Well, it finally happened. I’m about to enter into my first Art Show. Yes that’s right, I’m entering the 10th Annual Student Art Show sponsored by the Fredericksburg Art Guild. The show runs from 6 February 2020 to 1 March 2020 and will be held at the Art Guild located at 308 E. Austin in Fredericksburg, TX.
OK, so now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s look at what I’ve been up to over the past month. As you can see my last post was in early December of 2019 and like all of you we had a busy holiday season and things are finally starting to slow down a bit.
We were blessed with several visitors over the past few weeks and that gave us the opportunity to show off Fredericksburg a bit. One of the highlights of this quaint Texas town is the art community. Fredericksburg and the Texas Hill Country have been a bit of a mecca for artists for some time.
On the first Friday of each month, several galleries and businesses host the First Friday Artwalk and in February, the Fredericksburg Art Guild will highlight art by students of Truby Hardin (oil painting) and Nan Henke (watercolor) who have taken classes from them during 2019. I’m a student of Nan’s and she’s been extremely helpful and supportive with my fledgling art career.
This past week Ilene and I have been gathering materials to properly prepare my paintings for display in the professionally judged competition. We gathered frames, matting, backing, wire and hardware then I spent several days cleaning glass, deciding what color mat for each painting, then adding the hanging hardware.
Competition rules allow me to enter up to 7 paintings and I have chosen ones that I feel show the judges and patrons a good range of my abilities. In fact, if you’ve kept up with my posts you’ll recognize a number of them.
I’m also happy to announce that some of my paintings are on display at a new restaurant in Fredericksburg, James Brothers on Main. The owner of the Buffalo Nickel restaurant in Fredericksburg opened his newest addition to local cuisine a couple months ago and as part of his ambiance he includes art by local artists.
But I didn’t spend the week just getting ready for the competition. I also took some time to work on a landscape painting from a photo my brother Mark took in Washington state as well as a first attempt at a different portrait technique from an artist named Liron Yanconsky.
I also worked on a wash technique for lightening bolts. These techniques help me with learning just how much water to add to pigments to get different effects from light to dark and vice versa. I’ll be using the lightening bolts in a painting I’m planning to submit to our local theater during their production of Young Frankenstein. More on that later.
That’s about it, time to head out for some volunteer work at our local food pantry. While I’m there, why don’t you go make some art!