Mar 31 2010
This comes from a borrowed photo but it is cropped beyond recognition. Cropping is a great way to focus in on the part of a subject that causes your heart to sing! Pam is creating a piece for her dining room. She is learning that many of the principles of graphite apply to colored pencil. [...]
Mar 30 2010
Jackie is very experienced in graphite and may be one of the most careful of all my students. She has been known to erase and redo entire areas over and over. Because she has a light touch, this doesn’t destroy the tooth of the paper. She works from her own photos, and occasionally from borrowed [...]
Mar 29 2010
Adalaide shows an usual ability to design art rather than just copy photographs. She works from her own photos, but occasionally uses images from other sources. This shows the flags as she designed them, and then she got the idea of adding the insignia from her brother’s Air Force patch in the background. After some [...]
Mar 28 2010
Before anyone graduates to colored pencil, they need to have skill with graphite. If one doesn’t understand the steps of drawing accurately, adding color to the mix is not going to improve one’s skill or one’s finished pieces. Wendy is very very good with graphite and has a wonderfully light touch that makes her colored [...]
Mar 27 2010
This is the beginning of a colored pencil portrait. It looks like a heavy graphite outline, but this will go away as each color is applied. Mae is another traveler who works from her own photos. She looks very very carefully at each subject and crops and rearranges to make the best compositions possible. [...]
Mar 26 2010
This is in graphite and has been spray-fixed so it won’t smear. Next, the giant pot/vase thing will be done in colored pencil. Mary works from the photos she takes on her travels all over the world. Working from one’s own photos is best: no copyright problems and great familiarity with the subject are [...]
Mar 25 2010
This is a very difficult photo from which to draw. It has a zillion different textures and it is only 3-1/2 x 5″ (Aren’t we spoiled by the 4×6″ size now?) Olivia has diligently worked her way from top to bottom, left to right. We have done a bit of redesigning because there are some [...]
Mar 24 2010
Here is another sunflower drawing. Shereen works from her own photographs, and she is quite experienced at drawing. She has the outline of the petals on the page, and is now working on the background. In general, a right-handed person shades from top to bottom and from back to front. This prevents the smearing [...]
Mar 23 2010
Virginia May Botkin, 82, of Visalia passed away Sunday, March 14, 2010. She was born in Visalia on June 18, 1927 to Dorval Wallace and Versa May Beamish. Because her parents were both deaf-mute, she grew up communicating with American Sign Language. Virginia and her sister younger Rosalie (Shiffert) loved to sing, and often [...]
Mar 22 2010
Lots of people, more paintings sold, I’m tired, thanks for coming.