Best in Show

A few weeks ago the Long Grove Park District held its second "For the Birds" weekend.  The two day event featured bird-related activities as well as a decorated bird house and bird art silent auction fundraiser.

I donated a mixed media piece of a robin and was thrilled to find out that I won "Best in Show."  The piece was a combination of an acrylic-painted background with some highlights in soft pastel. The bird was formed with a paper mosiac from magazine pages.  It was finished off with "berries" made of magazine paper as well some wood twigs for the branches.

It was also gratifying to know that the piece was purchased so that the Park District will receive some needed funds for their nature-related programs.

Less is More

The default size of many of my paintings is 10" x 14" image size, which when matted with a 2" mat border translates to a 14" x 18" frame.

Recently I was looking at a painting that I done some time ago but never framed.   I liked aspects of it but did like the overall effect.  Then it occurred to me that perhaps I should use part of the painting and not all of it. 

Here is the original painting:

I then cut off the right hand portion with most of the building and where the boy was by himself .  I originally included the building in the painting to "fill" the space; now I was unhappy with the right hand side of the painting. 

After the cut there was a 12" square remainder which retained the aspects of my original intention for the painting--children playing in a school yard.  There was enough of the building to set the scene without dominating it.   

The new size painting was matted and inserted into a 16" x 16" frame. 

Do you agree with my decision? 

Tale of Two Dogs

Recently I used the same reference photo to create very different paintings. The subject is my niece's dog  named Stormy, a Great Pyrenees dog that was quite large, but very gentle and loving.  The photo needed artistic interpretation as it was a white dog on white sand on a sunny day.   The camera picked up the shadows as blue on both the dog and on the sand.

The first approach entailed using several experimental techniques.  I started by applying white gesso to part of a black pastel paper plus added some glitter acrylic paint.  I then applied soft pastel over the white gesso to create the dog and then finished it with some black gesso in the background.

The second rendition was more traditional, starting with grey pastel paper and a color palette for a blue sky and beige sand to contrast with the white dog.

Now that you have seen them both--which do you prefer? 

Art Demo

Thanks to the hospitality and great questions from the Arlington Heights Art Guild at my demo earlier this week.  With their members as well as some of my neighbors and artist friends, more than 40 people watched me construct a pastel painting from scratch.  Although I didn't have time to bring the painting to 100% completion, I shared my approach to starting and working on a painting using soft pastels. 

I used one of my photos--a Cape Cod beach scene as a reference and discussed how to layer the pastels from dark to light to achieve the colors and values desired.

The art guild has a scholarship fund raising event each year so I donated the same painting that I had completed earlier to be used in their upcoming auction.