Speedy with "Lost Edges"

I really enjoyed painting this - the Canal paper is very absorbent. It's a little difficult to control the paint, but it is fun to try.

When I paint people, and lose control, I end up with "zombies." I won't post those - although, maybe at Halloween... The boys in the previous post are rather close.

In case you don't know, lost edges (or soft edges) are where the borders between two areas blur a bit as compared to "hard" edges which are clearly delineated. It's a concept that may be obvious to others, but I admit was very difficult for me to understand at first.

People in Water Color

Here are Bob's nephews - Morgan and Colin. Perhaps too much contrast, but fun to do. I'm anxious to try painting my sister Rachael and her daughter, and Bob's cousin and his wife.

I'd like to paint my sister Roxanne. She passed away 15 years ago today. Maybe another day.

Water color

Here are some exercises I painted. The first two use Koi pan water colors, the second two use the colors from my palette, mostly Daniel Smith and M. Graham paints.
They're painted on Khadi Rough paper from India, about 5x7.

First try - clematis and roses from our garden. I thought I didn't quite get it all integrated enough - not enough lost edges.

More lost edges.

Drawn using a grey Pitt pen and painted using my palette colors.

Drawn in pencil, painted, then ink added with a calligraphy pen. I have to admit, I like the high contrast. Next time, I might try to remember to vary the type of lines.

I sold an art piece!

"Arranging a Sunny Day" was sold, and as far as I know, it was not purchased by a relative or friend. Now, Bob's annoyed because he wanted it! Oh well.

Here's an iPhone photo of Bob looking at the piece at the show. We were not actually allowed to take photos, so I covered up the other work. However, there was plenty of great work to enjoy. It was a lot of fun to participate.

Tuesday night I'm taking a Mixing Your Own Encaustic Medium & Paint class from Linda Womack. I'm very excited to play with the pigments. Not to worry - we are wearing respirators!

Otherwise, I've been doing lots of painting exercises, but I don't really have any finished pictures at the moment.

Submitted!

Bob went with me to make sure I didn't change my mind at the last minute!
Here's the line.



Here's Bob with my dinky art pieces. There was one man with a canvas that had to be 8 feet by 6 feet.


The show starts on Friday!

Perhaps now I should get back to my regular, income producing work. It would be nice to make the July mortgage payment!

Final pieces for the art show

My pieces are polished and packed up, ready to be submitted to the Lake Oswego Art Festival Open Show tomorrow.


"My Blue Ocean" - Final. I removed some of the sea foam - it was obscuring the ocean blues.

"Arranging a Sunny Day" - 12x12 bulletin board with 9 4x4 tiles. These are all Aquabord with water color and water color pencil and colored markers. I topped them with 2 layers of clear encaustic medium.

Magnets were glued on the back. Most of the tiles can be arranged in any orientation and in any position on the board. I thought this would be fun because it would give you an excuse to touch the encaustic finish. A soft cloth will remove fingerprints and smudges.

Close-ups of a few of the tiles.

Encaustic works in progress

The Lake Oswego Art Festival takes place June 26 - June 28, 2009. They have an Open Show that is, well, open to anyone who wants to enter. There is a small fee of $25 per three pieces, the items have to be for sale, and the festival keeps 40% of the sale price.

I set a goal to have something ready for the show this year as a challenge to myself. It's a way to get started interacting with other artists, learn about art shows, learn about readying a piece of art (hanging, framing, matting correctly), and see how my works compare.

The submission date is June 21. Here are two of the pieces I'm working on:



"Vaux Swifts at Chapman" - 12x12 on birch board, encaustic with tissue paper transfers, in progress.


"Vaux Swifts at Chapman" - completed in a frame. Sorry about the parallax in the photo.



"My Blue Ocean" - 11x14 on Aquabord with water color and 2 coats of clear encaustic medium (beeswax and damar resin), in progress.



"My Blue Ocean" - still in progress. I added encaustic paint and ground glass for the sand. This is on a 2 inch cradled board, so I'm collaging the edges. I'll show that when I post the finished piece.

I have one more to display. It's called "Arranging a Sunny Day."