Secret of Vintage Jewelry

Hello, and welcome to new follower Jennifer.

The past week has been a whirl of preparation for the forthcoming trade fair next Saturday 13th. The website business card has been redesigned, printed and submitted to be included in the “goody bags” we are having, contact sheets have been printed out and put in a display book, and I have started to revamp the displays I used at the last event.

The first was a board showing different stages in creating a painting. This little blighter (and that’s a polite translation) memorably fell apart last time and I had to do some emergency repairs to it – this time I’ve sidelined it in favour of Elizabeth’s large watercolour of Mount Teide (EC16 on the Artists of Derbyshire site), plus original paintings from each of us, on table easels.

The other “offending item” was a board in the shape of a paint palette. I’d displayed A4 sheets featuring a selection of each artists’ work on it, but now Liz has joined the site there isn’t enough room. I’ve therefore printed a copy one individual painting from each of us onto it, and stuck them on, spaced out like blobs of paint. First, though, I painted it with two shades of acrylic in a wood grain effect, and am considering gluing some paintbrushes on sticking up from the back, to complete the artistic effect.

My final piece de resistance will be a Power Point type presentation featuring each artist’s paintings in a continuous “film show”, to be completed (and indeed begun) this week. I really must take a photo of all this, to show you all when it is done. I will have to join Picasa to do this, as it seems I can no longer upload pictures directly on my blog, which is a shame. I have put a lot of effort into this trade fair, so fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, at art group, I’ve nearly completed my Magna pastels picture. I found myself wishing today that I’d done it larger, so that I could get more detail into it. What I could do is to pick out some details in grey/blue acrylic. We would then have a mixed media involving both a dry medium (pastel) and paint, not something I’ve ever done before, and it could be tricky, as the chalk pastel may not stay put … on second thoughts perhaps it would be best done at home away from beady eyes of art group members, just in case.

Karen was still plodding away at her painting of a wood, after several weeks, and Gill was beginning a new painting of some colourful jewellery against a cerise satin background - her pyjama top! She refused my request to show us how the top looked on her (I think the group have got used to my little jokes now). Kevin was well into a large fantasy picture involving sky and some sort of chariots. He makes it look easy.

On a spring theme, Sue had begun a painting of some sweet little lambs in a field, and spring does finally seem to be arriving now, although we are expecting a sharp frost of -5 tonight – and I expect Gill will be needing her little cerise number ….

All for now,

Jewel