Life on the Ranch and in the Studio, and on the Road

This has been a very busy weekend with lots of things happening at the ranch and in the studio. It was also our Regular Ozark Pastel Society meeting at the Art Barn on the campus of John Brown University. 

A special visitor to our home was wonderful pastel artist, Caprise Cooper, who was to demonstrate, to our Ozark Pastel Society on Saturday, several techniques she has developed for painting rusty objects with pastels. I was delighted to host Caprise at the ranch.

We met at the Art Barn on the Campus of John Brown University, to set up her demo space and lighting. We had met earlier at the Park House Restaurant, with Charles Peer, past instructor at JBU, to visit before hand. After the set up, we went to Charles' lovely home and had diet Root Beer, what a treat! No frosty mug though! We saw his beautiful art collection and then went to his wonderful studio. That was the cherry on the day. 

Saturday morning we watched Caprise go through her demo and show six different ways she has used different techniques and materials to create her beautiful art.

After lunch, we settled in for a mini lesson on preparing canvas, paper and other substrates with micaceous black acrylic, iridescent and pearlized acrylics and a special watercolor known as FineTec. Most supplies can be purchased through Dick Blick.

Most people used the black micaceous paint to prime their paper or canvas, which gave them a super surface to draw their image on. Caprise provided great photos, for swap meets near her home on Petit Jean Mountain,  for us to work with.

I worked on Uart 400 cream paper and worked directly with the acrylics and FineTec watercolors. The laying in of color was teadious as I had selected a very colorful rusty car with lots of chrome. 

As with all pastel paintings they go through a very awkward and ugly stage and you never feel you will be able to pull off a descent painting. Mine looked like a patchwork quilt. 

I was exhausted when I got home, as I had been challenged to the limit with the different process. So I was anxious and ready to paint on Sunday morning. 

In my studio, I began selecting pastels to use on this patchwork mess I had created. Listening to the music from the movie, 'Dances with Wolves' was the perfect inspiration for working on this mess I had created. I worked 90 minutes and it bagan to come together.

Next day, Monday, I worked 3 hours and started fine-tuning and correcting errors in my sketch. !!! Okay, so you think I made a mistake putting my image upside down+++Hang on!!! It was so much fun working with the brilliant colors in this painting, but I was stressed the day before.

I remembered a trick I learned many years ago from Betty Edwards' book 'Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain', in which she says sometimes we have trouble with our drawing because we want to name each item we are drawing.  So, if you turn your painting or drawing upside down, it engages the right side of your brain and and changes it to a subjective state. This is known as R-mode. 

Making the shift to R-Mode is difficult but if done properly will give great results.  Familiar things do not look the same when they are upside down. We automatically assign a top, bottom and sides to things we perceive.  Turning your painting upside down, confuses the brain and we now see shapes and in this case color swatches, that are my underpainting. This allows the left hemisphere to let the right brain or R-Mode to take over for a while. I continued like this for the duration of the painting, until the last thirty minutes to fine detail the painting. 

I finished it on Tuesday morning and will let it simmer a few days before I call it finished. 

My takeaway is I loved the textures created with the sugar rub, which helped give the rust a special 3rd dimensionand the glittery underpainting of the watercolor and acrylics that still shine through, even with many layers of pastels. I used gritty Unisons, and Mt. Visions, along with many Terry Lugwig neutrals and a few Nupastels for the finishing touches. I used several of Dian Townsend's 'Hots' which has both grit and some glitter. 

I definitely will use the techniques that Caprise taught us on other projects and am eager to see where I can use in landscape and maybe even stilllife. 

I continue to pray for Texas, and now New Mexico and our Country, where wildfires are now consuming the beautiful Lodge on the North Rim of Grand Canyon. How devastating with all this that nature is throwing at us right now. Please join me in praying for our country and the ones who have been impacted personally and the volunteers who step up to help in time of need. 

Prayers, and all my best,

Burneta