After the Blizzard, Bayville
14" x 10", watercolor (unframed), $300+ shipping
October was a busy month! I was in two shows...
1. The Art Guild Member Show at the Graphic Eye Gallery
Great work by Art Guild members!
I had two pieces in the show - After the Blizzard, Bayville and Moonrise, Orient
And I was very humbled and honored to receive the 2013 Terry Shkuda Award for Broadening Artistic Pursuits. (Thank you all, SO much!)
Kathy Shkuda presents me with the Terri Shkuda Award, with Shelley Holtzman TAG president.
2. Art Guild Show at Chelsea Mansion
The Art Guild was invited to be part of a free fall concert series in Nassau County in the beautiful Chelsea Mansion - for only eight days!
This show was quite a challenge to arrange and hang. One "room" was a tent (so, no walls to hang paintings on) and the other was the Music Room (but we couldn't hang anything on the walls).
So we borrowed grids used in craft/art shows and bought 15 easels from Jerry's Artarama. We had a lot of fun assembling those. The first one took 1.5 hours and the second one only half-an-hour – pretty good learning curve! They're really nice looking! (Almost too nice to use for painting!)
15 easels in the front room of Elderfields
Ten Guild members collaborated to paint the Nassau County Legislative building, as a gift for Carnell Foskey, Commissioner. Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation and Museums for helping to get us back in our home at Elderfields. A photo of the Legislative Building was scaled (by the amazing Aleta) and gridded out. Each artist got a 10" x10" section to paint on a wood panel in our own style. We then assembled it on a wooden frame.
This is my panel. I painted it first with three or four coats of Golden Watercolor Ground. I traced the piece of the building that was my assignment (yup, that little red roof and the top of the tree). I found a dramatic sky in my photos (I couldn't bear to just paint blue) and lightly sketched the clouds in. I painted as I normally would with watercolors.
The surface does behave like watercolor paper. You can lift and blend in much the same way. The nice part is that if you make a horrendous mistake, you can just wipe it off. If there's any staining, you can just paint more ground over it.
To get a little more detailing in the roof, I used some colored pencil. Again, the surface behaved very much like watercolor paper. I did spray a light coat of fixative over it when everything was dry.
Some of the panels together
Bill assembles the "collage" painting as Ilene watches.
Bill shows off the framed collage painting.
Diane & Ilene with the framed collage painting.
We think it looks very cool!
The Big DAY!
The easels look great...
...And so do the grids.
And, by the way, Mr. Foskey really liked the painting too!
The show turned out really well and we hope to do another show there next year!
The winners
My paintings
For more pictures, you can check out The Art Guild's FB page.
