A view of the Potomac by F11 and Art League member Jo Ann Tooley.
F11, a women’s photography collective including several Art League members, will be putting up an exhibit in Alexandria’s Beatley Central Library to coincide with FotoWeek DC, a regional photography festival taking place November 9–18 with events including exhibitions, seminars, portfolio reviews, and more. The show, “Down by the River: Visions of the Potomac” will be in the Periodical Room starting November 9, 2012 and features work by nine members of the group. Continue reading F11 Women’s Photo Group Exhibits Shots of Potomac
See below for details! You can click the banner above for past opportunity posts.
FotoWeek DC Events
The following events are from FotoWeek DC:
Pre-Festival Instagram Contest — Submit your best Instagram photos to our contest by November 7th -12pm EST for a chance to win Festival Passes, Seminars, Portfolio Reviews, and Launch Party tickets! Additionally, we have added a People’s Choice Category, so get your followers to VOTE and we will select our favorite images and repost every few days. To see submissions, visit our contest page. Winning work will be shown at FotoWeekCentral during the Festival!
FotoWeekEDU Seminars & Portfolio Reviews — Take an all-day seminar Nov 10-13 and 15-17 with one of our leading presenters. Have your work reviewed at our Portfolio Reviews on Sunday, November 11.
More events and details are on their website. The Art League Gallery is also hosting a number of events for FotoWeek — click here to see.
I’m still busy with my classes at The Art League. On Wednesday, our drawing class got a crash course in shading from George Tkabladze. Having perfected — more or less — the shapes in our still lifes, we got to work bringing them to life. George showed us how to create convincingly flat forms with even shading, and to vary the shading and show reflected light to turn our circles into spheres.
The Washington Post reviewed Juan Hernandez’s solo exhibit in today’s issue! (Scroll down to “Juan E. Hernandez G.”) “Tierra y Memoria” is open in The Art League Gallery through Monday, November 5. We don’t want you to miss it, so please come by if you haven’t yet!
Juan spoke about his work at the October 11 opening reception:
In “Color Sphere,” on view in The Art League Gallery through Monday, November 5, Marilyn Milici’s painting La Banda won the Sid Platt Watercolor Award, with the juror praising its strong graphical quality and contrast between light and dark.
We had a chance to talk to Marilyn about the “very shocking” award, and she told us about the unique “pouring” method responsible for the striking contrast.
“It’s an adventurous way to paint,” Marilyn said, running through the process: drawing the picture and assigning values, masking out the whitest white, mixing three different colors — red, blue, and yellow for La Banda — wetting the paper, and pouring the colors out. After the painting dried, she masked out the next lightest layer in turn, repeating the process, and six layers later, “you have this big gloppy disgusting mess,” she said.
“La Banda” by Marilyn Milici.
Marilyn said you can’t really tell what you have until you take off the masking at the end. In this case, she had a winner. “I think this method of painting works well with simple compositions with a strong light source and value contrasts,” Marilyn said. “All us watercolorists are crazy about saving the whites, but here you need to save each successive mid tone also.” (Empty Easel has more information on pouring watercolors.)
She also told us about the origin of the painting, in a recent trip to the Andes.
“We were on a trip to Ecuador, high in the Andes (9,000 feet) when we passed numerous people hiking along the Pan-American Highway on their way to visit a religious sanctuary deep in the mountains,” she said. “At the crest of a steep incline we came upon this motley band of musicians, spurring on the obviously exhausted pilgrims. The light was beautiful, the air was thin and spirits were lifted by their enthusiasm, if not their talent.”
Marilyn said she’s worked exclusively in watercolor since starting 15 years ago, taking classes with Art League instructors like Gwen Bragg and Susan Herron. Though she’s been out of the habit of painting for about a year, she said she is trying to make herself paint.
Of Sid Platt, a longtime Art League member who started painting after a career at National Geographic, Marilyn said he was “a wonderful old crotchety coot” as well as a very bright and gifted artist. The Sid Platt Watercolor Award was endowed after his death in 2010 from donations and the proceeds from a sale of his work. Marilyn said she was honored to receive the award named for a hero of hers.
More interviews with past award winners can be found here.
Last night’s Art on the Rocks — The Art League’s third annual art-inspired cocktail party — was a rousing success, with over 200 guests enjoying cocktails created for the evening and voting for their favorite. Thank you to everyone who came, to the participating restaurants, our volunteers, and our partners: the Pink Line Project and Catoctin Creek Distillery.
