilly stuff on it. It has 6 petals, the top 3 form a triangle and the lower ones fill in between.

She also said art is about taking risks. I think what she means is you have to willing to experiment, make mistakes and not worry too much about the final product. For me a risky endeavor is one where you stand a good chance of being hurt or killed and I don't think that's too likely with pastel painting.

Broke down and bought a 5 pan set of pan pastels, red, white, blue, yellow and black. Been experimenting. The hardest part of pastels, any pastels, for me is putting it on dark. I have too light of a touch. It's halfway through April and I still don't have another good candidate for the vanishing farm exhibit.

Helped out last Wednesday at Pius. Worked an acetating table with Mom, sis, brother-in-law and miscellaneous helpers. We really put acetate on a lot of the kids projects and worked well as a team. It was funny, the guy in charge sent to people over to our table to be trained. Probably cause we worked more than we talked. No more upcoming Pius volunteer work this week. I think they're having an exhibit tonight.

My experiment with using Aquabee Fashion Design Bold Bogus Rough Sketch paper with vine charcoal and white for portrait sketching at Milwaukee Sketch Club is working real well. I gave one to the model and the others are taped to a wall in my house.

Exploring Pastel class#3 & Tom Nahreiner Demo at Milwaukee Sketch club

This is going to be short I'm really tired.

Exploring Pastel Class #3
Got to learn about and use pan pastels with sponges & moo acrylic erasor. Use a light touch. Can put 2 colors on one sponge. Can wipe off dirty pan with sponge. Use light circular motion to pick up pan pastel. Today we drew a landscape from our imagination on Teintes dark green pastel. Then we got to draw a picture on a really long red paper from a photo(s). Raining too hard so didn't bring them home.

Tom Nachreiner Demo at Milwaukee Sketch Club

• Excellent. To see more of his art go to http://www.tomnachreiner.com . He also does plein air competitions in door county and cedarburg wisconsin.
  
• Like to work Plein Air. has a studio with bank of north facing windows for winter. Cool lt, warm shadows, constant all day.
  
• When working outdoors, works early to 10am, then 2-6. Wants shadows, although sometime hi noon turns out better than you think.
  
• Prefers oils although has used pastels and water colors. Also does digital art with Wacom tablet.
  
• If working from photo or picture, he turns it upside down so can more easily block in abstract shapes. Shape, Color, Value, temperature. Gets grayed versions of colors down first and big shapes.
  
• Uses homemade plexiglass palette painted same color of canvas on it's backside C-clamped to his stand. Doesn't use medium. Cleans brushes in process with paint thinner, final cleaning with Kerosene. Always has a frame for each canvas he paints. Doesn't varnish.
  
• keeps roll of paper towels handy. has looser, more painterly style.
  
• Color palette of white, lt yel, yel ochre, cad lt, aliz, trans ro, ult blu, raw umber to gray colors, prus blu, no blk.
  
• hold long brushes at ends so can see painting at a distance. Works big shapes to small.
  
• Sneak up on whites and colors.
  
• Uses a pad of paper towels to minimize touching oils and solvents.
  
• Constantly judging lts/dks, warm/cool, color against color, edges soft/hard. compares as works around painting.
  
• Filbert brush double dips colors. angle bright bursh for drawing, more precise, don't overuse.
  
• Each stroke defines 2 areas, backgrd & front.
  
• Feels oil painting teaches you more about painting than other media, have 2 mix colors (vs premixed pastels) and less mechanical drawing & filling in (watercolors)
  
• Can use a plexiglass grid with black, gray & white, dick blick, artworksessentials.com? picture perfect, red cellophane to see values.
  
• Once all general shapes in right area, turns upside right to finetun. Makes it fresh. check temp, color. Big brush to soften things.
  

adios

Exploring Pastel class#2

For our second pastel class at Artist & Display we took a long sheet of paper, drew a line down the middle to divide it in 2 parts and painted a bowl. On one side we did warm colors and on the other side cool colors. Then we painted a frosted vase with 2 flowers in it. Not much discussion this week, just practice.

Bought a spirol pad of 12x18" Strathmore Charcoal paper in assorted tints to practice. My other paper, Canson mi-teintes in assorted colors is only 9x12". I feel like I want to paint larger. Ordered a medium gray view finder to help me see light, medium and dark values in color better. I'm glad I understand the painter's color wheel. Other people in my class are still struggling with it. I'm still working on identifying light, dark and medium values along with warm/cool colors in pastel. (Every color has a warm and cool version) I don't know if I like having all the pastel jumbled together in a box like we have them in class, but I've noticed that that's how most pastel artists tend to work.

Used Aquabee Fashion Design Bold Bogus Rough Sketch paper with vine charcoal and white for portrait sketching at Milwaukee Sketch Club. Worked very well. Missed helping out at Pius studio night- worked too late.