A good lesson...

Try to keep your paintings, sketches, sketchbooks in some version of order. As you keep in touch with past clients, you may find that they wish to purchase historic materials.  Because I do so many compositional sketches for a portrait assignment, there are always more options for paintings than I will end up doing for the client. The parents of this little girl contacted me to purchase several pieces from that earlier project - graphite compositional sketches or watercolor color plans/studies. This is a detail from the final painting - a large double pastel of this little girl and her older sister. I should tell you a secret now...this was painted 17 years ago! It is still one of my favorites. How nice to hear back from those clients...

Beach Beauties and Blogs...

A wonderful artist friend, Mike Rooney, the North Carolina coastal artist who encouraged me to start this blog, offered to share some notes about using blogs in the art business. I am the speaker at the Pastel Society of North Carolina program this coming Saturday ( a week from today) and plan to include his information in this presentation. He's a great guy...just got back from painting in Cape Cod. You need to check out his site at http://mikerooneystudios.blogspot.com/
And so in his honor I am going to run this 5 x 7 oil of a beach beauty digging mussels one more time...
$150.00/ $9shipping/ NCSTx

Splendid First Friday...

The evening started off very slowly. So all the artists thought that everyone had gone to the beach for the holiday weekend. Not at all. We had a stunning crowd by 7:30 and it never let down all evening long. Shoulder to shoulder, it was a massive group, all ages ranges. Great interest in the artwork, great questions, great fun. Here is an 11 x 14 pastel on Ampersand board to toss into the mix...

Carolina Coast - One more time...

Here are a couple of closeup images from yesterday's post about the unusual restaurant at the coast of Carolina. Thanks for the calls and emails about this image. I agree with you - it was a most memorable place and it had to be painted. This is a pastel 20 x16 on Ampersand board, and here are two of the interesting areas.

Jolly Rodger, Kill Devil Hills, NC

This is the Jolly Roger Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills. Pastel 20 x 16 on Ampersand. This is a joyful, goofy, eclectic mix of wait staff in pirate costume, Christmas ornaments hanging from every nook, cranny, and ceiling, and this amazing stained glass solarium. We were staying at a quaint motel on the beach, and it included breakfast…but you have to go down the street to the Jolly Roger for that breakfast. Plate-sized pancakes, waffles, eggs, grits, bacon…the Carolina heart-stopping breakfast. The yuppies and northern invasion had not gotten hold of this property yet. It was obviously a small diner that had expanded three or four times with rooms that didn’t quite fit one another, doorways that didn’t quite match up, and vacationer-tacky knickknacks everywhere. However, the bar area/ solarium was just a tremendous surprise at the end of a serpentine walk through the other “memorabilia.” What fun...

Artspace Summer Festival

Today was the end of our summer program for all ages at Artspace. Our celebration included an artshow of all the work that was created from May to August, food, music, artist demos, magicians, a puppet show by the artists who created them... This was a good, old fashioned family event. And we were mobbed with people! Our 25 studios were packed, the halls were filled, the three galleries were filled, the ed room...well, you get the idea. It was so much fun to talk with the young artists who really want to see marked improvement and are working so hard to that end. How does this commotion fit in with fine art...well, first you have to get them in the door, then you can educate them! This is a 24 x 18 pastel on display at the studio...Summer Roses - enjoy your weekend.

Beach - cape cod show...

After all the ideas on beach related things that I tried, I settled on sending this as one of the images to the pastel show in Cape Cod. "Gentle Breezes" is an 11 x 14 pastel on Ampersand board. What do you think? Tomorrow I will share the next stage of the portrait you have seen in stages.