Helldorado- Call For Art and a History Lesson Too!

 Every year the Elks Club sponsors a rodeo and fair here in Las Vegas and along with those two events is a western themed art show and auction that has become a showcase for some really nice artwork.  This will be my 2nd year of entering and I am excited to get together with my fellow artists and enjoy the artwork.  Maybe I will even sell something!  I've included a link to the festivities if you’re interested and in the area. Helldorado 2014

This event has a long and interesting history including ties to an old local outlaw Indian named Queho. One thing I know...I love learning about Nevada history ALMOST as much as I like painting it. I encourage you to take a minute to read about this bit of Southern Nevada History.  

On a personal side note....I have on a number of occasions visited the area that was once called Cathedral Canyon located on the "Hidden Valley Ranch" off the Tecopa Highway.  This is the final resting place of the infamous Queho.  I even had the pleasure of sitting at the ranch one afternoon and having a short visit with the elderly Mr. Roland Wiley.  Cathedral Canyon was his personal project and it was amazing place to see.  He had converted a ravine on his property into a place where you could sit, meditate and think about things.  It was complete with running water and 2 working restrooms.  There was even a suspension bridge hung overhead that spanned the canyon and it is near that bridge that the marker for Queho's grave can be found.  Sadly, when Mr. Wiley passed away the desert quickly reclaimed the canyon and vandals have done their share to speed up that process.  Queho-Renegade Indian

The artwork is due April 23^rd, so I've been working on these two pieces for the past few months.  I apologize that I am breaking a very important blogging rule by posting less than perfect photos of my artwork but in reality I am more interested in just taking a minute to talk about each of these pieces and their obvious western flare.

"Best Friends"- 16x20 Oil

This first piece I’m calling “Best Friends” and my inspiration for this came from an old public domain photo of a little girl from the Navajo Nation taken in the early 1900’s.  Her smile just grabbed me nearly as tightly as she has grabbed on to her puppy.  This piece is painted in oil and is on a 16x20 canvas.

"Riding the Buckskin"- 18x24 Oil

The second piece is very personal as I painted it from an old photo of my dad, Gerry Diveley as a young rodeo cowboy.  Usually he would ride bulls and I even have a photo of him riding a buffalo but here he is riding in a bare back bronco category.  I don’t know if he made it the whole 8 seconds but I loved the action I’ve attempted to capture here and painting it was therapy for my soul.  Miss you Dad!  I’m leaning towards calling this piece “Riding the Buckskin” but like naming your children, sometimes you have to really think about the best name that fits the piece.

Looking Good in Green

I've never been the stereotypic female that screams at the sight of rodents or creatures with six or eight legs.  I've been known to actually take a spider out of the house and release him to live a better life in the great outdoors.  I recall once amidst the screams of my co-workers I was asked to crawl under the desk to check the recently sprung mouse trap only to find the poor creature alive and only trapped by a small portion of the leg.  I dawned gloves and took the trap and all in my car to the desert to release the terrified mouse.

There have only been a few times that I have locked my keys in the car and one of those times involved seeing a large praying mantis on a bush as I drove into a parking spot at the Costco.  I was so excited to examine the insect closer that I temporarily lost all sense and closed my car door with my keys lying in the seat.

It is no wonder that when I saw a photo by photographer Nina Schultz of Bisbee, Arizona of a gorgeous praying mantis atop a bush of massive white blooms I just knew this would be a painting I would like to try.

Here you can see my work in progress....still needing to add the final highlights.  When it's finished a high resolution photo will be taken and he will be available on my website at www.julietownsendstudio.com.  

Nothing Like Gold in the Pouch and a Lick on the Chin!

"The Big Pay Out"- 12x16 oil

Finally I am bringing my old prospector painting to a solid conclusion. This is my third painting in my series Old Prospectors. There might be a few slight changes but it is pretty much finished and I'm ready to move to my next creation.  This piece has been a challenge for a number of reasons- 1. The face is larger than any face I have painted up to this point, 2.  Hands are tricky and it was difficult to find reference material to use and finally, 3. I've never painted a dog so again finding the right reference material was a challenge.

I've decided to title this on "The Big Pay Out".  Not only has the old guy been successful finding enough gold to fill up his little leather bag he coutches tightly but his excitement is being met with loving devotion by a face full of kisses by his little companion.  He is one of the lucky ones as most left empty handed. 

