Sheila M. Evans

It’s getting to be that time of year again. It’s officially Spring, although it will NOT quit snowing here in Spokane. We just broke the all-time annual snowfall record here. Yesterday. Joy. All the more reason to start thinking about summer!

Over the next 2-1/2 weeks I will be getting the last of my art fair jury notifications (I would say which, but I don’t want to jinx them!) And, I just ordered a 5′ x 10′ extension for my tent. While this probably guarantees that I will not score any 10′ x 15′ outdoor spaces, it at least gives me an excuse to set up my stuff out in the back yard in what has become my new Rite of Spring. Setting up my display in the yard is a ridiculous amount of work, but it gets me in the right frame of mind for the coming months, works out the bugs, and helps me look like I know what I’m doing again when I get to my first real setup day.

People often ask whether artists own the tents and display things we use at art fairs. Oh, yes we do. Usually several times over, in fact. I don’t think there is an artist alive who has an art fair setup and isn’t constantly fiddling with it. It can always be easier to set up, lighter to carry, better looking, etc., etc. But it’s getting started that can get really interesting. 

It’s not as if anyone can just run down to Costco and pick up a professional tent  and some nice carpet-covered display walls. Most of the time artists have to be in a few fairs before they even find out what those things are called, who makes them and where to buy them. A few artists do the research first, buy nice professional equipment at the beginning of their art fair career (probably taking out a loan to do so) and as a result spend a lot less time and money in the long run.

The vast majority probably do what I did. That is, invent their own homemade display system, spend the absolute minimum money (and maximum time) on a display at the outset, then spend that amount five times over in improvements until finally giving up and buying the nice professional display. While not an economically advisable approach, it’s not without its entertainment value. If you are mildly nuts, anyway. Just for fun, here’s the story of my own booth… Read more

Once in a while I have to do something a bit different. This past weekend a walk to Manito Park ended up in a tour of the greenhouse where the tropical plants grow. It’s an amazing place to be when winter just won’t give up, all steamy and warm and colorful. Most of the plants inside are the usual hothouse suspects, but on this day, stuck between the begonias, orchids and cacti were pots and pots of these peach-and-yellow daisies. Not tropical so far as I know, but they caught my eye with their full, double petals and heads beginning to bend toward the ground.

I think I’ll work out a few more pastels with these. I like the motion and lines of them, even if they are a bit opposite of the grays I’m craving at the moment. It’s good to get a different perspective now and then.

Next week I will probably not spend much time in the studio. It’s a spring break of sorts and I will be taking some time to work on my other never-ending project: the art fair display. More on that soon.

Another new pastel and things are going well today. First, my newest painting, Atmosphere No.2, made me happy to be working in pastel again. I’m liking how it turned out overall, but I was mostly thrilled to have the opportunity to dig into those super-delicious grays and darks I keep ranting about. (By now, Terry probably likes me almost as much as I like his pastels! and No, I am not on his payroll.)

Adding to the joy today was my acceptance letter from the Edmonds Arts Festival, a nice little show in pretty Edmonds, Washington. This time I get to bring both my oils and pastels, so yay. Slightly less happy news for my husband/long-suffering sherpa, Paul, who learned that he gets to spend his birthday engaged in one of his least-favorite activities: setting up an art fair booth. Sorry, love.

And now for something completely different… well, it’s a pastel anyway. I suppose to be completely different it should be a bronze or something. It seems I am slightly rusty, as Coralline took me a bit longer than I expected. For starters, I didn’t remember to prep my paper quite as thoroughly as what I normally do. I paid for it with two days fighting some funky paper texture.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I always use Sennelier LaCarte paper for my pastels. I like the relative softness of its sandy texture, and the way it grabs a decent amount of pastel without pulling so much that it instantly fills its own “tooth.” This particular surface lets me do some serious layering of color, and get that iridescent look I like. But for the last few years the LaCarte paper’s texture has been a little less even than in the past. So I’ve taken to actually sanding the surface. It comes “sanded” already, meaning that it has a fine coating of a sandy substance. But before starting a pastel I go after it with fine sandpaper, working the entire surface to achieve an even, velvety-sandpaper feel. Maybe I should be calling it “twice-sanded”? 