Bartenders from Bastille, Chadwick’s, Columbia Firehouse, The Light Horse Restaurant, Red Rocks Pizza Napoletana, and Union Street Public House participated. (You can see them demonstrate their creations on our YouTube channel.) And when the votes were tallied, returning champion Justin Matlak from The Light Horse won again with his cocktail titled “No Comparison.”
Justin Matlak hoists his trophy, an alcohol-themed creation by Torpedo Factory artist Lisa Schumaier.
Ticketholders went home winners too, with door prizes including tickets to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a ticket to the 2013 Patrons’ Show, a gift certificate for an Art League class, and a Potomac Riverboat Company package for a water taxi ride and a meal at Rosa Mexicana.
Today’s Art League Happy Hour is a little early — call it a liquid lunch — because we want to remind you to get your tickets for tomorrow’s Art on the Rocks cocktail party!
Wednesday’s event will include live jazz, complimentary appetizers, and six new cocktails created specially for the evening by bartenders from local restaurants — all for only $35. There will also be drawings for prizes, including tickets to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra!
To get you pumped for tomorrow, we visited three more of the participating bartenders for sneak peeks at the cocktails they’ll be making. (Visit our YouTube channel for all the Art on the Rocks videos.)
Alexander at Red Rocks Pizza Napoletana created the Derby:
This week Basic Drawing met for the fifth time and Stained Glass met for the fourth time. Here’s where my stained glass panel is so far:
The pattern paper is on top of the magenta and brown pieces, and the green (top row center) looks black in this picture, so you’ll just have to imagine those colors for now. I think the colors we found were perfect, though — I had a lot of help from fellow stained-glass student Tiffany in finding all the colors I needed for my piece, which was quite a feat. As Jimmy, the instructor, predicted, finding magenta was pretty much impossible, but we found something very close. And check out the cool brown streaky glass we found: Continue reading George’s Artistic Adventure: Week 4 1/2
We’re bringing you an extra edition of artist opportunities this week to let you know about two upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
Public Art Workshop
Sunday, October 21, 2:00 pm. Washington Project for the Arts, in collaboration with Arlington Public Art, presents a free, participatory lecture as part of the 2012-2013 Professional Practices series, for artists and project sponsors (developers, planners, private and public agency administrators) interested in sharpening their skills preparing for public art commissions. St. Louis based artist and Washington University Sam Fox School of Architecture Professor Ben Fehrmann will be our guest for Where to Start: Site Analysis and Design Thinking for Public Art. To attend, RSVP by Thursday, October 18 (today) to Christopher Cunetto at [email protected]. Seating is limited. For more information, click here.
Alexandria Artist Grants
Monday, October 22, 7:00 pm and Thursday, October 25, 2:00 pm. The Alexandria Commission for the Arts is conducting two workshops to provide information about its annual grant program. The goals of the Commission’s grant program are to encourage artistic excellence in the City; assist Alexandria-based arts organizations in improving their financial, administrative, and management capabilities; and provide individual artists with opportunities to create, perform, and present their works. Applications for grants are due November 16. For more information, click here.
Do you have your ticket for next Wednesday’s Art on the Rocks yet? To entice you, we have a preview of one of the cocktails created for the event. We stopped by Bastille to see Rebecca Dincher make her Potiron, which, if you know French, you’ll know is pumpkin-themed:
The Potiron is inspired by a photograph by Tom Roberts in our October “Color Sphere” exhibit.
Liquitex acrylics for sale in The Art League Store.
Liquitex artist Tony Zatzick will be back at The Art League next week for another free demo on topics including color mixing, permanence, product history, mediums, pigment characteristics, and techniques! Attendees also get a free bag of samples to take home.
The demo will be Monday, October 22, 2012 from 2:00–4:00 pm. It’s totally free, but you do need to register by contacting the Gallery at [email protected] or 703-683-1780.
Tony is part of the Liquitex Artist Outreach Program and he last came for a demo in February — read about it here.
See below for upcoming deadlines and other opportunities. Be sure to make it to the Gallery this Thursday for Art Insurance 101, the latest in our Fall Lecture Series! You can click the banner above for past opportunity posts.
Art Insurance 101: An Overview for Artists and Collectors Thursday, October 18, 7:00 pm in The Art League Gallery. Jane Stapleton and Beth McGurk of Art Ingenuity Insurance present a timely discussion of methods for artists interested in obtaining insurance for their own work and collectors seeking to insure their collections. Please RSVP for this free event to [email protected] or 703-683-1780. Continue reading Artist Opportunities: October 16, 2012
Join us a couple days a week for Art League Happy Hour (yes, we like to go to happy hour a couple days a week). During Art League Happy Hour you can read up on Art on the Rocks news and see video clips of our participating bartenders creating their artistic cocktails.