 "The Big Pay Out" will very soon be available on my website at julietownsendstudio.com and prints will also be available there if you are interested.

"Taking a Break"- 18x24 Oil

"Just One More Pan"- 16x20 Oil

Turning a Photo into a Portrait

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of painting with my friend Jan Arduini.  Jan calls herself an "eclectic artists" and paints a wide range of subjects, all of which could be described as colorful.  Her ability to paint portraits is amazing and so I wanted to paint with her and learn more about the beginning steps taken to paint a portrait.  What is the approach needed to start and a good mixing recipe for the skin tone.  You can see Jan's artwork by visiting her Facebook page at Jan Harris Arduini

What I learned during my painting session was that it is better to pick a photo or subject that has a nice contrast of light and shadow across the face.  Straight on face shots sometimes lack that depth because of the lack of shadows.  In the picture I chose of granddaughter Katherine there are shadows cast by both her little arm and her very large and ornate hair bow.  The fact that she is reaching up with her little hand gives really good movement to the composition but boy did it play tricks on me as I was trying to sketch it out.  In relation to the size of her face the hand felt huge but that is because it is closer to you.  I decided rather than trying to draw in fingers that were not in the present in the photo I would try to paint a portion of the hand just like in the photo.

After a couple of hours of painting I am very happy with my results so far.  There are many more layers needed and tweaking of the facial features that have to be done.  I plan on painting the background in a nice rich brown so that all that pink just pops.  I plan to blog my progress in the next few days and talk about things I learn so check back for my following posts. 

Packing up after finishing an afternoon of painting and sitting at the gallery

Sweet Katherine- The reference photo I am using for my painting

"Taking a Break"- finally complete

It seems like I have been working on this piece for longer than I care to consider but it is finally ready for a coat of varnish and framing. Yesterday I included the piece on my website gallery and my Fine Art America site.   It has been a challenge not only because it was a more complex painting but because I suffered the loss of my dear mother-in-law during the process.  I'm really going to miss taking each piece over to show her as I complete them.  She was so encouraging to me and really acted as she genuinely loved seeing each and every painting as I finished them.

I've already started another prospector piece but this time in acrylic.  Hopefully I will be able to showcase that one here in the next few weeks.  I have always loved American history and trying to capture the rugged beauty of the American west is a challenge that I really want to pursue.

"Taking a Break"  18 x 24 Original Oil painting

I've Got Homework

I've been taking private painting lessons now for almost a year and I have to say that I have learned so much.  I would recommend taking lessons from a local artist if you are at all interested in improving your skills.  Even if painting is only a hobby, there is so much satisfaction in tapping into your creativeness.  In a world that is crazy out of control, painting gives me the ability to escape and create my own world.  It might be a mountain stream, an old barn or the ruins left behind by some long forgotten miner. They allow me to escape to another time or place.

Not only do I learn from painting the lessons with my instructor Lily Adamczyk, I find that I actually learn more when I bring an original piece that I have worked on myself and have her critique it.  Her experienced artist eyes can see small flaws and areas of needed correction.   I have on several occasions shared these critiques on this blog with the hope that as I learn there is someone else out there that actually can benefit from my lessons.

This piece that I'm calling "Taking a Break" is an 18x24 Oil painting that I have worked on for several weeks.  It is a particular challenge for me because of the size and detail of the prospector.  I usually paint in acrylics and appreciate the speed that the paint drys and so when I paint in oil I find myself impatient because you often have to wait for the paint to dry before you can proceed.  Often I will find that I'm just pushing muddy paint around the canvas which is what I did in this piece as I struggled to paint the rocks and the water.

