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Welcome to the Art
Guild's
Archives!
June 27 - Carleen Bright Arboretum Show
Bring your paintings for
our show to the Arboretum Monday, June 27, between 9 a.m. and noon.
The topic is "Scenes Around Waco". Bluebonnets, lake scenes, zoo
animals, farm animals, & children are okay so long as they could be from
around here. Please call Ellen Foster at 756-0347 to
let her know how many paintings you plan to bring, if you have not
already reported that. Dues must be current to participate.
June 5 - Richard Skurla - Abstract Landscape
Richard
Skurla came to Waco from Colorado and soon established a gallery,
studio, and art store on Austin Avenue. He showed us how he develops an
abstracted landscape. He began with a discussion of various brushes and
their uses, which some members had requested. He showed us some of his
brushes that had worn into entirely new shapes over the years, but
remained favorites because their unique shapes were useful. Flat brushes
tend to get their corners rounded into something more like filberts, and
most brushes get shorter, and therefore stiffer, with use.
Richard
passed around a photo of a Colorado river on which he had drawn
rectangles framing several compositions worth painting. He made some
small patches of several blues on his canvas, explaining his preference
for Prussian blue over French ultramarine, and manganese blue over
cerulean. Wiping those off, he began the painting by sketching the basic
shapes in the scene using thin oil paint and a small, stiff brush.
Then
he began to block in colors (mixed with liquin to promote rapid drying),
greens and purples for the hillsides and ridges, and a variety of colors
in the river. He uses about fifteen colors on his palette to provide the
bright, pure colors that he wants to end with. In the meantime, he grays
them by mixing his colors with their complements, or warming or cooling
them with adjacent colors, but he recommends against using earth tone
colors. Richard emphasized that landscapes should have something
interesting almost anywhere you look, rather than having only one point
of interest.
 He
moved around to different areas of the painting, filling in the sky, the
rocks along the banks and in the river, and brush in the foreground. The
river was developed further by darkening patches where shadows of trees
on the hill to the right would fall, and adding reflection from the sky.
He also made the tree line on the left bank more irregular.
He
continued to refine the image until he had achieved a quite nice
impressionistic painting. He explained that he had originally learned to
paint impressionistically, and that by starting with this
representational image, he grounded his work in reality so that he could
convey a sense of the original scene to viewers of the final painting.
Finally,
he began to abstract (or "Skurlafy" as his students call it) the
painting by laying in thick layers of attention-demanding bright colors
with a painting knife. If he thinks he has overdone it and made
things a bit too garish, he brushes the surface paint some to mix it
with the base layer and tone the colors down.
Richard promised to finish the painting, and invited us to come by his
studio at 1621 Austin to see it. The gallery is no longer open, so call
(756-3321) before dropping by, or go on a Thursday evening, when he has
classes. In fact, you may want to go for lessons, which are offered from
6-9 p.m. Thursdays for $15 a session. He also invited us to a showing of
his students' work on Saturday, June 11, between 1 and 8 p.m. We want to
thank Richard for a very helpful demonstration.
Show and Tell
Pat Blackwell
Bill Franklin
Judy Franklin

Larry Garza
Jean Larkie Gloria Meadows

Christine Niekamp
John Vasek
Pat Blackwell brought a Texas theme saw blade
clock in honor of Mr. Skurla, who said at his last demo for us that his
gallery would never display bluebonnets on saw blades. Along with
several bird carvings, John Vasek brought several stages in making one:
a block of wood, the head and body shapes cut out with a saw, and these
shapes glued together and partly carved (against the red background
above).
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