2011 Art in the Square Announcement

ART IN THE SQUARE at Utica Square

It's that time of year again - time to pack up the kids and the dog and come out for a lovely day at Utica Square in Tulsa browsing original artwork from over 90 area artists including me! For one day only, Saturday, October 1, 2011, I'll be set up between Wild Fork Restaurant and Starbucks. If you haven't had a chance to see my latest paintings from this year, now's a perfect time to come out. This year I'll be showing a variety of styles, including my current whimsical still life series (Poppies on a Little Blue Box shown here) as well as pastels from my "Taos" series to name just a few.

I'll be offering special pricing for the event and will accept Mastercard or Visa for your convenience.

Be sure and mark your calendars to join me next Saturday at Utica Square in Tulsa.

October 1, 2011
10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Experiment

While on vacation recently, visiting my folks, mom and I made some painting time together.  I had heard that you could use very fine grit sandpaper for pastels.  So, after visiting the local art supply in search of real sanded pastel paper and coming up empty, Dad and I went next door to Home Depot and let Mom look around some more in Michaels.  A few minutes later and with little money invested, I carried my bag of 220 & 320 grit sandpaper and a long piece of pipe insulation into Michaels and retrieved Mom.

At home, she dug out her art supplies.  Fortunately she had some mdf boards cut just larger than our sandpaper.  I taped the sandpaper (gritty side out) with masking tape to the boards while mom got us jars of water for the watercolor foundation.  I was really curious if the paper would buckle with the water.  Amazingly it did not!  The watercolors took beautifully to the surface.  After they dried, we used hard pastels to start layering our paintings and finished with just touches of soft pastels.  Periodically I took my painting in and tapped it off over the kitchen sink so as to eliminate excess pastel dust.

For my paintings, I chose to zoom in on some lily pads photos I had taken from our visit to the local botanical garden.  In the first painting, I used a full sheet of 220 grit sandpaper.  For the second one, I cut a 320 grit sheet in half.  The 220 was definitely better.  I found the 320 too smooth for both the watercolors and the pastels.  At first I thought I might want to gesso the sandpaper first since it's somewhat see-through, but given our time constraints, I decided not to.  Plus I rather liked the warm tone of the paper.  It worked out fine.  I think these could just be mounted to foam core to be framed if desired.  I almost forgot to mention - the pipe insulation?  Cut it up and you'll have an endless supply of pastel blending instruments - a must have when working with sanded surfaces!

 This is the watercolor and
pastel painting using
220 grit sandpaper.

For this piece I used
320 grit sandpaper.

"All's Well that Ends Well" - SOLD

"All's Well that Ends Well", 9 x 12" Pastel on Ampersand Pastelbord

This spectacular skyscape is based on a photo I saw on morguefile.com, a wonderful resource for free reference photos.  I began this painting with acrylics.  If you're an acrylics painter and struggle with getting soft blending, be sure to try using Ampersand Pastelbord as a painting surface.  It's amazing to see how lovely and soft acrylics can work on such a rough surface.  Since this scene was very vibrant and full of light, I thought it would be very striking to complete it with soft pastels.  The two mediums worked very well together and as long as you've worked in thin layers with the acrylics, you'll have enough of the sanded surface left to grab the pigments of the pastels.

I chose this photo as a reference for a variety of reasons.  First, the horizon is very low with the sky and clouds being the dominant feature.  Second, I liked the composition with the dark, contrasting blue triangular wedge of the clouds slicing into and leading the eye right to the focal point of the sun.  Finally, the most vivid colors are reserved for that lower third of the painting with the surrounding neutrals allowing those colors to pop.

To me the title represents the feeling I get after a heavy storm has passed at the end of a day and the sun greets us with the reassurance that everything will be okay.