Heart and Soul of the Great Plains 2010.11.06
Garage 283, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2010 by Sarah Atlee.
Garage 283 is my entry for the invitational exhibit Heart and Soul of the Great Plains. The show opens November 6, 2010 in Lawton and Chickasha, OK. My painting will be in the group on display at Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery in Lawton.
This show is presented in conjunction with the Museum of the Great Plains and the Comanche National Museum. Contemporary art will be presented in the Leslie Powell Gallery, naturalistic art in the Museum of the Great Plains and Comanche art in the Comanche National Museum.
Special guests for opening night will be Buffalofitz, an acoustic band with a highly entertaining brand of music, humor and storytelling.
Since moving to Oklahoma in 2006, I've been enchanted with our particular landscape. Not in a romantic way; I'm piqued by the jumble of decaying billboards, squat beige warehouses, freeway overpasses, prairie, McMansions, and expansive sky. Upon being invitied to participate in this show, I decided to construct a visual quilt composed of abstract snippets of my semi-urban surroundings.
Photo collage for Garage 283, 2010 by Sarah Atlee
This became my reference tool for creating the painting.
Garage 283, detail (landscape view), 2010 by Sarah Atlee
After finishing this experimental piece (first in an open-ended series), I realize that the color palette is about five times brighter than I would have liked. Interestingly, as a beginning painter, I had to fight the urge to cover everything with white glazes. Now, I'm fighting to resist the siren song of Indian yellow, veridian, quinacradone violet, red oxide, and cobalt blue.
Garage 283, detail view, 2010 by Sarah Atlee
Three Lucky Pennies at JRB Art Gallery 2010.11.05
Self Portrait: Three Lucky Pennies, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 x 1.5 inches, 2010
Three Lucky Pennies will be in the annual Small Works show at JRB Art Gallery at the Elms in Oklahoma City (map link) for the month of November 2010. The opening reception is Friday, November 5th, 6-10 pm.
The Small Works show at JRB will feature 100 8x8-inch canvases by 100 artists, each piece priced at $180.00. Artists Skip Hill, Nick Wu, Carlos Tello and Sohail Sheheda will be featured in the gallery's other spaces.
Here's a look at how I created this piece.
The idea for this self portrait popped into my head a couple of weeks ago. I imagined a ratty, thrift-store leopard-print coat, but that item seems to be missing from my closet. I took reference photos of myself wearing this wonderful purple kimono that my Mom has had for years. I settled on the two best shots, and spliced them together in PhotoShop.
I always enjoy painting the edges of a canvas. Luckily, the canvases this gallery provides for the Small Works show have lovely 1.5" edges. Using Adobe InDesign, I created a grid and placed my reference photo under it. This is a useful tool when working from a single reference.
This is an unofficial companion to my painting for 2009's Small Works show. I like to see what I can squeeze onto the edge.
I had to turn this painting around in just a couple of days, so I knew that a good underdrawing would be key. I couldn't afford to take time working all the shadows out in paint alone. I often do underdrawings in graphite, and I prefer not to use spray fixative because it's water-resistant and stinky. Here I've blended the shadows using my finger, from which a small amount of skin oil helps the graphite adhere to the canvas. When I put the first wash down, I do it gently, so as not to smear the drawing. One acrylic wash seals it.
Usually I put down a burnt sienna or pepto-bismol-pink wash for figure painting, but I pictured this piece with yellow undertones. The wash here is a mixture of Naples yellow and a cadmium-based pale pink.
When painting patterns, I prefer a loose interpretation to a slavish reproduction. I drew the pattern on the canvas in pencil, mostly not looking at what I was drawing. (I love drawing blind.) I went over the lines using Payne's gray and a #1 liner brush.
I put in the big shadows with Payne's gray (how I love thee), and began blocking in the skin tones with quinacradone violet, napthol red, titanium white, Indian yellow, Naples yellow, Pyrrole red, light umber, and burnt sienna. These days I'm using a lot of Golden Fluid Acrylics, recommended to me by professor Bob Dorsey for their high pigment concentration and versatility. He also recommends Windsor Newton Series 7 brushes, which are indeed "worth every penny."
Here I've added washes of quinacradone violet and more Payne's gray to the robe. Continuing to block in the skin tones. The background is tinanium white with just a drop of Payne's gray to cool it off, and contrast with the warmth of the figure. I laid it on thick, allowing hints of the yellow underpainting to show through.
To finish, I overglazed the skin with more titanium white, napthol red tint, and Naples yellow, using some Golden glazing medium in yellow ochre and iridescent red. More glazes of quinacradone violet were added to the robe.
Found on Flickr: Visual Diaries
The Visual Diaries are tools I create to capture my aesthetic for a particular moment. They're collections of my favorite Flickr images each month or so. See all of them here.
Hemphill-Co-safe-passage, by Flickr user Stateart1. Click image to view on Flickr.
This is from my October Visual Diary, The Finding Place. Hemphill County, Texas, is where my mother's family has lived for the past several generations.
See what else I've found on Flickr.
Custom Longboards Show @ DnA Galleries, OKC 2010.10.22
Join us for the second annual Custom Longboards show at DnA Galleries, in OKC's fabulous Plaza District, and help Dylan and Amanda celebrate their gallery's second anniversary!
Dr. Sketchy's OKC, Roller Derby Edition 2010.03.14
Hey Sketchers, come join me tonight at IAO Gallery for another episode of Dames, Drinking, and Drawing. In that order. Marilyn sez, "If you bring gently used or new art supplies you have a chance to win a fabulous prize. These art goodies will be going to Haiti." Yee-haw!
Abstract Dr. Sketchy's 8, ink on paper, 2010 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
Check out the new additions to my Flickr site - abstract drawings from this year's previous Dr. Sketchy's sessions.