The St. Pete Crawl

YAY! The St. Pete Crawl was a success, and a lot of fun for the folks that made it out for the evening. A big thanks goes out to both Chris Jenkins, St. Pete artist and resident whose blog is here, and the lovely Jo Ellen Schilke at the funkadelic Globe Coffee Lounge for making the arrangements and setting it all up for us to enjoy.

I headed down to downtown St. Pete with my 11-year-old daughter, Kayli, and we had a nice time catching up with the other folks who came out for the crawl, as well as -of course- drawing!

A good friend of mine, artist Brian Young-who co-created the Peace Be Still mural with me at Unity Church of Palm Harbor- came down with his daughter Kelly, who is an amazing talent, and Kayli and I had fun sketching in fairly close proximity to them all evening.

Kelly and Kayli persuaded us to try out the somewhat locally famous "red chairs" for size. Artist Douglas Kornfeld created these whimsical interactive sculptures which are located in the lawn of the St Petersburg Judicial center at 545 First Avenue North. The piece is titled Face the Jury. Here are some pics of Brian and the girls in the red chairs.... Kayli mentioned that she had always wanted to climb up on them, so I am glad we had some part in helping her achieve one of her stepping-stone goals in life. Just one more fun "to do" we could help her check off her quite-long list.

I seemed to be more into chatting with the other artists and dreaming about my upcoming trip to New York then drawing, but I managed to squeak these two spreads out during the crawl.

I know that I will drawing and painting my brains out for one glorious week beginning tomorrow, so I didn't worry that I lacked focus. More on my NY trip in the next post...

I tried to manage a few quick sketches while in the Globe, but I was distracted and my subjects were moving, of course. I just didn't feel up to the challenge of working too hard on them, so we moved on down the street after Kelly finished her coffee.

I settled in at the old Post Office, an open-air portico surrounding the post office building. This building has a lot of architectural detail- some tiling and ornate columns. I worked on capturing a bit of the detail, but again, being distracted by my thoughts, I didn't get into it too heartily.

We then moved on to the Mirror Lake area, where I settled down on the lawn in front of the Library. I worked a little on the building and also the statue that was out in front.

The sun was starting to go down and our stomachs were starting to grumble, so we got up and headed back to the Globe for a bite to eat. I had the Eggplant Parmesan wrap and Kayli had the Veggie Quiche- both good and affordable too. With our drinks, we spent only about $13 bucks total for dinner. Hooray for the Globe, still offering eats that don't break the bank.

With our sketchbooks in hand, we left the Globe to head back up to north Pinellas. The crawl was good, and we look forward to the next one! Y'all should think about coming on out for the next one we do. Keep posted, we'll announce something soon for September.

Some new work -experiments from the last two weeks

After a long hiatus from Wetcanvas!, I decided to participate this weekend and last in the Weekly Drawing Event (or WDE as it is fondly referred to ) in the All Media Art Events forum there.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this weekly event, every weekend, a member of Wetcanvas! who frequents the All Media Art Events forum hosts, by posting up to 16 reference pictures usually around a theme, and folks from all over the world, who have all different skill levels, tackle these subjects in whatever medium they choose. The idea is to work on their piece for up to two hours and then post a picture at the two-hour point. Of course, additional time can be spent with updates to the post, but by requiring a picture at two hours, everyone gets an idea of what each of the participants can do in a limited time frame.



Last week, a challenge was offered up to make one of the reference pictures into an abstract. I posted a step-by-step work-in-progress about how I like to abstract things, and will post it again here since I am not sure that I can link to that thread and have non-members still be able to view it. The finished painting (acrylic on paper) is shown at the top of this post.

The original reference photo can be seen here, if you'd like to check it out. Basically, here is what I did in each of the steps:
1. A quick gesture drawing, getting the placement of the components to line up in better places.
2. A value drawing in pencil. I referred to the value drawing as much as I did to the reference photo as I painted.
3. A gesture/value underpainting
4. Color added in basic blocky shapes (a color underpainting)
5. The finished painting, with other colors layered and worked in over the base painting.