We stopped by Chadwick’s today to see bartender Paul Fehn show us his drink, dubbed “SC III” after Summer Color III, the Colleen Henderson print it’s inspired by:
“Summer Color III,” pigment print by Colleen Henderson.
With blueberry puree, rye whiskey, triple sec, lemon juice, and sprite, the SC III starts off tart and grows sweeter.
Check back soon for more videos! Tickets are on sale now for Art on the Rocks. More information about the party is here.
In this month’s “Color Sphere” exhibit, the Gilham Award went to Christine Lashley for Margaret, an appropriately colorful portrait of her daughter. Juror Lee Boynton called the oil painting “evocative and full of great color and emotion.” We asked Christine about the painting, her views on color, and her artwork in general.
How was Margaret painted?
Christine: Margaret was painted “alla prima” (all at once) with M. Graham oils – these paints are extra buttery and I can layer strokes of bright colors together and get a juicy look. I had my daughter pose for me and I took some photos of her slouched on the sofa with the afternoon light streaming in the window behind her. I had painted her from life (in watercolor) and I wanted to an oil in the studio. When I was painting I asked her to come in to the studio and look at me a few times.
The idea for the painting was how she looked to me at the time she was sitting on the sofa. I liked that she looked natural, and not posing with a frozen smile for the camera. I wanted to portray a mix of my feelings as her mother and of her feelings as an individual.
“Margaret” by Christine Lashley
Since this month’s theme was color, what is your philosophy on color, and how do you know which one to reach for — for example, the reds and blues in the subject’s hair? What is color’s place in a successful painting?
When I fully understand a subject and have a very clear idea of what to paint and why, the color choices seem to jump onto the canvas. Color is personal. So, my color choices are very intuitive. It’s a wonderful feeling when a painting seems to paint itself. That’s what happened here. At first, I had a more traditional (vertical) composition sketched in with a burnt umber drawing (much more conventional). But this looked boring and did not convey an emotional impact very well, so I wiped the whole thing off, turned the canvas horizontal, and started the head larger, with bold, bright color and a large brush. It was really fun to start over and slash away at the first, boring attempt. Continue reading Q&A with Award-Winner Christine Lashley
I had another fun Stained Glass class today and got to see my project start to take shape. After tracing my pattern onto vellum paper last time, today it was time to cut all the pieces out. Here’s what that looked like:
To cut out the pieces, I used special pattern shears for the copper foil technique I’ll be using later. They work like regular scissors, but they have three blades instead of two, so the middle one cuts out the 1/32” gap I’ll need between the pieces of glass. You can see the little pile of paper it takes out. Continue reading George’s Artistic Adventure: Cutting Glass
In our continuing quest to be helpful, we’ve gathered some inspiration-themed links artists might find useful or interesting. Click away!
Inspiration, education, and entertainment all in one: it’s easy to get lost in the videos and interviews posted at Those Who Make. They aren’t all artists, but they all use their hands to make — clothes, blown glass, vodka, honey, etc. — in some very well-made videos.
Make your own Jackson Pollock drip painting! Try clicking your mouse to change colors.
Featured in a recent post on our Facebook page, the Google Art Project is a nifty way to look at lots of artwork from around the world. You can browse by artist or collection, zoom in on famous works, make your own collections, and even do a virtual walkthrough of some galleries, Google Street View-style — for example, see the Rijksmuseum without the trip to the Netherlands.
Here’s a list of The 9 Warning Signs of an Amateur Artist — a guide to “changing your attitude and the way you think about your art.” Skinny Artist has lots of great articles on things like inspiration and sharing your art online.
Speaking of amateurs, you’ve probably heard about the much-derided amateur restoration of the fresco of Jesus in a Spanish church. Did you also hear that the restorer wants a share of the donations the church has received since people started coming to see it?
To end on a happier note, here’s the story of a more professional restoration. MoMA’s Inside/Out blog has been documenting how their conservators document and repair damage to a pair of 60-year-old Jackson Pollock paintings. It’s some really interesting stuff!
October’s exhibits are up in the Gallery and looking good! This Thursday, October 11 at 6:30 pm is the opening reception for “Tierra y Memoria,” an exhibit of paintings and linocuts by Juan E. Hernandez G., and “Color Sphere,” the juried group exhibit exploring color.
