Motivation Monday

September...humm, are you ready?

Tomorrow we enter the final quarter of 2009. Amazing isn't it? Are you ready for a fresh start?

September is a great time to shift gears and to get into new routines. New beginnings are all around us. Children and young adults return to school. Vacations are over and a new season of recreational activities start up. There is a sense of change outside our doors as the daylight hours get shorter and the leaves start turning colour. There is also a sense of change inside our homes as we look at our calendars once again filling up with activities.

This is a perfect time to review your goals. What had you hoped to accomplish in 2009? As you revisit your list, start to think about the 122 days you have until January 31st. Review and refresh your plans. Maybe you have new priorities and interests. Perhaps you need to prune out some of those goals and ideas that can wait until next year.

Feeling overwhelmed by our tasks can cause our motivation to vanish. One way to feel less overwhelmed is to get organized. I suggest you grab a cup of your favourite beverage and sit down with a pen and a sheet of paper. Think about what is really important to you. Perhaps you would like to sign up for a fall class or perhaps now is a good time to join that local art group you have been meaning to check out. Whether you are making a fresh commitment to sketching more often, carving out regular art time, getting more exercise or healthy eating, September is a great time to refocus our direction. There are a whole 122 days ahead...I encourage you to 'seize the day' in these last four months of 2009. May these be the most satisfying days and weeks of the entire year. Go for it!

new wip and a botanical artist

WIP untitled, Coloured Pencil on Stonehenge, 5 3/4" x 15"

Copyright Teresa Mallen

Here is my latest work in progress. Peony leaves instead of rose petals! :-) With a width of under 6" and a height of 15", you can get an idea of how I wanted to crop this image tall and narrow. The peony I had photographed was white with one unusual reddish, pink petal and that is what interested me. Of course I got carried away and I have added all sorts of colour to the 'white' petals. I may tone it down by lifting some pigment. I'm not sure yet. I shall wait until I get colour all over the piece before I start making any adjustments.

Gosh, I hadn't intended to take such a long break from blogging but wow, August has just screamed by. I have been rather busy in my spare time so I guess blogging just fell by the wayside. I did some more test driving of vehicles once I returned from Atlanta and I am delighted to have made a purchase. I was out of town last week interviewing real estate agents with my sister (for the selling of our parents' farm) and we also had the property appraised. Of course the weeds are winning the battle but I do try to exert some control over the garden and my veggies are all ready to eat NOW. I wouldn't be surprised to wake one morning to find that I have turned into a giant tomato or zucchini. If things weren't busy enough, we are now painting our house. I mean this literally, no hired folks, just my husband and I wielding paintbrushes and rollers. Our house has wood siding that the previous owners stained a very dark brown colour. It is time to lighten things up. The veranda is already looking very fresh in its new white state. The rest of the house is going to be a yellowish cream. Forget petals on a bit of Stonehenge, our house is the real work in progress!

I mentioned in last post that I was going to chat about the Mock Jury workshop that I attended. I shall save that for the next post (I need to get outside painting!) but I did want to pass on some info for anyone who is interested in botanical art. The September 2009 issue of the Artist's magazine features the work of botanical artist Wendy Hollender. She works in coloured pencil! Woo-hoo. To download two step by step demonstrations by Wendy on drawing and colouring a tulip, click here. I discovered a fresh new twist on botanical art on her website - you can purchase a print of a poster that features hallucinogenic plants! Now that's different. Enjoy surfing the net, I am off to cover up more dark brown wood.

back from the CPSA convention

Here is a picture of my home away from home last week while I attended the Colored Pencil Society of America's annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The meetings and workshops were held at this beautiful Marriott hotel in Duluth. Everything about the exhibition and the convention experience was fantastic and more than I could have hoped for. The art world may be filled with lots of big egos and arrogant attitudes but not when it comes to coloured pencil folks. All the people I met were friendly, kind and welcoming. What a joy to experience! Oh and they just happen to create incredible art too!!

This picture of the hospitality suite shows some of the works of art donated by CPSA members for a silent auction fund raiser. Seated at the table are Cindy Haase (CPSA Membership Director) and Gemma Gylling (CPSA Convention Director). Thanks Cindy for the impromptu tutorial in all things Twitter!

Here is another shot of some of the silent auction art. I fortunately found a time when this room wasn't busy. On the first evening when everyone got together for a meet and greet it was so crowded you could hardly see the tables.

The picture above is a portion of the goodies table. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars of free stuff is donated by various sponsors. The goodies were later bagged up and given out during a CPSA members meeting. I even managed to snag some loot!

While at the convention I took the opportunity to attend a workshop with Pat Averill. Pat is a very talented cp artist who received her fifteen year merit award this year. That means she has been juried into the CPSA annual exhibition 15 times!! Most impressive.

