Yet Another Little Toy

The toy series is a lot of fun. This little guy has been sitting on my desk for years and when the outside temperatures start the day at -16, I have to agree with him! He was sold by Avon maybe as long as 10 years ago. I can remember when Avon only sold cosmetics. Now you can get almost anything you want from your Avon representative. This little painting is about 6x9 and is done in pastel on gold pastel mat. Pastel Mat has become my favorite surface to work on. I painted him last night as a test of the possibility of teaching a lesson using Skype and a webcam. With a little tweaking, it will work quite nicely.

Geisha is finished

I have put the finishing touches on the Geisha statue. I hope my client likes her. I will be calling today to see if I can drop her off. She is pastel on grey Hannemuhle velour paper. The size is about 11x14. I must say I did enjoy working in the garden. There were enough positive comments about having an artist in the garden that the Garden Club wants to do it again for the next tour. They do this program every other year. A lot of people took my business cards and perhaps there will be some additional work as a result. These kinds of activities are what I call "planting seeds". You don't know the results until sometimes months later when you see what "grows".

New Make-It-Take-It

I had to come up with a make-it-take-it for the conference in Maine at the end of June. This is a little pastel piece done on Mi-Teintes paper. The background is softened with denatured alcohol and then the purple cone flowers are painted over the top. The piece is about 6x9. It certainly isn't a fancy piece, but will frame up nicely and there is a good bit of learning to be gained from it.

More from the beach

Here is another of the little pieces that I worked on in my free time in Ocean City last week. It is pastel on Mi-Teintes paper, about 6x8.

Chocolate in Pastel

Not only did I do the bunny in colored pencil while I was in Ocean City, but I also took some time to do him in pastels. The biggest difference in the appearance of the two pieces is that the colored pencil version literally shines because the pencil is wax based and when burnished it is somewhat shiny. The soft pastels have a mat finish. Both the colored pencil pieces and the pastel piece were done on the same color Mi-Teintes paper. The pastel version also has a few more areas of reflected color--tints.

Chocolate bunnies

While I was in Ocean City, I had time to play with my colored pencils and my pastels. I had taken some pictures of a chocolate bunny that I wanted to do as a set and I packed the reference photos so I would have something to work on if I had time. I completed the set in colored pencil on grey-brown Mi-Teintes paper. The size is approximately 5x7. Sadly, the bunny was sacrificed for the good of the project--and a tasty bunny he was, too!

Pastel Sketch

This is a small experimental version of what will ultimately be a much larger piece. It is done on Mi-Teintes paper with soft pastels and is about 9x12. The final version of the piece will be approximately 16x28 to fit in a very large frame. It is time to get it up on my easel and start working on it.

The Gurls

There is a party happening in my living room! Four full-sized, life-sized Red Hat Gurls are sitting in my living room having a chat.
One of the Red Hat groups I belong to is decorating a car for a PT Cruiser convention at the end of the month. They asked me to design them. I found some Styrofoam wig forms to use for the heads and painted them up. Members provided wigs, hats, clothing, and accessories. This morning 5 of us got together to assemble the gurls. We stuffed thermal underwear and pantyhose to make their bodies--including bras to make sure they were curvaceous. Then we dressed them up. Three of them will sit in the car and one will be hanging on to the roof.


They will sit in my living room for the next three weeks. Their next adventure is a ride to the convention. I can't wait to be driving down the road with these three lovelies riding along--properly seatbelted, of course.

Testing

reference photo

I have been wanting to try out the Dick Blick colored pencils. They are less expensive than the Prismacolor that I normally use and could help me keep my supply costs down when I am teaching at retreats or conventions. I bought a 12 pencil set to try, so my color choices were limited. The Blick pencils seem to be highly pigmented. They perhaps have a bit more opacity than the Prismacolor. This may be more a function of the specific colors that are included in the 12 pencil set than a characteristic of the entire line. They also seem to be a tad bit harder and less creamy. While I was working today, I was sitting in the sun holding a yard sale, so being a little harder was a definite advantage. They do seem to blend well and layering colors was not a problem. I used both the colorless blender marker from the Prismacolor line and the Prismacolor colorless blender pencil and both worked equally well. Overall, I like the pencils and will continue to experiment with them. I will probably purchase a larger set so that I will have a wider range of colors to work with as well.

Her is my experimental work. It is developed from a photograph taken by my husband several years ago. Because the poppies are intensely colored, I was able to make use of the limited palette of colors I had available to me. The only addition I needed to make was a white pencil from my Prismacolor set. The work is done on gold Mi-Tientes paper and is approximately 6x8.