peony petals finished

peony petals, copyright Teresa Mallen, coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper, 8" x 8"

I haven't thought up a name for this one yet but here is my latest peony petals piece, pretty much finished. I will no doubt tweak it here and there before signing my name and scanning it for posting to my website. The contrast isn't as good as it should be in the photo above but once I started fiddling with that then the colours went crazy - you know how it goes, suffice to say it looks brighter in person.

The eleventh day into a new year...I am a gal who loves a fresh start and a new year seems to be the perfect time to wipe the slate clean. Our journals and day planners are bare and I relish the opportunity to embrace a new beginning. 

I must confess that 2011 was a bumpier ride than I would have liked. There were unexpected challenges and loss. Quite honestly I am very ready to see the back end of that year and to welcome a new one.

I have been thinking much in past months about goals and such and the other night I curled up in front of a fire, with my journal and a glass of wine and I got myself sorted. I planned, prioritized, dreamed and dared to visualize a very bright future. As I type, 2012 offers 355 new days, neatly parceled into weeks, months and seasons. Such a delicious chunk of time, of life filled with lush possibilities and gifts I can't even imagine. I am ready. Very ready.

I am not sure what my next new piece shall be but I have some ideas. I hope to get some time later today to sift through my reference photos. In the meantime, I have some volunteer work to attend to. I am on the executive of a group that puts together a twice a year Studio Tour. Today we shall go over last years finances, plan the next tour, jury in new artists, etc. It is always enjoyable to get together with fellow artists and I am looking forward to brainstorming ways to leverage this tour to new heights of success.

Have you planned out your new year yet? Remember to dream big!

new coloured pencil rose

center of a rose, wip, coloured pencil on Stonehenge, 18" x 8"

copyright Teresa Mallen

Here is my newest work in progress. You might notice the similarity in size, subject matter and style to my last piece. Woo-hoo, looks like a series is in the making! Usually I am not keen to work on a subject that is so similar to something that I have just finished. As a result, I usually don't work in a series. Of course all artists know that it is a good idea to work in a series (at least once in a while) but I must confess that I am a bit too hedonistic to stick to this good advice. Ah, but perhaps this time...I would just need to complete one more and I would have a small series!

Like the last piece, I am working on a rose - cps on Stonehenge paper. Again, this piece is all about curves and delicately blended colour. As you can see, I have yet to add colour to some petals while other areas have been quite developed. I hop all over as I work, adding a bit of colour here and there. At 18 inches wide, the piece has some lovely drama to it already.

My flower gardens are flourishing. Peonies, poppies and lupines are all displaying their beauty. Here is a lovely lisianthus...

and an allium...


I think it is time to brew up some tea and to sit amongst the flowers for a spell. I want to rewrite some of my press material and sitting in the garden will help make this a more enjoyable task!

So how about you, do you like working in a series?

Abstracted Rose Finished

Rose (untitled), 8"w x 15"h, Coloured Pencil on Stonehenge

Copyright Teresa Mallen

Here is the finished image of the work in progress I showed last time. You might recall that I was going for abstracted realism here. While the piece is a representation of an inner section of a rose, my desire was to capture and emphasize the various lines and curves that I found so appealing. You can click on the detailed view below for a better idea of how the piece looks close up.

I haven't given any thought as to what the title of this piece might be. I will tape it to the wall of my studio and perhaps something will come to mind as I look at it over the next little while.

It has been two weeks since I posted. Please don't infer that this piece took that long to do! In fact this piece came together quickly as there wasn't a lot of detail to render. Unfortunately I just haven't been able to spend much time in my studio recently. As some of you may know, my father passed away last year. My mother died six years ago. My sister and I have inherited the family farm and we are now in the process of going through the house and all of their belongings. For those of you who have already had to face a similar situation, you know what a huge task this can be. It is at least a three hour drive to get to the farm and back so these sessions are time consuming and tiring.

My parents moved a few times but eventually they bought a farm in 1957 and they lived there the rest of their lives - long enough to settle in well and accumulate stuff. So we sort, throw out, clean, sort some more, throw out, clean...on and on it goes. I have done at least 20 loads of laundry in the past week as I prepare their clothing to go to a charity. Once we are done the house, we can look forward to sorting the outbuildings. Old farm machinery, yippee. Right about now I could use a few extra siblings. :-) Then again, I have heard a lot of horror stories of how family members fight over their parents' estate so maybe things would just be more complicated.

It has been an interesting time wandering down memory lane. Many items bring back memories of the childhood that I spent there. Holding a crystal pickle tray transports me back to Christmas dinners with Mom's homemade relishes and bread and butter pickles. Long forgotten and tucked at the back of my old bedroom closet I discovered my buffalo sandals from the '70s. The stuff we choose not to throw out, it is so interesting. Costume jewelry that belonged to my grandmother - my mother couldn't part with it and now neither can we! This is a time of memories, laughter and tears.

