Vermont Artists Week

One of the great pleasures of being here at the Studio Center is that every morning there is figure drawing from nine to noon.  I stopped by again this morning and had the blissful experience of doing what I did years ago in art school....

The model is an accomplished painter in her own right and understands how to relax into a pose beautifully.
After seven o'clock meditation in the beautiful meditation hall and a breakfast of oatmeal with maple syrup and raisins, it doesn't get better than drawing for awhile with Bernardo Rubaja playing on my iPod.  Now, back to work in the studio....

It's been awhile....

Here it is almost Christmas and I haven't blogged in ages.  I have been working however, and here are a few of the drawings I have done recently.  Here is a quick, little 3" x 4 1/2", compositional study....

Continuing with my series of soft pencil drawings on gessoed paper, here is the finished drawing.  Lately, I have been fascinated with dramatic skies heralding changes in the weather.  I was trying for the feel of a sunny winter day when the dark sky in the west tells you a storm is coming, bringing more snow.

"Hillside Farm"

soft pencil on gessoed paper - 8" x 12"

Below are three recent drawings exhibited this month in the "Small Works" show at Artistree.  The first one is a small drawing sold in the "50 @50" portion of the exhibition....

"Old Barn, North Hero"

soft pencil on gessoed board - 7" x 7"

The tree below is one of many beautiful old ones to be found on River Road.  

"Peggy's Tree"

soft pencil on gessoed board - 8" x 10"

And when we were on Cape Cod this past summer, I found this salt marsh that spoke to me--as they always do!

 "Salt Marsh, Dennis"

soft pencil on gessoed board - 9" x 12"

So, that's it for now.  I have some framing to do and another large gessoed board waiting for my attention.  After the holidays....

Daily Painter Week Five

I'm a bit late with my blog for this week--we just got home from traveling to Virginia, visiting with friends, and I didn't have access to my computer until now.

Below is a drawing I did at Mink Brook Nature Preserve.

"Birdhouse in the Woods"

6" x 9" - soft pencil

Route 14 north of Bethel is a great place to find old farms and weathered outbuildings like the one below.  I definitely will be going back there!

"Old Farm, Route 14"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

Here are a few close up photos of barns, silos and outbuildings that I took that same day.

I thought I might use these photos for paintings or drawing but when I looked at them I decided they needed to stand alone as photos.  

Daily Painter Week Four

I've been doing a drawing or painting every day now for a month.  I am amazed at this since I wasn't getting into the studio very much earlier this year.
I started the week with two drawings of studio objects.  The first is my canvas stretching stapler.

"Red Stapler"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper with colored pencil and watercolor

I liked the black, white and red colors together and so I decided to draw the hammer I use for hanging pictures and banging on staples that don't go all the way into the stretcher frames.

"Red Hammer"

6" x 10" - soft pencil with watercolor

This next series of small abstracts is done in the same manner as last week's "Tulips".  These also look good connecting to one another in a horizontal format.  

"Moving Fractures"

4" x 6" - watercolor with collage

Below is a marker drawing I did last Thursday at Mink Brook Nature Preserve in Hanover, New Hampshire with the Odanaksis Artists who have been painting plein aire together for the past eleven years.

"Ancient Tree"

6" x 9" - Sharpie Marker

I was fortunate to be able to work plein aire two days this past week and now have two drawings plus lots of photos to work from.  More next week....

Daily Painter Week Three

I spent a lot of time in the studio this week and created seven new pieces....

"Sap Bucket #2"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Barn on the Hill"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

The flowers below will be mounted horizontally into one frame....

"Tulips"

 4" x 6" - watercolor with collage

The watercolor below is the second painting inspired by a snowy day on Calendar Hill....

"Shadow Ribbons II"

9" x 12" - watercolor

This Daily Painter adventure goes on.  I wonder what next week will bring?

Daily Painter Week Two

Well, I just finished week two of daily drawing and painting.  I am finding the daily exercise to be exciting and invigorating.  

A quick sketch with added watercolor at the Quechee covered bridge.

Since there isn't a lot of time to devote to each one I skip studies and the work becomes more spontaneous.  On the sap bucket drawings, I just found an interesting place to begin, worked out to the edge of the little paper--maybe 5" x 7"--and if the composition didn't work I just lopped off the uninteresting part--a kind of "flying by the seat of your pants" approach. 

"Sap Buckets" done in marker

"Sap Buckets #2"

5 1/2" x 7 1/2" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Sap Bucket #1"
6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Shadow Ribbons I"

9" x 12" - watercolor

I am very happy with the last three pieces and consider them frame worthy.  And I haven't spent so much time in my studio in ages....

