February Newsletter

 

 

Hello again, I hope this finds you well in spite of the chaos and horrors taking place in so many parts of the world. Please look after your mental health and hopefully we can all find some ways, big or small, to bring some goodness, positivity, and/or peace to the world.

I have a few things that I’m excited to share with you this month. The first is that I will be teaching some classes through the University of Utah’s Lifelong Learning program. The first class I will be teaching is a Coptic bookbinding class. I have loved bookbinding for years and I’m excited to be able to share my love for this craft. As of writing this, the class is currently full, however, if you’re interested you should check back or join the waiting list just in case. It's likely that this class will be offered again in the future. I will also be teaching some other classes in the future but I will share more about those when their registration opens.

I’m also excited to share that I’ve added some new items to my Etsy shop. I’m now offering some hand ground pigments and handmade watercolors made from those pigments. I hope to expand my pigment and watercolor offerings soon, check back at the shop to find out what they are.

Thank you as always for your interest and support!

January Newsletter

 

Hello again, I hope this finds you healthy and well amid these uncertain times. January has been a busy month for me, among other things, the A New Page Show at the JKR Gallery ends on the 28th. Unsold pieces will remain available in the gallery through the month of February.

 

Photo taken by JKR Gallery 

I’m also excited to share that I’ve started an Etsy shop, where some of my paintings now available along with craft items like hand bound books and marbled cards. 

I will be sharing some of my pieces on my instagram and facebook pages each Thursday. Anyone interested in the piece will be able to message me to make arrangements to buy the piece and then the sale will be transacted through the Etsy shop.

December Newsletter

 

Hello again, I initially said the newsletters would be every few months but at least for the time being there’s lots to share so the newsletter will be monthly.

Thank you to those who were able to attend the Midwinter at the Gates of Dawn ARCH-HIVE Show at Writ & Vision this month. If you were unable to attend the show, you can find a virtual walk through of the show here. The show was also reviewed by Artists of Utah/15bytes.

    I’m excited to announce that I will be a part of the inaugural show at the JKR Gallery’s new space on Center Street in Provo. The show will be called A New Page and will run from January 14 - 28, 2022.

    My work can also be viewed at Ludd Art, a UK based online art auction platform. Check out the site and watch for upcoming auctions.

    Thank you for your interest and support! Please keep safe and healthy and have a happy new year!

Newsletter

 

Hello, welcome to the first issue of my artist newsletter! I will be sending this newsletter out every few months 

with updates about me and my art.  

This past June I completed a Master's degree show Traditional Art from The Prince's Foundation School of 

Traditional Arts (PFSTA), in London. For my final project, I focused on Western European, medieval manuscript 

illumination and I chose to illuminate Christian scriptural accounts of the creation. See the full series here. 

 Our degree show was held at the Garrison Chapel, Chelsea Barracks. Due to pandemic restrictions, we also had 

an Online Celebration (my presentation is at about 14:20). Our class also had the honor of having the school’s

 patron, HRH Prince Charles, visit our show.

                Prince Charles and I - photo credit Richard Ivey

My classmates and I were given the opportunity to be a part of START.art, a new curated online platform. 

   My work in the gallery            The PFSTA class of 2021 minus one

I’m excited to be joining the ARCH-HIVE for their holiday show at Writ and Vision on December 3, 2021 

from 6-9 pm. If you’re local you’re invited to come and enjoy, it should be a great show. If you come, please 

wear a mask as Covid precautions will be strongly enforced for everyone’s safety.

Thank you for your interest and support! I hope you enjoy whatever holidays you may be celebrating this 

season. Please keep healthy and safe and have a happy new year!

Shading Exercise Update

It's taken much longer than I anticipated but I finished my second shading exercise. This time I wanted to compare the two pencil sets I have. On the right are the two done with Derwent pencils, a set of H - 9B; on the left I used Faber-Castell, a 6H, a 5H and a set of 2H - 8B. This is not a sponsored post. I have mostly used my Faber-Castell pencils, I was given the Derwent pencils but over all I prefer the F-C and that was reaffirmed in this exercise. I generally prefer H/hard pencils to B/soft pencils. I really like the smoothness of the F-C pencils.
As for the exercise itself, practice makes perfect, I'd like to do one more, this time I want to make it as clean and crisp as possible.

Drawing excercises

I've set my sights on some new goals as an artist and what I'd like to achieve will require me to up my game. I've really worked at a lot of things over the years but drawing and other art "fundamentals" if you will, have slipped, so I'm making yet another effort to improve my drawing skills.
This is a very simple and unexciting exercise, I remember doing in on in my first high school art class, possibly in middle school as well. I remember being satisfied with my efforts in high school but it's been a long time. In middle school I used one pencil (usually a .5 mechanical pencil) to achieve the full range of values. I was introduced to the idea of using a range of pencils (hard to soft) to achieve the same effect, I became more aware of the range of papers available and how not to abuse them as I drew.
What I'm taking a long time to say is that I'm still getting used to the idea and process of using a whole range of drawing pencils to create my range of values. I should be much better at this by now but I've never put the work in. Hopefully I can do that and stick with it this time.
Here's my first attempt.

I'll do better on the next one.

Airports and the arts

So I finally got around to pulling the museum maps, etc. Out of my backpack from Paris. I found these two with the others.

A pamphlet of the art in the international terminal at the Dallas - Fort Worth airport and a pamphlet from at the museum space in SFO. I think it's genius to have a museum space in an airport. I spent about six hours at both of these airports and while it was cool to wander around and see the art in Dallas, it was much cooler to see the curated exhibits at SFO. They have four exhibit spaces in different parts of the airport and exhibits rotate around. I think you could even go see them without having to be going anywhere. I think they were outside of security. I wish more airports would do this!