By the way, in reference to the title of this post, I haven’t set any particular number of pastels to complete this time. I’ll just go at it until I think I have enough for this year’s shows, or I have to stop and start framing, or I really really want to paint in oil some more. Okay, back to the studio!

 Today is the day. I’m returning to the pastel easel to start getting ready for the pastel half of my summer season. But after several months of working with relatively tidy oils, my dust-covered pastel easel and surrounding areas were looking pretty gross. My “working palette” tray contained bits and chunks of pastel representing the working palettes of about the last thirty-seven pastel paintings, and everything was covered in a film of grey. Unable to bear the thought of starting new work in these surroundings, I began cleaning. If you have ever worked with pastels and are not an obsessive clean-as-you-go sort, you know what I am talking about. It is a seriously not fun job. Seriously.

Cleaning up the dust is one thing, but the worst part is trying to figure out which broken-off, wrapperless bits and pieces of pastel go with which set and where. Read more

Umm… ta-daa? It’s weird but I’m not sure how to feel right now. I’m done. I made fifty oil paintings. It took all week to make this one, Olivia, a painting that wanted to fight me at every step.  I thought such a stubborn painting deserved a real person’s name. Happily our love/hate relationship ended on a love note. Otherwise I’d be starting number fifty-one next week.

Paul thinks it was all psychological, that I had a block on finishing number fifty. It’s probably true. I’m happy to have reached the goal, but right now I’m feeling kind of a letdown. I wish I hadn’t finished midday on a Friday, but maybe on a Wednesday so I would have had time to dive into my next project. Now I have to wait until Monday to get my hands dirty again.

All whining aside, next week should be exciting. Not only do I get to change perspective a bit and start making new pastels for Bellevue and Sun Valley and whatever other shows will be on the schedule, I get to play with some gorgeous new Terry Ludwig pastels I bought on my way home from Bellingham a few weeks ago. Terry introduced himself and hung out in my booth for a while at Cherry Creek last year, and he was a lot of fun to talk with. I had tried his pastels, but so far only owned a handful. So when I stopped at Dakota Art Pastels, the great pastel candy store in Mt. Vernon, Washington, I went straight to the counter for some of Terry’s buttery-rich colors.

I asked for a set of intense darks, but they brought out two sets… one intense darks and one new set of Maggie Price Essential Grays. I opened the lid of the gray set and after a barely-subdued “SQUEEEE!” I left with both. (After paying for them, of course, and feeling a bit sorry for the three resident dogs whose hearing may have suffered permanent damage.)

So, there you have it. Next week get ready to see some new pastels, and more on the show schedule over the next month too. Onward!

I told you I’d do it! And, here it is. The oil version of Nirvana, my big, bright, hopeful, next-to-last painting in my group of fifty. Nirvana is all about transformation, and with this painting that seems to work for a few different reasons.

For one, I suppose it marks the near-completion of my transformation into a multiple-media painter. Maybe more importantly, it also convinced me to become a painter that takes the time to tone canvases before painting. I’ve done that exactly one time before this, adding a sepia wash to a canvas that I was to paint with one of my Zen Garden images. That time I applied the wash right before I wanted to start painting, then became frustrated that it took so long to dry.

This time, I toned the canvas with a grey-purple color right before leaving for the coast. Four days later when I started to paint, it was dry, and I was a very happy art chick. What a difference! Not so much in the final result, but in the speed with which I was able to get into the really interesting part of the painting. Without toning, underpainting used to take frustratingly long as I struggled to cover every millimeter of the bright-white gessoed canvas. I would find myself fighting with these white edges where areas of color met and I tried not to make mud between them. Toning completely eliminates the problem.

Also, I put off toning because I was afraid I would lose the ability to use the white background to create ultra-intense, transparent , glow-y colors. Meh. There’s plenty of bright color in Nirvana. I needn’t have worried.

So, wow! I get to enjoy the fruits of my “discovery” on exactly one more painting before turning around to work at the other easel. But hey. Better late than never.