Daily Painter Week One

On April 13th I began what is to be a year long adventure.  I committed to creating and posting on flickr's Daily Painters, a private ArtisTree sponsored site, one piece of artwork each day for the next year.  It can be a drawing, a painting, a collage, a photograph or whatever I feel inspired to do.  In my first week of work I decided to used gessoed paper and soft Ticonderoga black pencil.  The first three drawings are studies of little still life objects...

Pear

Apple

Morning Coffee

The next drawings focus on sap buckets, trying to capture the endless variety of values the winter and mud season landscape requires....

Sap Buckets I

Sap Buckets II

"Sap Buckets #1"

5 1/2" x 7 1/2" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Sap Buckets #3"
5 1/2" x 7 1/2" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

It has been an interesting challenge, working quickly and intuitively, sometimes starting with a focal point and building outward from there, cropping paper when it looked to be necessary, sometimes being a bit more planned in approach.  I'm enjoying the process so far.  And I'm trying not to think too much about the fifty-one weeks to go.

An Experiment

Yesterday I started an experimental drawing with soft carbon sketch pencils on gessoed watercolor paper.  The quote I did at Artistree last month used basically the same materials, but doing a rather realistic drawing was a larger challenge  It quickly became clear that I needed to work from left to right since the pencil smudges so easily.  Smudging is fun when and where you want it but not so much when  and where you don't!

"Sap Bucket Drawing"

carbon pencil on gessoed paper - 9" x 12"

A kneaded eraser and blender came in handy.  I just finished it and sprayed it with fixative so it won't smudge anymore.  Hopefully....

It's finished....

I went back to ArtisTree and finished what I started last Monday at Pot Luck and Studio Fever night.  My section of papered wall was just painted with gesso when I left.  I brought with me, carbon sketch pencils, masking tape, templates, curves, a straight edge, alphabet stamps and a long list of quotes I've been collecting for ages....

I chose a quotation from Carl Jung and got to work.  Some of the letters were missing from one of the alphabets so I started to do a mix and match and now the lettering looks a bit like a ransom note which I like.  It was fun playing with the soft pencils and designing the space.  I forgot the kneaded eraser which would have come in handy.  Perhaps I'll go back....

What Happened in Classes this Week?

In drawing and mixed media classes this week, among other things, we were working with little still lifes of fruits.  Of course it's hard to draw them without knowing how dark and/or light parts and pieces of them are.  So we started by testing the softness and hardness of various pencils and then creating value scales like the one below.  It goes from white on the left to black on the right with all the intermediate steps in value in between....

Then, using little fruits each person made a small study of apples and pears, trying to use the full range of values in their drawings....

It looks to me now like I could have gotten a bit darker in overall value....

In mixed media class we attempted to create a drawing of the same fruits using Prismacolor colored pencils in only process colors:  canary yellow, process red and aquamarine.  By mixing these three colored pencils,  you can create a full range of colors as in this drawing.  It requires some patience, layering one color on top of another, mixing them together to get just the right color and value.....

Above is my attempt--a challenging and interesting exercise in drawing....

Mixed Media Class

I've been teaching a couple of classes at ArtisTree in Woodstock this term.  In mixed media class we played around with templates and quotations, creating designs similar to the two examples I put together below, creating a "path" for the words.  The first is a quote from Alexander Calder....

"I Paint with Shapes"

9" x 12" - mixed media

The second example utilizes the same materials:  soft pencil on gessoed paper using shape templates and  masking tape and a variety of shading and line to create good contrast between dark and light.... 

"Art Consists in Drawing the Line Somewhere"

8 1/2" x 11" - mixed media

It's fun playing with new and familiar materials, using them in different ways....

House Portrait Commissions

I enjoy drawing pen and ink house portrait drawings by commission. I work from clear photos. If the house is not too far from Vulture Mountain, Vermont, I can take photos myself, otherwise you can provide them. Clear photos and good detail shots are necessary. These house portraits make great gifts for anniversaries or for friends who are moving. They can easily be printed into holiday cards or stationery.

Here are some examples of my house portraits....

...a residence in Dennis on Cape Cod...

...a Brewster, Cape Cod residence...

...and a residence in Norfolk, MA.

House portraits are approximately 9" x 12", though size and proportions vary depending on the photos and the detail required. The general price and is $200, unframed. Contact me at kbfiskeonvulture@gmail.com for more information or to make arrangements for your house portrait.