Another fun night!

Last Friday was our Friday Night Painting Party and it was a full house again! The more the merrier is so true. We have a lot of fun in these mini workshops.

Lots of concentration going on here. They were applying gold leaf to the sky. You should have seen the room when the workshop was over. It's amazing how that stuff flies around. I think I vacuumed for a solid hour on Saturday :) 

 From this angle you can see the shine of gold on some of the canvases.

A couple of our folks had to leave a little early so they escaped the group shot but here are the rest of our painters. I love it! Every piece is different and lovely. I can't wait to see what May's workshop pieces will look like. Soon I'll post the piece we're doing next time. We'll be working with tissue paper for texture on the next piece.

Peace and creativity,

Carlynne

Coming Up Soon

Purple Iris

14x11

Our next Friday Night Painting Party is coming up on March 30th. We're doing something different this time. This is a great class to take if you love florals. This beautiful purple iris was growing in my sister's yard and I had to have pictures. Since then I've done several versions of this incredible flower. On this one I played with metallic gold paint in the background. 

This workshop is almost full so if you're planning on being at the studio on the 30th be sure to get your registration with payment in by March 23rd! If you want more info or just have a question please comment or send an email to hershbergerhuff@hotmail.com

Hope you're having a happy, creative week!

Carlynne

We had a good time last week with our Prismacolor rep Diana Garrett. She came down to the Sunshine State to do some presentations so she came by the studio during our Monday class and shared some great info, some laughs and some really great prizes! Everyone left with a goodie.

It doesn't matter how long you've been painting, there's always something new to learn. I've been doing a lot of work in acrylic on canvas the last few years and very little with colored pencil but watching Diana got me fired up again for the pencil. Why did I practically abandon my old friend the colored pencil? Because of framing, framing, framing!! (and to be honest, it was also just time to do something different) I have a portfolio full of work on paper that could be in frames but unless it has someplace specific to go I just can't spend the money to frame it. Dealing with canvas is so much easier and less costly.

During Diana's presentation she brought out some of her own work - beautiful! She's not just a rep for Prismacolor but also a wonderful artist. What was so inspiring? Not just the wonderful work she does but the ideas she brought with her (and yes, if I had been thinking, I would've taken some pics of her work so you could see it). We talked about ideas like working with colored pencil on plexiglass and wood, ways of working with the pencil so it can be varnished and not have to be framed in the traditional way with glass and mat, working on skins made from pastel ground that were painted on glass, peeled off and applied to another surface. Some of these things I've done before but it's nice to have a refresher to the get the blood flowing again. Some of them I haven't tried and it's always exciting to have something new to look
forward to.

Tomorrow night I'm looking forward to showing some of our students how to make an altered book. It'll be brand new for them so hopefully they'll get fired up about doing something different. I'll be back with pics from the workshop.....

til then, peace and happy painting,

Carlynne

Heads Up

Golden Leaves

11x14

Acrylic

I wanted to give you a heads up so you can pencil this in on your calendar. The next Friday Night Painting Party will be January 27, 2012. We'll be doing  this colorful acrylic landscape in our 3 hour workshop. I know things are crazy right now with everyone getting ready for the holidays but when the dust settles be sure to let us know if you plan on coming. These painting parties fill up and space is limited! We'll get the details out soon but in the meantime you can post a comment here or send an email to hershbergerhuff@hotmail.com if you're interested.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Last Night

Last night was our second Friday Night Painting Party - good times :)

 We did a gold leaf sky landscape painting. Here we're getting the studio ready. Yes, it's a little weird to have a life size horse in the middle of a workshop but no one seemed to mind. Anyway, we prepped the canvases by painting them magenta and drawing in the tree line. If we expected people to paint a landscape in 3 hours we figured we'd better give them at least a bit of a head start.

 Playing with gold.

 Looking so good.....

Everybody's smiling - our job is done.

What I love about doing this kind of class is seeing the same painting done so many different ways. Every painter puts their own hand into the subject. Now if I had remembered to take pictures of the finished pieces I could have shown you that but we were having such a good time I forgot to pick up the camera again. Maybe  at the next one I'll get a line up of finished paintings.

Hope you're having a good weekend,
Carlynne

Where Were You on Wednesday?

We were at the Appleton Museum in Ocala on Wednesday of last week. We were invited to give a demonstration to the Ocala Art Group (OAG) and we received a very nice response. This photo collage was put together by Ray Jowers who played paparazzi that day.

They served us a really good lunch in the Museum Cafe and as Carlynne already mentioned, it was really fun visiting with our friends Nancy, Julie and Maggie. We don't have lunch with friends nearly often enough.