Before taking my painting to my lesson

Here is the piece as it looked when I took it to my lesson yesterday with the following corrections brought to my attention.  Now I have lots of homework to bring this painting to the FINISH LINE.  I'm certain that I will share in a blog post very soon the finished product when I get all my homework done.   Here are my needed corrections:
    1.  Background trees are too bright and detailed.  Below you will see that one tree has been adjusted to better reflect the distance element.  I have to fix all of them to match this one. HOMEWORK
    2.  The water has too many lines and is too bright especially in the distance.  This makes the water look unnatural.  I have also not done a good job of painting around the rocks.  Normally in a composition like this you will have painted the water before proceeding on to the foreground but because of my going back and making changes I've actually worked on the water after my prospector and rocks were already painted in.  Lily helped me by showing me how to correct the water and so have to finish the river.- Homework
3.  We added depth to the foreground by adding more dirt area between the log and the rocks.  I have to correct the rocks by changing their general shape and color...More homework.
4.  The details in the grass blades need to be more defined.  I have painted them to uniformly by making them all the same size.  The grass in the background appears too clumpy and needs to have a more random appearance- More Homework
5.  We fixed the fire by adding more Naples Yellow to the flames rather than yellow and smoothing it out.  I have to add back in the smoke once I have finished with the rocks- You guessed it- more homework
6.  We added more highlighting to the log, the hat, the cup and plate, the gold pan and shovel.  By adding a darker background color the result was the prospector and the log popped more.
7.  The shirt required more rounding out in the back and adjusting in the front where he it would meet his pants.  Now my prospector has a little more natural look rather than the appearance of being stiff.  I had painted his suspenders with paynes gray and didn't think that as they came up on his shoulder the sunlight would change that color to a blue hue.
8.  The tone of his skin that was shadowed from his hat wouldn't only be grays but would have a glaze of skin tone.  Lily had me brighten up his cheekbone and nose to finish off his face with a more rounded appearance.  We also made a correction on his wrist where I had painted the shadow of his sleeve too dark.

My painting waiting for me to make those final details that will bring it to the finish line

Sometimes it's CHICKENS and Sometimes it's FEATHERS

A hard reality that I'm certain that most artists have faced is that unless you are independently wealthy most of us actually want to sell our work....Probably so that we can buy more paints and a couple more canvases.  I hear artists talk about "The Good Old Days" before the economy failure and collapse, when there were collectors out there that actually paid money for your artwork.  Unfortunately, during that time period I was busy pushing a 10-key and was stacked up to my eyeballs with paperwork, working as the business administrator for a large private Christian school and church.  Painting was a far distant memory and the dream of being an artist was pushed so far down in my heart that I really didn't even give it serious consideration.

That all changed a couple of years ago when I decided to finally take that drawing class at the local community college.  For years I attended college classes there and online with University of Phoenix but each class always consisted of either being business or accounting related and it wasn't until I had gotten my BSBA did I even think I could take a "FUN" class.  With drawing 101 under my belt, I decided to give some online painting lessons a try so that I could try to resurrect that skill that I had so long let lie dormant. I went through the 12-week landscape lessons presented by Tim Gagnon (timgagnonstudio.com) and my excitement and confidence was reignited and the past three years are history.

So I have been retired from my "day" job for 6 months and now I'm painting full-time.  I've sold a couple of things this year but like all the other artists I know, I want to sell much more.  So I have my work hanging in a little co-op gallery in town and have packed up my "inventory" and hauled it out to a number of art shows.  I've created a nice website and paint almost daily.  I've decided that I'm going to offer smaller pieces that I can produce in less time and hopefully sell in a price range that will entice potential buyers to dig into their wallets.

Yesterday, even though I prefer to paint much larger, I created my first 8x10 masterpiece that I spent about an hour painting.  I chose chickens as the subject matter because I have witnessed the reaction that my fellow artist and friend Anna Norris got from the public when they saw her "Rainbow Roosters".  annanorrisfineart.blogspot.com  So I'm going to be offering 8x10's for about $50 instead of my normal price range of $150-$300.  This piece I think I'm going to call "Chicken Little" and it will be the first of a number of smaller pieces I'm going to paint in the next few months.  I hope you enjoy.

"Chicken Little"- 8x10 Original Oil

Last Leaf

I started working on a little piece today that I think I'm going to call "Last Leaf". We've had a long, hot summer and an autumn with unseasonable warm weather but today that all changed...rain and snow fell across the valley and the cold northern wind has done an effective job of relieving the trees of the last of the reluctant leaves.  The original photo that I used for my inspiration was taken by Dini Esplin, a talented photographer from Spring Creek, Nevada.  When I saw this photo I knew this would make a great painting and I hope that I can capture the emotion that occurs with seasonal transitions.  This "WIP" (work in progress) is oil on a 12x16 inch canvas.

Last Leaf  WIP as I am working on the fine details

Last Leaf- 12 x 16 Oil