Pat's workshop was all about rendering water - standing water, waves, foam patterns, reflections, rocks with spilling water and wet sand. Pat is a fabulous landscape artist. What she is creating from her fascination with water is equally wonderful. As an instructor, Pat was very well prepared. We enjoyed oodles of beautiful ocean pictures as Pat shared with us many of her best water photographs in a large screen presentation. There were four exercises to complete and the day flew by. I was most interested by Pat's use of Paraffin wax and crayons in her cp art. I think this info will be very helpful when I consider creating something for the CPSA mixed media exhibition.

The picture below shows part of our workshop room as we regrouped following lunch. I believe there were about 40 people attending this session. I so enjoyed meeting Pat. Like everyone, she was so friendly and welcoming to this new convention attendee. Pat even joined me for breakfast one morning. Unfortunately we just didn't have long enough to chat. If you ever have a chance to study with Pat, I encourage you to do so. She is a wonderful, talented person.

Remember my Newsletter issue of November 2008? I featured Ester Roi's heated drawing board in that issue and I also mentioned the release of a smaller board in my March 2009 Newsletter. Well here is Ester and her husband Mario. I actually had a chance to watch Ester demonstrate how one could work on her heated board. It was thrilling to watch her work her magic. I love Ester's work. The techniques she has developed while working on this surface are worth exploring. Do check out her website - Ester has lots of step by step info and she is using more than just coloured pencils on her board - do go see. I am sure you will be inspired.

Perhaps you are sensing a theme here, but gosh, if Ester and her husband aren't just the nicest people you would ever meet anywhere. Absolutely delightful. Ester, Mario and I hooked up after the awards banquet for a good long chat. It was like we had known each other for years.

Here is a picture of myself and Ester just before the awards banquet.

I took lots of photos at the awards banquet but I will post just this one. This is a picture of the incredibly talented Jeff George receiving the top honours of the night, the CIPPY Award and CPSA Best of Show. The woman at the podium is CPSA President Kay Schmidt. Congratulations Jeff. Jeff is just the nicest man you will ever meet and I really enjoyed a conversation I had with him. I know that Jeff has achieved his level of success because of his determined work ethic. Jeff has a day job and all of the responsibilities the rest of us has. Despite this, for years now he has made it a point to work at his art everyday - even when that means setting the alarm at an incredibly early hour in order to squeeze some time in. Such determination and dedication to his craft has definitely paid off. The vast majority of successful people are successful because of good old fashioned hard work. May Jeff's fabulous art inspire all of us to work that much harder on our own creations!

If you would like to see a complete list of all of the award winners, visit the CPSA website. Also, please note that a DVD of the entire exhibition can be purchased from the CPSA! If you can't get to the exhibition in person, it is a great way to see the show. I was at the show and I bought one so I could remember it!

Before moving on from the awards banquet, I would like to congratulate Holly Bedrosian on winning an Award for Outstanding Achievement. I watched her piece unfold on her blog and it was a treat to see it in person. I had the privilege of sitting next to Holly and her husband at the banquet. I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet Holly in person. And yes, she is as beautiful in person as she is in all of those self portraits!

During convention week, there was a special reception at the gallery for all of the artists. Here is a picture of the Jacqueline C. Hudgens Center for the Arts, Duluth Georgia.

This next photo shows the entrance into one of the main exhibition rooms. Holly's self portrait is on the left.

Another gallery room....

Another gallery room, and woo-hoo I see a chunk of chard!

Now here is one of my favourite photos. This is none other than the incredible Linda Lucas Hardy posing with her amazing art. Congratulations to Linda on winning the Award for Outstanding Recognition. It was very well deserved. I have long admired Linda's work and getting to see this piece as well as her silent auction entry was a real thrill. Linda is truly one of the nicest people you will ever meet. She has such a warm personality, she is funny, intelligent and gosh who wouldn't love that Texas accent? It was an honour to meet Linda and to become new friends. Linda has a blog with convention photos and she even has said hi to me in a post! How cool is that? Didn't I say these folks were wonderful?

Well hey, here is proof that my Swiss Chard Mosaic actually made it there and is on the wall still...sorry for the reflections...

More gallery photos...

Another gallery wall...

Finding room for the 120 paintings wasn't easy for the gallery.

That's it for now. (Next time I shall share some of the ideas that came out of the Mock Jury Workshop I attended). It was a tremendous exhibition and I am honoured to have been accepted both last year and this year. I had such a wonderful time, met such wonderful people and saw such fabulous art. I am sure I shall attend another convention in future! I highly recommend the experience. All of those pictures and not one with a lampshade...humm...did she or didn't she? Ahh, that stays in Atlanta!

finished pears and work interrupted

'Simply Pears', 7.5" x 10.5", Coloured Pencil on Colourfix Paper

Copyright Teresa Mallen

Here is a picture of the finished pears. This was a fun, undemanding piece (with the exception of the previously mentioned background experiment).

