Welcome to the Blog Of CPSA DC210 San Jose

CPSA District Chapter 210, San Jose, CA

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Highlights of November 2015 meeting

Our November meeting actually happened on Halloween (October 31), so chapter president Denise Howard dressed accordingly, thanks to Paula Greer who lent her hat!

Recognition

We recognized several members for service and accomplishments:
  • Gemmaa Gylling, as she steps down as our chapter webmaster
  • Ranjini Venkatachari, as she steps up to be our chapter webmaster
  • Mike Purdy for inclusion in Ann Kullberg's upcoming "CP Cats ans Dogs" book
  • Mike Menius for Honorable Mention in CPSA ArtSpectations
  • Gemma Gylling for her podcast interview by Sharpened Artist
  • Explorations in Colored Pencil IV winners: 1st place Gemma Gylling, 2nd place Denise Howard, 3rd place J.Y. Chang 
  • Denise Howard for 3 pieces in OA Small Works Invitational in St. Louis
  • Denise Howard for 2 pieces accepted in Coastal Arts League’s annual juried show in Half Moon Bay
  • Denise Howard for 4 pieces in SVOS Invitational in Los Altos
  • Maryann Kot for Honorable Mention in the Pleasanton Art League All Member Annual show

Old Business

Our biennial election results were unanimous, so our chapter officers for November 1, 2015 to October 31, 2017 will continue to be:
  • President: Denise Howard
  • Vice-President: Maria Lemery
  • Secretary: Mike Purdy
  • Treasurur: J.Y. Chang
  • Membership: Maryann Kot
Andrea Myers gave an update on the plans for our first-ever "drawing retreat", which will bee at The Sequoia Retreat Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Felton, during March 2016.  Several members have expressed an interest, but of course expense is a concern, so the more who sign up, the cheaper it will be!

Our two-day Ann Kullberg portrait workshop is April 16-17, 2016 at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore; don’t wait to sign up, because it is advertised on her website and her workshops fill up fast!  Here’s the workshop description.  To register, click here and select Livermore/Pleasanton from the popup list.  Anyone is welcome, it is not restricted to CPSA members.

New Business

We discussed the possibility of hosting an upcoming CPSA national convention.  The last time we hosted was 2010, and since only so many of the 22 chapters are in locales with facilities that can properly accommodate both the International Exhibition and the convention, our turn will come up again soon.  The consensus was, yes, let's offer to host!  So Denise will inform national, and we'll see if they have a year in mind.  The next couple of years' sites have already been determined so we don't have to do anything more now.

Denise reminded everyone that annual national and chapter membership renewal is now due, as it runs from November 1 to October 31.

Two significant show entry deadlines are coming up:

Presentation

Shone Chacko is an incredibly good scratchboard artist from San Jose.  He recently won Best in Show at the Cupertino Food & Wine show, which included $1000 cash award.  We were fortunate to have him introduce us to his favorite medium!  His wife and two kids even helped him set up.  He brought several examples of his work; he said the best ones are in a show in San Jose right now, but these looked pretty darned good to us.  Scratchboard is very complementary to colored pencil because of its extreme attention to fine detail and the fact that you can use colored pencil to colorize a scratchboard drawing.  Shone brought sample scratchboards and scratch tools for everyone to take home and try out, compliments of Ampersand, the maker of the boards.  He showed us the wide variety of tools he uses, from special scratchboard tools, to steel wool, to tattoo needles, to surgical scalpel blades.  Most of these things he finds for sale cheap on Amazon!  There are special inks made by Ampersand for colorizing scratchboard; he prefers these over Derwent Inktense pencils, which are known for their saturated color and water-solubility.  Just a tiny drop of ink, diluted with a lot of water, covers a large area.  After scratching an area, he mixes the color on a plate and applies it very sparingly with a brush, then waits for it to dry completely before scratching more. For the demo he started a drawing of a cat, beginning with its eye; the board was about 8”x10” and he said that if he was doing it on his own (not demoing) he could complete it in only a couple of hours!  He also displayed a work-in-progress of a leopard that is about 20” x 30”, the largest piece he has done to date.  It is mostly finished even though he estimated he has only spent 30 hours on it so far.  The speed with which such detailed work can be completed raised a lot of eyebrows among our group that is so used to the slowness of colored pencil!  Although the scratching sound can be a little too similar to fingernails on a chalkboard for some folks to handle, I think there will be some scratchboard experiments at our next “show and tell”….
Scratchboard artist Shone Chacko demonstrates his process
Shone starts with the eyes

Here are a couple of photos from "show and tell", when we learn what everyone else has been up to with their pencils, what problems they've encountered, what techniques they've been trying, etc.!

Paula Greer is trying an underpainting of graphite with a Duralar overlay for color.  Note her candy-corn fingernails, for Halloween!
Winifred Scott tried a Yosemite landscape on sueded mat board

Next meeting


Our next meeting will be Saturday, February 20, 2016, same time, same place.  The program is still TBD but since we didn’t have time to view the DVD of the 2015 International Exhibition and Explore This! 11 on Saturday, we will include it for the February meeting.