Reflections Kit now available!

'Reflections'

coloured pencil on black Stonehenge

copyright Teresa Mallen

You have seen this 'reflections' piece here before as a work in progress. As previously mentioned, this painting was for a kit. Well the kit is now ready for purchase.

The kit comes complete with everything but pencils. I create the kits using the 48 pencil set of Prismacolor Premier pencils. If you own a different brand, a swatch list is available to allow matching of colours.

The kit includes a sheet of black paper, white transfer paper, a detailed line drawing, pictures of the work in progress and a picture of the final image, a copy of the reference photo as well as four pages of step by step instructions.

Don't be intimidated by the idea of rendering glass and reflections. This kit will surprise you with how easy it is. The finished kit looks quite rich and dramatic due to the black paper.

If you are interested in purchasing this kit or would like to see the others that I have created, please click on this link: 'kits'.

If you are in the Ottawa area and are free tomorrow evening, Wednesday May 14th, you are welcome to come to a meeting of the Kanata Art Club. I shall be their guest presenter and I shall be teaching coloured pencil techniques. Just email me if you would like more info.

Our bear is still around. He made another visit Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. Hopefully he/she will soon realize that our home/yard is not a source of food. According to the internet, bears in this area start looking for a mate by the end of May, so maybe this bear will leave in search of a 'significant other'.

I'm shocked, I'm stunned, I'M IN !!!

'Jack Pine Kaleidoscope'
coloured pencil on Stonehenge paper
copyright Teresa Mallen

Well YIPPEE, I just found out that 'Jack Pine Kaleidoscope' has been juried into the Colored Pencil Society of America's International Exhibition!!!!!

As the title says, I am shocked and stunned. If you haven't heard of this show, I must tell you that this isn't just any old show...this is an exhibition with literally hundreds and hundreds of entries, from coloured pencil artists around the world and only 125 paintings were chosen this year. Mine was one of them - how incredible is that?!

I am so delighted, words cannot convey it. I am familiar with the names and the work of many of the other artists juried in and I am in awe of their talent and abilities. These folks are the best of the best in coloured pencil. They set the standard for excellence in coloured pencil work around the world and to see my name among them leaves me dumbfounded indeed. I keep going back to the CPSA website to check to see if there has been some mistake and to see if my name has been removed.

So now I have to get this piece framed in acrylic (as glass cannot be shipped) and I have to get it packed, insured and shipped off to Seattle Washington where it will be on exhibition from July 2nd to Sept. 29th. Wow. Of course I have moved beyond being concerned about this mundane stuff and I am now pondering things like "Goodness, I will need a new bathing suit as the one I have is ancient and I wouldn't want to be seen by the hotel pool in it." Did I lose you? The CPSA is hosting a coloured pencil convention in Seattle during the exhibition and guess who is scheming to attend?

Okay, so I fly across North America to view my own painting (that I shipped at some expense) on a different wall. How goofy is that...but I will also meet a whole mess of grand c. p. poo-bahs. I know that all these grand poo-bahs are really nice folks, so that would make make the trip most worthwhile. This is a once in a life-time opportunity (I may never get juried in again) so now my brain is clicking along, considering the possibility of attending. We have air mile points so now I just have to find a black market for my kidney so I can afford the hotel fee! Okay, just kidding...anyone want to register for my June classes, how about buying a few hundred kits, a painting or two???

Congrats to all the other artists that were accepted...see you in Seattle...maybe...

the bear facts please...

Well guess who is back? No I didn't take this picture. It is courtesy of www.pdphoto.org, a source of public domain photos, royalty free.

Our previous bear visit was on Friday night. Things were quiet for a few nights and then we were revisited last night. It was a late night as my husband and I were both clicking away on our computers until about 1:00 a.m. I looked in the backyard before heading upstairs to bed and all was well. I was up just after 6:00 a.m. to find that our feeder poles were bent again. We have been putting the feeders inside at night but the bear found one that was left out in the side garden.

I went surfing the net today and found all sorts of info on black bears - some I knew, most I didn't.

Did you know that:

- black bears are omnivorous, have a sense of smell 7 times greater than a dog, are good swimmers and tree climbers, have colour vision, and they can also be different colours other than black (cinnamon brown, sliver blue and even white)

- they are highly intelligent (said to be on the level of large apes), and are very curious, they live 21 to 33 years, they have a navigation ability superior to humans, and they have excellent long term memory

- a lean bear can exceed 30 mph (fat bears in winter coats overheat and tire quickly - kind of like me in my heavy winter coat dashing about Christmas shopping)

-males weigh between 125 - 500 pounds and females between 90 - 300 pounds

- they are active half an hour before sunrise, take a nap or two during the day (definitely a sign of high intelligence!) and they bed down for the night an hour or two after sunset. Okay, so this means they are likely to be out and about during the day. And I had the back door wide open all day yesterday so the dog could go in and out. Oops.

- their range is smaller than I thought, just a few miles. They are the smallest of bear species in North America, they are not vicious and they do not kill humans to defend their cubs (those are grizzly bears), they are silent and they only growl in the movies.

As our bear has an excellent memory, he/she isn't going to forget our backyard. We are going to be extra vigilant with our bird feeding practices as well as the use of our composter. We are going to set up our motion detector water sprayer (it is sold to keep deer and other animals out of gardens, if the sensor detects a creature it gets a soaking by the sprayer hooked up to a hose) and I have my flashlight and camera ready.

