Sheila M. Evans

This week I finished a large canvas, number twenty-nine of my fifty. It’s another of my Zen Garden Series, titled Fall Garden No.2. I enjoyed working with the warm golden colors, as a lot of my recent work has been in blues and reds. I will be doing some small panels next and will post one next week.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! For me, anyway, and not the holiday part. It’s the time of the year that I get to take a fresh batch of reference photos for my never-ending Ambient series. There is a very specific set of conditions that allows me to get the photos I need. There has to have been frost for a month or so, there has to have been at least some snow, the snow has to have melted, and it has to be slightly hazy at about two in the afternoon. This doesn’t happen all that often, but yesterday the planets aligned a bit after one o’clock. I looked outside and the light was perfect. So I grabbed my camera and my big mud boots and made the seven-minute drive to the park where my favorite plants grow. Read more

This is how I make the canvas panels that I like. Painting in oils on these is the most similar experience I have found to working in pastel. I’m not completely sure why this is, but there are a couple of possibilities. First, the canvas I use is more textured than most of the canvases you can buy, and the hard board backing behind the canvas supports the the fibers and eliminates the “bounce back” you get with stretched canvases. The hard surface mimics working on paper against a drawing board, and the enhanced texture is similar in some respects to sanded pastel paper. Also, the canvases I make seem to be more absorbent than commercial canvases, absorbing (somewhat) the first layers of paint and allowing me to drag subsequent layers across the textured surface while the lower layers show through a bit. This works best with a fairly dry brush. Anyway, enough already. Here’s how I make the panels:

These are the things you will need to make a panel. A piece of masonite, a scrap of canvas large enough to cover with about two inches extra on all sides, some sort of “stick-flat” paste such as Yes! or Nori, a large brush, some steel wool, and something to trim your canvas. I’m using a cutting wheel that you can get at any sewing supply store.  I highly recommend this, but anything will work. Also a rag, extra pieces of masonite, and gesso will be needed–and a method of cutting your panel if desired. Read more

Earlier I said I would update my progress on the fifty oils. A few weeks ago I passed the halfway point. Here are a few of the paintings (with pastels on the walls and easel in the background) ready to be photographed.  Today I am starting number twenty-nine, so I am feeling good about making my goal!  Try not to laugh at my tiny studio.  Okay, laugh if you must.  Fine. 

I’ve been making some canvas panels and later this week I will go through the process a bit.  They make a great surface, especially for me as a pastellist.  Oils seem to behave in an almost pastel-like fashion on them.