Welcome to the Art Guild's Newsletter!

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We shared pot luck dishes and conversation around the table, then moved to the living room to critique the paintings that people brought.  Nancy Cagle asked for suggestions to improve the clouds in the one she is shown holding at the left.  Judy Franklin brought a mother and child painting (shown at the right) that drew one suggestion: that the hair could be reduced a bit on the upper right.

 

Bill Franklin brought the one shown at the left.  He said that the bright sky, contrasting strongly with the cliffs, drew your eye to what was essentially an empty space.  A few suggestions were made, but none that solved the problem.  Charleen Isbell, who has been busy painting, brought eight new paintings, most of which we looked at and commented on, including the one at the right.  Frank Letzler provided her detailed analyses of a couple.

 

We were delighted to have a new artist bring two of his paintings.  Anthony Neal is shown at the left with a large, unmounted fantasy painting which he painted in oils on a canvas thumb-tacked to his bedroom wall. He has also painted several about 24 x 30, some of which are portraits of residents at Regent Care Center, where he works.  Anthony has had no formal training, but clearly has talent.  Nancy offered to connect him with others doing, displaying, and selling fantasy paintings.

 

Including Anthony, there were only ten of us in attendance.  The rest of you missed a good time and good food.  And we missed your company and your art.  We hope to have more of you back next time.  Lets resolve to make summer a time to spend painting indoors out of the heat.

Cheryl Chapline is an accomplished watercolorist with a degree in Fine Arts. Cheryl started the art program at Waco Montessori School, and is currently an instructor at TSTC. She also teaches an evening class at Vanguard School on Mondays, which she encouraged Art Guild members to attend. Her presentation began with a slide show of her photographs and art works. For photography, she uses a Nikon 40 DX camera as well as a more compact one. She pays careful attention to how light affects the subject, and strives for a wide variation in value in her photographs and her paintings.

Cheryl draws her subjects on plain paper and transfers them onto 140 lb. Arches cold press watercolor paper with graphite. She applies a loose underpainting on all her works, using aurelian yellow, permanent rose, and cobalt blue. She places the paint where she wants that particular color, allowing some colors to blend, and leaving others alone. She often uses a darker shade of the same color for shadows. When she wants a very dark color she blends ultramarine blue and burnt sienna or burnt orange.

For her demo, she worked on a floral for which she had already done an underpainting. She followed lighter shades of red with darker ones. Using many red hues, she achieved great variation in both color and value. She made sure that the flowers had a variety of hard and soft edges. She used a fan brush to pull the color through the subject. The underpainting was left showing in places, which helped achieve a full range of values.

She said that the most important factor in a successful watercolor is good paper, with paint and brush quality secondary. She uses good (and expensive) brushes for her detail work, emphasizing that they need to be tested with water for a good point. She uses less expensive brushes for broad strokes. The paint she prefers is Windsor Newton. She also likes Daniel Smith paint, which contains only pure pigments. She said the newer quinachrodome colors are more brilliant and saturated and are good to work with.  In the photo at the right, you can see the partially finished painting at the end of the demo, in which the darker patch to the left of center is more or less finished.  The rest of the image shows the initial underpainting.

 

Thanks to Cheryl for a great demo, to Martha McKinney, Pete Moffatt, Linda Green, Kathe Tipton, John Twardowski, and Bobbee Watts for bringing refreshments, and to those who brought painting for the monthly contest and sharing.  The winners are shown at the right, and paintings are shown below.

 

 Pat Blackwell    Nancy Cagle      Bill Franklin      Judy Franklin      Larry Garza    Charleen Isbell

                          

 Gloria Meadows   Christine Niekamp     Violet Piper       John Twardowski      Robyn White

Dorothy Johnston will be moving to Colorado this summer, and we wanted to have one more chance to learn from her while we could.  She demonstrated her watercolor techniques using a flock of sheep as her subjects. The paper she used was 140 lb cold press watercolor paper in a horizontal rectangular shape, approximately 20" x 8". She had already painted the background quinachrodome gold using a wet brush on wet paper, as you can see in the photo at the right, which is reversed right to left by the overhead mirror.

 

The light was coming from above the sheep, and she left their backs white. She painted the shadowed area on dry paper with reds, blues, greens, and varied shades of purple, which she mixed on the paper using alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue. What resulted was a vibrant, interesting painting, much more so than the faded photograph she was using as a reference, as you can see in the photo on the right.  The photo below was taken after the demonstration and is not reversed.

Thanks Dorothy.  We wish you well in your new home.  We also thank Rose Jacobson, Bettye Schwartz, Gloria Meadows, Frank Letzler, Bobbee Watts, and Judy Franklin for the refreshments, and Rose Jacobson, Bill Franklin, Gloria Meadows, Nancy Cagle, Violet Piper, Christine Niekamp, Charleen Isbell, John Twardowski, Bobbee Watts, and Judy Franklin for bringing their art for the monthly show and tell and contest.  Because of ties (two firsts, three seconds & two thirds), most of the artists got ribbons.  Several commented on their works.  Photos are below.

                        Nancy Cagle                      Bill Franklin        Judy Franklin     Charleen Isbell   Rose Jacobson

   Gloria Meadows Christine Niekamp     Violet Piper      John Twardowski    Bobbee Watts

Another art display we enjoyed was the silhouettes (below) of the school's children painted on the wall in the central hallway.

Exhibit News

A number of exhibits are scheduled for this year and next.  Reports of them will appear here after they are hung.  For the schedule, see the Calendar page.  For specific details, see the Exhibitions page.