Finally back from a blogging break!

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I last updated this blog. Life has been so busy with teaching and preparing to move that I've been horrible about keeping on top of writing and updating over here. I've also been working on writing a syllabus for beginning drawing classes ( online format)which will begin this summer. I hope to have this ready after my family and I have moved to the Washington DC area and settled in a bit up there. I already have 3 inquiries for potential students. With all that said and to catch up a bit: I just wrapped up a 12 week Foundations of Drawing class for an Educational Co-op. I've been teaching beginning drawing classes for 16 years and always thoroughly enjoy them, but this class was so special. I had some wonderful students who worked extremely hard over the semester. Twelve weeks is certainly not long to have proper drawing classes so it was more of a speed-foundations class but they did well with all that was introduced to them. Sadly, for some, it may be the only exposure to art classes that they ever get. Others, I suspect, will continue to pursue this newfound love of drawing. My only regret is that I did not offer classes there earlier. Perhaps if I had, I could have broken the Foundations class up in Part 1 and Part 2. Here's a glimpse of the end of the semester class exhibit. Students began the study with basic shapes, value scales, and various shading techniques. They progressed to life studies, grid drawing and finally on to a very brief introduction to Charles Bargue plates, the first image you see here.

In closing, I'm not sure why blogger formatting will not let me create new paragraphs here so I apologize for the text all running together. Please, also, forgive the poor quality of the images. I only had my cell phone with me that day.

Tornadoes and a Winter Wonderland

Well, to say this past weekend had some strange weather for our state would be the greatest understatement of the century. On Friday, the temps rose from around 50 to 72 degrees here within a 30 minute time frame. That was the catalyst for the disaster to follow. As reported on the news, parts of Kentucky and Indiana were devastated by EF4, EF 3 and EF 2 tornadoes that roared through later in the afternoon and early evening.

I had dropped my children off at the near half-way point between my home in Central Ky and my parent's home in the mountains. This was to be a fun weekend with their Grandchildren. We ate lunch with my mother and nephew at a Dairy Queen around noon and then I drove home in some treacherous rain, lightening, and high winds. A few hours later, the horrible storms moved in and wiped out the entire downtown area of a small community called West Liberty. This is over an hour or so from my home. The place where I met my mother, is called Salyerville and it was also hit incredibly hard with most all of the businesses on the bypass, where we had lunch, destroyed. It's very sobering to have driven though all the destruction on Sunday and to see firsthand so much debris and devastation.

My thoughts and prayers are certainly with all who were faced with this terror on Friday night. I am so grateful and blessed to report that my family East of here is safe and none of us suffered any losses or damages as a result of the tornado outbreak.

Then, on Monday, we woke to freezing temps and up to 5 inches of this!








Very bizarre weather indeed, but then again, Kentucky is known for bizarre Spring weather. However, the communities in the eastern half of the state that were hit by the storms rarely ever have tornado threats. Today, we woke to blue skies, sunshine and rising temps.

Green Grapes-Complete

(Green Grapes by Rebecca Chamberlain)


...Well, it's 99% finished...I wrapped up the stem work and burnishing today and just have some tidying around the edges before signing and framing...Shoo...The poor cluster should have been discarded days ago but I had to keep it to finish all the stem work. At least there were no fruit flies!

I think I'll raise a glass this evening in honor of the fruit of the vine :)...Now, what to do next...hum...a strawberry, perhaps?

More layering....

The grapes are coming along, slowly...I still have lots of of layering and stem work to do but it's getting there... I spent several hours working on them today. I'm keeping fingers crossed that this one is finished in time for the library Drawing Society exhibit. There's nothing like having a deadline looming to kick-start things into gear.

Grapes In Winter

Once again I turned to the supermarket for another subject to draw. This time, however, I was inspired by Jess's wonderful grapes at Inky Leaves as well as memories of a July trip to a local winery with my best friend.





While we were there, strolling through the vineyard, I knew that I wanted to do a study but had no art supplies with me that day. So I put the idea on the proverbial back burner and decided that I would do one in the future. Of course, I forgot about them until recently.

