Finished the first Color Pencil Book!

Hey, hey, hey! Marie finished the "how-to" book on colored pencils and has finished the masterpiece that denotes graduation from the book's author and teacher. And this is what that looks like.

Art with colored pencils - who knew?

If you have been following this blog, you know that Marie has been taking art lessons from "Tiny" in our Arizona geezer camp. After working her way through three mediums in three years -- charcoal, pastels, and oils -- she was offered post graduate work in water colors. Nah! Even with her dad leaving us marvelous water colors, she had no interest in the medium. I secretly suspect she doesn't want to show me up -- a position I both admire and appreciate.

( The picture above is an "early" colored pencil drawing Marie made of Bradley Ellis. I say "early" because it is prior to the first book and serious study of colored pencil art. )

So, she took her graduation certificate from Tiny's kind tutelage and bravely faced the world on her own, thinking oils would be her calling. Wrong, turpentine-breath! Having dabbled with colored pencils in the past, she decided to give them a try. If you know Marie, you know she starts any new adventure with a visit to Amazon.com and buys a book, ... or two, or three. And so did start her journey into the world of colored pencil painting. It's not anything like she suspected, and yet quickly became enthralled with the medium. It's not messy; it's not stinky; and you can do some of the background stuff on your lap while watching television. I am very impressed with the work she has done with this medium and, yet again, she may have found her favorite style.

link to colored pencil art

Finally! Painting that uses paint

And brushes! Painting that uses paint and brushes --- what a concept. Marie passed her second class with pastels and was moved on to oils. A new medium for her again, and being new, it required yet another trip to the art supply store. Better make that stores, plural. Lots of tubes of paint, a couple of hands full of brushes, mixing medium, and brush cleaner. Oh yeah, canvas instead of paper. We're off and running. She thought she would not like oils --- stinky materials and long drying time. Well, in the words of Gomer Pile, "surprise, surprise, surprise". She loved oils and felt she had found her medium.

Her first attempt at oil painting, again under the careful tutelage of Tiny, is shown here and was named "Serenity Cove". The art show of 2007-2008 had over 280 paintings and she again won an Honorable Mention for this painting. She has entered 3 shows and has 3 ribbons as a result, one in each of three mediums. I'm proud, can you tell? The other oil paintings required of her class were "Almost Home" and the portrait of Molly, "I wonder". Other oils include a portrait of Zack as a Jetti (must have been Halloween or else he got beat up a lot at school). The Link below has all of her oils shown.

Upon repeated urging from Marie and some of our painting friends, I asked Tiny if I could join her classes. "No". There was no further discussion of the matter, which was fine with me. I didn't want to go through the charcoal and pastels stages. So, I got a book, and decided to teach myself water colors. I've got a long way to go to catch up to Marie, but in all fairness she has more talent. The small paintings are exercises in a do-it-yourself book and are done in about 15 minutes or less. Ah, the joy of instant gratification.

link to oils by Marie

link to water colors by Jay

Man, this stuff is messy

Just on the chance the name doesn't give it away, art made with charcoal is painting with a burnt stick. Following a few hours of this activity the participants look like B-movie coal miners. You know the type --- clean except for the streaks of black on the cheeks and hands. The hands are a no-brainer, and the noses, cheeks and other points of interest on the face are the result of touching same with the already charcoal covered fingers. The blending and shading accomplished in charcoal is done with the fingers -- it's messy.

But, having successfully completed the classes in charcoal, Marie moved to the next step in Tiny's art classes, that being pastels. For those not familiar with pastels, it is ground color pigment which has been compressed into sticks 3-5 inches long and maybe a quarter-inch in cross section. It is basically charcoal sticks with color -- more mess, only more variety in the face smudges.

Again, the class required a scene, a portrait, and a subject of the student's choice. Marie's choice for the third class project was a still life of a blue vase, given to us by David, sitting on Marie's red pajamas with fake philodendron. Her scene, and first try at pastels, was a group of Hobbie Kats (catamarans) on the Snake River in SE Washington. She didn't particularly like the subject, but the teacher loved it, so Marie did it --- and won another Honorable Mention ribbon at the art show for that year.

Link to more pastels

Marie starts art lessons

Earlier in these musings, I mentioned Marie and I transform into art hippies when we are down south. I dabbled with oils when I was a wee lad in high school and have always admired water colors. So, when Marie said she was interested in learning something about painting, I went for water colors, and that story will be later. Marie has dabbled with pencil drawings on and off for several years so when she saw a notice of an art class here in the resort, she decided to give it a shot. The class, taught by an extremely talented lady by the name of Virginia, was a three season Marathon that met for three hours once a week. The approach was to bring the students through three paintings in each of three mediums --- charcoal, pastels, and oils. I think the order was important because the cost of the materials gets higher from left to right and Virginia --- called 'Tiny' for reasons that will be apparent later --- is no dummy. Her program is not unlike getting people hooked on drugs, and Marie will attest she is an art junkie now. If you are into trivia, a 'painting' is any medium that covers the entire canvas, whereas a 'drawing' does not.

