Art Fair Today - Nazareth, PA

Coffee Break

approx. 4" x 3" watercolor and graphite

Stacy L. Rowan

Just a post for people in my area to announce that I will be showing my art this afternoon and evening at Nazareth Evening on Main Steet in Nazareth , PA. The event starts at 3pm and runs until 8pm. The art show is taking place in the square at Main and Center Streets. Also local businesses along Main Street will be open for the evening and there will be entertainment in the street and square.

If you are in the area, I'd love for you to stop by and say hi!

I created the above image for the postcard I sent to my mailing list announcing this event. If anyone is interested in how I make and print my own postcards, leave a comment and I'll be happy to share. Notecards with this image are also available.

Thank You!

I would like to extend a big thank you to fellow artist and blogger Michael Brinkley! Michael's blog focuses on pencil drawing and in it he gives detailed information for creating pencil portraits. In fact, Michael recently changed the name of his blog to Pencil Portrait Lessons to reflect this focus. He has made other changes in addition to the name change, including deciding to feature a different artist every Wednesday.

This week I am honored to be Michael's featured artist. Please go here if you would like to read my responses to Michael's interview questions.

Thanks again Michael!!

Preparing for an Art Fair - Part I

Familiar Blush

3.5" x 2.5" watercolor on paper

Stacy L. Rowan

I am currently preparing for an art fair that is taking place this Saturday evening in Nazareth, PA. While I'm in the middle of the process, I thought I'd share some tips that make show prep a little easier for me.

My first few art fairs included a mad scramble of preparation which took up all of my art time for the few weeks leading up to the fair. As much as I like doing fairs, I hated being away from my paints for so long and my family hated the stressed out, frantic person I turned into.

The solution - move as much of the prep work out of the weeks leading up to the fair.

This first post will deal with managing the "stuff" required for an art fair. By stuff I mean the canopy, lights, table, extension cords, print rack...everything that is not art.

After my first couple of art fairs, I realized that I needed the same stuff for every fair, and with a few fairs under my belt I had a pretty good idea of what it was. So months before I had any shows scheduled, I sat down and made a list of all the stuff I wanted to take with me. Now I will admit that I over pack for every occasion, so my list is quite long. I included everything I thought I might possibly ever need. And I mean everything. Big things like my canopy and chair and display racks and little things like zip ties, scissors and tissues.

Once the list was done I put it in a safe place. For me that place is in my bin of office supplies (receipt books, stapler, pens, calculator, business cards) that I take to every fair. It would also be a good idea to have a back-up copy somewhere, say on my computer.

Next I chose a spot in our basement to store all the stuff that I don't need to unpack between shows. This saves time when I am gathering everything together for my husband to load into the van. It also makes it easy for me to point my art fair stuff out to my family. So when I say "Don't touch Mommy's art fair stuff!" they know exactly what "stuff" I am referring to. Lastly, having everything together in one area makes it harder, though not impossible, to lose or forget something.

In my next post I will give some tips for managing inventory.

About the painting: I love the little blush of red that sometimes appears on green pears. I had the idea that cranberries would "pair" nicely with one of these blushing pears because of the common color and similar shapes. So I tried the combination on my kitchen table and a painting was born.

Watercolor Cabbage - August VSD

Cabbage

6" x 4" watercolor on paper

Stacy L. Rowan

Here is my submission for the August Virtual Sketch Date. I loved the purple and green combination found in this cabbage. Since I reacted first to the colors in the reference, I decided to use watercolors for my entry.

If you've been following my blog, you know that I have been out of the art habit recently. The virtual sketch date challenge was the perfect opportunity for me to get back to it. That being said, we all know that rusty feeling you get when you've been away from your paints. So I decided this month that my main goal was to finish my entry and submit it on time. As a reminder I wrote this on my printed reference page...

Success is in the doing, not the end result.

And I have to say, when I hit that "ugly phase", reading the above statement really helped!

