First Artist Demo

Yesterday was my first ever artist demo at The Fernie Arts Station. Being a beautiful Saturday afternoon I was not surprised that the audience was small, but that was probably a good thing as I wasn’t nervous and they were nice with no heckling!  I was surprised how quickly the 2 hours went by, initially thinking I would wrap it up early, but did not.

What worked well:
I did the demo in a similar fashion to the baking shows.  I had 3 canvases of the same size. One was just a gessoed and toned ‘blank’, the second had a completed under painting and the third was the fully finished version.

I started with my blank toned canvas and described how I prepped the canvas. Then I showed my sketchbook and talked about my drawings and studies for prepping and planning
I began the drawing on the canvas with diluted oils and got half way done, then asked if they had enough and wanted me to move on to painting.  UNANIMOUS yes.

  Hmmm... it was a good time to throw in a joke - why did Van Gogh become a painter? Because He didn’t have an ear for music. GROANS. Moving on.

Started the darks and shadows first with thinned oil paint.  Then mixed up sky colour, then lightest grass colour and covered the largest areas first. Then tackled the house and soon enough time was up.There were of course questions throughout which I hope I answered without babbling too much.  I think I would sometimes go off on tangents but hope they got their questions answered.  I showed the completed version earlier on in response to a question.

I think I would be good to go if I ever had to do another demo someday.  The pre-planned and finished painting steps worked well for me, as there were no surprises.  I do like to plan ahead!

All in all a positive experience for me, hope it was okay for the audience.  It would be worthwhile having someone video the talk so I could cringe and watch it all later to see what was working best. Many thanks to Jackie at the Arts Station and the women that attended!

Fernie Arts Station
 
Photo courtesy of Jackie from the Arts Station

GO - GO GADGET ARM!!

I GOT A NEW GADGET!  It's almost as good as the Canada Arm on the space station, just smaller.  When I am doing a painting and using a photo reference I have often just printed off the photo and worked from that.  However, the challenges of running out of ink (always!), printing a picture that has even worse shadow colours than the photo, etc. have always been an issue.  

While reading Kathryn Tyrell's blog, Making a Mark, I noticed some of the artists on the Sky Tv Portrait Artist challenge using a device to hold their phones or tablets onto their easel.  I did some research and found this baby at Staples online (cheaper than Amazon).  The reviews were good, it cost about $40 and I think it is AWESOME!  The bendy arm is very sturdy - some people complained about in their reviews, but sturdier is better in my books.  It attaches easily to the easel or flat areas and I shook my iPad all about and it stayed still!  I decided not to put it directly on my easel because it will probably get dirty fast - so right behind it on the shelf seems to work well.

On-line it said it had an adapter type piece to fit onto hospital bedrails - but it doesn't come in the box - maybe it was something you can order separately?  Highly recommend it for now.  Check back in a few months and if it gets saggy or drops my iPad I will let you know! ( I am not selling them or making any money off this - I just like gadgets)