New Classes for the New Year -- Welcome 2021!

I think we're all ready to turn the calendar page to January and say goodbye to 2020!  Why not add some creativity to your new year?  Join me for these online and in person classes offered through the Community College of Beaver County, in Monaca, PA.

You can read more about them online here: https://www.ccbc.edu/arts

Live Online Class:

New! Introduction to Drawing via Zoom

Start off the new year by learning a new skill and develop your ability to draw in this guided class. Instructor Betsy Bangley will lead you through a series of activities designed to help you learn how to capture the world around you with a pencil on paper.

Play with art materials to find out how to make a variety of shades and line types, move on to sketching everyday objects, and build up to exploring perspective and textures. Discover a new way to express yourself and embark on an art adventure! 

Upon registration you will receive a Zoom link and list of materials.  Your email address must be included upon registration. 

Date: Mondays, April 19th – May 10th, 2021

Cost: $64 + $10 Lab 

Sessions: 4/Hours: 12

Time: 6-9PM 

Room: Zoom Online

Code: ARTS01603

In-Person Classes at the Monaca CCBC Campus:

New! Pastel Landscapes
Capture the fresh drawings of spring through pastel painting with instructor Betsy Bangley. You will be surprised how quickly you can lay down the colors of spring on a small landscape painting. Learn how to mix, blend colors and practice laying out small landscapes. You will build up to creating vibrant landscapes outdoors, weather permitting.

There will be no class on April 3rd.

Date: Saturdays, March 27th - April 17th, 2021

Time: 10am-1pm
Cost: $59+ $15 Lab
Sessions: 3 Hours: 9
Room: VFC, 3007
Code: ARTS03401

NEW! Making Hand Stitched Books
Craft your own personalized journal or a book to give to someone special. Join instructor Betsy Bangley for a morning of unleashing your creativity.

Date: Monday, April 12th, 2021

Time: 10am-1pm
Cost: $33 + $13 Lab
Sessions: 1 Hours: 3
Room: VFC, 3007
Code: ARTS03301

Creating Calm Through Art Explorations
All human beings are artists. Discover your natural creativity to help create calm in your lives. No previous art experience is necessary! Play with watercolor paints, create vision boards, and give yourself permission to try new art explorations to see where it leads you. All materials provided.

Date: Saturdays, May 1st - 15th, 2021 

Time: 10am-1pm
Cost: $59 + $36 Lab
Sessions: 3 Hours: 9
Room: VFC, 3007
Code: ARTS03202

How to Register:

To Register, call CCBC at 724-480-3575.

OR

Copy and print the above registration form and mail it to:

CCBC Admissions & Registration

1 Campus Drive

Monaca, PA 15061

OR

 Register online here: https://my.ccbc.edu/ICS/Continuing_Education/

Happy, Healthy, Artful New Year!  

I hope to see you in one of these classes in 2021!

Creating Nature Art When It's too Cold to Go Outside

The morning after the first big winter snowfall, I hiked around my farm snapping reference photos for painting and drawing projects.  Within days, I found I needed a snowy scene for my annual pen & ink calendar, and put this snowy Hemlock tree to use for the December 2021 page. 

A dear friend an talented wildlife photographer also shares his library of images with me.  I used his photos as references for the swan & the rose hips.

I select the images I want to include in my calendar page, then make a pencil sketch from the photo, and add the quotes.  I use the pencil version of the page to create the finished pen & ink work, laying a sheet of pen & ink paper over the pencil sketch on a light box. If I make a mistake, no problem -- I still have the pencil original and can start over.

It's not the same as being outdoors with the Hemlock tree in person, but as I draw, I still connect with the tree, the snowy day, and the healing power of nature -- without getting frostbite. 

And now I have a nature calendar to give family & friends.

The Magic of Upcycled Gratitude Journals

One of my favorite daily rituals is to drink my morning tea from a china teacup and journal what I'm grateful for.  I used to keep chickens, and accumulated a stack of brown paper chicken feed bags.  The simplicity of these bags charms me, and makes them feel ideal for upcycling into journals. 

I never face the "fear of the blank page," because I'm writing on something most folks would just throw away or compost.  That gives it a magic that delights me.

 

I use the bag's original stitching as the binding, and then add grommets for fun.  The bag is made of three layers of brown craft paper -- designed to hold 50 pounds of grain, the layering adds strength. That gives me six pages to write on -- enough for a month of entries.  

Artist in a Snowstorm

 

I've been seeking enrichment -- something different in all the sameness of a life lived in this quarantine.  Nature cooperated and provided me with the beauty of a snowstorm.

