Life Outside the Fishbowl

Atomic Dog Show at the Del Ray Artisans

“Nama-Stay” by Sarah Chittenden

The Atomic Dog exhibit is on through May 27th at the Del Ray Artisans in Alexandria.  You can get details on the show by clicking the image above, or here. Sarah did a wonderful job curating the show.  My daughter was very excited to see that a few people brought their dog to the opening reception, and she spent the majority of her time petting them.

We picked up a small oil painting of a dog by Linda Lowrey, after much pleading by said daughter.

This is my first show with the group, I've got two pastels in the show that I painted for the theme.  Both of these paintings are on Ampersand's Pastelboard.  It has a neutral grey surface, which made it a bit challenging as my greyhound was a silver brindle.  This is Rosie, who we lost about five years ago. The green background was my daughter's request, so she can hang it in her room ;)

Roadster, pastel 2018

Next up is Willow, a corgi. Willow demands lots and lots of petting.  And treats.....  but she's a real bundle of love.

Willow, pastel 2018

I had so much fun with these two pastels I decided to try my hand at Rosie using UArt's black paper. I'd bought some of the paper when it was released last fall, but hadn't had a chance to try it out.  You can follow the progress of this pastel on my Instagram account.  Here's a montage I posted when starting the painting.

 

 

 

June Update -- and a Few Commissions

Where on earth has the spring gone? The kids just finished school last week (yes, we get out late here) and we're trying to get my son all supplied up to attend the Boy Scout Jamboree in a few weeks.   My goal to update this blog more regularly is languishing, but since we had a flurry of house activity I'll be able to share some pretty close to finished spaces, finally.  It's only been two years since the kitchen & living area were remodeled and about a year for the basement.  And it took us about that long to agree on a replacement for our 19 year old Crate and Barrel couch.  But more later......

May brought my brother and his family into our area, along with their three dogs.  We had two corgis and a shepherd with us for about a week and now my daughter has her heart set on aquiring a corgi -- not sure how enthusiastic the guinea pig will be to adding a dog.

This past spring I continued taking acrylic painting and watercolor classes at the Art League.  I've posted many in progress photos on Instagram, and many of the paintings from this spring still need a bit of background work before I feel like they're finished.  Two of my favorite paintings were of a cow skull and a vase of day lilies.

I also completed, framed and delivered two commissioned pastel paintings.  These were both made for a colleague of my husband who retired. This first painting is of Basin Harbour, Vermont where they've been holding an annual conference for years.

And this is a scene from the Isle of Skye in Scotland from a recent staff ride. 

I attended the retirement party where these were presented.  I now understand why actors don't like to watch their movies with others.  It was easy enough to talk about my work at Artomatic among strangers, quite another thing to accept compliments from people I know.

A Change in Seasons

There's a distinct difference between summer and winter, and these two pastels of the same place show that.  Our last big family vacation was up to Scotland and the Highlands several years ago.  This past March my husband went back and retraced a number of the places we went.  When he asked me what I wanted him to bring back, I answered "pictures." Lots and lots of pictures for me.

This is Glen Coe in August, full of lush greens and color.  I pushed the color in this pastel, adding more yellow than in the photo. This painting is on a Savoir Faire pastel panel. I'm not sure where I picked this up, but it was the first time using it.  It took watercolor well, and you can see I left a lot of watercolor sky showing.  I decided after the underpainting dried I wanted it more vibrant so I grabbed a vivrant yellow and reddish purple to blend into the background.

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen this photo, soon after I started. And this one when I thought I'd about finished. While it was being framed, the tape holding the glassine stuck to the surface and ripped the panel, so I had my framer chop a couple inches off the left side and I went back to do a little revising.   In the process, I shifted the colors to take a lot of the pink out. I'm off to take this back to get framed right now, so cross your fingers....

And this is the same place, this past March.  There's a bit of snow on the mountains and everything's a shade of brown. The green is muted and the grasses have died back for the winter. This painting is on ArtSpectrum paper and you can see the reddish-brown color showing through.  I did blend the sky in a bit to remove more of the background color.

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Artomatic Crystal City

 

If you are in the greater Washington DC area, Artomatic starts this Friday at noon and runs through May 6th.  Opening night this Friday from 7 pm - midnight.  Artomatic is a large arts festival that is free to the public.  The address is 1800 South Bell Street in Crystal City.  There's plenty of garage parking and it's right off a metro stop.

My space is on the 7th floor. I've been spending a good deal of time getting ready for this show, including these two recent pastel paintings. I've posted many in-process photos on Instagram, however, I haven't posted the final paintings here. For both of these I used Ampersand Pastelboard.

This one's another shot from Scotland.  We stopped along the A82 to see the Three Sisters and this is Coire Gabhail on the left and  Gearr Aonach on the right.  For this I used a gray Pastelboard and didn't do a separate underpainting. 

And this was on a smaller white pastelboard that I bought to try out the surface.  I thought I'd try out a still life and I liked how the surface took the pastel.  It's not quite as toothy as the 400 UArt paper, but it won't warp or bend. I did do a pastel underpainting using water on the surface. 

I like these boards and just received a few other colors in the mail to try out, including a few gessoboards that will need to have a pastel surface added.  Can't wait to try these out!

Paintings

Today I'm going to share a few still life acrylic paintings I did this past fall.  I am very thankful I decided to sign up for this class on a whim last year; I am happy and excited to walk into the studio each Monday morning. Happy on a Monday? Who could ask for more?!

Thanks to the two-hour school delay this morning I wasn't able to make it over to the Art League for my painting class.  I love painting with Jin; I learn so much from his class.  I mostly paint still life set-ups, with the last two-three classes painting a live model.  If you follow me on Instagram I regularly post in-progess and finished pictures of my work. 

