Holiday Party — December 13
Our Annual Holiday Party will be held Monday, December 13, at First Christian Church, 205 East Kirkwood, Bloomington. Starting time: 6 p.m. or ONLINE from 6:30 to 7:00.
Members and guests are invited. This year it will not be a dinner but a dessert, and everything is entirely complimentary. At the party, attendees will enjoy personally wrapped individual Bundt cakes of their choosing, hot coffee and tea, and cold holiday punch.
To stay at home, but contribute a card and/or ornament to receive a Bundt cake, email Jeanne Dutton jeanne.dutton@att.net by December 7th.
Here are the Party Details:
This year’s Holiday Party is to be a social evening – an opportunity to be together. During the party there will be an optional activity if you are motivated to create some festive art. You can choose one or both of these alternatives.
- You can bring one or two painted watercolor postcards made on any theme (a greeting card like “thinking of you” or “get well”; a special occasion holiday card such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, etc.; a scene from a place you have visited or a local feature, etc.) You can purchase ready-made watercolor postcards or cut a card out of your own watercolor paper (4 x 6 inches in size). The idea is to bring one and take one someone else made home, or bring two, take two home.
- You can make one or more small painted structure(s) that could be made to hang on a tree. We will place our creations as ornaments onto a holiday tree, to leave at the church during December and half of January. Artists will be able to take their pieces home sometime after Epiphany. (Aquagami is a great way to participate; see Nancy Metz’s Pinterest page at https://www.pinterest.com/ndmetz/aquagami/ .)
If you can’t meet in-person but want to partake:
- All at-home members are invited to join virtually for a half an hour or so while we show everyone’s artwork.
- If you create and contribute a piece of art, you can get a little Bundt cake as a gift from BWS. Here’s how:
- Before the party, Carol Rhodes will arrange to pick up your creation and deliver a Bundt cake to you. (She’ll be in touch about the schedule.)
- At the party, we’ll do a Zoom so you can connect to everyone and view a display of the artworks of fellow BWS members along with yours.
- If you do choose to stay at home but send your artwork, please email Jeanne Dutton at Jeanne.dutton@att.net by the end of the day on December 7. (She will be ordering the cakes and coordinating with Carol.)
The deadline to say you were coming to the church was December 1 as we needed to know how many to expect to plan for refreshments and table setup. So December 7 is your last opportunity to participate. We’d love to see you on Zoom if not in person.
January Program News
Betty Wagoner will conduct the January 10 program entitled “Watercolor Pencil and Watercolor Painting.” Here is what Betty said about the program: “We will explore a few watercolor pencil techniques that can be used with watercolor painting. Using watercolor paints can provide more colors than available in watercolor pencils, notably by mixing colors. We will review a few examples of watercolor pencil artworks that have and have not employed watercolor paints in the artworks. Because of the Zoom format, the program will be primarily demonstration, but it will be possible for viewers to try out a few techniques while watching the program.”
Inside BWS
A Note from Our BWS President
Every year the BWS president, with the help of the board, appoints a three-person Nominating Committee to select a slate of officers for the next year. I hope you will consider volunteering some of your time for the Nominating Committee. Being on the Nominating Committee will not absorb a lot of your time; it’s a short term commitment. Those of you who would like to serve on the Nominating Committee, please contact me. Thank you, Joanna Samorow-Merzer
Ride Sharing
Some of our members have difficulty driving at night and getting to the in-person meetings, especially during the winter. To make it easy for these members, people can now write to carpool@bloomingtonwatercolor.org asking to join, and Carol Rhodes will subscribe them to a list connecting those who are interested in rides. Members can chat with each other about ride-sharing by sending email to carpool@bloomingtonwatercolor.org. Carol Rhodes is monitoring the list and can help arrange rides to and from meetings.
Announcing the BWS Benefit Exhibit
February & March 2022
“We Paint…Van Gogh’s World!”
Stars! Swirls! Sunflowers! Self Portraits! Vibrant Colors!
What does the man, the artist, his work, inspire in you??
The Vault at Gallery Mortgage once again welcomes BWS for our annual benefit exhibit.
Any 2D medium is welcome in this show, so get creative! Three judges will determine who wins the cash prizes for Best of Show and Silver Second. Artists who enter a painting will have their name put in a hat for the drawing for door prizes donated by none other than Andrew Preston of Preston Arts Center. (Heads up! The grand door prize is a Sienna Pochade Plein Air Paint Box Medium, value $156!)
This year, our BWS show will benefit an outstanding organization, one which touches all of our lives in one way or another…Teachers Warehouse! Founded by the Rotary Club, TW served over 2,200 teachers from across five counties in 2020-2021. Check them out at https://teacherswarehouse.org/
Watch your email for all the details and the full prospectus and video links that will certainly inspire you. Here’s one now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk
Delivery is Tuesday, February 1, 10-12.
Deadline for photos for the SmugMug gallery and publicity is January 10.
Questions? Email Jeanne Dutton at Teachers@BloomingtonWatercolor.org
Outside BWS
Friends of TC Steele
Betty Wagoner, BWS Paint Out Chair, announced that the Friends of TC Steele Member Art Show will be held March 5 to the 28th. This information will be added to the BWS Show Calendar and to Brushstrokes once the prospectus is complete.
Think About Giving Art this Holiday
Every weekend between now and Christmas the Arts Alliance Center in the Bloomington College Mall is open for business, featuring local artist, many of whom are BWS members. Christmas is a great time to give a piece of original art to a friend whether authored by you or one of the members of our group.