The unexpected fallout of this is that as we sort the farmhouse my home suddenly becomes stuffed with items that I am bringing back. Yikes...Oh, but there are some groovy finds. Last week we accessed a couple of storage rooms over the kitchen. You can only get up there via a ladder and we hadn't done this in many, many years. Well woo-hoo, I was still climbing the ladder when I spied some lovely chairs. One really gorgeous looking one (lovely lines to its construction) and a few others. They were buried under other things so I don't know if my woo-hoo will turn to an uh-oh. Perhaps they are broken or something. I do know that there is pigeon poop on everything so some serious cleaning will be required. My sister has dibs on the 1900 Singer treadle sewing machine. So now you know what I am up to if my blog posts get rather infrequent!

So what is up next in the studio? Well, this week I have to work on getting the Chard piece ready to ship to Atlanta. Tonight I am going to haul out all of my mat board to see if I have a large enough sheet in the right shade of off white. I had mentioned in the last post that I might do a few of these rose pieces. To get started I will look for another reference image from my photos. Right now though, I am going catch up on reading some of my favourite blogs.

Abstracted Realism - new cp wip

'rose flame', work in progress, 15" x 8", coloured pencil on Stonehenge

copyright Teresa Mallen

Isn't it wonderful to start a new piece? I thought I needed a break from working big but I missed a larger format so this one is 15 inches by 8 inches - lots of room to stretch out and breathe! So what am I doing with this and what do I mean by abstracted realism? Well, have a look at my rose photo below.

Using Photoshop, I played with some reference photos. I ended up with a composition that I really liked. I chose a close up view, a vertical slice of the center of the rose. This piece is all about shapes and curves. I saw curves that reminded me of a candle flame or smoke rising. That is the story I wish to tell with this new work. The piece is grounded in realism as I am drawing an actual rose but it is also undergoing a bit of abstraction as the cropping focuses on shapes and curves. I love the shapes and curves of the crop and it doesn't really matter to me if the source is a rose or a tree branch or whatever.

I have lots of yummy colour down already but for now the photo isn't showing it well. I am working on white Stonehenge and I am building up colour by applying light layers of pigment. I saw a few other compositions that appealed to me so I think there may be a rose series in the work here...maybe...

For those of you who are wondering if there is going to be a May issue of my newsletter...humm, I am quite busy right now with commitments outside of the studio so it may be a while before I can get writing another issue. For those of you who are subscribers, you will of course be notified as soon as a new issue has been published. The silver lining is that for those of you who are new members, you have more time to catch up with your reading of past newsletters. If you are new to my blog and you don't have a clue what I am talking about, hop on over to my website to read my newsletters for coloured pencil enthusiasts.

Finally, for the birders out there, not only did I hear a whip-poor-will this week, (as mentioned in a previous post) I actually saw a mother and her oh so adorable baby (half way between fluff and feathers). I was walking my dog one evening and we happened upon them resting in the grass. Mom flew off. I so wish I had my camera so I could have taken a picture of the baby. The site was close to the house and I could have returned to the spot but I didn't want to disturb them more than we had. Don't worry, I kept my dog from having a curious sniff. :-)

Peony is finished!

'Crinkled White' Peony, Coloured Pencil on Stonehenge, 20.5" x 5.5"

Copyright Teresa Mallen

Reveling in the sublime...that is what I was doing this morning. In past weeks I have been teaching on Saturdays. Ah, but not today. This morning I was up with the birds, brewed some coffee and sat at my drafting table, pjs and all. It was a gloomy, almost rainy morning and it seemed appropriate to put Mozart's Requiem on the CD player. Pure bliss. While I was sipping my coffee and enjoying the music, I tweaked the peony above. Please take into consideration that while I took many photos in different lighting conditions, I didn't get a photo that was quite true. The white is reading rather blue but I hope you can get an idea of what the work looks like. (you can click on the photo above to see a larger image) From here, the peony will go on my studio wall for a while so I can look at it from a distance and see if there are changes I wish to make.

This peony would have been done sooner but I have been busy with other aspects of my business. I have been teaching, negotiating teaching agreements for the fall (outside of my studio), advertising, writing my newsletter and setting up new classes. It didn't help that this was a rather large piece (for me anyway) and it had a lot of detail. I loved doing it though.

I am now thinking about the next piece. I have a busy week ahead. I am hoping to get the ball rolling with a printer for my line of reproductions and I have to be out of town to handle something regarding my Father's estate. Given my schedule and the fact that my last three pieces have been rather big, maybe it is time to do a small piece. The peony is 20.5" x 5.5".

The piece I did before that was Neptune's Leaves, 16.5" x 25".

Before that, it was the Swiss Chard Mosaic piece, 17" x 7".





Yes, definitely smaller and faster for the next one, maybe trading card size! :-)

After the blissful time time in the studio, my husband and I and our dog went hiking for couple of hours on the Carp Ridge. The Ridge is a rugged, rocky, wild place just a few minutes from my home. Absolutely delightful. Those words at the top of my blog, "add beauty to your life", well that is how I strive to live. I hope you have found a way to add beauty to your weekend. Now, I shall head off to look through my reference photos to see what art might be next.