On Friday in Seattle at the CPSA 16th Annual International Exhibition I took John Smolko’s workshop. I’ve always admired his work, and his distinct use of colorful, energetic lines in his pieces. John has been an award winner at the Annual shows multiple years. An experienced art teacher, he led us quickly through the basics of scribbling - a form of crosshatching used to weave together colors - and then into our morning exercise of creating block letters against a glowing background. In the afternoon we were able to choose from a range of subjects - pictures of John’s students, still life objects. I chose a student’s picture, and decided to keep in the theme of the colorful palette I had used for the morning exercise. With about 2-3 hours of work, the piece isn’t completed yet - but I’m really happy with the progress on the piece. I plan on working on it further and finishing it. Here’s a pic of the demonstration, and a scan of what I completed during the workshop:

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The CPSA website now has images posted of all of the silent auction pieces.  There are terrific pieces by many great artists.  Check out the webpage here.

There was a good turnout for this weekend’s workshop at the Wyoming Valley Art League, with 16 members attending. We had time to work with white, red, and black Colourfix paper, and I gave everyone dark green and gray samples to take home. The workshop’s title was “Capturing Light with Colored Pencil and Sanded Papers”. Here’s a snapshot of the main exercise, a rose, done on 4″ x 6″ black Colourfix:

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Scribbletalk has released its annual calender for sale. Each month has a different artist, and works were chosen by vote. “Cascade” appears for March 2008. You can purchase a calender from Cafepress or view the orginal Scribbletalk thread.

Bend won the Phoenix, AZ, District Chapter 212 Award for Excellence at the CPSA 15th Annual International Show. You can view the other award winners at the CPSA website. Check out my Shows and Events link to see some pictures from this past weekend’s trip to Bethesda for the artist’s reception.