Cultural Days

Richmond Artists Guild planned our usual contribution to Cultural Days - which was September 30th-by having a model and the public could either watch or join in. We decided to have a bit of a twist by having our model pose on her motorcycle. One good thing was, when the model took a break to stretch and walk around, the motorcycle stayed put so some more work could still be done.Some were painting on canvases but I decided to work on pastels and I chose a neutral grey pastel paper. Pastel paper is two-sided. One side is smoother and the other side has more of a grid surface to hold the pastel pigment. Good quality pastels have more pigment than cheaper ones. Pastels come in soft, hard or even pencil forms. There are also very soft powdery ones that come in little cases much like the compacts girls used to carry to powder their noses. In fact, this form of pastel is applied with a sponge - and make-up sponges are cheaper than the ones sold for the same purpose in art stores. Pastels have to be kept sorted to like colours so that they don't rub off against each other and become grubby. One of the joys of using pastels is that the colours have a lush richness to them that can be a delight to apply. Well- it rained on our Cultural Day, but we were under a canopy and managed to finish- but I bet our model would have been happier indoors with a heater.

At Living Cafe

The Iconic Edibles and other food paintings are now all hanging at the Living Cafe and looking very colourful. The server told me that her favourite one was this one of the Gelato . She recognized it as real Italian gelato and said how much she had enjoyed gelato when she had the opportunity to visit Rome. There was a cooking demo for Cultural Days but I didn't stay for it ( although I would have liked to - it looked really interesting!) as I had another Cultural Days event to get organized for. Sometimes time seems too short to fit in all the art and activities a person would like.

What I did last night

Last night, some of us were drawing or painting in the lobby of the Art Centre-to show the kind of thing that we do in our Life Drawing sessions.  For this public event, however, we did have a draped model...which is something we actually do sometimes in our regular Life Drawing sessions. We arranged a better lighted spot for the model, but our lighting was terrible. I thought I was using black for the dress strap - but, look- it is purple!  Also, not sure about the skin as it ended up more yellow, when I could actually see the colours I'd been using. I may go over it again to "de-yellow" it.   I was using conte' crayon on an orange paper.  This was done in around 2 and a half hours, minus breaks for the model. This event was for Cultural Days which runs all weekend across Canada. The Art Centre was really hopping and we had some people come specifically to join us to do their own drawing- which was really nice!

Art in public

Last night we did our Life Drawing with a draped model at the Art Centre- down in the foyer. This was for Cultural Days. We attracted a fair crowd of watchers and a couple who tried their hands at drawing with us. We had the light on the model but the lighting for we artists was not so good- so it was a bit of "drawing in the dark" - but an improvement over "painting in the rain" which was how we started out at the Grand Prix. Since then, I've noodled a bit on the plein air painting - changed the colour of the sky and added crows- just to have a bit of fun with it---- and because I felt the foreground needed something. So here is the result.

Cultural Days

How did we get near the end of September so soon? Some of it whirled by in preparation for the Grand Prix of Art Steveston, where we started out painting in the rain this year. Now we are up to Cultural Days and Richmond Artists Guild is doing a Life Drawing demonstration in the foyer of Richmond Art Centre this Friday evening. We will have a clothed model in one pose and the general public will be invited to watch or try drawing. I plan on worked in coloured pastels (conte' crayon) so I may produce something like this one. This was Helene in a hat with a veil. We have a different model on Friday night so I may very well post the results.

Another go...

As I've said, one of the good things about acrylics is that you can change things. Remember "Grandmother's Gown"? As in previous posts, I did work to warm it up once- but now I've had another go at it. This time, I made even more changes to the warmth- and also added an earring- and I feel much happier about it. The other thing I have been working on is an event for "Cultural Days" - a cross-Canada celebration of the arts at the end of September. The Guild is going to sponsor a plein-air painting event. Artists will have three hours to complete a painting - in the Steveston area- and there will be prizes. People can walk around to see the artists at work, and later even vote for "people's choice". It will be open to all artists but there will be registration. We don't have registration forms yet but Saturday, September 25 is the day to mark on your calendar for Steveston's Gran Prix d'Art.

Show in Hallway

Today the Richmond Artists Guild hung a show of member's work in the Minoru hallway of the Richmond Art Centre. I have two paintings in the exhibit. One is "Baskets" which is posted on my June 11 blog and the other is "Iris Garden"-which I intend to post here. Iris Garden is a view of a house (gardener's house?)and nearby irises as seen from the gardens of the Lieutenant-Governor's residence in Victoria, B.C. We had an enthusiastic group out with their paintings and there is a nice variety - definitely worth dropping in to see if you are in Richmond. Blogging has fallen behind as there have been many meetings and other events. Stay tuned for something exciting to happen for Cultural Days at the end of September. I've been working on something which is not ready for an announcement yet.