Regina Calton Burchett – Drawings & Pastels

I’m so glad to have time to paint again. I’ve wanted to do this one for a long time, from an October morning camping at Inks Lakes in central Texas.

The Austin Pastel Society monthly meeting was yesterday, and we had a member-artists Paint-Around with Johanne Morin, Debra Richardson , Mike Etie, and John Bittick and myself.  I’ve dreaded this since Rae Andrews did some cheerful arm-twisting to get us to commit.  We each started our own painting from our photo we brought with us, were allowed to paint for ten minutes, and then passed the photo and painting off to the artist to our left. Then we had ten minutes to work on the next one, until we had each had worked on all five paintings.  At the end, we had a final ten minutes to finish up our own piece.  It sounded like torture.  It wasn’t though – it was fast-paced and very fun. Thankyou to Vicki Brevell who assisted the whole process, and to Janis Langley who took photos!

Here are the final or close to final paintings:

The Austin Pastel Society yearly competition has 98 entries, and you can see them all here. There are so many good artists in this group, and these entries will be reviewed by juror Claudia Seymour. Those chosen for the show will be on exhibit from March 7 through May 2, 2010 at the Corridor of Art – 700 Lavaca, Austin, TX

These three paintings shown below are the ones I have submitted. This year, rather than painting in a last minute rush, I chose three I had done earlier in 2009, that I still liked after several months had passed.

Distant Lights

Congress Avenue in the Rain

Pathways

Many new artists have offered their wonderful pears for inclusion on the www.pearathon.com website – please check it out to see all the variety of artists dedicated to capturing the essence of pearism ~

Pearathon.com

I like working on these 5×7 landscapes, but need to improve on…  so many things.  Not over-working a piece, brush type strokes rather than drawing, maintaining my way of painting without copying the current movement toward complete minimalism, while still studying to be a better artist….  practice, practice.

LittleLandscape2     5×7    Pastel

I worked a bit more on my first little landscape, and think I like it better.  After watching just part of the DVD on composition, I should have known better than to put a row of clouds all the way across the painting, even though that was how they occurred in the sky, as it stops the viewer’s eye from traveling through the painting. Hmmm.

Now I may wait for more inspiration on the trees

I woke up at 5am, dreaming about pastels. I hadn’t been able to paint in so long (with the exception of my paintout with Jo almost two weeks ago), so went out to my studio a little before 6am and cleaned some, watched a DVD on composition for a while, went through a bunch of my sky photos to decide which one I wanted to paint. This was a fairly quick one I started – not sure if I am done yet. 5×7, pastel on sanded Art Spectrum paper

Little Landscape, 5x7, pastel

My friend Jo Castillo and I were finally able to go paint together and were blessed with a beautiful day! The temperature was perfect and the sun made some great reflections at McKinney Falls. We had painted there a year or so back, when it was too hot to even sit in the shade, so this was a much more pleasant experience. I got a start on two pieces, but they are far from finished, so will post those at some future date. Glad you’re back home, Jo!

The last couple of months have been spent enjoying the time I could spare creating art while wondering, yet again, why we do art – especially during slow economic times when not many people seem to be interested in buying what we spend so much time planning, drawing, painting, judging..

And the very complex, intricate, convoluted answer I came up with – because it’s fun. It’s fun to create, it’s fun to use your imagination, it’s fun to play with color and application, it’s fun to see a piece evolve minute by minute, day by day. But we all need input from others and a dry spell in sales can give cause for a lot of self-examination. And too much focus on oneself.

Over the years, we’ve all known people who brought to mind the phrase “enough about me, what do you think about me?” So to guard against too much “me”, it’s necessary at times to get away from your own little self and see what is going on in the world – or at least in your part of it.

Yesterday, I was able to attend several art events exhibiting work by artist friends. One was the Real Gallery, part of the East Austin Studio Tour, which has an impressive number of artists and locations, and a wonderful variety of work. Another event was at a friend’s house, where we enjoyed inspiring music and a beautiful display of her art and technique. And lastly, a visit to another house where the art was created from wood – lovely work and design.

So it was nice, for a change, to not feel the pressure to sell my work – that’s why God made the space between walls and sofas – and to spend time enjoying and appreciating the fruits of other’s creativity.

Austin Bats Sailing from Congress Avenue Bridge

Again, I’m having a very difficult time getting a correct color photo of this blue / mauve / grey painting.  This is a little blurry, but I actually think my cell phone took a more accurate picture than our more expensive camera. This was painted from a photo I took while in a boat in Town Lake, head covered, mouth closed.