Plein Air Convention and Expo PACE19 overview

I returned 2 days ago from a 5 day trip to San Francisco, CA, where I attended the 2019 Plein Air Convention and Expo #pace19  This post is a review and highlights for me from the trip, in case you decide to attend one (next year it is in Boulder, Colorado), which I highly recommend doing.  I kept a journal while attending and it is almost half filled with notes, tips and sketches.  Below I have a summary of Days 1 and 2.  Will do Days 3 to 5 in my next post.

Best Things
1.  AWESOME ARTISTS providing instruction and demos from early in the morning until late evening.  As an oil painter I attended the relevant oil painting demos, but there were also pastel and watercolour painters here.
2.  MARKETING BOOTCAMPS - Eric Rhoads  provided an early morning Art Marketing instruction with a ton of tips and info.  Very worthwhile for me as an 'emerging artist'.
3.  PLEIN AIR PAINT OUTS - great opportunity to paint urban and landscape around San Francisco and in Sonoma.
4.  Expo / Vendor Hall - excellent opportunity to purchase great artist supplies.  I bought panels, brushes, containers, paint and a Shelby Keefe video at discounted prices.
5.  PRIZES - lots of giveaways.
6. PEOPLE -Plein air painters are a nice bunch of people and it was amazing how when you get chatting you find you have a lot in common with others.

CHALLENGES - finding time to eat and sleep.

Detailed Info

Day 1- Wed, April 24th - Left Edmonton, AB at 4:15 am - Arrived at the hotel at 1 pm and headed off to the Expo hall for a demo by
Kathleen Hudson at 2 pm. She had a beautiful demo, several good tips  TOP TIP: uses small hand mirror to check her painting, to ensure values are all reading properly.

3pm  Newcomers Orientation - helpful

4 pm - Opening Ceremony - high energy - every day of the conference there were awesome prizes, such as paints, brushes, a PACE trip, videos, etc. and at least 6 or more people got a prize daily.  Although I never won anything, our registration package had some cool free stuff and often when you bought something in the Expo hall at the vendor booths they had a freebie included or had reduced prices.

7pm - 5 Artists one Painting - this one was fun to watch as Shelby Keefe, Paul Kratter, Larry Moore, Charlie Hunter  and Cynthia Rosen had roughly 20 mins to take a turn working on one painting.  Lots of cheeky dialogue amongst the artists and the challenge involved in not painting entirely over the previous artist's work.

Exhausted - Sleep

Day 2

6:30 am Eric Rhoads - Art Marketing Boot Camp - wow! Lots of helpful tips crammed into 1 hr, 15 mins. Top tip - Persistence 20% of work week is marketing

Excellent info for me as an 'emerging artist' to make sure I get on top of my social marketing now if I want to grow my 'art business'. 4 PAGES scribbled down in this time.

-  Michael Situ Demo - Highlighted always thinking about contrasts to add interest and balance the painting - Light and Dark, Warm and Cool areas.  Loved his colour use.

Kathleen Dunphy - I ran off to catch the end of Kathleen Dunphy's presentation as it was running concurrently to M. Situ's.  Top Tip: sometimes you have a Focal Path leading you around the painting and not just a single focal point and ALWAYS draw!

Brian Blood - did a San Francisco street scene, appropriately dressed in his hippy tie dye t-shirt.  I had one of his videos previously, so I really enjoy his use of light and colour.  Top Tip - gather info in your Plein air painting focusing on tone and value and being conscious of moments and changes that provide interest.

Randall Sexton - 

Car Portrait - he starts with big shapes blocked in vs drawing, cool to watch.

Plein Air Painting - took the bus to Chrissy Field below the Golden Gate Bridge.  Rude introduction to our Plein Air as it was cold and windy.  I should have worn another layer and had gloves.  Also I should have had my easel properly situated and weighted down as it blew over and I lost all my brush cleaner, which landed on my painting.  Learning many lessons!  Packed up and sketched instead, which I enjoyed too.

Scott W Prior - Urban night scene - Scott completed a painting that he had already started, showing us how he added the details to finish off a rainy, night urban scene of a street car.  Cool! Sorry the picture is very poor, check out his website instead.

