Sheila M. Evans

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.

And it begins…

March and April are jury notification months—the pins-and-needles time when I start to find out what my show schedule will look like for the coming year. March has started off on a good note: one of my absolute favorite shows, the Bellevue Arts Museum ArtsFair, has invited me back.

I have to admit, I was a bit worried about this one. I haven’t had trouble getting into this show in the past, but this year I have been driving my friends and family crazy worrying over my entry. I felt that I made a mistake with my image choice. Two mistakes, actually. The first was entering an image right after finishing the painting, while I was still perhaps unrealistically enthused about it. It was a good composition, but I later felt it lacked the finish level of my other pieces. The second mistake was entering as soon as the applications became available instead of taking some time to really think about my entry. Once you’ve submitted an entry on this particular site, there is no changing your mind.

All’s well that ends well, however, and I am thrilled to be returning to one of my best shows. There is one small sour note, though. I was only accepted in the Drawing/Pastel category. I guess Bellevue isn’t ready for my oils yet, or more likely the other way around. But I’ll try again next year, when I will have a much greater selection of oils to enter. That should help my chances considerably. Onward!

Ginkgo Forest

Pastel, 8″ x 12″. 2004. Unframed, matted to 14″ x 18″.

 

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Splash

Pastel, 8″ x 12″. 2006. Unframed, matted to 14″ x 18″.

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