Art Fair - To Do or Not to Do...

Last night was my first 'Art Walk / Fair' of the year.  This one was Art Walk St Albert and it is held on the first Thursday of the month from May until September.  I was actually supposed to have also been in the May Art Walk, however it was snowing and cold that day before and morning of, so I pulled out of that one, fearing for my art and my toes. Here is some info for VENDOR artists considering a booth at any art fair.

- The  Cost. St. Albert Art Walk is free for outdoor vendors to set up, who have applied.  This is great if you are just starting out and want to test the water's. ( It's great for anyone really).  check out prices of applying when you want to do an art fair.

- The location. This one was great, as it is in front of St. Albert Place which holds a library, studios, City Hall, the Arden Theatre.  Quite busy with people coming and going for the first while.
You get plenty of exposure, even if you aren't making sales.

- The Duration of the Art Walk.  Lots of work to prepare for a short duration Art Walk - from 6 until 8:30 pm.  I spent most of the day before-hand setting up my tent to make sure I had all the bits, laying out my paintings, making portfolio, labels, price lists, etc.  With time I will get faster at doing this.

- Weather - it is uncontrollable - I came prepared with gloves, toque, layers - but we were all a little chilly.

-Your set up.
Costly Version.  We lucked out, the rain held off and the wind was moderate.  Saw 2 easels go down and I was eyeballing my neighbours tent as it was not pegged or sandbagged.
Your options are - going big and getting the tent and its accoutrements - which DEFINITELY REQUIRES 2 PEOPLE for set up and takes MUCHO time.  I purchased my tent on-line from Impact Displays for about $380 and search their website well, as I found a package that includes all 4 walls and a small awning for just about the same price as just the tent.  It comes in a handy wheeled bag that almost fits everything back in again, but not really.  My display racks were 8' lengths of wire shelves from Canadian Tire or Walmart, that are zip tied together.
- Staying small and portable, which my neighbour on the other side had, with a nice professional display rack and table that looked like if it started raining she would be warm and dry in her car before I could hardly get started!  She had an additional box of prints and other items to show people who were interested in her art stored neatly under her table.

- The People.  This was a very friendly location.  Most people had positive comments and didn't mind chatting.  I gleaned information on which paintings they reacted most positively too and kept track in my guest book.  (COWS!) Most were just browsing but I enjoyed chatting.

- The other artists - all super friendly and very willing to share their tips and tricks.  THANK YOU for sharing info on who your printer is, where to get the best prints, etc.  It was recommended that I get some prints made of my work to sell at a lower price point for those who could not afford the original oil paintings.  Guess what I am doing today!

DIY Easel up cycling

This was a table top easel I got years ago fairly cheaply.  It has been  gathering dust for some time now since I graduated to the big girl stand up easel.  I had a brainstorm to take off the easel portion and find my lightest camera tripod, to adapt them into a nice light weight plein air easel set up.

I purchased a guerrilla universal tripod plate ($24.) from my local art store.  I had tried  to cheap out and find the hardware in the nuts and bolts section of the hardware store but was told they didn't have anything like what I was after.  However, I was given a big piece of FREE plywood from Ron at the hardware store since I only needed a small piece. I bought a  camera tripod attachment plate at the camera store ($16.)  I attached the plywood to the easel, which I had removed from the base.  Then on went the plate and now I can quickly attach it to my camera tripod. 

Because the easel had adjustable support arms when it was on the table top  easel, I left them on and they are perfect with two baby bungees to make the whole setup more stable in terms of blowing around.

This is what the tripod and easel look like and really is light weight compared to my guerrilla box, should I want to do hikes into the hills this summer.

in progress painting, the top arm can slide down snugly to hold it in place

Plein Air Convention Days 4 & 5

Finally, I have a couple moments as all 'my Boyz' are busy making me Mother's Day Brunch and I have a few minutes to do what I want. So here is my review of the final 2 days of the PACE19, Plein Air Convention. 

 I actually slept in and missed the last 6:30 am Boot camp - dang - these were very useful, but I think I needed to catch up on some sleep.   

The first seminar I attended was Suzie Baker.  She was great. One of the top tips I took away was you should STOP when you see something that inspires you and DEFINE what about it inspires you.  Get that main idea written down so you can paint the thing that inspired you.  (the light on the hill, the colours in the sky, etc). Three pages of notes from her demo - she would definitely be worth taking a workshop from.

The second artist seminar I attended was Joe McGurl.  This guy is serious - seriously talented and pretty hardcore about plein air painting - take a look at his work - he foregoes using photos.  He builds lots of his own gadgets to make his  plein air forays into the wilderness easier and to ensure he gets accurate studies for his studio work.  Joe was awesome about sharing all of this info.  He is like the Red Green of plein air painting.  And I am a fan of self-building and home made gadgetry, so I took lots of notes.

Today we had a nice long afternoon paint out at Lands End Park.  Views all over the place, unfortunately I became overly excited by so much to see and tried to include it all in my plein air piece.  The top photo was my view, and so I tried to include golden gate bridge, the beach, rocks, etc. I think I needed a focus and my painting was a struggle with no clear focal point or path.

After about an hour and a half. I packed up my easel, did some sketches and went for a nice long hike down to the beach you can see in the photo.  I really enjoyed the day and got some good photos, despite painting a little stinker.

