Creating Still Life and a birthday treat

Last year, I decided to take an art class and really enjoyed it...so now I wanna be the next O'Keefe or Cassatt. Or maybe just have a hobby that people can ooh and ahh at.

July 10th was my birthday and the Art Expo was in town. So since I'm now this budding artist, I thought, "Let's Go!"

The Learning and Product Art Expo is sponsored by Dick Blick, Artists Journal, Pastel Journal and Water Color Artist. Its held in Pasadena CA and Lisle IL. Lisle is just a couple of miles from my house so I decided to take a class and check out the expo.

The Expo is held over a weekend with a meet and greet the teachers on the Thursday evening before the start of the Expo. There is a $10 charge, but its only $5 if you're taking a class. Of course the classes range in price from $60-140, with the mode being $75.

On Thursday I went to the meet and greet and it was enjoyable...and expensive since I just HAD to buy some stuff...so I bought some CD's on how to make your art pop...oh and how to do pet portraits.....

On Friday, my class was at 1p.m. and I got to the Expo about 11---to no parking and rain! I finally cheated and parked in the motorcycle parking...I figured that since it was pouring down rain, there would be very few, if any, motorcycles. I run in and find where I'm supposed to sign in and do that and get my goodie bag. Its very nice, a large reuseable bag that's really roomy. Inside was some ink, a copy of Artist's magazine, paper samples, linseed oil and a paint brush....plus my favorite--coupons!

So I walk through the vendors. First these were absolutely GREAT prices -- most things were 50% off and some up to 70%! I picked up some sketch pads, pan pastels, a book and another video...and then my bag was heavy. And it was getting close to the time for my class. I meandered through the hotel/conference center looking for the room. I finally found it(after going to 203S instead of 203W) and met the teacher.

Pan pastels act more like thick watercolors, rather than just pastels. Or so I've been told. Although I did pick up a 10 pack, I haven't used them yet. They do work well from the little bit of scribbling I did at the vendor. Although most vendors sell colors up to 48 or 76 colors/shades/tints, many artists, specially if they do landscape, limit themselves to 10-12 core colors and then mix them to get the right effect.

When I registered, I signed up for a class called "Loosen Up!" which was facillitated byStephanie Birdsall.

The class was in how to "loosen up" when applying, working in soft pastels. During my class last semester, I really enjoyed working in pastel, so I thought why not? I find the room and meet the teacher. She's an elegant whisp of a woman, casual clothes. On her website, she tells us, is an interview that she did with PBS...kinda cool.

After we all introduce ourselves(there's 9 of us, all women, ranging from 30-ish to 60's more of us older than younger), we begin our class. Stephanie has picked out pastel board for us and pastels--she has her own "line" with one of the pastel manufacturers -- its her favorite 10 colors, the ones that are the most diverse and the samples that we have are basically that line. She had the hotel bring up fruit and proceeded to set up 5 or 6 still lifes around the room, making it much easier for us to concentrate on something closer to us, rather than all of us trying to work up the same still life.

The first thing we are to do is decide on where our horizon will be on the board and then to roughly draw in the fruit with the golden ochre color. Pastels are for layering...you work dark to light. We then used a wash for the background, at least the bottom half and went to work.

To work with pastels, again, you work more from dark to light and you must take care of what type of paper you are using. The paper must have some "teeth" to it, some texture and thickness, to hold the pastel with becoming muddy.

This is the finished product. All of the fruit began with the brown color of the background. The green apples were brown, then a darker green, yellow green, some red and then a very light yellow for highlights...oh and more brown for the stem and some top shadows.

The shadows have some gray, black, blue and purple--yes purple!

I was really amazed as I saw my little project developing--at first all it was was shapes and blobs....a bunch of rough circles on a sea of brown...and then...slowly, but surely, it began to look like a 3-d representation of fruit! Without and real lines, the apples and stawberries began to look like apples and strawberries(ok, so at least one strawberry is a bit too heart shaped, but you know its a strawberry!). The class lasted about 3 hours and it was well worth the $70-80 I spent on it!

So I went home a happy, but broke, artist....as you can see, my bag was pretty full and this doesn't even count the book that I bought!