Sheila M. Evans

This post falls in sort of a “note to self” category. But I thought it might be useful to someone else as well, and hey, here is as good a place as any to save my notes.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve stretched no fewer than twenty four of my 6″ mini canvases. Needless to say, I’ve got it dialed in fairly well by now. But I realized that I probably have all the tiny canvases that I need (or have time to paint) this year. And I also realized that by next year I might have absolutely no idea how I did them, because I’m like that. Like what, you ask? Worrying? Forgetful? Mildly obsessive? Yes.

So without further ado, here are my notes on stretching tiny gallery wrap canvases. Or any gallery wrap canvases, if you use bigger stuff.

I started with a 6″ x 6″ x 2″ deep canvas stretcher (I have them made by a framing wholesaler), and an 18″ square of canvas from which 5-1/4″ squares have been removed at the corners. When the stretcher is centered on the canvas this leaves about 5/8″ from the sides of the stretcher to the cut edges of the corners. Read more

It’s been a short week in the studio but I have managed to paint a few pastels. Hot off the drawing board is this one, Dancing Half Moon Study. It’s another small piece destined to become the sketch for a large pastel, which I will begin first thing next week. I’d been struggling for a few days to work out a new composition, then this came together rather suddenly. I love the motion in it, and the shapes reminded me simultaneously of a crescent moon, ballet slippers on point and a standing-balance yoga pose. The title is a combination of all three. 

Meanwhile the art fair preparations continue. Artfest (Spokane, WA) begins three weeks from today! Most of the hard work is done but I’ve been making life easier for future me with some labor-saving treats. “Treats” include things like built-in shims for my Pro Panel walls and a wireless credit card terminal. I’ve been coveting a terminal for some time now and today I made the leap into the 21st century (or technically the late 20th). Special thanks to Pro Panels and Teamac for their help with the shims and the wireless terminal, respectively. Both are great companies and once again, neither employs me in any capacity. They are just good people.

What else could I possibly need to do, I believe I asked at the end of my last post about my art fair setup. Ha. Well, there were just a few things.

As expected, I did have to do some fiddling with the walls. Since I use wooden pieces at the tops of the panels, I realized I would need to make more in order to fill a double booth. Happily, I devised a method of using the old pieces from my original setup which would save money, shop time, staining and lumber. Happily, that is, until I actually looked at the original top rails and realized they were narrower than the new ones and therefore unusable.

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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

 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

Have you ever bought one of my unframed pastels? Is it still unframed? Then this post is for you.

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, and I finally did: I have a new page for my blog titled Framing Pastels. You can see it in the right-hand column under Pages. I’ve included tips for framing a pastel start to finish, and also for framing a piece that is already matted, such as the miniatures I sell at art fairs.

I hope it will be helpful. Most of the necessary equipment is readily available at hardware and/or art supply stores. I’ve also added a new section of links titled “Resources,” which appears at the bottom of the right-hand column, where I have listed a few sources for mats and other supplies. I will continue to add to the list in the future. 

Enjoy my new page, and happy framing!

Pastels are so beautiful, all those colors are so candy-like and tempting. It’s hard not to grab an armload of new colors every time you walk into the art supply or open up a catalog. And you might as well, because the more colors you have, the easier it is to accomplish what you want. But of course, this hoarding gets expensive, and the more colors you learn that you can’t live without, the more complicated re-ordering becomes. Unless you are among the most organized of us, you will eventually lose that label for your best light-greenish white with a hint of chartreuse. And as the number of tables and boxes devoted to pastel supplies grows, the likelihood of confusion increases. I currently own well over 400 pastels.

So here’s something I love about oil painting: It is so easy to keep track of supplies! Read more

From time to time I’d like to share information about equipment that I particularly like. There’s nothing like having the right tool for the job. It just makes working that much more pleasant and rewarding.
When I started painting in oils again, I had a pretty good collection of brushes left over from my college days. But as I got into it a bit, I discovered that there were a few sizes I was missing, and that some of my brushes were getting a bit past their useful prime. Not a difficult problem to solve, right? Except for one thing. As of about a year ago, I am a vegetarian. To keep consistent, I also don’t buy leather or other animal products like squirrel-hair brushes. And I realized, as I looked at my collection of paint brushes, that the only ones I ever used were the natural-hair sort. I had some synthetic brushes but found them almost impossible to work with. They were too soft and just generally not responsive to the way I paint. I had to come up with a solution. My natural response to the realization that I must replace some item with a “vegetarian” version is to go on a research and spending spree. (I did this to excess with my favorite weakness, shoes, and found some wonderful resources like MooShoes and Bourgeois Boheme.) 

For the brushes, I didn’t have to look far. An online search led me to the Escoda Tadami Synthetic Mongoose Long Handle Brush. I ordered one (I found mine at Dick Blick) and fell in love. Not only are these brushes far superior to any synthetic that I have used, they are now my favorite brushes, period. As you can see in the photo below, I have started a small collection.  They are not cheap, but they are worth it, so I add a few sizes whenever I buy supplies. Highly recommended!