PORTRAIT- June 6 WDE:


This week, I tackled a new medium- Inktense pencils- and tried a portrait. I will cut and paste my post so you can hear about my struggles trying to get that medium to work with a portrait. I plan to do a few more takes on the portrait this weekend and will post here again if I do. In case you can get to the link without being a Wetcanvas member, here is my post there. In case it takes you nowhere, here is the copy and past of the post:

"Ay yi yi- did I have soooooo much trouble with this one!

First, a 3/4 view is always challenging, Second- she is a beautiful woman, and at some points in my drawing she was NOT beautiful, Third- I was battling the medium the whole way, which was the new Inktense pencil in black.

About the medium.... I think these Inktense pencils could be very cool for certain things, but IMO were not well suited for portraiture, and I will tell you why. When you add water to the drawing, the black that was created was very intense (duh- like the name I guess!!) and it dried quickly and was very hard to soften. I haven't read much about these, but I think that you can only dissolve them one time- after that, they are waterproof.

Perhaps when I have done 20 portraits in this medium (which will probably not happen!), I could get a better handle on that, but there was too much lack of control in the lights and darks to tackle a portrait, in my opinion.

What I found myself doing was drawing a lot of dry Inktense, as well as another black colored pencil (Polychromos) over the original Inktense (which had been wetted and then dried) to help even out tones and blend. I do like a looser style, but I think the good old WC pencils will still be my choice for a dry-to-wet drawing of a person. More options and control...

After, I also bumped up some of the highlights with a white pastel stick.

I think that is about it.

i like certain things about the drawing, but know that I didn't capture her likeness exactly. I elongated her face in my drawing by accident, made her eyes a little too large, and didn't get the nose and mouth quite right BUT, I do still like the spirit of the work, and was happy to give a new toy- the Intense pencil- a test drive. My attitude with portraits is- If you can't get the exact likeness, try not to overwork it and make the drawing "sing" with linework and values. On that note, I did my best, and that is all I can expect, so I am happy.

I will be using Inktense again, but think it is better suited for landscapes and still life subjects, personally.

Enough banter- Here is the portrait! I will mark this a s MI, because I would like to try something else and add it to the thread. The weekend is still young. Hurrah!!"

To see the reference photo for this portrait, click here.

If you haven't tried out the WDE's, join Wetcanvas! and get your feet wet this weekend. it is really fun!

Every Day in May #2- Dancin' Shoes

I was thinking today about how I am grateful in many ways for the opportunities my daughter has had through dance.

Beginning in Kindergarten or so, she started lessons in ballet, and has continued ballet and tap and progressed to pointe last year, five years after she first started.

She does really well in dance, and that's great. She loves it- that's the main thing. Will she make a career out of it when she gets older? Probably not. But I love that she has a positive activity that she can share with her friends at this confusing age, as she readies to enter her teen years.

Dance has made her body strong, has given her a good self image, and has afforded some great opportunities to dance with professional dancers in several versions of the Nutcracker- with the Miami City Ballet two years ago, and with the Moscow Ballet this past Christmas.

I decided to draw her pointe shoes, and tried something new for me here- I didn't pencil in any shapes first- just "went for it" with the Micron 05.

I have definitely been a "pencil and paper" gal myself. Drawing in graphite is my comfort zone, for sure. Hatching and crosshatching are somewhat new for me. Of course, I tried them long ago (you don't want to know how long ago) in college drawing classes, but I have never been a big fan of working that way myself.

Lately though, I gaze in awe at the fabulous pen and ink sketches I have seen in the EDM forums and elsewhere in some of the sketchbook pools on Flickr. It is pretty darn inspiring.

So I have decided that I too want to hatch and crosshatch! Yes! I can do it it! - at least I will try it and give it a go. I found out that it is pretty fun after all, especially when you throw a little watercolor on it.

I'm still behind in the EDinM challenge, and hope to do another sketch of gratefulness tonight. Yep- I'm grateful for the fun of art. Isn't art fun?