Finished!

I had entered this into the Federation of Canadian Artists Postcard Competition a couple of weeks ago.  Was pleased to know that it was juried into the final judging - final winners are going to be chosen May 1st. Crossing fingers.

36x18" oil on canvas
Spring Thaw

Finally, I have completed my painting of Fernie, BC main street.  This has taken a lot of time and effort, but I am fairly pleased with the result.  It will be one of the pieces in my solo show at the Fernie Arts Station in July 2019.  Check it out in person then.

Loosey Goosey or is Tighty Righty??

Just when I feel like I am getting closer to a preferred 'style' of painting, I do something different and start to wonder.  For example, I am in the midst of painting the two pictures below.  The landscape was fairly loose and fast with colours that were not quite what I saw so I ramped them up a little.  The building is very tight and controlled and the colour is pretty true to the photo I was painting from.  I enjoyed doing both.  Hmmm.... I think in about a year's time after I get another 100 paintings under my belt I might be closer to the answer.

Day 27

Can't say much about this one... it is still in progress may pick at it more tomorrow perhaps.

Warming up

The weather has been rather chilly here, but when you live in a cold climate YOU MUST get out and enjoy it or you will go mad!  We had a beautiful sunny day yesterday and spent it outdoors with friends and family   We had a fire and picnic - it was so cold the quinoa salad froze first as we ate it, then the bean salad soon after, potato salad stood up a bit longer.  Hot chocolate was essential, the marshmallow is just a sweet extra.

8x8 oil on canvas

#15 - Portrait

Went back to my tried and true first love of portrait painting for Day 15 of the 30 day challenge.  I am still working on this but need to post before I have to run off to take care of other essential things that need doing.

8x10 oil on canvas panel

Day 13

Very quick oil on panel for day #13 - my rusty paint scraper.

Day 12 - Finishing up

Today's painting time was spent working on finishing up my Backyard Rink start - got rid of some trees, changed some background.  I am almost done, aside from some tweaking of values and sky.  Tried doing an extra 1 hour painting but only had 1/2 hour before running off to get kids, dinner and head for a meeting-so it got scrubbed.

12x12 - oil on canvas

Practise til perfect

9x12 oil on panel

This little keeper is created for an upcoming 'Call for entries'  and I am still working out some shading issues, but the theme was retro.  This one is either Saturday morning cartoons or Rumpus room View - orange shag and wood panel - ahh the 70's.  Speaking of which, I found these dandy fashions when I googled orange shag, retro styles, etc. - shocking, yet refreshing to see models who are soooo normal!!

retro mens wear 70's

Onward...

I am reading a really great book on Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaccson   Da Vinci was amazing with the scope of his projects and skills.  However he did have a difficult time 'finishing' his projects.  Reading this made me feel a bit better about my sometimes painting habit of working on something then not quite calling it finished and leaving it 'for awhile'.  NOT that I am anywhere near the skill level of 'Leo' but I could totally relate to how he would often not finish a number of his projects.  He was often "stymied because his conceptions were "so subtle and so marvellous" that they were impossible to execute faultlessly. "It seemed to him that the hand was not able to attain to perfection of art in carrying out the things which he imagined" p 81

I am sure many artists out there can relate to this, in that what we envision the painting to look like just never seems to turn out the way we want.  My current struggle is with creating light in my paintings - so I am back to studying more on value and colour to try to help with this.  Below are this weeks homework for Figure Drawing class and my recent stab at 'finishing' the sleigh ride painting.

Charcoal sketch of Old Master drawing for homework

Calling it on this oil on panel

Road Trip Inspiration

I had the opportunity to do a very short road trip with one of my sons, as he was off school this week.  We had 3 days and drove to Fernie, BC.  We snapped photos enroute - me for inspiration and painting material and my son, just because he is a talented, aspiring photographer.

Fernie, BC

I saw this fabulously coloured camper van in the parking lot in Black Diamond? I think it was.  I decided to do a warm up painting this morning with it.  It was a tad more technical than what I imagined - so I spent more time than I wanted to on it.  However I think it is worth saving to do a future painting from, with more thought about the background.