 SUNDAY - THE FINAL DAY OF PACE 19

This was the last day of the convention.  We bussed out to Viastra Winery in Sonoma at 9 am to paint until 5 pm.  Finally, a beautiful day with the fog lifting by about 10:00.  I set up facing the main building and spent until noon working on a study.

 After I had some lunch I switched spots and found this little vista which had some wonderful atmospheric affects happening with the hills.  I sat in the shade and really enjoyed just painting for another 2 1/2 hrs with a bit of chatting with a pastel artist close by.  An awesome end to a great trip!

Plein Air Convention - Day 3

A continuation of my experience at PACE19 ...

Day 3

6:30 am Eric Rhoads - Art Marketing Boot Camp - worth it!!

Shelby Keefe Demo - Making Great Painting from Photographs.  I enjoyed Shelby's instruction and style of painting.  There are some Plein Air artists that tend to be 'purists' in terms of not painting from photos.  For me, the reality of living in a norther climate where we have cold and snow at least 6 or more months of the year, is that painting from photos is a regular thing.  I agree that plein air sure does help with seeing colour and value more realistically though. I especially liked Shelby's use of a coloured underpainting and having it peek through the painting.

The photo is poor as the lighting is a bit harsh and yellow in the convention room, check her website.

Larry Moore I raced off for the last bit of Larry's demo, Gouache and Field Creativity.  I really like the idea of using gouache in the field as the flexibility of it, drying time and weight of supplies is appealing.  I am a regular viewer of James Gurney's blogs and videos and he uses gouche a lot so this demo was cool to see how gouache can make some really nice plein air studies.  Larry was a great presenter too,

 

Charlie Hunter - Values Matter - Charlie Hunter is massively entertaining as a presenter and massively gifted in his drawing and moody paintings. It was a favourite demo for me as he intersperses his presentation with jokes, stories, terrible songs and quips.  He still manages to create a fabulous work of art while entertaining us all. So much energy! Constant drawing practise!

Joe Gyurcsak

Overcoming Obstacles in Plein Air Painting - best tip Try not to go over a stroke again, lay it down and leave it so you don't kill the painting.

Paint Out at Golden Gate Park

Our plein air excursion today was to Golden Gate Park.  Weather was much more cooperative and lots of interesting spots to paint at.  I really enjoyed the time out today and had lots of great feedback from 4 experienced art 'rock stars'.  The best tip I received from 2 of the 4 instructors, was that I should keep a nice puddle of grey, made from my palette colours, to help bring cohesiveness to my painting and dull down some of my overly bright areas.

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.

The Upside of Painting

My most recent effort is a largish painting of my favourite town, Fernie BC.  After some repeated attempts to paint in a more loose, impressionist fashion and having little success, I decided to try something challenging on the opposite end of the scale.  I have been plugging away at this for over a week now.  I was finding it difficult to paint the detail in the close up store windows, so I used the old trick of turning my picture and painting upside down so that I would just see shapes and paint what I saw not what I thought I was seeing. The upside of upside down painting is that it really helps!

Impressions

I am back at the painting with a vengeance. I have completed 2-3 since Christmas but was losing steam.  I painted this little one today in a more impressionist style which is a style I personally love and would like to improve at.  So I think there will be more in this style for awhile.

9x12 oil on board

Cozy Christmas

Soooo...I haven't been painting very much lately.  I was working almost full time, teaching at the Art Gallery of St Albert.  Then I got on a needle felting and wool sweater upcycling rampage for Christmas after work each day.  I made about 12 needle felted penguins and snowmen ornaments.  A few years back, my now 100 year old Grandmother knitted my children some lovely, but itchy wool sweaters.   I re-purposed them into toques for their big heads, something they can wear for a lot longer now.  I also upcycled a few wool sweaters into felted wool mittens.  Everybody's gonna be cozy this year!  Merry Christmas!

Warm Woolies

I am taking a little break from painting and am working on some Christmas gifts.  I purchased a number of used wool sweaters from Value Village and have 'up cycled' them into wool felted mittens.  You can check out my Instagram page for a brief clip showing the needle felting design on one of the mitts.  You can find TONS of videos on Youtube, on how to alter an old sweater into new mittens too.

The pattern and the back of one wool mitten with the needle felted design.

An innocent bystander

The completed mittens, wool felt with a cozy fleece lining.  WARM!!

Cleaning Up

Following a great webinar I took part in last week, by Brenda Malkinson entitled How to Choose what to Lose - Editing your Artwork, I got to work editing all of my materials and supplies that I do not use any longer. This may help me to stay focused on a couple of mediums and methods, rather than being pulled off in different directions.  She recommended iHuman Youth Society in Edmonton to donate, good art materials that are cluttering up your studio.  I spent a couple of days packing up my still useful supplies I don't use and brought them downtown.  I had a great tour of iHuman from Steve, the Artistic Director - thank you!  Check it out and then donate supplies or money!

On the topic of cleaning up, I also found this awesome brush cleaner in the makeup aisle of London Drugs recently. Works like a charm on my paintbrushes!  I don't have any makeup brushes (maybe I should) but I am sure it works well on those too!

Scrubba-dub-dub

Hangin' Around the Rosies

I really ended up liking this painting when all was said and done.  Initially I had painted in the purplish, dark bushes behind the roses but took them out and liked that better.  I am now questioning the purple hill in the background, but will let it sit for a week or so before I make any drastic changes.  Nothing I like better than fresh laundry off the line.  This particular clothes line was in White Rock BC, taken when out for a stroll.

11x14 oil on canvas