Fueled with some inspiration, I found a nice cluster of plump green grapes at the market. My first challenge was setting them up. I knew I needed to suspend them to get the views that I wanted but this proved more difficult than I could have imagined. I was struck by how heavy they were but figured that I could use some string to hoist them up and anchor that with something. The contraption I came up with, a box that I used to pull the string across and secure underneath to hold the fruit, lasted all of about 5 minutes before the grapes started dropping. Working at an uncomfortably fast speed, I got the over all shape of the cluster on transfer paper before losing a sizable portion of the arrangement. Consequently, I had to hold the grapes with my left hand as I finished sketching with my right. I do not recommend doing this by any means but I needed to keep the drawing accurate and true to the view that I started sketching from. That seemed to be my best option. With grapes still dropping ( and getting rather sticky), I placed them side by side with my drawing and began the more detailed tonal under drawing.




Here's the graduation of values (above pic) with Dark Sepia on the cluster.



(and the illustration after more layering)

I spent a good part of Monday afternoon layering Chrome Oxide green, Permanent Green Olive, Earth Green Yellowish, Light Yellow Ochre, and some Burnt Sienna for the browning discoloration. Thankfully, I had just enough Chrome Oxide to darken in the darkest values. The waiting game is on before my Dick Blick shipment of more pencils arrives with some essential colors. Then I can hopefully finish this piece by the weekend.

Cherries update

After a few hours of quality time in the studio, I was able to finish the cherries today. I tuned into Pandora Radio, clicked on the Ella Fitzgerald station, made a cuppa Earl Grey Lavender and got busy. What a great afternoon to be working indoors,too. The temperatures have taken quite a dip today and the weather forecasters have projected snow for our area. We have had such a mild winter this season that a couple of inches on a weekend is fine with me. And, there are a couple of children in this house who will no doubt be hoping for a Saturday snowman.

I have yet to take a photo of the Cherry Trio with proper lighting but I did take a few pictures today as I worked.


(Here's the illustration after the stems had been detailed and the burnishing was completed.)






(A view from my studio space of the partial stained glass window that overlooks the garden. The snow was just beginning to cover the neighbor's roof.)


( The other window in my workspace that overlooks the street...)

Cherry Trio

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself stumped for botanical subjects. Though there are still some very interesting things in the garden that I could have used, I just couldn't find anything that I really wanted to draw. So, I headed to the supermarket's produce department where I snatched up a nice bag of plump cherries. I love drawing cherries and recently sold a pen and ink illustration of them that I did 2 years ago. With a new Library art exhibit approaching, I decided to do another one to exhibit there, only this time in color. This is what I came up with:



Now, I might add that the real task was to avoid consuming the subjects! Did I mention that the rest of the 1 1/2 lb bag I purchased was largely devoured by a precocious fruit fiend?..Um...I mean by my 5 year old daughter ..:)




I wanted to do a trio of them so I grabbed three of the best looking ones from the bag and came up with an arrangement. First came the initial drawing on transfer paper and then traced that onto my Fabriano Artistico paper.




I followed the suggestion of botanical artist, Ann Swan, and actually used black to layer in the shadows on the cherries. I normally use dark sepia but she suggested that gray tones would not be dark enough for such dark cherries like the ones I found, and like the ones she used in her book. So, I began layering with black and then used Black Cherry(Prismacolor)over that. This should be done,per her suggestion, to absorb the black. Next came the layering of Permanant Green Olive on the stems.



I softened the darker tones and colored in the lighter areas with Red-Violet, Madder, and Magenta. These pencils are all Faber-Castell polychromos except for the Black Cherry Prismacolor one that I mentioned above. The result is what you see below. I got so wrapped up in this process that I neglected to stop and photograph the progress as I layered the colors in.


( I had to use auto correct because the photo was too dark.)

I still have to finish the stems and burnish everything but I will photograph the final illustration, with better lighting, before it's framed.