You may have noticed the dates posted for the pears. While coloured pencil has a reputation for being a slow medium, it really isn't this slow! :-) July has had some unexpected events and it hasn't been the productive month I had hoped. I look forward to July and August. I normally end my teaching gigs by the end of June and I usually anticipate catching up on my to-do list over the eight weeks of summer. This summer has the added responsibility of getting the farm where my parents lived ready to be sold. But, there have been other hiccups along the way.

The province of Ontario is currently switching all of the land titles and deeds from one type of registry to an automated one. We found out this month that a lakefront property that my sister and I inherited did not make the transfer. Our deed got flagged as missing a severance stamp and we now had a Planning Act Violation and an invalid deed. Kind of reminds me of my painting getting held up at customs! After much angst and two law firms working on our behalf we have discovered that the original severance and issuing of a deed was in fact done properly by our parents but we still have to have a lawyer argue our case. This has been an unexpected drain on my time this month.

In addition, my 16 year old car is suddenly having some issues and it has become clear that the time has come to replace it. So I have begrudgingly spent many hours in the past two weeks test driving cars, reading consumer reports, etc. I don't like to shop, I am a frugal gal who doesn't like to spend money and I like buying cars even less. Grrrr....

So now it is the last week of July and things are looking up. The legal issue is now being dealt with by a lawyer. I am close to making a car decision. Most importantly, I am packing to go to Atlanta this week to attend the Colored Pencil Society of America's Convention. Woo-hoo!

Wildlife update: I have been asked if the deer I mentioned a few weeks ago is still around. Yes she is.


We also have another doe and her twin fawns making appearances. My husband has seen a small black bear twice in the past week. She probably wants my raspberries! The rabbits have taken over the back yard. This is a fenced piece of land so they are safe from coyotes and foxes. Some lilies in my front garden were eaten by the deer and the lilies in the vase below were chewed off of their stems by a rabbit. I guess they weren't tasty. I am not sure if Beatrix Potter would approve but I am starting to sympathize with Mr. McGregor in the Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Actually, if truth be told, I am delighted to have wildlife problems. I love living amongst these animals. I feel truly blessed to see them and it is worth raspberries and chewed lilies. :-)

As I mentioned I shall be away this week attending workshops and meetings at the CPSA convention. No doubt I shall be having a wee bit of fun too. I hope I can find a lampshade to fit my head! LOL Perhaps there shall be some pics in the next post. Of course I shall edit out the incriminating ones!

So how is your summer going? Are things turning out the way you planned and hoped?

simply pears, new cp work in progress

Time for a new piece and for a change from flowers I decided on fruit. I grabbed some pears and headed outside for a bit of a photo shoot. I must admit that my photos leave something to be desired as I was rushing things. My initial thoughts were that I would like to do a simple, rather stark, contemporary piece. I would have liked to use quartz or granite counter tops as a surface but as I don't have either of those in my house I used my old faithful marble pastry board instead. A lot of great pie dough has been rolled out on that marble! Humm...how about a pear tart? Oops, I digress...

The above photo is one of my not so great reference photos but that's okay as I cropped it anyway. I created a drawing and the image below shows how it looked once I transferred my drawing to my paper and started adding colour.


I chose an olive green sheet of Colourfix paper to work on. I wanted a change from white Stonehenge and I wanted to work on something sanded. The piece is approximately 7 1/2" x 10 1/2" in size. If you haven't tried coloured paper and you are not sure how to transfer a drawing to a coloured surface (or to a paper that is too thick to use a light box) please click here for a description of how to do it. Just scroll down to the question section.

In the above photo, I have put down three different pencil colours to make up the background. The pears are untouched and are still the colour of the paper. I started in on the marble with a first layer of pigment. Then I started to wing it when I should have proceeded with caution. The picture doesn't show what I did next.

After stopping to take a photo, I decided to tackle depicting the dark veins in the marble. I also decided to bump up the detail in the marble to make it more striking (and more like granite). So I started in applying dark streaks all over the place. I wasn't sure it was working but I kept going. Well, when I was finished I knew it didn't work. It was just too busy for the simplicity of the piece. And uh oh, I had got quite carried away and there was a lot of pigment down! Darn.

So I got out my tape and I started to lift...and lift...and lift. It wasn't coming off evenly but hey maybe another layer of pigment would cover it. I tried that. Nope, now it was worse - a real streaky mess. So back to the lifting. Finally I decided that this wasn't doing the job so I reached for my electric eraser. I had hesitated to use it as I thought it might remove the sanded texture of the paper. But hey, things were looking too awful to leave it the way it was. You know what? It worked! Like a charm. Yippee! The lesson I relearned here was that when things really don't seem to be working, stop and assess what is happening. I should have done a test on a scrap bit of paper to see if I liked the marble look. I was impatient and I paid the price. Lifting and erasing took too much time and was quite boring.

