Highlights of August 2016 meeting

 We had a lot of stuff to talk about!

Recognition

• Denise Howard and Ranjini Venkatachari, both won $800 Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the CPSA International Exhibition (and Denise’s sold at the show) 
• Jackie Chang for five-year Merit Award at CPSA International Exhibition
• Mike Purdy for acceptance into Lily Tomlin show at FE Gallery in Sacramento
• Geoff Sargeant for $3500 Best Pastel, Charcoal, Pencil or Ink at St. Kevins Catholic College show in Melbourne, Australia (and the school purchased his drawing)
• Paula Greer for Best of Class in Alameda county fair
• Tracey Chaykin and Denise Howard for Award of Merit in state fair show
• Denise Howard for her new Jump Start kit from Ann Kullberg
• Andrea Myers for her article in the June Ann Kullberg’s COLOR magazine
• Ranjini Venkatachari for finalist in All Media competition in The Artist’s Magazine

 Old Business

Laurie Miille created a sample redesign of our chapter brochure which looks GREAT!

We had some shuffling on the chapter board since the last meeting, which started with Membership Director Maryann Kot moving to the Chicago area:

• Maria Lemery replaced Maryann Kot as Membership Director 
• Paula Greer replaced Maria Lemery as Vice President
• Laurie Miille has replaced Jackie Chang as Treasurer 
• Andrea Myers is our new Webmaster (in addition to Hospitality Coordinator)

We are ramping up to the opening of our chapter show, “Explorations in Colored Pencil V” at the Coastal Arts League Gallery in Half Moon Bay!   The entries are all in and we will have 29 artworks by 13 artists (2 of them non-members).  We will be hanging the show on August 27 and the show will run August 28 - September 24.  The reception and awards announcements will be on Saturday, September 10 from 5:00 - 7:00 PM. 

Earlier that day at 2:00 Denise Howard will give a presentation/demo in the gallery, "Speeding Up Colored Pencil", free and open to the public.

Paula Greer is organizing our booth for the Livermore ArtWalk on Saturday, October 8, 11 AM - 5 PM.

Our next two-day workshop will be Amy Lindenberger!  She will be here April 15-16, 2017 and will teach "Using Colored Pencil on Black Surfaces" one day and "Combining Watercolor Pencil with Colored Pencil" the other day.  Although you might think "Oh, I'm not interested in black paper or watercolor pencils", you owe it to yourself to learn about all these "tools" because you never know when a subject or idea will come up that would be just perfect for one of them!  We want to start composing advertising and the registration form soon; we just need a volunteer to raise his/her hand.

New Business

Paula Greer, Maria Lemery and Janki Chokshi are taking on the task of updating our chapter by-laws.  Once the document is ready, we'll vote on it via a SurveyMonkey poll so that everyone (not just those in attendance at a meeting) can vote.

Other

Laurie Miille is taking over Maryann Kot's drawing classes at the Bothwell Arts Center.

Ranjini Venkatachari is starting "Colored Pencil Possibilities" ongoing classes at the Marketplace in San Ramon.

Mike Purdy has generously donated his Icarus board to our chapter!  The tentative plan is for it to be available for temporary checkout (like a library book) from Laurie Miille at the Bothwell Arts Center starting right now, and then at the November meeting we will raffle it off.  It’s in like-new condition, only used a couple of times; Mike said he’s found that heat just isn’t his thing so it’s been taking up space in his closet.  Thank you, Mike!

We raffled two big convention-goodie bags that included things like an electric pencil sharpener, a set of 24 watercolor pencils, a set of graphite pencils, drawing pads, erasers, a small bottle of Gamsol, an artist apron, and much more.  The lucky winners were Enri Leon and Mary Adamson.

Presentation

Our scheduled presenter, Roger Arno, had to cancel due to illness.  So instead, Paula Greer and I did a tag-team presentation about the workshop we took at the convention taught by Tracy Frein.  Tracy works with colored pencil on drafting film, but in a different manner than most artists who use this combination.  He calls it “drawing by subtraction”, because he first creates a “ground” of colored pencil evenly all over the surface of the film and then erases away to create the drawing.  It goes very quickly and produces a very interesting look.  To see some examples of his award-winning work, check out his website:  https://tracyfrein.faso.com/

“Show and Tell” was as interesting as ever!  From first-ever colored pencil drawings, to drawings on drafting film, to works in progress on colored paper, to a hard-earned lesson from Paula Greer about the importance of UV (museum) glass for preventing one’s colors from fading, even if the art is never in direct sunlight.

Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be Saturday, November 5, 11:00 - 3:00 at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore.  Our presenter will be Roger Arno, a colored pencil artist from Saratoga who had an amazing career as an artist for NASA. 

Happy drawing!
Denise Howard, CPSA, CPX
President, CPSA DC210 San Francisco

Below are some photos from the meeting....

Denise demonstrates Tracy Frein's process for preparing drafting film with dissolved Prismacolor Art Stix

Paula demonstrates Tracy Frein's "drawing by subtraction" process on the prepared drafting film

Vivi Leon and Mary Adamson were the happy raffle winners of big bags of art supply goodies

DC 210 Represents!

CPSA DC 210 San Francisco was well represented at the CPSA convention in Tacoma, WA last week!  As mentioned in an earlier post, five members have pieces in the International Exhibition (which continues until August 13 at The American Art Company in Tacoma).  Seven members attended the convention....

Ranjini Venkatachari, Gemma Gylling, Denise Howard, Paula Greer, J.Y. Chang, Mike Menius.  Not shown: Janki Chokshi.

There were two $800 Awards for Outstanding Achievement, and our members took home both of them!

Michael W. Monroe, Director Emeritus of the Bellevue Art Museum in Bellevue, WA and a former curator at the Renwick Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, was the juror for the 2016 CPSA International Exhibition. He gave a talk/critique at the gallery and this is what he said about Denise's "Tree of Kintsugi ", which he had awarded one of the two Awards for Oustanding Achievement.