Art for Self-Care: Nature Sketching

A constant in my life over the last few years has been hiking with David. Our routine hike takes us down 5 miles of trails through woods, past meadows and over streams to a backpackers' camping area in our local state park.  At first, we hiked for fitness, and to be together.  

When the lockdown began, I started tucking my nature journal under my arm on our walks, and sketching when we stopped for water breaks.  While I immersed myself in drawing a May Apple or a wobbly cherry tree, David would read the news on his phone, finding it less stressful to digest the news out in nature.

I filled one nature journal, and started another by in mid-summer.  Having hiked 730 miles since April, I continue to add sketches on each hike.  It helps to have this routine in my life, & to create and connect with nature.

More Colorist's Value Studies of the Figure

In Friday's Osher class, David was our model, and it felt so good to have a model in the studio, even though I was drawing off the monitor like my students. David gave us creative gesture poses, and a lovely long pose, and he set up the lights to provide us with lots of gorgeous shadows.

We did studies of legs and feet, but with a playful twist.  I demonstrated my approach of looking for highlights, midtones, moderate shadows & deep shadows, and assigning a different color to each tone.  Instead of trying to represent familiar body parts, this approach invites you to capture shadow shapes, which I find freeing.  I had an especially good time discovering the little negative space shadows between the toes in this drawing.

During the gesture poses, I focused on capturing the masses of David's body in the first minute, then took the final 2 minutes to seek out contour lines and shadows.

Art for Self-Care Update

I've been enjoying reading Cathy Johnson's book Painting Watercolors, North Light Books 1995. Her playful approach to building skills with watercolor painting makes picking up a brush and experimenting easy. Sunday morning I wanted to do a bit of painting, but didn't want to do anything complex, so I flipped through Cathy's book and found a simple landscape to copy.

Copying another artist might seem like "cheating," but it's a time-honored method used to train art students in the techniques used by more skilled artisans.  Every time you copy another artist's work, you gain insights that don't come simply from looking at the artist's work.  You get to play with your art supplies, to learn, and get a burst of inspiration all at once. 

And, you're left with something lovely to prop on your desk and admire as you pass by in your daily routine.  This little painting will likely become a post-card and get dropped in the mail after I've enjoyed looking at it for a few days.  Small art has the benefit of feeling like less of an undertaking, and more of a game. Isn't playfulness the best type of self-care?  

I used a palette of Prussian blue, Cobalt Green, Indigo, Burnt Sienna, and Chromium Yellow Hue Deep. The feathery snow effect resulted from table salt sprinkled on the snowy Prussian blue hill. I let it dry a bit, then used a blow-dryer on low to make sure it was crisp-dry before sweeping the salt off and adding the cabin and trees. 

I hope you find time this December for some artful self-care!

Here's a link to Cathy's book in case you'd like to explore self-care with a watercolor brush:

 https://cathyjohnson.info/bookpages/paintingwatercolors.html

And, here's a link to her blog:

https://cathyjohnson.info/tips.html

Cathy also has provided her e-book Keeping an Artist's Journal  free for a limited time in response to  Covid-19.  Here's the link:

https://cathyjohnson.info/ebooks/artistsjournal.html 

 

The Benefit of Living with a Model Update

The end of the semester has brought a flurry of university Zoom modeling sessions.  In one of our last sessions, David modeled, and I ran the camera.  During the long pose, I grabbed a set of graytone pastels with 5 values:  white, light gray, medium gray, dark gray and black.  After a quick vine charcoal gesture, I tried to capture the areas of highlight and shadow in the bold lighting, discerning each step as best I could. 

Though I ran out of time before I completed the scene, I enjoyed getting lost in finding the shadow shapes and values.  His back was all in shadow, yet the values within the shadows on David's back changed with each rise and fall of his form. The dark valley of his spine transitioned into the higher, lighter ridges of muscle that parallel it on either side.  

I find I can achieve pleasing results when I stay true to the values I see, and feel lucky to get to practice.

Kathryn in Blue

 

I often hear my students say of their drawings that they're "not good enough." Or, they'll compare their work to another's, saying that their own is "not as good" as a classmates drawing.  I understand that feeling.  I often "hear" the voice of what I call the "Nattering Nabob of Negativity" sitting on my shoulder telling me I'm doing it wrong as I create.  Not useful, but a common human experience.

As a result of that critical voice, when I step back from my work, I often think I've done a poor job at trying to represent our model.  But, the next day, I take a second look at my work, and find that I can look with a less judgmental eye and see the beauty of what I've created.  When I'm drawing the figure, I've learned not to listen to that negative voice, and to just keep drawing, keeping my eye on our model as much as possible, and keeping a positive attitude.