Then we talked to the goup for about an hour and a half and demonstrated ways to combine colored pencil with other media. We also took questions and sold and signed quite a few of our books. All in all it was a very good day. Thank you OAG for inviting us and Ray for taking care of all arrangements.

Peace and love to you all, especially at this time of year,
Kelli

I'm feelin' it

I absolutely LOVE textures. Anyone that knows me knows that I can't keep my hands off of a cool looking textured surface. From the time I was a little girl I was fascinated with textures in nature - tree bark, veining in leaves, bird tracks in the snow (I didn't always live in Florida), the fuzz on new spring leaf buds, the indentations of raindrops in dirt, the bubbles of tar on the side of the road in the summer.

Of course the natural progression of things is that I would end up incorporating texture into my paintings. I play with textured papers, pastes and gels, sand, glass beads and rocks. There's nothing I love more in the studio than watching the fluid acrylic paint seep into the crevices of crackle paste and puddle around the bumps of glass beads. The nuances of color as it concentrates into a smooth valley or gets absorbed into a soft paper surface is just plain exciting! Call me weird.... I don't care!

So..... for the people out there like me, Kelli and I will be teaching a workshop on playing with these textures. Since the texture gels and pastes usually take overnight to dry we're going to prepare some panels ahead of time and then focus on what to do with paint and collage elements to enhance the textures and make them sing. The workshop will be in Ocala at Red Swan Paint & Art on Sunday March 21st from 1-5. Give us a holler if you want more info and contact us soon before the class fills up. mailto:andhershbergerhuff@hotmail.com

Now go touch something and feel the texture - you don't have to tell me what it is. :D

Peace,

Carlynne

Remember This?

Remember this piece of slate with it's lovely textures and shape? I took photos of it before I did anything at all to it and now I have added a little more texture and some burnt sienna. (I really had no choice, it just cried out for burnt sienna.)

This is a close up of what it looks like now, I loooooooooooooooove the textures and color. HOWEVER, where do I go from here???? Heeeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeee, pleeeeeeeeese.

Oh, and don't' forget, we will be at Bakers and Cooks this evening from 6-8 for the monthly First Friday Art Walk in downtown Ocala, FL. Be there, just off the square!

Peace and love,

Kelli

Acrylic Textures Workshop

Good morning people! I'm thrilled to announce ~ it's Thursday! I love Thursdays, it's studio day. I'm actually here to announce that we have a workshop coming up so you can mark your calendars. We're doing a half-day workshop on acrylic textures. Work on canvas with acrylic mediums to achieve exciting textures and color patterns. In this workshop you will learn about texture mediums and how to use them in an archival way with acrylic paint on canvas. Paint abstractly or use textures to enhance your realistic work. Do you like palette knife painting? Collage or assemblage? Interested in the look of encaustic painting? Just love texture? Then this workshop is for you. Once you learn these skills, the possibilities are endless!

Join us Sunday, March 21st from 1-5 at Red Swan Paint & Art . They are located at 2730 NE 14th St in the Oakbrook Plaza. The cost of the workshop is 45.00 and we'll be providing some of the supplies. When you sign up you'll get a list of the supplies to bring. Contact us for more info.

Time to paint,
Peace,
Carlynne

Great minds... I can only hope

Waxwing Poetic

Vera Curnow

Tri-Focal

Vera Curnow

With this being the 20th anniversary of the CPSA, I was thinking back to the beginning of the group and Vera Curnow came to mind. My first contact with Vera was 20 years ago when she wrote an article to the Artist's Magazine wondering if there were any other colored pencil artists out there. I was down here in Florida doing my thing... coloring away. I was thrilled to see that there were other people as in love with the medium as I was so I wrote to her, along with the others who were saying "hi - we're out here". She founded the organization and I've been a member ever since.

Vera has been an inspiration to me on so many levels - her work, her drive and energy, her creativity, her teaching ability and her willingness to take chances. She's the one who taught me to paint with colored pencils using mineral spirits - this was revolutionary for me! It changed how I worked and opened up a whole new way for me to play. Working with a brush again brought me to working with watercolor and colored pencil which led to doing colored pencil on canvas which led to doing..... acrylic on canvas - acrylic without colored pencil, hmmm...

