Another chalk line...

The series of 100 reached #76 with the completion of these images. These were all done on the Wallis paper and random brands of pastels. I will try o finish up the next 24 within the month - hopefully before I leave for MT. Moccasin Mountain Gallery wants some of the minis for their wall and I will take some more to Miles City with me. At the moment I am tacking the minis to a large foam core sheet, but not sure what I will do with the ones I don't mat and frame. Maybe they will become a patchwork collage of little landscapes under one frame.
At the moment I am working on my idea for the Quick Draw events; doing some sketching and drawing to see what I can fit into the designated time frames. It's a challenge to complete a piece of work with a time frame as the guide. It requires planning and practice. Not my usual style which sometimes entails spending some time painting, then going and making a pot of coffee, wait til it brews enough for a couple of cups and then pour out a hot, pretty concentrated rich cup of coffee...THEN go back and contemplate the paper on the easel! One must have already consumed their cup of brew before you start the Quick Draw and be ready to paint when the bell rings or the gun is shot...whatever the "start your painting" signal is!
the Northwest Pastel Society member's show opening was last Friday at Blue Horse Gallery in Bellingham. It was a nicely hung show with more than 100 pieces on the walls. Abstract was the preferred style of the judge and the piece "BC Chess" by Bill McEnroe was the best of show winner. It was a great piece to which Bill penned a poem as well. This painting as well as the other winning artists are listed on the Facebook Fan page Northwest Pastel Society and on the web site.
This Facebook page is also a source for artists looking for pastel events in the Northwest - paint outs, competitions, meetings, etc. Good place to check where pastel shows are if you are a lover of the arts as well.
Next weekend in Walla Walla is Spring Release for the wine industry. It creates quite a bit of energy with lots of people coming in to taste the wines of the valley. For artists, many of the wineries offer hanging space for art. These are generally lovely spaces and fun to hang your work in. I am considered a residence artist at Whitman Cellars, always having art hanging there and this year also have some pieces at the new Grantwood Winery. It is fun weekend to visit some of the wineries and taste some of the new releases and check out the art. with 140+ wineries, there are lots of opportunities to taste and view some art! So with that, I shall say happy painting....

looking through the dust...pastel dust, that is...

Completing these 4 images brings me to 72 small works. These were all completed on the Wallis paper with a variety of soft pastels and some Nupastels for detail.
I attended the Northwest Pastel Society member's show on Friday at the Blue Horse Gallery in Bellingham. The show was great - excellent variety and style to make an interesting show. Details of the show will be able to seen after the first part of May on the NPS fan page on Facebook and on the NPS website. Our board is now working on the International Pastel Show that we host - this year Nov-Dec at the Schack Art Center in Everett. The online entries are due by the 9th of August. The Schack Center (new)is being built now and this show should be the first in the new building! Encouraging pastelists from near and far to submit to this show as this will be a premier event, it is certain to draw lots of attendees from the Northwest.
We are going to Montana in a few weeks and I will participate in a Quick Draw event. It is a very quick draw...1/2 hour to complete. I need to practice! I have in my mind what I am going to paint; now I need to perfect it...in a half an hour time! That's a goal today - work on my "time trial"!
I am going to try to have the series of 100 finished by the middle of May. I think it is achieveable now that I have rounded the corner of 70! keep an eye out the final drawings and happy painting...

as the dust settles...