Overall I am pleased with this little painting. I am happy with the colors I achieved and, by means of this post, was successful in my main goal of getting this done. However, I do feel I lost some of my initial freshness. I used masking fluid for the leaf veins. I have a love/hate relationship with masking fluid. I love that it lets me paint without being concerned about saving the light areas that are masked off. But I hate what happens when I remove the masking. The areas of masking are almost always bigger than I want them to be, and I hate dealing with softening the hard edges of paint that built up around the masked areas. I'm not sure if the painting actually looks less fresh, but the time I spent blending in the masked areas sure made it feel less fresh to me!

Please visit the Virtual Sketch Date blog tomorrow and use the links to look at the other entries.

August Sketch Date Reference

The reference photo for the August Virtual Sketch date has been posted here. All entries are due Saturday August 30th. If you would like to take part this month, go to the VSD blog and post a comment on the August reference post. Hope to see you there!

Yippee!

Child #1's cast came off today!! We are all very excited. She will be on crutches and still not able bear weight with that leg for at least three weeks, but we are taking advantage of this improvement and are on the move to enjoy what is left of the summer.

See you in September!!!

Virtual Sketch Date - July

Sunquats

11" x 14" charcoal on Stonehenge paper
Stacy L. Rowan

Here is my entry for the July Virtual Sketch Date. It is a charcoal drawing of sunquats. The reference was supplied by Leslie Hawes and can be found here. A list of entries will be posted on the Virtual Sketch Date blog tomorrow.

A Sunquat is a citrus fruit and is a cross between a kumquat and a lemon.

As soon as I saw the gray scaled version of this reference I knew I wanted to attempt it in charcoal. I admit that I may have been a little ambitious when I whipped out the 11" x 14" paper, especially given our current circumstances, but that didn't stop me from trying. Overall I am pleased with how much I got done and how the drawing turned out. Although, if you look closely you will notice it is not signed yet. I am reserving the right to tweak it later.

This is the first charcoal I have attempted on Stonehenge paper. I am pleased with how the paper performed. My only complaint is that I had a hard time getting my brightest highlights back. For that reason I still prefer working on Rives BFK paper.

In case anyone is interested, I thought I'd share a little bit about my process.

Normally if I am working on a charcoal from life, I'll start the process by doing some small, quick value sketches. In this case, I was working from a gray-scaled reference so I skipped that step. However, I did take the reference into Photoshop and posterize it. Posterizing reduces the number of different values and simplifies the reference.

Using my two references, I decided where I wanted to change values and where my three lightest and three darkest values would be. I made this decisions based on composition and focal point instead of following the reference exactly as it was presented.

After the computer work was done, it was time to start drawing.

When I start a charcoal, the first thing I do is apply an even mid-tone of charcoal to the whole sheet of paper. As a watercolor artist who is used to saving my whites like they are gold, the first time I had to tone a paper I was petrified. I've gotten over that fear, but still find this step the most boring part of the whole drawing. I use a compressed charcoal stick to apply the charcoal and a combination of cotton balls and paper towels to even out the tone. I am not particularly gentle during this toning process and yet, both Stonehenge and Rives BFK hold up well.

Once the paper is toned, the real fun begins. I lightly sketch out the composition with my charcoal stick and then add and subtract charcoal as needed to get the values I desire. For my darker values I use a range of charcoal pencils from 2B to 6B. For lighter values I use long handled cotton swabs, tissues and my trusty kneaded eraser to remove charcoal.

One of the things I love about charcoal is how easy it is to make changes. I can darken and lighten repeatedly without damaging my paper. Using the flat side of my kneaded eraser I can remove large areas of charcoal. If I want to erase lines or small areas I can use the edge or shape the eraser into a point. Tissues and clean cotton balls are great for smoothing out an area of tone while lightening it. A cotton ball or swab that has already been used is good for smoothing out tone without much lightening. They can also be used to darken a light value. For my brightest brights, I use a pink pearl eraser. It pulls more charcoal off the page than any other tool.

Charcoal allows me to work freely and quickly while still achieving realistic results. And in the warmer months, when I am surrounded by so much natural color, I find a real attraction to its black and white tones.

When I was preparing this image for posting, I played around with cropping it. I'd love to hear if you like the full sized image or cropped image better.