The first season, 2005-6, was the introduction to charcoal and each medium must have three paintings, one of which must be a portrait. The first painting is a still life of a pitcher and everyone in the class must produce a pitcher picture. Say that three times fast. The second painting was of the baby hand of Marie's nephew, John Kime. Tiny was impressed, as was I. I need to interject at this point, Tiny will not 'let you sign' your paintings until it meets her standards. Marie entered 'Baby John's Hand' in the end-of-season art show and won an honorable mention ribbon. Lest ye think there were only 4 entries to the show, there was well over 160 paintings, at least 40 of them charcoal. At any rate, the next charcoal was a portrait of David, Number 1 son, at the age of 7. That got Marie through the first season and a graduate of charcoal painting. During the following summer (off season) she did two more charcoals --- a portrait of our neighbors (her first commissioned work), and a portrait of Phil's family. Those paintings are hanging in the respective homes.

Charcoal Paintings

Our Church in Arizona

The first trip down here Marie started looking for a church, and guessing every town had a First Presbyterian Church, she did that search on Google -- where else? The web site for First Church in Mesa really caught her attention --- WOW!! What a music program -- check it out.

http://www.fpcmesa.org/music.htm

Well, we drove to the address one afternoon to find how to get there and on the way into the church office we followed a woman who turned out to be JoAnne Throckmorton, previously JoAnne Lancaster. I went to high school with JoAnne's brother, Raymond, and her husband's brother, Bob. Small world --- it happens again.

Again, I digress. Anyway, it turned out the church was about 20 minutes from our place and we quickly got involved in the chancel choir, two bell choirs ( a 3 octave and a 5 octave ), and a small study group. It is such a comfortable congregation and it reminds us of the churches where we grew up with a traditional service, real hymns, and the liturgy of the Southern Presbyterian tradition. We joined as Associate Members which is a designation allowed for long-term visitors who, like us, are members in another Presbyterian Church and do not wish to formally transfer membership.

We have become good friends with the Director of Music and his wife, and we have sung several times in a quartet with them. A typical service has a choir anthem, three congregational hymns, one contemporary praise song with guitars, bass, piano and drums. In addition there is special music of either a solo, duet, quartet, quintet, or instrumental. The bell choirs ( 4 of them ) each play once a month except for the little kids who play twice a year. Mark Ramsey, the Director of Music, has his PhD in organ performance and makes the $0.6MM pipe organ jump. It's easy to see why this church caught Marie's eye.

link to photos

Potty Training - Geezer Style

You will recall I call this place a geezer camp, and with good reason. It's full of geezers and it's like going to camp when you were a kid. The place is full of talented artists who are more than willing to teach others their skills. And to make things easy, the park provides space and equipment in which to learn and use those talents. I was a semi-talented woodworker before coming here, but the shop equipment here is only to be dreamed about in the average home workshop.

So, I get to practice my woodworking skills and have taken classes to pick up a few more in the process. To illustrate the point, I have learned Intarsa, which is the woodworking technique in which art is made with wood. I also learned elementary bowl turning, a skill I had not tried at home due to not owning the jigs necessary for the lathe.

But I digress --- the subject of this posting is supposed to be about potting, something I had never tried before and Marie had done much earlier in life. Her dad was a master potter, a fact to which members of her family can attest by virtue of having many samples of his work.

Because of the family propensity for getting your hands in mud, we went to the pottery room our first winter here and have been potting ever since. The Southwestern Plate shown here was one of Marie's early projects. You can get more detail on this or any other picture by double clicking on the picture to get a full screen view. Pretty good, huh?

She has done several other pieces since that first year and you will find pictures of some of them in the link below. I have done a few things in clay myself, but not to the level of Marie --- it must be in the blood. The facilities of the park have made this opportunity a reality for folks like us. Besides having talented people to teach, the cost of the kilns for firing the clay projects would be prohibitive for most amateur potters, not to mention the huge electric bills for running them.

pottery pictures

Our Southern Home

We started coming to Arizona in the winter of 2005-06 and staying in what I call a Geezer Camp and Marie calls an "over 55 gated resort". It's one of the 50,000+ such resorts in Mesa -- one of Phoenix's many suburbs. Our particular geezer camp has 1500 sites for RV's, taken by large 5th wheels, motor homes, or park model RV's with an added stick-built room which are called, interesting enough, Arizona Rooms. That first winter, we were in our 34 foot 5th wheel trailer and stayed for a little over 4 months. We also decided we liked it enough to come back and live in something larger than the 5th wheel --- duh! If you have ever spent over 4 months in a trailer, you know the feeling. So, we bought the park model. All in all, the house is almost 900 sq ft which is plenty for the two of us. It has a "sitting room" with windows on 3 sides which Marie uses as her studio ( more about that later ), a small eating area that is used for cards and other games, a kitchen, bath, a master bedroom - queen size, and the large Arizona room where we do our relaxing. The Arizona room, with our comfy chairs, is the library ( one 3 shelf bookshelf jam-packed ), the music room ( a killer Sony CD player and about 50-60 CD's ), the home theater ( large Sony TV with DVD player and a double digital recorder ), and a couch hide-a-bed for company. The back of the Arizona room is partitioned into a second bath, laundry facilities, and a small office/studio/workbench for me.

Follow the link below for some extra pictures of the park and our winter home. The name plate hanging on the front porch was made by me in the pottery craft room. That's Phil in the picture for those of you who haven't met him.

to more photos