Art on a Line

2010 Art on a Line

Opening Thursday, May 14th

Our May General Meeting was held as a reception at the State Fairgrounds Fine Arts Building for the opening of our Art on a Line Show and Sale. It gave our membership a chance to see the 2500+ paintings on display, to see how each of our 75+ artists set up their "wall" and then we had four quick technical demos by members for Northstar members. These were set up to be short quick demos of 20 minutes each, dealing with a technical issues with good how-to advice.

(Click on thumbnail images to see larger images!)

Photos by:
Kathy Magnus, Barb Pariesien, Connie Keithahn and Nancy Larson

Copy by: Connie Keithahn

Connie Keithahn

Connie started things off with a quick overview of the Batik Watercolor Process. She showed how to start, which paper to use, how to wax layers, and finally ironed all the wax off between pages of newspaper for a final painting.

Katherine Salverda:
Katherine showed us how to capture Atmospheric Conditions by adding darks and lights in all the right places to make things stand out or recede in our paintings. She stressed looking at Value, Color and Edges to make things go back or to come forward.

Gail Fonnest:
Gail's quick technique demo was about painting in Triads...using three color choices within a painting. She showed color wheels of colors that can be used in a Triad and did a handout of what to do with this technique.

Judy Blain:
Judy gave us tips on how to MAKE mud paintings (to get real mud colors) and then showed what to do to get rid of Muddy paintings! Mud happens when one cannot see all the way through it to the paper. She offered some quick fixes to Mud! Salt it, Use Mr Clean Sponge, use a wet toothbrush or make lines through the dried painting with a brush handle.

The "Back Demos" - Thursday

The Back Demos were done under the mirror and lights for the weekend. These were more in-depth process demos and the artists gave us lots to think about.

Emmy White:

Still Life
Emmy used her audience as her Still Life Subject, and put them all in a hot tub! It was a fun demo to watch, and certainly added to her collection in her Hot Tub Series. She uses such wonderful colors, and seems to just be able to plop down paint and it comes out looking so great!

Wendy Westlake:

Florals, Wet Colorful Backgrounds

Wendy's demo was with lots of wet on wet, bright colors and quick motion. She painted a lot of the back ground first, then laid in the floral petals.

Jeanne Larson:

Design Design Design
Jeanne showed us how to do bold design elements using color and negative space to pop out the floral petals.

Dick Graves:

City Scape

Very entertaining demo, with buildings appearing instantly, crowds of people developed out of shadows and final process all discussed.

The "Back Demos" - Saturday

The Back Demos continued on Saturday with four more Northstar members presenting their work and techniques.

Rebecca Cardinal: Batik Paris

Rebecca took us through the many steps and layers of doing a batik. Very complex system of painting and layering with wax. She did a demo as part of a series she is doing on Paris landmarks. Her final crackling of the wax laden paper was done by wiggling her fingers underneath the painting, allowing the wax to crack. She used paint to put the batik cracks on the paper.
Judy Blain: Small Townscape

Judy again simplified the process of a small town block encouraging us to seek a place of interest to focus attention to, to allow the paint and colors to blend a bit, and to leave some white spaces! We don't have to paint every inch!

Carol Spohn:

Wet Backgrounds and Textures
Carol demonstrated with Incredible White Mask to save parts of her painting and showed how to do that. She then did layers of colors in bright hues and added things like gauze in parts for texture, crumbled saran wrap and then peeled away the mask to show the finished piece. For lines she used small pieces of cheese cloth to make stems amongst the flowers/leaves

The "Back Demos" - Sunday

On Sunday two other Northstar members presenting their work and techniques in the Back Demo area.

Frank Zeller:

Expressive Rocks, Water
Frank’s demo was just a wonderful sight of water rushing over large boulders. He said he always does a value study to start with and follows lights onto the rocks. He left parts of the page white for the water, then added shadows to make the rocks sit down in the water.

Deb Magelssen:

Abstract Figures
Deb did her demo pieces on paper that she had completely rolled with black paint. She then put gesso all over which helps the paint adhere. She put on rubber gloves and dug into the paint with her fingers to draw the ballerina’s skirts, arms, legs and backgrounds. She only used a brush at the very end to give details to the ballerina. She works from the dark background to the light on these pieces. Her paintings had a lot of movement to them.

Artists at Work Demonstrations
While the artists were doing the longer demonstrations in the back of the Fine Arts Building, under the mirror and lights, other artists were set up on a side of the building, doing more casual demos. They were the Artists at Work. The following were doing their demos for the audiences:

Kathy Braud: Elegant Ink and Watercolor