Both shows are open through November 5.
Artwork from “Color Sphere.” Foreground: “Orange Ladder,” fused glass, by Doris Ross.
Hernandez’s artwork takes everyday life in his native Honduras as its subject.
“My goal is not so much to make a representation of these scenes and their protagonists, but to express something about their human condition and the nature of their lives,” Hernandez said. “These pieces are filled with my deep feelings for these people who are part of a country that faces many social, economic, and political challenges.”
That was taken near the end of class, though I fixed it up some after that. In particular, instructor George suggested I work on straight lines (as well as centering the subject on the paper). I can definitely see what he was talking about, so I’ll be practicing my lines. I do feel better about the shapes and their relative sizes and distances from each other. The sphere in particular had improved by the end of class from this potato: Continue reading George’s Artistic Adventure: Shaping Up
Join us a couple days a week for Art League Happy Hour (yes, we like to go to happy hour a couple days a week). During Art League Happy Hour you can read up on Art on the Rocks news and see video clips of our participating bartenders creating their artistic cocktails.
With Art on the Rocks just two weeks away, the mixologists have already selected the artwork that will inspire their new mixed drinks.
The third annual celebration of art and cocktails will be Wednesday, October 24, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Click here to buy your ticket. Ticketholders can sample all six drinks — created by mixologists from Bastille, Chadwick’s,Columbia Firehouse,the Light Horse Restaurant, Red Rocks Pizza Napoletana,and Union Street Public House — and then vote for their favorite. There will also be live jazz by the Gassmann Duo and appetizers from the participating restaurants.
The evening’s libations will be inspired by specific pieces of artwork from “Color Sphere,” the October exhibit in The Art League Gallery. These are some of the pieces chosen so far:
“Painted Elephant, Jaipur,” photograph by Frances Borchardt, left, and “Starn Wave,” oil on panel by Dennis Crayon.
Brodie Evans from Union Street Public House will be creating a drink based on Frances Borchardt’s photograph of a painted elephant. Justin Matlak of the Light Horse Restaurant, one of the winners in last year’s tie decision, selected a trompe l’oeil painting by Dennis Crayon.
See below for upcoming workshops and deadlines. You can click the banner above to see past opportunities posts.
Art League classes & workshops
Get back in the swing of art classes this fall! Check out the school homepage for upcoming workshops. There are also a few weekly classes that haven’t started yet:
Free lectures
The Art League Gallery’s fall lecture series includes talks on art insurance and Adobe Photoshop. See our Lecture Series & Enrichment page for details and check back as we add new events. Please RSVP to the gallery if you’d like to attend one of these free lectures.
Starting this Saturday, October 6 at 8pm, you can catch Art League ads during Downton Abbey on WETA UK!
The WETA UK Event: The Complete Downton Abbey Starting October 6, WETA UK will present The Complete Downton Abbey on Saturdays at 8 pm through November 10.
Here’s how to tune in:
You can watch WETA UK in Greater Washington over the air via antenna, or on various cable systems as listed below.
Color wheels by Ignaz Schiffermüller (1772) and Goethe (1810)
In honor of the October “Color Sphere” exhibit, today’s links are all about color!
Read all about Pigments Through the Ages, including a timeline of familiar pigments through the ages, from the ancient umber to titanium white, invented in 1921. You can see what they’re made of and what famous paintings use them. It also includes historically used pigments like “smalt.” Web Exhibits also has a page about the science of color and art.
Was Vincent Van Gogh colorblind? Some speculated as much after a Japanese scientist studying vision wrote that article last year, showing how some of Van Gogh’s paintings would appear to someone with a specific type of colorblindness. (He also wrote an app that allows anyone to try it for themselves.) It started quite a debate, though as the original author noted, the question of Van Gogh’s eyesight is out of the scope of his research. So, even though he probably wasn’t colorblind, it’s interesting to think about how an artist’s palette can be driven by their personal perception as well as by their artistic vision.
While you’re musing about that, test your own color vision with this online hue quiz.
If you’re a digital artist, digital photographer, or you’re posting images of your artwork on Facebook or your website, you want to make sure your computer monitor accurately reproduces the colors you want. Here’s an overview of the why and how for color-calibrating your monitor, camera, printer, and scanner for Macs or PCs. John Burgess also covers the basics of color calibration in his free Exhibition Prints lecture in November!
Things are getting underway in my stained glass class — today, we were supposed to come in with a pattern ready to go. After a lot of thought and Googling, I settled on making a stained glass TV. Here’s the pattern I ended up with today:
