It seems everyone is in panic mode due to the coronavirus. It"s a shame really as I believe people are really overreacting. Unfortunately for me it has had a very big impact on my small school. No-one is coming even though our studio is squeaky clean at this point and since fewer students are coming there would be lots of space between students. Not that I don't think the virus is serious- I do but not to the point where you feel you must hoard food and toilet paper- what is that about anyway.

On the plus side, I have plenty of time to thoroughly clean shelves and finish my illustration commission which I worked on today. I cannot show it to you yet since the person who wrote the story hasn't really seen them yet.  I, however have been working on a big pastel landscape and here is the study in gouache that I did for it

It is on illustration board which is one of my favorite surfaces for gouache. I have combined a photo that a former student left with images from Ouessant  where I have been. The rocks are incredible there. it is a very windswept island off the coast of Brittany in France.

I also finished my restoration of the De Heem still-life which turned out well and was a real pleasure to work on. Those artists of the Baroque period could really paint. It was in incredible shape given its age.

Here is a detail of it cleaned . I really enjoyed working on this painting and am a little sad that it is finished.

I will be posting more often probably during this corona virus period since I will have more time -so till next time.

      Happy warm day in february! Can you believe it!. I however chose to spend my day working on this incredible painting that I am conserving for a client. It is a still-life of fruit by De Heem, a Dutch painter of the 17th century- one of a family of De Heem's. The more famous one did flowers but you will find this one, his son I believe in museums well.

Here it is after I had just started. As you can see it is still very dark except for the fruit where I had just started surface cleaning. It had been restored before and relined so I took the old lining off and scraped as much of the old glue so that the new lining would adhere well. Then I stretched it on a board with tacks while i fixed the old stretcher and frame. Actually it"s one of my students who did it and its fabulous because we were able to keep the integrity of the support. Very important to keep as much of the original as possible.

Actually this painting is incredible considering how old it is. Hardly any loss of paint and not much in the way of craquelure- you know those little cracks that paintings get with age. Well this one doesn't"t have it.

Here is a close up of it father along in the cleaning process. Amazing isn't it. I love working on really good paintings, One learns so much! This is a Vanitas painting which shows the passage of time with bites and rot beginning in some of the fruit and a number of flies and moths here and there. 

I will post the whole painting when I have finished and you will be able to see all the little rot and deteriorating places.

That is all for now

       My students and I have been working hard to put together our Winter Show. I have some absolutely wonderful people who I am privileged to teach. I had marvelous help cleaning on thursday and friday and a couple who paint together hung most of the entire show in two hours. i can tell you it was an incredible feat! I was sooo grateful especially as their sons were coming in town and Susan had to bake. Another newer student came to reclean on saturday morning while the hanging was going on and brought loads of cookies as well as her time. She was amazing and I was so grateful. Another student brought gluten free cookies which means I could have some and yet another brought a bottle of wine which I have saved for tonight.
   My assistants Anthony and Thomas came in the early afternoon and hung the late arrivals as well as my paintings and theirs.,which  means our entire show was up and running by 3 on Saturday- unheard of. Usually we are there till 7 or so at night. So the studio looks wonderful and if you did not come yesterday, try and come tonight from 6 to 9. there are lots of goodies and tonight there will be wine for the adults.

I have painted some newer pieces for the show and other students were madly trying to finish theirs in time, but fortunately everything came together and it is a wonderful show.

         Fall is here at last bringing milder heat and warmer light. I love this time of the year.  I love to go plein air painting during this time- not so much green! I will however be glad when cooler weather prevails.

My Studio had an Open house on Sunday Sept 8th. We open the studio so the community can come and have a look and ask questions about classes or any other art making topic. Some advanced students have their work up along with the other instructors and myself. We usually have two demonstrations .  This year I  did a demo in oil of a landscape in Germanton I have always wanted to paint.
  I have been painting on wood lately and really like the way it feels and the way the painting looks when it is finished.  Later in the Afternoon, Anthony Pfohl,Jr did a watercolor demo of a donkey from a picture he took when he went to Petra. in Jordan.The Open house went well though attendance was light but that I think was due to the Folk festival and there were other things going on this weekend as well.

We did a lot of cleaning and repainting of the studio and some rearrangement so everything looks nice .Hopefully we can keep it that way because in December we will have our annual winter show which showcases the student's work. So look out for it it will be December 8th and 9th.

On another note, The Pastel Society of North Carolina has their annual members show at the Ambleside Gallery. it should be up until the 28th. I have a piece in it- a snow scene

Its called "Fallen Giant" so go and check it out along with all the other incredible pastels there.

                August is such a slow month sometimes and it is soooo hot! I taught a plein air class in the evening for 4 mondays . During the first two we did drawings followed by  pastel and the last evening we did oil. Since my students were more interested in watching me, I spent the last class doing a demo. I was trying to show them  how one goes about starting and developing a painting outside. it is A bit different  from working in the studio. I usually work on carton which is a kind of cardboard and use fastmatte paints . These set up fast so you can continue with regular oils after and get the piece more finished.

I  really liked the way the sky turned out but wasn't too happy with the water . I will be going back to the scene to finish up. I copied it on wood however and preferred this format better since my area of interest was the sky which was magnificent and it usually is here at Lake Higgins

I

This is not yet finished and it is a lot crisper in reality so I will have to take a better picture. before I post it as finished.

I have also been creating some small pastels One of which was accepted into Pure Color an international online show. I must say I was pleased to be accepted since it was out of such a large pool of entrants. Here is my painting:

I had fun doing this one. This is the first time I did a pomegranate in pastel. Usually I use oils so it was a nice change of medium. 

Our open House is coming up In September but more about that in my next blog.

Happy Summer Everyone, Although for me it has been creeping along very slowly. its hot and one of my sons moved in with me which has been full of turmoil for both him and me. Nevertheless I have been able to accomplish some interesting project.

  A recent art restoration project was a beautiful landscape that was badly damaged. it entailed relining it as well as patching and inpainting. The artist whoever he is painted his trees in the most beautiful way. i did a small copy of the tree part of the painting to learn his technique.

He seems to have done a warm brown underpainting then painted his leaves on top leaving some of the underpainting showing. It creates the perfect value change from the darker tree against the lightness of the sky values. he also creates his greens from black and yellow adding blue here and there. Very interesting and I have been trying to incorporate this technique in the way I paint.

Here is the original from which I did the little narrow painting. Gorgeous isn't it?

An Interesting workshop experience

  It has been a very long time since I have posted on this blog. I became discouraged because my blog never seemed to receive any feedback, but I have just attended a very interesting workshop, during which I not only learned an interesting pastel technique but have also decided to come back to writing on this blog.
 I attended a Rita Kirkman workshop. If you don't know her work, she does a lot of animals and people, notably a series on Renaissance people.
During the workshop not only was the surface different, but also the ground applied to gatorboard- a much harder surface than I usually like but the format is much different as well. It was so very interesting to do something so different and the effect was looser as well, some of which I liked and but some areas I would prefer more finished. I will be experimenting more with this and posting my results.  Below is the one I did which I preferred.