So I continued on and started in on the pears.



So at this point, there is still work to be done. I haven't finished the pears (you can still see the green paper at the bottom of the front pear), the shadows are not done and I shall tweak the new non-marble background colour. I should have stopped to take a picture of the awful 'marble' background before I erased it. It was truly hideous! :-)

Now for some garden photos...yarrow

More yarrow...I love yellow in my gardens.

For some shocking pink, good ol' phlox.

I shall show you the finished pears in my next post.

The moral of this post is that sometimes it is best just to keep things simple...oh and slowing down to do a test strip saves time in the long run.

Motivation Monday

Are you fierce about your art?

Like you, my inspiration comes from many sources. Something I read recently had an impact on me and I would like to share it with you.

On the last page of The Ark magazine, summer 2009 issue, (a publication of the Nature Conservancy of Canada) there is a feature article of someone who is an important volunteer. The text that grabbed me is this: "So fierce is Mabel's conviction that this is a special place that for the past several years she has worked to ensure that the Musquash Estuary would be protected for others to enjoy." Humm...fierce, such a powerful word. A fierce conviction...Wouldn't it be extraordinary to have someone define you as fierce?

A dictionary definition of fierce states this: savage and violent in nature, ferocious, extremely severe, very ardent or intense - now this last one sounds right. Very ardent, intense. I started to ponder what am I 'fierce' about?

Let me ask you again, are you fierce about your art? Can you honestly say that you are very ardent and intense about creating your art as well as honing your skills as an artist? Don't we all wish to be deeply devoted to our art not to mention passionate about it? Perhaps you aren't as fierce as you would like to be. Maybe you have let things get stale and routine. Maybe you have let other tasks get in the way of making your art. Don't settle for that. Now is the time to make a change. Bump your motivation level up to the heights of ardent intensity. Go on, choose to be fierce!

(If you are new to my blog, you can check out other Motivation Monday posts by clicking on the button in the sidebar. I recommend scrolling down to the very bottom and reading up as the posts tend to follow on from the previous one. May you be inspired!)

another peony and milkweed

peony leaves (untitled), Coloured Pencil on Stonehenge, 8 1/2" x 9 3/4"

Copyright Teresa Mallen

Well, after looking at all of the peony photos that I took a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't resist doing a quick picture of some peony leaves. I especially liked the leaves near the bottom that seemed to me to look like an open clam. This piece whizzed along and I didn't end up taking any work in progress pictures...oops.

I have finished teaching my Beyond the Basics course and I now have a break during July and August. I have lots of projects I hope to get to this summer - I shall keep you posted.

The Coloured Pencil Society of America's 17th Annual Exhibition opens tomorrow. For a teaser photo of one of the gallery exhibition rooms, click here. Three weeks from today I shall be on a plane heading south to Atlanta in order to attend the CPSA's convention. I am getting excited!

Now for some trivia...did you know that milkweed flowers have a beautiful scent? They do, really! I have some milkweed flowers in a vase in my house and their lovely perfume is filling the air.

I am a fan of weeds. What isn't there to love about milkweed? They have beautiful flowers - which you now know smell wonderful. Also, monarch butterflies need milkweed to survive. The larvae/caterpillars of the monarch feed on milkweed. This is their only food! Monarch butterflies are one of the few insects capable of making transatlantic crossings. They are becoming more common in Bermuda due to increased usage of milkweed as an ornamental plant in flower gardens!

Here are a few of my milkweed photos.

Asclepias, the milkweeds, is a genus named by famed Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus. He named the genus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing because of the many folk remedies associated with the plants. Here are a few fun facts: The milkweed filaments from the follicles are coated with wax, and have good insulation properties. Tests have shown them to be superior to down feathers. The high dextrose content of the nectar led to milkweed's use as a source of sweetener for Native Americans and voyageurs.

The fibers of some species were used for cordage. Milkweed also contains latex and both Germany and the United States attempted to use it as a natural source for rubber during World War II. Milkweed is a common folk remedy for removing warts. The sap is applied directly to the wart several times daily until the wart falls off. The sap is also used externally as a natural remedy for poison ivy. The plant also contains cardiac glycoside poisons which made it useful for native tribes to use in their arrows. Milkweed is toxic and may cause death when animals consume 1/10 its body weight with any part of the plant. Okay, don't eat the plant!

Who didn't love pulling apart milkweed pods as a kid in order to set loose the seeds? Remember that sticky white sap that covered your hands?

So if you want to encourage Monarch butterflies to visit your garden, why don't you grow some milkweed? You will enjoy the smell of the flowers too! :-)