Another new technique - Ink Drawings

I've admired this technique done by other artists so I'm giving it a try. The challenge is to keep from overworking the ink and allowing the toned paper to show through. I'm trying to avoid using the black ink to excess. Not bad for a start. More to come....

 Back after almost a year and a half....brushing the dust off the blog. No longer involved in outdoor art shows, or indoor shows for that matter, I felt that it was time to create a new piece of artwork. For the time being I've switched back to my original medium, Prismacolor pencil. I had to brush the dust off those, too.
I was given these dried gourds about 15 years ago, and have been kicking them around since then. After arranging them for a portrait with appreciation for their texture and form, I couldn't help feeling that some extra "life" was needed to be added to the composition. Along came the chickadee, which if it were actually in this scene, would probably knock over the hollow gourds.

Virtual Judges

This is a new art fair experience for me: At the show I was in last weekend, I realized at some point on Saturday that I hadn't seen any sign of the familiar art show judges. They're the 2 or 3 clipboard-carrying folks who visit each booth, somewhat stealthily, trying to avoid too much contact with the artists, who may actually try to engage them in conversation regarding their art in order to possibly convince the judge to deem them worthy of an award. Of course, the judges are reluctant to spend time with each artist, because doing so would take too much time, so they give the display a glance and then place a circular colored sticker on the artists signage, make a check mark on the list, and move on.

Having seen none of this activity, I assumed that the show organizers had decided that awards would not be given this time. I was wrong. A man poked his head in my booth late Saturday, and said, "You should have won the 2-D award." I thanked him for the compliment and added that I wasn't aware that there were awards or judges since none visited me, even in a barely visible state. I pointed to my booth sign without stickers and said they must have skipped me. He came back several minutes later and said he found out that the there were in fact no judges present at the show, as I suspected, but that the awards were decided based on the images that we submitted for our online applications! Virtual judges! Now that's efficient, don't you think?

Buy/Sell, Revisited.

Exactly a year ago I wrote in this blog about an incident at an art show in which a vendor was discovered to be selling mass-produced items and as a result was forced to display signs stating that fact. This year, at the same show, the issue repeated itself, times three. The bogus vendors, whom I never saw in their booths, were given the choice to either leave the show or display the signs of shame. One of them chose leaving, and I saw him wheeling out his cartons of whatever he was trying to sell. I'm not sure about the fate of the others. I don't need to repeat my opinion of such opportunists, but I will say that there were more than those three at this show.

The Best Indoor Display Ever

The recent indoor show I attended had a smaller than average space and it's always a challenge to display the artwork in this setting. I believe that this time we (I admit I had help) found the best possible way to fit everything in the best way possible. It was also good to come home with a little bit less art than I came in with.

Birders' Conference

This was my display at the Birding America X Conference in Chicago on Saturday.

It was good to be around such dedicated bird people.

Still waiting...

So it has been 6 weeks or so since the last post and I've yet to see that warm day. But, I did complete another watercolor painting. It's a cardinal, by the way.