BIG NEWS – times two...

Hip Hop Bebop

watercolor, 12" x 12"

Chris Beck

BIG NEWS item #1:  I got word back in early February that two of my paintings had been selected to hang in the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) annual open exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London between March 25 and April 11, 2015. The RI was founded in 1831 and this annual exhibition is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious in the world.  There was a rigorous selection process: I first had to establish a tax number in the UK, then submit digital images, and finally, submit the actual framed paintings for a second round of jurying. I'm very appreciative of the help I received from an artist friend in England to frame and transport my works to the gallery for the jurying.

In addition to Hip Hop Bebop, I will have a second painting on exhibition – Waiting in the Wings.

Waiting in the Wings

watercolor, 12" x 12"

Chris Beck

BIG NEWS item #2: This past Friday, I learned that my painting "Arabesque" had received the First Place award in the Other Media category of the Richeson75 Small Works show.  In addition to a generous award, I am particularly pleased with juror Molly Johnson's statement: "A vibrant and extremely well executed watercolor. The artist's dynamic design of background and colorful subjects are whimsical yet it is a sophisticated piece of work." She really understands what I'm trying to do. The show is at the Richeson School of Art and Gallery in Kaukauna, Wisconsin from February 23 to April 4, 2015.

Arabesque

watercolor, 9" x 10.5"

Chris Beck

In addition to "Arabesque" I have a second painting on exhibit in the Richeson show – a bit of fun featuring our old friend Ruddy Duck, mixed with type and spattering for textural interest. 

Quack

watercolor & gouache, 9" x 9"

Chris Beck

Eau en Couleurs Watercolor Biennial

Chateau de Bourgogne, Estaimbourg, Belgium

The International Watercolour Biennial organized by Eau en Couleurs, the Belgian Watercolour Centre, opened on August 15 at this castle in Belgium. We had excellent weather for the opening day and enjoyed a lovely reception and wonderful dinner with friends old and new. Catherine De Ryck, president of EeC, and exhibition co-organizer Marie-Paule Dupuis did a fantastic job with the show and made us feel most welcome.

I was very pleased to be one of the invited artists representing the National Watercolor Society. Also attending, and shown with me here, were Laura Mitchell, David Poxon, me (Chris Beck), Jill Witty, and Kris Preslan.

My husband Jim took several panoramic shots of the main exhibition hall, where the NWS invitational paintings were displayed. In the first one, NWS paintings are on the left and back walls -- my painting is next to last on the left wall (toward the middle of the photo). The second shot shows NWS works on the right wall and on the small panel near the window (middle of photo). Hanging on the other walls are paintings by members of the jury and some of the juried artists.

The exhibition was hung throughout the second floor, with additional artists from the US included among the juried artists from every part of the world. Here's one of the adjacent rooms.

And lastly, a few photos of the castle grounds -- the first looking out a window in the main hall (taken on a cloudy day later in the weekend) and the second from a room on the other side of the building. The castle is now the property of the City of Estaimpuis and is used for both cultural and private events -- here the grounds are set up for a wedding reception.

 Hope you enjoyed a small peek at the biennial. I spent about 10 days in Belgium and would return in a heartbeat, but that's material for another post!!

Still kicking!!

Hip Hop Bebop in Splash 15

I was more than a little shocked to realize that it has been nearly five months since I last posted here. Life just has a way of getting in the way sometimes. But I'm still here and things are going great!!  I just received my complimentary copy of Splash 15, Creative Solutions -- where my froggy band appears in company with a lot of wonderful art. Copies of this beautiful book are available through the North Light Online Shop.

Mr. Burbank's Cactus
transparent watercolor, 20" x 18.5"
Chris Beck

You already know that Mr. Burbank's Cactus is in Belgium for Eau en Couleurs, the 2014 International Watercolour Biennial. I just got word today that the painting also qualified as a finalist in The Artist's Magazine annual competition. I'm thrilled to be chosen -- many talented artists enter this competition every year and making the cut is a high honor.

Unfortunately, my summer didn't start out on such a high note.  After months of unhappy decline, my mother passed away on June 1. She was 94 and had been slowly failing over the past couple of years, but it was losing mobility last October that made her life most difficult. I went home to visit her just before she took a turn for the worse -- it was a rough visit, but I'm glad I had the chance to say goodbye.

While we were back in Wisconsin for her funeral, we also managed to squeak in a visit to the reception and dinner that the Transparent Watercolor Society of America holds for its annual exhibition. A thoroughly enjoyable side trip -- filled with fabulous art and lots of laughter with the wonderful friends I've made over the years.

My time since I returned home has been spent making travel arrangements to go to Belgium for Eau en Couleurs.  A rather last-minute decision, so lots of scurrying about getting everything in place. I'm really looking forward to meeting artists I've only known online and I'll try to take photos to share when I can.

