Art Festival in Pitman, NJ Tomorrow

The last couple of days I have been busy matting and framing some of my work and packing up my show supplies. Tomorrow I will be participating in a Music & Arts Festival in Pitman, NJ. This is the first year for the festival. Artists will be displaying their work in Ballard Park at the intersection of Pitman Ave. and Broadway. The festival runs from 2pm until 8pm.

I have displayed my work before in Pitman at their annual fall craft show. They run nice shows which have good attendance. I am excited they are branching out into shows specifically for fine art.

If you are in the area tomorrow afternoon or evening, stop by and say hello.

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The picture above shows some of the work I framed up this week, including drawings in my new tap dance series. I will be sharing these new drawings here soon, complete with better images. The drawings were well received at the Tap Ties National Tap Dance Day Celebration.

A Chance to Win Some Art

“Waiting” graphite on cream paper Stacy L. Rowan	“Caught in a State of Undress” watercolor on paper Stacy L. Rowan

If you are in the Lehigh Valley or somewhere close by this Saturday and would like a chance to win one of my prints, please head on over to the Miller Heights Tricky Tray fundraiser. This event is being held at Miller Heights Elementary School in Bethlehem, PA on Saturday, April 25th from 10am until 4pm. You do not need to be present at the time of the drawing to win a prize. All winners are notified by phone. If you are not familiar with Trick Tray events, you can read more about them here.

This year I donated two matted prints. A 10” x 8” print of my graphite house finch drawing titled “Waiting” and a 14” x 11” print of my watercolor entry from the January Virtual Sketch Date “Caught in a State of Undress”. Both pieces are shown above.

In addition to my prints there are many other cool prizes – over 240 in all!  If you are in the area why not stop by and check it out?

3 Things I’ve Learned in the School of Group Challenges

graphite sketch of my pencil jar

4” x 8” in Moleskine sketchbook

The reference for the April Virtual Sketch Date was posted yesterday. This month’s reference is a lovely rhododendron bud supplied by Jeanette Jobson. All entries are due by Saturday April 24th.

I was thinking about group challenges the other day – like the Virtual Sketch Date and Karin Jurick’s Different Strokes From Different Folks - and what a great learning experience they are for me, in particular, reviewing all the entries.

When viewing the entries, I love seeing them all together on one page. I start out by scrolling through the entries or glancing at each one quickly. I know that the entries that catch my eye during a quick sweep deserve a longer look.

When I first started viewing these group challenges, I wondered why some entries caught my eye and others didn’t, especially because they are all of the same subject. What was it about some paintings that made me want to linger? For me it comes down to three things.

• Composition – Many times what makes a painting stand out from the crowd is composition. Cropping can make all the difference in how a painting reads. Same is true for elements that are left in versus elements that are eliminated. Recently I saw two almost identical compositions and the main difference for the one I preferred  was the addition of something that didn’t appear in the original reference. My lesson…study composition until good compositions come easy.
• Style – I am finding the more I do this exercise the more often paintings of a certain style catch my eye. The surprising thing about this is that the paintings I like are not painted in a style similar to my own. Having learned what style appeals to me, I’ve decided to try to work toward that style in my own paintings.
• Technical Ability – My studies have revealed that technical ability is actually less important to me than I would have guessed, but there is some base line that needs to be met for me to enjoy a painting. The lesson for me here is to not sacrifice style and feeling in my own works in an effort to prove technical ability.

I love that I can learn from group challenges even when I don’t participate in them. I’m interested in hearing what lessons you have learned from the School of Group Challenges. Feel free to share them in the comments.

Announcing My New Series - Drawings of Tap Dancers

I am very excited to announce this new series because it combines two of my loves – art and tap dancing. I mentioned my love of tap before, but at the time I was not dancing. I started dancing again about a year ago, and in the fall joined a class offered by the Tap Ties company.

Not long after joining I started thinking about combining art and tap. Since the ladies who make up Tap Ties are all incredibly nice, it didn’t take too much guts to ask them if they would mind allowing me to take reference photos during their practices. Lucky for me they said yes.

I now have over 300 reference photos and the ideas for drawings and painting are coming so fast I often find myself scribbling them down in my own strange short-hand. My biggest problem so far has been deciding which ones to start with because I want to start them all right away!

I have a lot more to say about this new series, but for now I want to share the first drawing.

I decided to start this project by focusing on the dancers feet. One of my goals is to convey motion, because so much of tap is about the movements the feet make to achieve the desired sounds.

tap dancing feet

9” x 6” graphite drawing on Canson paper

Stacy L. Rowan

In this drawing you can see that the front foot is moving fast and probably making multiple sounds, while only the heel on the back foot is moving. I loved the interesting shape of the front foot combined with the realism of the back shoe.

I currently have two more drawings started and a third planned. So stay tuned!

Graphite House Finch - March VSD

This little graphite drawing is my entry for the March Virtual Sketch Date. I drew it in my Moleskine sketch book using a 2B pencil while I waited for my kids.

