A New Venture

Summer has arrived and, hopefully, the tourists will start coming too.

In our area many of the artists rely on the tourists for the bulk of sales. The valley (from Yahk to Riondel) is small town and rural with a total population around 15,000, many of whom are seniors.  To make it even harder to sell art we have a lot of artists and artisans in the area; and, while competition is supposed to be good for business, I am not sure if that applies to art.

This year a venue where I have displayed my art with good success in the past

has closed its art exhibit and I am going to try a new venture - A Summer Art Market!

The Art Market came about thanks to a small grant from the Creston Arts Council. Our first day will be tomorrow, July 1, and we will have 6 artists setting up to, hopefully, sell their art. The Market will only be held Saturday afternoons during the summer. I am hoping that we will get some traffic from the local Farmer's Market and from the Kunze Gallery both of which are just down the street from our location.

As the Art Market is my idea, I have been doing all the organizing - I can't seem to stop - lol. Anyway, I have sent out emails, posted on Facebook, created and ordered rack cards and made up and distributed a few posters. Now I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will get some visitors!

I have my boxes all packed with a wide selection of the things I make and paint: matted and bagged original watercolours and mixed media pieces, Hot Weather Scarves, a variety of my cards, my quilled ornaments and some of the stenciled signs and T-shirts I did last winter. I figure I have enough art and other things to display something new almost every week during the summer.

Although art is not a business for me, it is important to me to sell my work - mostly to make room for new art. I have made a few on-line sales but I am not into marketing and, frankly the Canadian Postal system is pretty expensive for shipping so I am not pursuing that avenue to any great degree. I am much happier just selling locally and am hoping for success in this new venture.

The Last Party of the Season

Well, summer has hit us with some heat finally and it was so nice to be able to set up in the cool basement for the last Watercolour Painting Party of the season.

I only had five participants this weekend so it made everything go very smoothly. Another advantage was that they all had some experience with watercolours.

Here are the photos of the work created:

Heather and her Derelict Boat

Closeup of Heather's painting

Eileen's Lighthouse

closeup of the Lighthouse

Jane with her Summer Veranda

closeup of Jane's painting

Mike and Rhonda with their paintings

Rhonda's Flower Garden

Mike's Rickety Old Barn

Everyone was very happy with their finished paintings and I think some of them will be back in the fall for another Painting Party.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

So, I am not going to write much today. Here are some photos from my latest Watercolour Painting Parties.

                                                     "VIGNETTES"

Bonnie

Veronica

Close-up of Veronica's painting

Marja

close-up of Marja's painting

                                 
                                  "BUILDING IN FOG" PAINTINGS

Eileen Tanner and Shauna

Shauna's painting

Eileen's painting

Tanner's painting

Shelly and Pauline

Shelly's painting

Pauline's painting

Judy and Lynn

Judy's painting

Lynn's painting

We had a great time at both parties and, once again, everyone seemed very happy with their paintings - in spite of a few hiccups - lol.

I am taking a bit of a break from art to catch up on house and yard work but I am sure I will be back at it soon.

Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment.

A Weekend Away

This past weekend Bob and I went over the mountain to Nelson for a few days. Bob was participating in a weekend gathering of community bands but I went for a painting play-date with my friend Linda.

Linda had some plans for a large abstract painting that she wanted as a feature of her newly renovated Bed & Breakfast bedroom. As this was the largest piece she had every done she was understandably hesitant. This is the finished painting.

Linda's "Journey"

Linda wanted to use various colours of the house paints that decorate the B&B but wasn't sure which would work best in the new room. So we practised!

practice board

I had a piece of masonite with me that I had intended to use for my own painting but it ended up being a testing board. First I slapped on some colours that were similar to the base coat on Linda’s canvas, then I added some of the other colours she wanted to use. That gave us a chance to decide what colours worked best. Linda chose the darker sand tone and the green and sponged them on the canvas randomly. The next step was to determine the subject colours and how to apply them. Once again colours were applied to the practice board, this time by Linda. The choices were purple and cream and the application was splatter and swipe with a 3 inch house painting brush. This part was done outside with Linda standing over the canvas. This was fun, especially when the wind decided to help with the direction of some of the streams. Although neither of us was sure the painting was finished we left it alone until the next day. Sunday morning we decided the painting needed just a touch of an accent colour - hence the splotches on the practice board. Vermilion was the colour we liked best and, fortunately, one of my acrylic pens was the perfect colour. A bit of thought, some practice and voilà -the painting was done! And, there were two very satisfied artists in the house.

While Linda was working on her painting, I was doing some playing of my own.

stencil and sparkle play

#1041 - Storm Tossed - 11 x 14 acrylic on canvas board

#1042 - WIP?

Of all the paintings I did during the weekend the only one I like is Storm Tossed. It was an old painting of Linda's that she didn't like and she suggested I 'fix' it or change it. I didn't change much so I had her sign it too - a collaboration between friends!

Although most of the time painting is a solitary endeavour, it is good to be able to work together to a satisfactory finish, whether it is just with ideas and suggestions or if it is some actual hands-on help.

Btw - here are a couple of photos of the waterfall behind the place where we went for dinner on Saturday.

And the Winner is....

Well, not really a winner but the painting that was chosen to be the gift for a young girl named Poppy. Here it is!

#1036 - Peachy Poppy #2

As you may remember I had a commission from a friend to paint a picture of poppies. The only instructions where to size - 7 x 10 and the colour - a soft peachy pink - the rest was up to me!

I found that a bit confusing so I decided to paint a number of pieces to give my friend lots of choice. I have shared the first two before but here they are again.

#1014  Peachy Poppy #1

#1020 - Poppies by the Fence

I did one more version of this last piece with fewer poppies - sort of a close-up view.

#1037 - Poppies by the Fence #2

All four paintings were very favourably received and it took my friend and her husband a few days to decide which one they preferred. It is so nice when a customer is satisfied!

By the way - I have three poppy paintings for sale - lol!

Birdbrain

We have a robin that epitomizes that term! First, she started a nest on the support beam of the roof of the outside deck - she abandoned that. Next, she started a couple of nests under the deck roof - she abandoned these too.

We waited a few days to make sure that the robin wasn't coming back, then we swept and blew away the half-built nests.

We figured that was the end of the problem - we don't really like robins above the deck as they make a terrible mess. However, I looked out this morning and there was a robin perched in the same area where one of the nests had been. She was twitching and fidgeting around and had us wondering what she was doing.  I went about my normal morning routine and put her out of my mind. Bob called me sometime later and told me there was now an egg on the beam - but no robin.

We watched for quite some time but the robin didn't come back. I don't know how she expects the egg to hatch but I figure it is just another example of how bird-brained this bird really is!