Friday, August 1, 2014

newsletter show and tell


Friday August 1st newsletter excerpt:
We are in it now, the prime time for taking  holidays – for a lot of people anyway. For those of you outside of Canada, you might not know that this coming Monday is a holiday in most provinces.
Not wanting to miss out on the spirit of things, my motivation decided to take a bit of a holiday this week! J Well, it is understandable, my studio to-do list is rather dry – for example I am supposed to be writing out all of the text for the poppy project, including blurbs about me and TMS and I should get cranking on the new website design, yawn...

So I took an afternoon off, got very decadent, brewed some tea and settled myself on a wicker love seat outdoors with a book I have wanted to read. I even had a nap. It was lovely. Summer is so brief after all. J I hope those of you reading are having a chance to be decadent as well!

I think I will keep this newsletter short this week, seeing as most of you are probably heading off to play somewhere.
 
How about a show and tell?


My star gazer lilies are in full bloom right now, so it seems an appropriate time to show this oldie but a goodie... (I have kept the file size small on this one. When I include a lot of pictures, the size of the newsletter can get pretty large to send via email.)
 
 
Star Gazer Lily, coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper. Copyright Teresa Mallen
Next item for the show and tell is a spoon with funky reflections...
I got an idea for a series – a piece of fruit on a spoon. I am not sure what inspired the idea but I do like all of the reflections one sees in cutlery so I know this was one of the main motivations for doing the piece.
To help with me work on the concept, I shot some pictures of a cherry on a spoon. Here is an example:


 
 I fussed with lighting, placing the spoon at different angles to see what sort of reflections I got and so on. I tried different shaped cherries, some with stems, some without...
Once uploaded onto my computer, I zoomed in on the photos, played with cropping etc. and in the end I decided the image I wanted was more of a close up, not showing the entire spoon.
If you remember my newsletter from last week, the story I wanted to tell in this piece was the ‘story’ of the colourful shapes in the reflections on the silver of the spoon. (BTW, regarding last week’s newsletter, Heather Neill, the artist that painted the cover art of American Art Collector, found out about my newsletter and left a comment on my blog. I nearly slid off my studio couch in surprise...LOL)
The next photo shows the piece under way. You can see that I am working on a black sheet of paper called Mi-Teintes Touch. The paper also has a sanded surface (think of the rough texture of sand paper). This type of paper is often used by pastel artists. The tape in the photo was keeping the paper from moving around on my drafting table.
Oh, and of course I am doing this entirely in coloured pencil.



 
I enjoyed drawing the cherry but for me the true delight was in detailing the reflections on the spoon. It was a quick piece and it was a joy to work on from start to finish.
And what about that fruit on a spoon series? Well, the idea is on hold. Turns out once I had one completed, I wasn’t too keen on repeating the theme. Perhaps I shall return to it one day.
Depending on what you read this newsletter on (desktop versus a device) the resolution might look a bit fuzzy in spots but as I stated above, I am trying to keep these newsletter files from getting gigantic. Just trust me, everything looks awesome in person! J


 
Cherry on Spoon, 10” x 3”, copyright Teresa Mallen
 
And that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed the show and tell.
 
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