Regina Calton Burchett - Drawings & Pastels

On May 2 and 3rd, 2009 ~ Sally Frazer, Ann Seago and Regina Burchett will have a booth at Great Outdoors “Art Under the Oaks” at 2730 S. Congress Avenue in Austin.

Wherever you live, you probably enjoy
the shade and scent and beauty of a tree.

When I leave home and drive in any direction, there are new neighborhoods emerging - in an incredibly short time span - from the freshly razed ground.  Mature trees are now heaped into scrap piles around the perimeter.

With the construction of most new homes, we seem to move further away from a life which integrates the home with the surrounding land and trees.  New subdivisions often appear to consist of a pasture planted with garages, each with an attached house and a token stick of a tree centered in the front square of grass. Along with new housing for our increasing population, we bring more cars and an increasing array of technology which creates emissions harmful to the environment.

One way we can counteract this is by planting a tree!

Even if you are lucky enough to live in an established neighborhood with mature trees, age and disease can damage or wipe out your trees – many trees were lost last year in our area to a combination of drought and oak wilt. So it is a good commitment to make to the value of our homes and to the health of our neighborhoods to plant a tree!

If you live in Texas, one very cool website created by Texas A&M is helpful on how to select, buy, plant and care for a new tree, based on your Texas county and the size of tree you want and where you are going to plant it - http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/

Plant a tree in memory of a friend or loved one who has passed or to celebrate a new child being born - one way to do this is via the National Arbor Day Foundation. Contact them: http://www.arborday.org/

Dell is partnering with the Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org with its “Plant a Tree for Me” Program which will offset the carbon dioxide produced through powering customers’ computer systems - http://www.conservationfund.org/node/326

Nature gives us balance in life in a variety of ways - physically and spiritually. Trees benefit us not only in their beauty but with their practical functions. Each positive step we take toward restoring the trees we have lost contributes to bringing Earth - and ourselves - back into balance.  (from previous blog of 8.2007)

And click here to view a great post today on “Making a Mark” blog on how to draw trees - it links to this Squidoo lens. Squidoo has some very helpful and detailed “how-to” draw, paint, etc. art pages.

I started this tonight about 10:30 after a very frustrating day / week… it’s from a photo my friend Diana shared with me. She is doing a painting from it also. Because of a frame I already had, I decided to stretch the image somewhat, and work from that. This is the initial charcoal sketch, and a link to a slideshow of my progress tonight.

WIP - fog, tree, path

Slideshow Link progress to date

Update: 5/6/09 - Here is the completed pastel. I kind of lost the fog, but liked it the way it was…

Cattle Guard

Finally finished this today, I think. It’s not been a week to hope for accomplishing anything, but I think I like this as it is.  I’ll go ahead and frame it, and then I won’t change my mind…

Distant Lights

I haven’t had time or spirit to paint the last week or so, but really enjoyed watching the birds swarm around the feeders after the rain today.  There were cardinals, buntings, and a variety of other birds that I don’t know.  I would welcome anyone’s input in regard to what these birds are.

Bunting and Blue Bird

Cardinal after the rain

Bunting, Blue bird, Brown bird

Working from a photo, this is one I started while at the La Villita Art Festival in San Antonio.  I still have work to do on the foreground and trees.

A few our photos of the La Villita Art Festival in San Antonio…  thank God for Larry and all his work! Low turnout for all the artists, but we met a lot of nice people and had a good time.

Not sure what more I will do to this, but I like the sky so far…

I had a lot of fun last weekend at the Zilker Park Botanical Festival, sharing a “Botanical Art” booth with two other artists.  We discussed many things, art among them, and met a lot of nice people.  For a while, I tried to draw a tree, but the sun coming through the crape myrtle behind me kept making moving and detailed images on my paper.  I tried to draw the shadow outline, then decided it would be interesting to take a photo of the shadow on the paper itself.  My friend Sally and I ended up traveling through adjoining booths and taking photos of tree shadows, cactus and palm shadows and sun bokeh on a blank sheet of drawing paper. Quite a few people offered advice on which would be most interesting.  Only one photo actually has a physical part of a plant in it - the rest are simply shadows.  I’ve always been fascinated with shadows - hence the name of my website…