I supplied the reference this month, so I am quite familiar with this bird. He comes to a bird feeder in my back yard. I tried a few times to take his picture, but he always seemed to fly off as soon as I went to get my camera. I think he is shy.

Finally he showed up with his lady friend one day when I already had my camera out, and I managed a few quick shots of their romantic meal. Now I know what it feels like to be the paparazzi. Minus the big paycheck, of course.

Still Here

Hello loyal readers, ...if any of you are still out there. I thought it was time to stop in here after my long, unplanned break. Maybe you thought from my silence that I had decided to pack it in and retire to a tropical island. As lovely as that sounds, the closest I've been to a tropical island recently is when I bought the can of pineapple rings that are sitting in my cabinet.

Some of you may remember my lull in posting last summer when my daughter broke her leg. Well, this lull was also caused by the presence of crutches in our life.

In mid February, my daughter had the rather large, titanium screws(shown below)that had been used to fix her leg removed. Following this surgery, she was not allowed to put any weight on the leg. And due to the risk of re-injuring herself from a fall, she had to have an adult with her whenever she was up on her crutches.


I thought since we knew she was going to be on crutches, and since we had so recently experienced life with crutches, that this time would be less disruptive than the first round. Turns out I was wrong.

After five and a half long weeks, we finally had a follow up appointment this Tuesday. Her doctor told us she is healing well and gave her the green light to come off the crutches. Hooray!

So the good news is that in a few days the crutches will hopefully be put away for good. I'm also hoping this means I'll finally have time to catch you up on all I have been doing in the last month. Because even though I haven't been posting, I have been working!

Colored Pencil Landscape - Feb VSD

Lake Louise
6" x 4" colored pencil on matboard
Stacy L. Rowan

I wasn't sure if I was going to get to the Virtual Sketch Date this month. As it is, I am squeezing my entry in under the wire. This month's lovely reference was provided by Debbie Later. Thank you Debbie!

Two things caught my eye in this reference. First was the variety of beautiful blues. From turquoise to peacock to cerulean - it was a bonanza of blue.

The second thing I noticed was the play of vertical and horizontal lines. The trees on the mid-ground mountain provide the verticals and the striations on the background mountains along with the reflections in the water provide the horizontals.

I decided to simplify my drawing to basic shapes in order to focus attention on the colors and direction of the pencil marks. It was a different approach for me and I'm still trying to decide what I think of the end result.

Please remember to check out the VSD results post and the VSD Flickr group to see all the other entries.

Portrait Practice

Lately I have been feeling the need for speed.

Well, more truthfully, I have been wanting to improve my combination of drawing speed and accuracy. I believe I could draw anything I wanted given an infinite amount of time. And on the flip side, there is very little (if anything) that I could draw accurately in say 30 seconds.

So when I found out about a portrait group help by the Bethlehem Palette Club, I decided to give it a try. The group is for club members and is held every Wednesday morning during the colder months (January through April I think).

Each week we have a different model to draw. The models are all volunteers, but I have to say that so far each one has done a fantastic job. It is surprisingly difficult to sit without moving for 20 minutes at a time!!

Prior to joining this group, I had drawn or painted a grand total of 2 portraits. The first one was of my Grandfather. It was a gift for my mom. I drew it in graphite using an old photograph as my reference. I was pleased with the outcome, but it definitely fell in the "I can draw anything given an infinite amount of time" category.

My second ever portrait I did in watercolor at a workshop. I worked on it for a full day and added some finishing touches the next day. You can read about the experience and see the finished portrait here.

The first week of the portrait group I decided to use watercolors since I had had success with the watercolor portrait last year. Unfortunately, I didn't have a hair dryer with me, and I only had about two hours of total painting time. This made the portrait significantly more challenging and it shows in the results, which is exactly why I won't be sharing that portrait here.

Since there really isn't a good place to set up a hair dryer, I decided to try charcoal on colored ground for week two. The good news is that I felt the portrait was an improvement over week one. The bad news is that I was working on Mi-Teintes paper for the first time and I forgot that one side had a pretty pronounced textural pattern. Guess which side I drew on.

Also, earlier in the week I had been working on a graphite drawing. I don't typically use any blending tools when I work in graphite, but I do like to blend with charcoal. Of course, I forgot I liked to blend charcoal until about two thirds of the way through that session. Needless to say, I'm not sharing that portrait either.

But this week, this week I was prepared. I made sure to use the smoother side of the paper. I blended early and often. And I listened to my iPod to distract that inner critic. And the result... a definite improvement - not a masterpiece by any means, but something I am willing to share.

9" x 11"charcoal portrait on colored paper

Working from a live model under a time constraint is a great way to sharpen my skill at getting the pertinent information down in a timely fashion. My goal for joining this group is not to become a great portrait artist, but to see improvement in my portraits over the course of a few months. I am thrilled that I have already seen improvement in three weeks, and I hope I continue to improve from here.