Today, after creating the drawing above, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I could see that I had gotten Kathryn's head too large, and I could see a departure from my usual realistic representation. I decided that instead of illogically disliking everything I turn out, I am going to arbitrarily like everything I turn out -- My opinions are all subjective anyway, and at least that way, I can see the successful aspects of my drawings more readily.  Why not?

I think the Nattering Nabob of Negativity makes us think that disliking our work represents a more cultured or humble outlook, or that of a serious art student striving to improve.  Putting anyone down doesn't seem encouraging to me.  Putting myself down least of all.  So here's to self-encouragement! May we all practice it as we create.

Because of the uptick in Covid-19 cases, models now join our Zoom class virtually like everyone else.  It's harder for everyone -- Kathryn had to construct a studio in her basement, with lights and curtains. Much more technical complication than when she models in person.

Though I always draw from a computer monitor, even when the model is in my studio (I want to draw the same image as my students), this time, the image coming back seemed cooler and bluer in tone. So, I reached for cooler colors than I usually do when drawing Kathryn, creating Kathryn in Blue.

In spite of all the challenges, Kathryn picked up her hula hoop and brought us some beautiful poses.  Here are her 3-minute gestures:

A Quiet Thanksgiving Nook

 

I sit by this little table in a high-backed chair every morning with tea to plan my day and write in my gratitude journal. My cats love to join me here.

I took advantage of some down time in my schedule to reimagine my creative space.  Refreshing the space and setting out old friends like my colored pencils and watercolor brushes in jars where I can see them brought new energy to this favorite place. 

The morning light coming through the window captured the scene in brilliance for a moment.  

The November Woods

I've been inspired by artist Cathy Johnson, who teaches me to simplify what I see in nature when I sketch.  She also suggests taking a minimalist art kit into nature. Rather than haul my whole box of 48 Prismacolor colored pencils along with my nature journal and Micron pens, I looked at the day and the land around me, and grabbed 5 pencils to tuck in my coat pocket.  Indigo, sepia, dark brown, burnt sienna, and Tuscan red were all I needed to add color to my Micron pen drawings.

When we got to the backpacking shelters at the midpoint of our hike, I pulled out my journal and captured a sense of the day.  It felt freeing to simplify my color pallet, and to draw the forest rather than every individual tree.  It's a drawing, not a photograph, I remind myself! 

Art Journaling as a Stress-Break

Taking the cats for their veterinary check-up is both important to me and stressful.  Three furry friends in their cat carriers buckled into my little Elantra created a symphony of mewling misery as we headed 10 minutes down the road to our vet the other day.  I'm grateful for our team of wonderful, caring & kind vets, but because I have empathy for my kitties, I can feel their distress in the process as they are examined, wormed and vaccinated. 

Thankfully, our cat friends got a good health report.  When I pulled up our driveway, safely home and done, all I could think was I need to make some art.  Once I had the cats out of their carriers and settled back into their familiar space, I grabbed my nature journal and colored pencils, and wandered down the hill from my home to plop on the grass and connect.

Sitting with a stand of nodding grasses and weeds and sketching them felt like magic.  I relaxed.  One of my cats sat at my feet, and we simply took in the beautiful afternoon sunshine playing over the grass fronds.  Deep evergreens in the background created a shadowed contrast to the November weeds.  I began to feel calmer, more grounded, peaceful.  The simple act of sitting with scrabbly weeds and scratching sketches in a journal felt deeply healing.

Figure Drawing Update: Hector in a Mask

 

New Pennsylvania state regulations on mask-wearing went into effect just as we welcomed Hector to model for our Osher Figure Drawing class.  As a result, everyone in my home studio wore a mask, and my students got to draw their first masked model.  

At first, it felt awkward to try to capture the shape of Hector's face and head, but soon, we realized that the mask served as a sock on a foot or a mitten on a hand to simplify a complex body feature. We incorporated the mask into our compositions, ending up with Hector as a regal knight with a sword.

I felt inspired by Hector's playful gestures with a Thanksgiving pie pumpkin, and we all wished for more time when the final beeper sounded.  A delight to be swept away into drawing!

Hector's 2- and 5-minute gestures with a pumpkin:

Figure Drawing Update: Amelia

Last Friday in my Osher Figure Drawing Zoom class, Amelia brought us creative and beautiful poses. Her gestures were particularly well thought-out and varied.

I demonstrated how to approach drawing the head and face, and David stepped in to help by providing a second face to compare. 

As we reviewed the collective results of our 15-minute portraits, I talked with the participants about how we as artists commonly draw our own faces on our models.  I think it's part of the connection we feel towards that person we are drawing, our empathy for them and our shared humanity we are expressing.  We are all one tribe, and figure drawing allows us to feel that connection, to practice our empathy, even over the miles via Zoom. Below is a portrait of Amelia-as-me or me-as-Amelia.