Sunquats - cropped
Stacy L. Rowan

And please remember to visit the other Virtual Sketch Date participants...

Leslie Hawes, Laura's Watercolors, Miki Willa, Sharon, Doug Hoppes, Melissa Muirhead, Kay Susan, Michael, Jeanne Grant, Kylie, Paulette, Maryann Cleary, Maggie Steifvater, Jeanette Jobson who served as admin this month, and the woman who started it all Rose Welty. (More entries may be posted before the end of the day. The final list of participants will be posted tomorrow on the Virtual Sketch Date blog.)

July Sketch Date Reference

The July Virtual Sketch Date reference has been posted. Go here to see it and leave a comment (there)on the reference post if you want to participate. Entries are due Saturday July 26th.

It is a wonderful reference and makes me want to break out the charcoals.

Sometimes Plans Change

Back at the end of May I told you my plans for the summer. Now I'm here to say that sometimes plans change.

Change of Plans

2B graphite pencil in Canson Field sketchbook

approx 45 min sketch

A week and a half ago, Child #1 broke her leg. The break is high up on her leg close to her hip joint. The doctors placed two screws in her leg to hold the bone together while it heals. They also placed her in a rather large cast called a spica cast. As you can imagine this makes some daily tasks a little harder for her than normal.

Life with this cast also ruled out some of the activities we had planned. Luckily we are a pretty creative family and are finding new ways to have fun. Both children (and parents) are being good sports about these unexpected changes and we all are in good spirits.

Providing extra entertainment and care for the children has made it tough to find time for art and blogging. So if you are expecting to hear from me either through posts here or by email, please be patient. I promise I will do my best to respond to everyone as quickly as possible.

Enjoy your July!!

Virtual Sketch Date - June

Lily

approx. 5" x 8"

2B graphite pencil in Canson Field sketchbook

Here is my entry for June's virtual sketch date. The reference this month was supplied by Jennifer of Fuzzy Dragons. Thanks Jennifer!

If you check out the reference you will see that I played with the arrangement a little. I liked the shadow and shape of the flower in the lower right better than the large flower in the center. I also loved the bud above it. In fact, if I had more time, I would have used my watercolors or colored pencils to do a color study of that bud. However, since my time this week was limited, I skipped the color study and kept the values in the flower fairly light.

Rose will be creating a post with links to all the sketch date participants once everyone has posted. Make sure you check it out. I think there will be even more entries than last month.

Once again, the commitment to this sketch date had me drawing during a week that I typically wouldn't have managed to squeeze any art time in. I really enjoyed the time I spent on this drawing. It was relaxing compared to the rush of the rest of the week. And now I get to enjoy the anticipation of waiting to see all the other drawings. Hooray!

Drawing Day 2008

In honor of Drawing Day, the kids and I sat down and did some drawings together. I had visions of heading out and drawing from nature, but the over 90 degree temperature with a heat index near 100 quickly put an end to that plan. So instead, our inspiration came from items in our kitchen. Here is each of their drawings followed by my sketch of the same item.

Child #2 did the bananas and the napkin basket in Crayola marker on regular copy paper.

My bananas are also done in Crayola marker on copy paper. (It was so much fun working with those bold colors!)

My napkin basket was done in my watercolor Moleskine using an Eberhard Faber Ebony pencil.

(Please see the next post down -- Drawing Day 2008 (continued) -- for the drawing from Child #1 and the rest of my images. Thank you!)

Drawing Day 2008 (continued)

Apparently I can only upload 4 images in a single post. Never knew about that limitation before. But without further ado...here is Child #1's drawing.

Child #1 drew a basket containing pots of (artificial) herbs. She used Crayola markers in her Strathmore Field sketchbook.

My drawing of the herbs was completed in my watercolor Moleskine using a .05 black Micron pen, Cotman watercolor pans and my waterbrush.

I was surprised by the challenging subjects the kids chose to draw and impressed by how confidently they approached their drawings. I think they did very well! And they are excited by the notion that "people they don't even know" are going to be looking at their art on the computer. What an interesting world they are growing up in.