A few years ago Kelli and I had the opportunity to go to Vera's gallery in Indiana and teach a workshop. It was great fun to see what Vera was up to. Not only was she doing colored pencil, she was also doing acrylic. She has the same love of texture that I do and I was thrilled to see that we were going down the same road. I had an argument once with a woman online. She was telling me that you can't change your style or subject matter in your work - that would mean you were unfocused and immature. What a bunch of BS. Of course you can. If you feel the need, then by all means go for it. I still work in colored pencil, I just expanded my horizons to include other things. Vera works in a variety of media, is she unfocused and immature? I don't think so!!! Just take a look at her work above. If you want to see more of what she does visit her at http://www.veracurnow.com/ If you want to see what she created when she started the CPSA go to http://www.cpsa.org/

Thanks Vera for being an inspiration to so many,

Peace,

Carlynne

Mixed Media Workshop

One Missing

by Carlynne Hershberger

To all you mixed media artists and all you wannabee mixed media artists, we are teaching a workshop in Cloudcroft NM that you will want to attend!!

The piece shown above (One Missing) is a mixed media piece that Carlynne will be demonstrating during the workshop. Over the course of 5 days (that's five whole days with us!!!) you will work on three different projects combining colored pencils and several other media. This piece uses colored pencil, solvent and gold leafing and combines several techniques. (And although it's very pretty, the color, as seen here is not quite accurate. Don't know why it published this way!) For another project you will use colored pencil, watercolor and acrylic paint. It's a great chance to take your colored pencil work to the next level and/or learn how to combine several media.

The workshop takes place in the picuresque little town of Cloudcroft in the beatiful mountains of New Mexico July 27-31, 2009. For more information, go to the Cloudcroft site http://www.cloudcroftart.com/. And keep watching this blog for more info and another piece of artwork to be demonstrated at the event.

Peace and creativity,

Kelli

Been a long time....

Wow, it's been a very long time since we've posted on here. Shame on us for taking this long. There's been a lot going on. We've been busy getting ready for workshops, art shows and teaching our weekly classes. There's Kelli in the above photo doing a demo at the workshop in Rising Sun, IN. We had such a wonderful time with the students there. What a great group! They took the projects and just ran with them. I absolutely love seeing the creative way people interpret a project, everyone is doing the same image in the same colors yet the results are amazingly varied. We did 2 projects in 2 days, the first one combined watercolor and colored pencil and the second one combined colored pencil with silver leaf. The workshop was fun, the people were great, the weather was perfect.....what more can you ask.

The next workshop coming up is in Seattle at the end of the month. I'm one of the instructors at the Colored Pencil Society of America's annual convention and exhibition. This is going to be exciting. I've never been to Seattle and I've heard all good things so I'm really looking forward to seeing a new city. My hubby's going along so he'll get to explore a little more than I will. The exhibitions are always excellent too. It's nice to see the artwork in person. AND.... this year my work was accepted to the show so I'll get to see it hanging there with all the other wonderful paintings. I'll bring some pics back and share.

Peace,

Carlynne

A Fun Time

Hi Everyone,

We had a really good time last night in Orlando at the Gallery at Avalon Island. The staff at Red Swan, (the art supply store, where we teach, work and hang out) received an invitation to the private party to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of the artwork of Bobby Goldsboro. Yes, THAT Bobby Goldsboro ("Honey" and "Watching Scotty Grow.") And yes, I did say the private party.

The photos include Bobby Goldsboro and Mel Tillis (yes THAT Mel Tillis, country singer, actor, etc.) and they are both very nice people. We were thrilled to be included and had a wonderful time. Bobby and Mel are both painters and come into Red Swan for art supplies and framing.

The gallery is in the old downtown and is very nice. The artwork was surprisingly good for someone who just took up painting two years ago and has worked without lessons. Lynne and I both went with two of our students, Gisela and Nancy. One of the photos shows Nancy getting an autograph from Bobby. (Notice we're on a first name basis.) It was a fun girls/artist night out and we decided we need to get out of town more often.

Peace and creativity in 2008

Kelli

Update on New Work

Here is the latest version of the new painting. I don't know if I am going in the right direction, but everyone I've asked tells me I am. It's new, so I am not feeling it yet. You know how you get excited about starting not just a new painting, but a new technique and then at some point you stop and ask yourself, is it good, or is it crap? It's very difficult to be objective about your own work.

Peace in 2008
Kelli

Workshop

Hi Everyone,



We have a workshop coming up all about acrylic textures. It takes place at the Brick City Center for the Arts in Ocala, FL on October 26 and 27th, 2007. (BCCA is the home of Marion Cultural Alliance.)



It's really a one whole day workshop split into two half days so we have overnight drying time, which is necessary for the materials we are using. You will learn to use many different types of acrylic texture mediums, such as our two current favorites, sand texture medium and Liquitex Super Heavy Body Gesso. You'll get a chance to sample many more and find out what you can do with them to create wonderful mixed media pieces on canvas.



When you learn how to use the texture mediums, the possibilities are endless for paintings, collage, assemblage and crafts. You have seem many of our texture paintings right here and will continue to in the future. Contact us for more information.



Peace,

Kelli