People are curious about anything that’s hidden. Car enthusiasts look under the hood.  Engineers check foundations.  Journalists look for the back story.  If something is covered up, you can bet someone will come along and lift the cloth to see what’s underneath.

This weekend I took a workshop to learn how to create something that’s hidden under pastel paintings – the under-painting.  You usually don’t see much of them in the finished work unless you know what you’re looking for.

I knew the workshop with Nancy Vance would be good because Nancy had been prepping for it for months, but I had no idea how much I’d learn!  I was the pastel rookie of the group, encouraged by Nancy and Wendy Fetters to give pastels a try.  Now, I think I’m in love with a new medium (and have an excuse to buy even more art supplies)!

I’ll summarize what I learned without ruining the experience for those who plan to take Nancy’s workshop in the future.  We did a lot of experimenting on small pieces (5×7) rather than trying to large create finished works. The pacing gave us time to play, but kept us moving.

The emphasis was on under-painting to establish the structure for a pastel paintings. We also tried different types of paper and used either water or alcohol to set the pigment.  Here are my under-paintings and “finished” pieces for each technique.

An underpainting with local color (the basic color that the object will be):

A monotone (mine isn’t exactly monotone since I introduced some yellow greens with the blue green):

Complementary colors:

Sunshine and shadow (three shades of blue and three of yellow):

(Oops!  I forgot to capture this underpainting.)

Watercolor:

These pieces only begin to demonstrate the wealth of knowledge and experience I gained in two short days. When you take a workshop from someone like Nancy, you get the distilled wisdom of all the study and experimenting she’s done, including what she’s learned from the workshops that she’s attended.  This was the first workshop that Nancy’s taught, but I’m sure many more painters will be learning from her in the years to come.

I left the workshop anxious to try these new techniques with pastel but also thinking about how to apply to other media.  You never know what might be hiding under one of my paintings!

Remember how Schroeder (of the Peanuts gang) celebrated Beethoven’s birthday every year?  Well, if you are a  creative type you may want to celebrate DaVinci’s birthday today, April 15th.

We all learned about the Renaissance Man in school and so you know he was an artist/scientist who was a creative genius.  So that gives you plenty of options for celebrating!

• Hike, climb a tree or watch a bird.
• Sketch, paint, or journal.
• Get out your old clarinet and play a tune.
• Knit or sew something.
• Write a few pages.
• Sing boldy.
• Mess around with beads and glitter.
• Start a new project or finish an old one.
• Hang a picture.
• Try a new recipe.

Make sure it’s something active.  You can’t just read about it or watch a video.  You’ve got to do it and if you can do it outside, that’s even better.  When you’re finished you’ll feel great so you can raise a glass of your favorite beverage in toast to Leonardo!  If you are really inspired you can leave a comment below.

Once upon a time I worked for an office that moved into a new building.  The ladies room had an outer area with a counter and mirror that some of my colleagues decided needed “décor.”  Since we didn’t have a budget for “décor” staff members were asked to bring in suitable items.

Given the range of tastes and what staff members were willing to contribute, we ended up with quite a mishmash.  One tchochke stood out from the rest.  It was a glazed ceramic swan filled with plastic flowers.  I never knew who brought it.  I guess they must have liked it, but the rest of us just thought it was tacky.

So the swan took flight, showing up in someone’s cubicle and hanging out until the cubicle dweller “swanned” another unsuspecting soul. On and on it traveled for months until it either flew south or we lost interest.

Our Central Ohio Plein Air Group was “swanned” while we were painting at Creekside in Gahanna on March 5.  It was a great day to paint out, unexpected for early March.  A swan swam around our area  for most of the morning, so we took lots of cell phone shots.

This swan was way absolutely beautiful, gliding across the water.  Then it came out of the water for bread crumbs kids were tossing.  Suddenly it was no longer a thing of beauty.  At its full height with wings spread, it turned into one scary animal!  So you never know with swans.

I decided that I wanted to see what I could do with the swan photo so I played with it across several media,  working small – 5×7.  For the most part I went with warmer colors in the water and cooler mixes for the bird.  You can see the results below.

1.  Water color on 150 lb. cold-pressed Arches paper

2.  Colored Pencil on blue-gray Mi-Teintes paper

3.  Oil on gessoed masonite

4.  Pastel on Uart 400 paper

So vote for your favorite swan in the comment box below or a tacky/scary swan may be crossing your path soon!