I just realized I haven't updated my blog for a while. Here's a follow-up on the Spanish Moss Miniature Art Show. We had artists from 13 different States, and one artist from Iran. We also had 6 local artists in the show this year. Here is a link to the AMAS site with the information on entries and awards; and a photo of some of the representative work from the show.
We took the Spanish Moss show down at the end of March. I had good news from the show - both of my mini paintings won an award. "Let's Play Ball" won one of the local artist's awards - one of the best possible awards since it was a gift certificate from Alabama Art Supply! And my "Longhorn Calves" painting won a purchase prize from the Nall Foundation. Nall was the judge for our show, and I was very honored to have a fine artist, and our judge, choose my painting for one of his purchases. His other purchase was a very fine painting by a miniature artist from California. Frances Ashcraft and I delivered the two purchase award paintings to Nall in Fairhope yesterday. Here is a photo of Nall with the mini cows.
And today was the quarterly Sketchcrawl - which was held at the Mobile Botanical Gardens this time. Satomi and I hurried over to the gardens after our morning Figure Group session and only had an hour or so there to sketch - but the weather was cool and the gardens were beautiful, so it was a wonderful day for some outdoor sketching. Here is the watercolor sketch I completed of the herb garden fountain area. And a link to the FB website posting of all of the other sketchcrawl sketches. This is a great way to join with a community of other artists for some fun sketching, and a good way to hone your sketching skills. Sketchers all over the world go out sketching the same day and post their results on the web so you definitely get the sense of a global community of artists who all enjoy the act of sketching.
And I could not resist posting a couple of photos of my newly acquired Lithographic Stone!! Two of my artist friends who are fine printmakers took me with them to check out some antique litho stones offered by a fellow whose father had long ago owned a commercial printing shop here in Mobile. Fred and Conroy helped me pick out a small stone (a size that I can handle myself), and Fred took it home and grained it for me. I brought it home today and it is now in my studio looking beautiful and ready to go. I've ordered some litho crayons and tusche, and a couple of handbooks, and hope to get started soon in the new (for me) media of lithography. I'm inspired and excited about the new challenge, and hoping to get some mentoring from my printmaker buddies. This is an 8 1/2" x 11" stone, so I'll probably be able to make prints around 6" x 9" in size.