Knowing that it is likely to be active in the day caused me to be peering out the studio window today and I confess I jumped at every creaking tree limb and twig snap at lunch time when I was out doing some planting in the garden. It might be able to run 30 miles per hour but I can't!

Our dog is most indignant to have his territory invaded by such a large wild creature. He is a dominant male and he wasn't happy about (pardon my language) the pile of poop the bear left by a rear feeder. The pooping wars are on!

Anyway, enough about my bear visits...don't miss yesterday's post - check out the May newsletter if you haven't already.

May Newsletter Is Ready!

The May newsletter is ready to read, just click here. If you are new to my blog, let me tell you about the newsletter...

I am now publishing a newsletter on to my website. My goal is to inform and inspire other coloured pencil artists. Newsletter Group Members get to participate by asking questions, requesting feedback on a work etc.

Newsletter Group Members also receive an email in their inbox as soon as a newsletter has been posted. To become a member of the Newsletter Group, just contact me. The newsletters are free so why not check them out?

About the photo...we had a bear visit our backyard last Friday night. Here is a picture of two of our mauled bird feeder posts...there were others. While bears do wander around here, especially in the spring as they are quite hungry this time of year, this is the first time we have had one come into our 'compound'. We have a large area in our rear yard that is fenced off with a five foot fence. It keeps our dog on our property and keeps the deer out of one of my gardens. The bear climbed over as there was no other sign of entry. We have been bringing our feeders in at night so we don't create a 'nuisance' bear situation. I love living in a place teeming with wildlife. We are blessed indeed.

Rose blossom on Pastelbord, WIP

Here is what the rose blossom looks like now...

Unfortunately the photo doesn't capture the essence of the piece. The grainy texture of the Pastelbord is giving the rose a soft, dreamy quality which I like a lot.

I haven't had too much time to work on this piece as I am busy typing up the May newsletter as well as the instructions for the reflections kit. I had to tear myself away from my studio this afternoon as my husband and I had to do an airport run to pick up relatives returning from a trip.

I will post the finished image as soon as I get it done.

Rose blossom on pastelbord, WIP

Ah, the adventures in my studio...

I started a new piece this morning. I had my drawing on a piece of tracing paper and I was ready to transfer the lines to my Pastelbord. I inserted my transfer paper only to have an oops moment. Without thinking, I had inserted a piece of white transfer paper but darn it all, the Pastelbord is white. Just wasn't going to work...okay it was early and I hadn't even brewed coffee yet. Now the real problem sets in - I don't own any graphite transfer paper. I have never needed any. When working on white paper, I am able to use my lightbox to transfer the line drawing but as this is a board, it isn't see-through.

I needed a plan B. I grabbed my Wolff's 2B carbon pencil and I created my own graphite transfer paper. I rubbed the carbon pencil over the back of the tissue paper and voila! Worked like a charm.

About this piece: it is on a 5 x 7 inch panel of white Pastelbord (which has a sanded surface similar to pastel paper). While some of my work is small in size, I don't normally work this small. I purchased a package of four 5 x 7 inch Pastelbord panels so here I am doing a rather small rose blossom. The finished size will be smaller than 5 x 7 as I am saving room around the edge to allow for framing. I have read that people using the white Pastelbord don't like it, especially when compared to working on the other available colours of Pastelbord. So far I am enjoying working on it. The only negative so far, is that I find it harder to keep the areas that I want left white clean (especially when compared to working on Stonehenge paper). .

I like it when the tooth of the paper shows through in a work and I do like the toothy nature of this sanded surface. I am applying the pigment in the old fashioned way in that I am just laying down layers of coloured pencil. In this piece I am not filling the tooth with the use of Neocolors II crayons, watercolour pencils, solvent or colourless blender. My goal is for the the tooth to remain visible. Already I find that this adds to the delicate, soft look of the piece. I am using Prismacolor Lightfast pencils.

This is a fun piece for me as I like working on white objects. This may be a white rose blossom but by the time I am done with it, it will have quite a bit of colour. I 'see' so much colour in white :-) ...for those of you who have taken the Beyond the Basics course with me, remember the white tea cup and cloth project? I have a white peony blossom in the header of this blog. Further evidence that I love to add colour to white!

As you can see from the top photo, I am working at establishing my darker values first. I intend to crop the piece more on the right than the left so keep in mind that compositionally, the image will change.

RSS Awareness Day

Marsha Robinett posted in her Monday April 28th blog entry that May 1st is RSS Awareness Day. To read more about this go to Marsha's blog at www.theextraordinarypencil.blogspot.com.

It is May 1st and I am ready! I have added RSS Feed to this blog - see the top of the right hand side column.

What does this mean to you? Well, if you like this blog and you would like to read my future entries, you can subscribe to it. By registering your email address, you will receive an email in your inbox that tells you when I have posted a new entry. This saves you from having to go to the blog site to see if I have made any recent postings. There are two ways to subscribe. You can click on the subscribe in a reader area or you can click on the area for subscribing via email. If you use the 'reader' option you will remain anonymous. I do not receive info on who is subscribing and your address remains private. This means that you are protected from receiving spam.

If this sounds groovy to you, hop on over to the upper right hand side and start your subscription today. Your feedback is always welcome. If you wish to leave a comment on a post, please do so.