My apologies for posting a photo image twice. don't know how it happened or how to remove it :-(.
Some experimenting with black canson paper...found that the best pastels are the harder of the soft varieties like Rembrandt or the hard pastels like Nupastels. I used some limited palettes to create these. Using some workable fix in between layers helps build color on the Canson. It is interesting to see how the blue/red combination almost is looking like a photographic negative. When you use a dark paper, one of the cool things is that the paper color adds a little texture when you let a hint of it peek through the pastel.
The little vertical piece was done on a scrap of Wallis about 3x4 inches and was a very quick little study with about 3 pastels. It is a good lesson to limit pastels to 3-5 sticks and see what you can do with that.
If you haven't checked out Facebook - it's worthwhile. You can make it what you want...but it is an efficient way to network with art and artists. I have a fan page you can follow - Bonnie Griffith Landscape Artist and also manage the Northwest Pastel Society page. These will post events for artists and arts and have some interesting images posted occasionally. NPS is always looking for new members and the FB page is another tool to use. There are some really good groups one can join as well, that have discussion groups and really good information. They are hosted by Sandy Askey-Adams on Facebook. Once you join you can post images on those sites. And then of course is PastelNews.com the absolute BEST site out there for pastel artists. Mario spends a lot of time making it great and being a source of valuable information to the pastelist. So check out these sites! And...happy painting...

Western Art events calendar - Auctions, Showings, Festivals

Western Art events calendar - Auctions, Showings, Festivals

I have just uploaded images on the Western Art and Architecture web site. This is a wonderful magazine for the reader who is interested in fine craft, art and architecture. Always good articles - focused mostly on western US life/art etc. There online site offers artists a place to showcase work and list their galleries and events. The art is not all western - nice variety of realism, abstract and impressionistic...and lots of different mediums. Check it out.

More on the series of 100 small works later...happy painting

atmosphere and pastel dust

There is nothing like the spring skies when the days are hot and then late in the day the storm clouds come in. Here the storms come from the west typically and you can see them coming a long way away...from the Pendleton Blues the sky grows darker and darker. so a lot of painitngs I do of the Blue Mountains with stormy skies, you can see the storm coming from the west...And that was the name of a painting I did for the Pendleton Center for the Arts show a couple of years ago. One painting posted today, of the highway heading toward the mountains is the old Immigrant Road that takes you to to St Andrews Mission and then circuitously up the mountains to the top of Cabbage Hill on I-84. It's a great spot next to the mountains where the mission sits. The mission school is now the Crow Shadow Institute of the Arts where some absolutely incredible print making takes place under the direction of Frank Jenzen...it's where I learned about monoprints and some basic printing skills.
A day yesterday was spent at Bennington Lake, painting with Carlyrae, John, Jeff and Mark - bunch of pastelists who share the love of plein air painting and just getting out and having some good conversation and painting.
Today will get me out in outdoors again to paint and maybe late afternoon a quick trip around the area for some reference shots. No camera yesterday at the lake...
more work on the small series of 100 today...
happy painting and enjoying the beautiful spring!

pastel dust

One more in the series of 100 is added using a lot of reds and purple. I did one more tiny sketch on a scrap piece of Wallis that is about 3x4 inches; maybe smaller...very simple just trees with the purples, reds and orange hues. I liked it enough to put it in a tiny little frame. No image of it yet.
I am workingon some pieces to go to Big Fish in Bellingham the end of next week and ones for Kelly's in Joseph as well. I have a couple of larger ones completed - photos on the next post. I grumble a little at myself - when I am working small it is so much easier to be nice and loose with the pastel; but when I work large, the painting takes on a more realistic appearance. Maybe I need to work with my left hand only!

I included a couple of shots of the Willow show on this post. It was a very nice evening and just looking at them again brings good memories of a very fun show with all the variety of 5 different artists! The 60-something mini is posted as well as a new piece that I am pretty happy with. I used a reference photo from my trip to the Oregon coast in mid March.
The Cafe Utza show is hanging. If anyone ventures into southeastern Montana into the burg of Miles City, a must do is having coffee and pastry at Cafe' Utza. You get a dynamite, bold brew and some wonderful pastry of the day and then on their rich red walls they hang art from cables. Several of the minis and some larger landscapes are hanging there for next couple of months. My son Chris is a banker in Miles City and found this little gem of a coffee house and since he is the self proclaimed "art marketer", he set up the show! Next month we will go to MC to do an art event sponsored by the Art and Heritage Center there...a quick draw...and it is the quickest of quick draws. One half an hour to complete a painting/drawing and another 10 minutes to frame it. I love a challenge! Trust me that my paper will be no larger than 9x12 inches!
If you haven't already, check out the fan page "Bonnie Griffith Landscape Artist" on Facebook...also another fan page is the Northwest Pastel Society page...that's one that will post shows, meetings, events, etc for the NWPS. Anyone interested in and working in pastels might find this page worth a book mark as well.
More minis are brewing...the pastel dust is accumulating!