I also discovered that I love painting pumpkins and gourds -- this whitish/bluish one in particular.  Luckily the nearby Whole Foods has quite an assortment to choose from.  Perhaps being able to use lots of oranges and yellows plays a part in that -- colors you normally don't find in the pastel landscapes I do.

However, this past week I did start a pastel using reference photos I took before all my pumpkins went bad.  I posted a few shots on Instagram.  Here's where I decided to stop for the day.  I've been busy at home putting away Christmas trees and decorations and trying to get my space organized for a bit of company so I haven't been able to get back to this painting  ... yet....

 

 

That's it for today. #stilllife #pastelpainting #ampersand #pastelboard

A photo posted by Deborah Mahnken (@lifeoutsidethefishbowl) on Jan 25, 2017 at 12:13pm PST

 

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A Few Recent Pastels

This spring I spent my pastel time with photos of our trip to Scotland last August.  I find myself drawn to the mountains, rocks, and incredible greens of the landscape.  Here's a few pastel paintings, which you've seen in various stages if you follow me on Instagram.  I took both of these to be framed a few weeks ago and am anxiously waiting for the call to pick them up.

This first is from a view at Glen Coe.  We walked out the back of the visitors center, to the right and around the trails looking for some good backgrounds for a family photo.  I loved this old stone wall. This painting is rather small, probably around 8" x 10" -- but I didn't measure it before I dropped it off.  I had finished this in the fall, but careless construction workers managed to knock over and smudge this piece.  While I was fixing the damage I decided to make some changes, such as correcting the mountain terrain and adding a few corals in the rocks.

Glen Coe Stone Wall; pastel on prepared surface

 

This scene is from alongside the road on our way back that day, where part of the hills/mountains were cut and blasted to make way for the road.  I'm not sure exactly, but we took the A82 most of the way to and from Sterling.  I used 400 Uart with a wet pastel underpainting. 

Highland Pass; pastel on UArt

 

An Award!

I got a call today from the Art League letting me know I'd been selected for an Equal Merit award in the annual student show for my pastel (below) of this Scottish landscape. The reception and award presentation will be on Sunday.  How exciting!

It's funny because when I was deciding which pieces to frame, my husband like the other pastel I'd done of this scene better.  I preferred the pinks of the underpainting showing through and took this painting plus the painting with the hay bales to the framers. 

A Few Recent Pastels

I'm trying to finally get back to this blog, after having been physically barricaded from my computer for most of the past few months.  Thanks to the "Jonas Blizzard" or "Snowzilla" or "Stormegedeon Part II" -- whatever your prefered name -- we've been stuck inside for the better part of a week with no school.  That's incentive to clear away the piles of junk blocking my desk.  Along with that I pulled out the camera to take photos of the pastel paintings I've been doing this fall from our summer trip to Scotland. If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen these paintings in various states of completion.

This first painting of a pasture was from Stirling, Scotland near (or possibly part of) the Bannockburn battlefield. I used a mounted piece of UArt for this painting, which was lovely to paint on, however, in the intervening months the board has warped. I'll have to get this framed sooner rather than later.  I used my Blue Earth cerulean pastels to do the underpainting, which you can see here.

This painting was done on a piece of Art Spectrum.  I'd gotten a sampler set from Dakota Pastels a while back and had never opened it up.  I grabbed a piece with a dark purple shade for this, however, after my initial layer was down I wet the pastel effectively covering up most of the color of the paper.  I discovered that the artist tape I use doesn't play nice with this paper; it tore the top edge as I was removing it, so I was forced to crop off the top two inches of sky.

And finally, this is the same scene as above, this time painted on UArt paper with a four-value underpainting.  The scene is from a stop along the drive back from Glen Coe in Scotland towards Stirling. You can see some of the mountains of the Highlands off in the distance.  I've also painted this in watercolor a few times as well, which I'll share another day.

 

In Progess Paintings....

We wrapped up our four week pastel class this Wednesday, and I was hoping to finish this painting.  I think it's about finished, but I'll set it aside for May and bring it back to class in June to see if there's anything I want to change or add.

You can see how it evolved from the sketch.  One of favorite iPhone apps is Hueless.  It's the best app for checking your values and I'll use it as I work on my paintings, checking it against my reference photo. 

This was one a shot using Hueless taken about half-way through the class as I was working on the lower foreground area. It helps me see where I need to either lighten or darken the pastel.  You can use value viewers, like these,  of which I have several, but my phone is often easier to grab. And the hueless app doesn't have the same limitations as the hand-held viewers with red pastels.

I've also been slowly working on getting this watercolor still life completed.  I've posted some in-progress shots on Instagram. I was really pleased with how the pumpkins were coming along and I was quite nervous about adding a background. 

Sometimes you have to be brave and repeat after yourself, "it's only paper.... it's only paper...."

Pastels

Since the last time I posted a finished pastel painting (back in February) I've completed two more and just started on a third.  After completing the monochromatic pastel on Uart paper (below), I grabbed a piece of gatorfoam that had a prepared surface. It was much smaller than the UArt, around 8x10, and I thought I'd try the same subject again.

Here's my monochromatic painting:

And now the second, smaller one. I started with a black, textured surface and while I used many of the same colors, I didn't restrict myself to a monochromatic scheme.  I happily added a variety of other colors.

Working on a prepared surface is fun and forces you to stay loose and not get lost in details.  I just started a new painting this past week on a mostly blue surface. If you follow me on Instagram you saw my sketch and photo.  I'm hoping the bright blue background will help the yellows and oranges really pop.

After class on Wednesday, I'd made a good start. You can see where I used a white pastel pencil to lightly sketch in my shapes.

And who knows.  Maybe when I've finished with this one I'll turn around and do it again, this time on UArt.