A Big Art Weekend

Some of my 2009 plein air art on display

Progressive Painting
(c) Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society

"Jamie 1"
Vine charcoal
10-minute sketch
1/9/201

The Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society held it's New Year's Party, the second I've attended. Bob joined me and he was such a help in the setup. We had a fabulous time mingling over appetizers, viewing plein air paintings and sketchbooks, enjoying a marvelous potluck, doing a painting exchange, and winning prizes in support of an art project for children. I was on the decorating committee and worked with fellow artist, Wendy, to put together centerpieces for the Asian New Year Themed party. It was the year of the tiger -- many paper lanterns, chinese takeout boxes, gold coins, chopsticks, fortune cookies, two stuffed tigers, and a wonderful handmade dragon went into celebrating the the Year of the Tiger. I enjoyed seeing many of my art friends, including Mike Bailey and his beautiful wife, and artists who went to France on Mike's 2007 Dordogne trip.

Please forgive the quality of these pictures -- I have my new camera out being repaired at the moment. I displayed several of my plein air paintings from our lovely outings throughout 2009 along with many by other artists. Those are artists's sketch books in the foreground. I participated in the progressive painting. There were two done and this one has some of my strokes buried among the layers. We all added watercolor to the gessoed boards. Then two very accomplished artists, Karen Wong, and Jane Ferguson, pulled them together. They did a fabulous job of turning these paintings into lovely works of art. The one above was completed by Jane. Two lucky winners took the progressive paintings home all matted and framed. I was very happy to receive a wonderful watercolor by our SCVWS Webmaster, Marion Podolski in the art exchange. One of the highlights of our raffle were three paintings donated by two nationally known artists, Jane Hofstedter and Myrna Wacknov. I sure was hoping to win one, but I was not that lucky.

Tomorrow I will be coordinating Myrna's demo for SCVWS. If you are in the area, these demos are free and held at Hoover Historic Theater in San Jose from 1:30 to 4:00. I am so excited about the upcoming workshop with Myrna. No doubt you will get to see some of what I do starting Friday.

Finally, I had to do my daily sketch, so I grabbed a photo of Bob's daughter, Jamie, from her wedding in April. She was crouched over her tiny grandmother on the dance floor. Grandma is a in her late 80s and just loves to dance. I almost captured the expression of fun on Jamie's face. I see the proportions of the body are off a bit -- oh well, that's how we improve our drawing.