Music and Motivation

2" x 3" graphite sketch

I have a new studio tool to share with you today. (Well, it's new to me anyway.) I enjoy listening to music while I draw or paint. I find that it helps occupy my mind enough that it keeps my inner critic quite. This is particularly important in the early stages of a new work.

Although I like listening to music, listening to the radio bugs me. A lot of radio stations pride themselves on variety. Variety is another way of saying they try to please everyone. Which to me translates as I may like one song out of ten, but the other nine are meant to appeal to people with different musical tastes. Frustration from outside forces rarely helps the creative process!

An acquaintance mentioned that she liked listening to Pandora, so I checked it out. The premise behind Pandora is that you can create your own radio station. Click the "Create a New Station" button, type in an artist or band whose music you like and they will play that artist's music along with similar music by other artists.

If you want a station which plays more than one type of music, click on the station label and choose "Add Variety" which will allow you to input names of other artists you like. If they play a song you don't like, click on the thumbs down button at the bottom of the song box.

The result...a completely customized radio station playing only music you like. I've only used it twice, but so far it seems pretty cool!

And now for the motivation...

Christine Kane wrote this post about the impact of the economy. I really like her way of thinking.

House Portrait - Finished Painting

In my last post I showed you some preliminary work that I did for a house portrait commission. Below is the finished painting.

9.5" x 13.5" watercolor on paper
Stacy L. Rowan

There are several things that I decided to change after completing the color study.

First of all I noticed that I "shrunk" the garage door when I went from the shadow guide to the color study. So I made sure in my line drawing for the final that it read as a two car garage.

I also decided to make some changes to the roof. The angles on the hip roof were one of the most challenging parts of this drawing. While I was enlarging the garage, I decided the roof angles still needed a little tweaking. I also choose to change the roof color making it cooler and lighter in value.

The last change involved the trees behind the house. In the final painting I used more cerulean blue in the large pines to push them further into the background. I felt this helped establish more depth in the painting.

Overall I found that creating the shadow reference and color study were very helpful, especially for this challenging project. I was much more confident when I got to the larger painting because I was familiar with the subject and knew I had already solved some potential problems.

House Portrait - Preliminary Work

This week I finished a house portrait commission. I thought I would share some information on my process in case it would be useful to anyone working on a similar project.

For previous house portrait commissions, I traveled to the property and photographed it myself making sure to take many pictures from different angles. Obviously I would take pictures from a distance so I could capture the entire structure, but I also snapped some close-ups so I would have information on details that might be fuzzier in the wide shots.

However, the commission which I just finished presented a unique challenge. My client no longer lives in the home they wanted painted, and the home is located in another state, many hours from either of us. So I had to make due with the pictures the client had on hand.

Unfortunately, the client didn't have any pictures from the angle we wanted for the painting. And in fact didn't have any pictures at all of the right hand side of the house! Also, the photo with the best lighting was a close up of a small portion of the front of the house. What's an artist to do?
I decided that despite (or maybe because of) the challenges I wanted to give this project a try. The first thing I did was explain the challenges and schedule reviews with the client. At these review points we would both have to agree we wanted to proceed.

Next I asked for as many photos as the client had. More information is always better than less. When we realized that we didn't have a single picture of the right hand side of the house, the client offered a unique solution... Live Search Maps. These maps show satellite pictures combined with maps.

From the Live Search Maps home page, you can enter the address of interest into the search bar at the top of the page and click the green search button. This brings up a map of your requested location. To see the photos, zoom in as far as possible using the magnifier button with the + sign. Next click the Bird's eye button at the top of the map. Now click on each directional letter (the letter, not the arrow) on the compass in the top left hand corner of the map to see a view of the property from that direction.

Obviously the satellite views are not as good as taking your own pictures, but they are pretty amazing considering they are shot from outer space. And they are a heck of a lot better than nothing! Without this online tool I don't think I could have painted the house from the angle the client and I chose.

Since I was working from several different references, I decided that I needed to do some preliminary work before jumping into the final piece. In addition to an accurate line drawing (which took every bit of perspective knowledge that I had!), I decided to also create a shadow guide. I felt this was important because my lighting reference photo did not show the entire house. This is the quick shadow reference that I drew.

8" x 4" graphite drawing

I also painted a small color guide, since I was pulling my colors from several different references. I felt a smaller preliminary painting was a good way to test if the colors would look consistent. Below is my color reference.

7.5" x 4.5" watercolor

Creating these two preliminary pieces helped me avoid some problems in the finished painting and really got me familiar with the property before moving on to the larger painting. In my next post I'll talk about some of the changes I made from these study pieces, and I'll show you the finished painting so you can judge the success of this approach for yourself.

Branching Out

Like so many others, I have decided to branch out and add Facebook to my marketing avenues. This is a new adventure and I am still learning my way around. You can view the beginnings of my business page here. I will be adding to it as time goes on and I become more familiar with available features. The business page is viewable whether you have a Facebook account or not. Please stop by, I am looking forward to seeing a lot of friendly faces as I travel through the jungles of social networking.