Bobbie Dixon was today’s demonstrator at Campbell Artists’ Guild. It was a chamber sort of a demo – with a table easel, and everybody sitting close to it to see what Bobby was doing. She showed how to transfer a small photo to a masonite (I think) of a bigger size first. Since the same can be done with a small sketch and a bigger final image, I paid attention. My usual method of enlarging by laying a grid over the sketch and another grid over the bigger tracing paper regularly leads to a situation where I loose focus going from one square to another and draw a wrong part in a wrong place.
Bobby seems to have a solution for that: she folds the photo into halves twice horizontally, then twice vertically, then folds it again so that you only see one square at a time. I am going to try it with the next drawing. If you see only one square, there is less chance to get distracted from what is in front of you, right?
The painting turn out great – raw, unfinished, still breathing, yet with all main components already in place. And Bobby graciously raffled it for CAG members.
It’s a very simple tutorial, but the final image is charming: Colored Pencil: techniques & tutorial
This Friday, September 18th, Fall Fest Art Show’s reception and award ceremony were held, and my Fortitude received Honorable Mention:
Something fascinating happened during the reception: Nava Attia-Benoit’s painting just happened to look like a gentleman who walked in. Not only the face, but the hat and shirt looked about the same! He was asking for the artist who did the portrait and was finally introduced to Nava who never met him before. What a surprise for both of them!
Congratulations to winners Kim Newell, Karen Mumford, Jim Burns, Nina Uppaluru, Nava Attia-Benoit, Nancy Near, Jane Kwant, Janki Chokshi, John Perez, Belinda Lima, Slava Shabrov, Grace Seidman, Yao-Pi Hsu, and others.
Many thanks to everyone who organized this show and helped to make it a success.
We came to the fair unusually late this time and found out that there were more opportunities to park close to the trail that lead to the fair. It was almost chilly, and taking a shuttle ride in an open trolley didn’t look even remotely appealing. Not that walking up and down hills warmed me up, but it was definitely better. The ground was dump in some places, like it was raining earlier here.
When we later talked to Terry Steinke (which is always a pleasure, just like seeing his wonderful etchings), he said it was just low clouds from the ocean that condensed on trees so much it actually felt like a drizzle if you were standing under a tree. What felt so nice to me, was not doing any good to unprotected artworks on paper, and even some glazed ones and their mats were warping.
There was a lot of glass art, and diffused light made it even prettier than on a sunny day: Dehanna Jones, Sue Marek, Dan & Eve King-Lehman, and a few others who didn’t have business cards or anything else to help remember them. Why do artists do that?
New great finds:
- Esther Barr who creates almost animated animals in an ancient repousse technique
- Chunhong Chang, a Taiwanese artist whose beautiful paintings combine traditional European and Chinese techniques. Classic small Dutch paintings meets Ming Dynasty art.
- S. Fuess and her colorful horses in oil. She does not limit herself to horses only, it just happens to be my favorite subject that I notice first and that I remember better than anything else.
- Paul Wisdom with metal art that almost always incorporates bamboo in some form.
Artists whose work I was glad to see again:
- Joseph Battiato with all sorts of stoneware pots
- Ginny Conrow and her elegant crystalline glaze porcelain, Bruno Kark with bold, large ceramics of which vases in the form of folded tubes are my new favorites
- Nancy Chien-Eriksen and her most wonderful eclectic collection of dragons, horses, and other creatures
- Timon Sloane and his pastels full of emotion and color
- Sharon Spenser with new bronze sculptures that now harmoniously incorporate organic materials.
Got ourselves a new Aryeh Frankfurter’s CD, “The Twisting of the Rope.” Haven’t listened to it yet, but I am pretty sure it will be good. Everything by Aryeh that we had so far was good.
When we were leaving, ocean clouds were almost touching the ground. My attempts to shoot it without a tripod resulted in a series of images that showed varying degrees of camera shake. Still got some useful reference for future drawings.
About me: Yelena Shabrova, an artist and web designer who lives and works in Silicon Valley, Ca. See more of my art at 
