Landscapes in Colored Pencil

                            Lakeside Sunset - 12 X 16 Colored Pencil on Ampersand Pastelboard
    
I have always admired the Hudson River Valley painters and wished to convey my style in a landscape.  Like most artists I'm always wanting to try something new, or add to my bucket list of paintings done.  My current challenge is to develop my style into the landscape genre.  I've been participating in a free landscape webinar put on by WetCanvas and F & W books and artist Johannes Vloothius.  These webinar recordings will be available for download by F & W at a later date.  I found out about the web classes after the first 8 classes were given, we are now into the 18th class.  (Ever the timely one here. LOL) This class is primarily for painters in oil, water color, acrylics and pastels.  But has so much great info for even this colored pencil painter.  I wish I had started the above shown painting after I gleamed valuable landscape knowledge from this master painter.  As it defies many of his do's and falls short with many of his don'ts. 

But I have learned from the advice of other artists friends, and that is not to mention a paintings faults but to learn from them and move on.  Even Johannes comments to not redo or fix a painting but to just progress from there.   So that is what I'll do.  The painting is of a sunset from the lake at Dillman's Resort in WI where I attended a colored pencil class given by Cecile Baird.  And no matter my issues with the painting I can still hear the loons calling at night when I look at it.      

I do wish to become adept at creating landscapes with colored pencil.  Realizing that I may need to practice with plein air work in pastel when on site.  But this was a studio piece from a photo of that sunset on a June evening when art was in the air.

Now back to scribbling on my new challenge rushing water UP Close and Personal............

New Website Up and Running and Other Business

After taking my time and making sure to learn then create my new website using iweb on my Mac (all in order to enable me to do updates myself and not pester my son Chris), I have learned much!  I have made plenty of errors (which equates to many more hours than a tech savvy person) and in general now have a sense of accomplishment, or  as much as any computer challenged individual can have.   Take a look at:  http://www.gloriacallahan.com 

Other than a whole new look, additional pages (class offerings, events and such) it contains some new work.  But also it contains a link to my BLOG here so I will be making even more efforts to keep up on updating this blog. 

"Business":  Yes something we creative types all shun but HAVE to make efforts toward in order to be efficient, organized and marketed.  (Or at least find my pencil sharpener!)  My old hat of being a comptroller for several companies i.e. accounting, keeps me motivated to track my finances and those of the Bon Air Artists Assoc. of which I am treasurer.  Working toward 501C3 (tax exempt) status for them has me resurrecting too much of my left brain.   And thus not creating as much art as I wish I could. 

Funny thing that left brain, it rears it's head when we least expect it, but useful when completing our taxes.  I find myself having to fool it more and more these days doing things like turning my photo ref upside down, looking in a mirror at my work and erasing more than before I took on this task.   But now that I'm done with the website set up, I'm on to the next post about colored pencil in landscape painting! 

Now where did I hide the photo ref.........