Art Illiana Gallery — Call for Entries
Art Illiana Gallery (26 N. 6th Street, Terra Haute) has an open call for entries to “The Crow Show.” Entries can be submitted between now and December 24. The show will run from January 7 through March 18. Entries must be original works in any art medium and completed within the last 5 years. For more information see the prospectus.
Show Calendar
As a service to its members, BWS is initiating a show calendar project – a listing of upcoming shows that may be of interest to BWS members. We want our exhibitors to have an easy way to find upcoming opportunities, and we want to encourage those who are less experienced or new to exhibiting.
The show calendar will be updated and sent to you every month as an attachment to the email announcing the publication of Brushstrokes.
The December update to the Show Calendar is attached to the email announcing that the December Newsletter is now online. This is a list of upcoming shows and exhibition opportunities that may be of interest to BWS members.
Barbara Edmonds, who complies the information on this spreadsheet for BWS, asked that we emphasize that members please send any information for local area or regional shows to showinfo@bloomingtonwatercolor.org. She also wants members to know that all the ONLINE COMPETITIONS are usually INTERNATIONAL, and thus they are listed at the very last of the spreadsheet.
Membership News
Mary Sue Veerkamp-Schwab has been commissioned to paint a mural on the office wall at St. Paul Newman Center in Bloomington. The wall will have icons of the 2 saints of the parish and two of the archdiocese. Featured will be inspiring quotes from the saints. “The whole piece will come together by creating a background that will appear to be marble or an old manuscript. I am having fun creating the faux cracks“ says MarySue. MarySue has extensive experience teaching using her calligraphy skills in her art. One of her secrets is to use a level to get each line straight. “It’s time consuming but worth it in the end. I use white charcoal pencil to make the lines, which are easier to remove than pencil.”
Congratulations Kitty Garlock!! In May of 2019 BWS had a paint-out at the Hinkle-Garton Homestead on 10th Street with a show that followed where all the pictures produced at the paint-out were for sale. Kitty Garlock donated her picture “Call to Lunch” for possible future use or sale to Bloomington Restorations Inc, the foundation that maintains the home. Little did she know that the foundation would eventually create a cookbook of Daisy’s recipes around this idea and use her painting for the cover.
On Saturday, December 3rd these books will go on sale at the homestead for $14.95. Kitty states that it was an unexpected honor for the foundation to use her painting for the book cover and she is proud to represent both Upland Plein Air and Bloomington Watercolor Society in this project.
The accompanying photo was taken from the Hoosier Times Home page, Nov. 13, 2021.
Tips & Techniques
Motivate your Art Practice with Small, Quick, Daily Paintings
Editor’s note. This is another in an occasional series of tips and techniques from fellow BWS members. Please share your ideas and images with Brushstrokes’s co-editors Nancy Davis Metz and Jerry Harste.
Text and images by Claude Cookman
Is it just me? Or do you also have trouble finding the motivation to go into your studio and paint regularly? Perhaps the solution is to lower our ambitions — to work small, quick, and daily.
I have lost track of how many large, ambitious paintings I’ve started, only to lose interest or get stuck and toss them on my unfinished pile. Invariably, it takes days or weeks to psych myself up to begin another big project.
In early November I started a practice that motivates me to work, primarily because it lets me finish every painting. Few ideas are original and I discovered this one years ago in Carol Marine’s book, Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often to Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist. I was reminded of it recently by a YouTube video. The concept is to create small paintings, in a limited time frame, every day, or as often as you can.
I work with pastels, but you could use watercolor, oils, acrylics, ink, indeed, any medium. I have chosen a 6- x 6-inch format, but any small format will suffice. I try to finish my pieces in an hour or less, which keeps me from overworking them. Many of us aspire to paint more loosely. A short time frame helps achieve that quality.
For me, it’s important to draw from a physical, three-dimensional motif. So, I set up a still life, limited to two items, the night before and arrange the lighting. You could work from photographs or sketches and choose any motif or genre. Most nights, I also select my palette of pastel sticks.
Much of the creative fun comes from choosing the objects. Because I love to cook, a lot of the paintings showcase food. I like to juxtapose organic with human-made objects; rough textures with glass, plastic or metal; verticals against horizontals. I also like to arrange items that might suggest a narrative or pick two objects so incongruous they leave the viewer scratching her head.
Organizing the night before lets me get started first thing in the morning when my energy is high. It also allows my subconscious to percolate overnight. Often, I awake with ideas about the composition or color scheme. For example, the actual background of the accompanying examples is a white sheet. The painted backgrounds all flow from my subconscious as I play with color and abstract mark making.
This approach lets me experiment without worrying about ruining a high-stakes painting. I have several brands of pastels from hard to soft sticks, pan pastels, and pencils. And I paint on five different surfaces from grit to velour. I’m only beginning to explore the permutations.
Working small, quick, and daily lets me practice my craft without the pressure of having to make a perfect painting. I learn almost as much from a small painting as a large one. Composition, color scheme, value structure, edges, focal point, and other decisions are necessary for a painting of any size. Past a certain point finishing large paintings often becomes just a matter of rendering.
When I do my next large piece, I expect the skills I have internalized through this daily habit will manifest themselves in my intuitive mark making. To help ensure this, I keep a journal in which I record my discoveries and articulate my process for each painting.
Best of all, I awake most mornings excited about going to my studio and working. Finishing a painting almost every day motivates me to start the next one.
December Calendar
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