Kicking up some dust...

The pastel dust is alive and well at my studio! I however, have not been working on my series of 100 in the last week or so. There were some other time challenged issues that needed attention, so the series got put on the back burner!
I am working on pieces to go to several galleries. The two I posted will probably to to opposite ends of the state!
First of all, the Willow Gallery opening was great. The evening was a blustery, rainy and cold one, but it did not seem to deter art fans from getting out. I loved seeing some of my former, fellow board members from the Carnegie Art Center - Sheila, Cheryl, Molly; as well as Charles Potts a respected poet/writer; a lot of friends as well...The show is diverse and interesting; worth a trip in to see! I loved Candace Rose's assemblages - most unique and interesting and Kathy Wildermuth's watercolors are stellar...(Les bought one and it will look great with the one of Kathy's that I already have!). Susuan How one of the photographers exhibited her work that were all of the Bennington Lake area. I have loved that area and it has been the source of several trips of mine with my camera. Anyway, that was an inspiration to go through those photos of mine and do some pastels of that area. The ones attached to this post are of the trails by the lake. I will do more; it is a most interesting landscape.
New work went to Wenaha Gallery yesterday and new work will go to Whitman Cellars today. The Feast Walla Walla is tomorrow and I will have a display area for art, as I did last year. Some of the small series of 100 will go there along with other small work and a few larger pieces, notecards and some giclee prints. So with all the scurrying around coming to an end at least for a few days, maybe I can get back to the task of completing a few for small works! In the meantime....happy painting...

More dust

When work has a time line associated with it, other projects get to go into a holding pattern, so to speak. I had a deadline of April 4 to complete my work for the Whitman College Dance production "The Ancients". I love to do sets and posters for Idalee and her productions, so I never say no I don't have time. And this production sounded so fun to work on. I was right...the work bridges ancient history of Greek mythology and the Anasazi Indians. The poster illustrated both Muses of Apollo and a dancer of Native American heritage. It's printed with a black boarder that feathers into the illustration. My next task was to do a backdrop scene from ancient Greece. Got that done; also one of Native American cliff dwellings. Next,the sets...6 feet tall half cylinders, each 24 inches wide...nine...each to be a "statue" of one of the Muses of Apollo. They were fun to create; each with their own personality. As each was finished I stood them up in the garage so that when you walked out into the garage you had to walk amongst the Muses! The production is April 9-10 and I am anxious to see how my Muses look on stage as they come out in darkness with only spotlights and then each Muse comes to life and a dancer emerges and does a routine...
Come to the show!!\
My series of 100 progresses with 4 more images completed now numbering 63. 10 of these are in the Willow show which opened last night. Several have gone to the galleries in Newport and Yachats and to Cafe Utza in Miles City for a show. some have sold. Someone said they want all the ones in MC...we will see.
These latest ones were done with a variety of pastels. My last trip to Dakota Arts gifted me some new pastels that I had not tried before...Great Americans and a landscape set of diane townsend. Like them both. I should have some more completed yet this weekend. I can see 100 getting completed fairly soon. good thing...I have a lot of obligations to meet; new work to Kelly's in Joseph; 6-7 pieces to Big Fish in Bellingham, things for Grantwood Winery for spring release. and a few more of the small works will go to some of these places...
Easter tomorrow and if the weather is good I want to take a drive to Palouse Falls and shoot some reference photos. I want to paint the falls and also down river from the falls of the canyon...so for now...happy painting!