Hope you're having a good summer!! I'll see you here again sometime in August!!

International Watercolour Biennial...

Mr. Burbank's Cactus

transparent watercolor, 20" x 18.5"

Chris Beck

Back in January, I received an invitation from Eau en Couleurs – Belgian Watercolour Centre and the National Watercolor Society here in the U.S. to exhibit a painting this summer in the 2014 International Watercolour Biennial in Estaimbourg, Belgium.  I've just completed a fairly large (for me) painting -- 20" x 18.5" -- based on an enormous old cactus that I saw in the Luther Burbank Gardens in Santa Rosa, California.

I want to give a shout-out to Katherine Taylor and John Cogley of Daniel Smith Inc. I met Katherine at a watercolor sampling event at a local art supply store and, a few months later, met John when I went to his fascinating talk on Primatek pigments at an artists' materials expo here in northern California. John is the owner of Daniel Smith Inc., the force behind the company's expansion into new product lines and the worldwide market, and someone who cares about and supports our artistic endeavors with quality materials. Katherine, the sales manager for the wholesale branch of the company, generously gave me watercolor dot cards and other materials so I could try out some new colors.

Cobalt Violet Dark turned out to be indispensable in this painting, along with Quinacridone Deep Gold. Quinacridone Sienna has been my go-to color for mixing darks since I first discovered it ten or twelve years ago, but the star of this particular show is undoubtedly my old favorite -- Green Gold. Thanks, John and Katherine!!

Dippy Duck #6...

Dippy Duck #6

watercolor & gouache, 8" x 8"

Chris Beck

Dippy Duck has been a favorite demo subject -- no surprise there as he is brightly colored and quite distinctive. The title reflects the construction of the set -- the top part is a pepper shaker and the bottom half is a salt dish from which you would dip the salt with a small spoon. Oddly enough, this is the one salt shaker I don't actually own. I discovered this little fellow near the close of an eBay auction and the price was stratospheric -- somewhere around $400 -- quite beyond my budget.

This is another of the pieces I finished during a demo last fall. Like the duck painting I posted last week, the background is spattered with gouache to add sparkle and texture.

Ruddy Duck Revisited...

 Quack

watercolor & gouache, 9" x 9"

Chris Beck

Back in October, I was asked to present the program for one of the local art clubs and decided to take a slightly different approach than I usually do.  Instead of working on a series showing the progression from start to finish on one image, I took several unfinished demo pieces that had accumulated in my studio and played around with them a bit.  I had hoped to share things sooner, but I left early the next morning to visit my mother and help downsize her living situation yet again. By the time I got home a week later, other tasks required my attention and this unfortunately slipped out of mind.

You may remember our old friend Ruddy Duck. Ruddy has starred in a number of demos over the past few years.  This was how he looked at the start of the demo:

I added the word "quack" up the side of the painting, using gouache with some oversize alphabet stamps that I found by chance at Rileystreet Art Supply in Santa Rosa, CA when I went to a product expo event there.

Because it looked pretty stark after I stamped the letters onto the painting, I decided to soften the image with spattered gouache.  I cut a mask for the duck out of low-tack Contact paper (you could also use frisket paper) and pressed it lightly against the image with my fingers.  Then I mixed up various colors of gouache on a spare palette tray and used a flat-bristle toothbrush to spritz it over the background and letters.

I used ultramarine blue, spectrum yellow, flame red, and burnt sienna, along with white to brighten up some of the colors. As you can see, I've customized the toothbrush I use to spatter paint. I used a heat gun to soften the handle just enough to bend it so it has a better angle for mixing paint on the palette.

I have a few other examples that I'll be sharing as soon as possible.  Right now I'm working on a large painting for an invitational watercolor biennial in Belgium this summer, so that takes precedence.

Featured artist in the NWWS Newsletter...

Hip Hop Bebop

watercolor, 12" x 12"

Chris Beck

It's always a delight to hear that someone loves your work, so I was very pleased to get a note from Charlene Collins Freeman this past summer, inviting me to be a featured artist in the Northwest Watercolor Society Newsletter.  Charlene created an excellent online interview, covering everything from my early art experience to my creative process and my thoughts on success, and she has included many of my favorite paintings in her presentation. The feature has just been published in the latest Northwest Watercolor Society Newsletter (Jan/Feb 2014). My thanks to Charlene for the invitation and resulting feature article and also to the newsletter editor, Jeff Waters, for sharing my work.

If you're not familiar with it, NWWS is a fantastic organization with enormous energy and I'm very honored to be recognized in this way. Check out the NWWS website.

My guest column in The Artist's Magazine...

 

 Arabesque

watercolor, 9" x 10.5"

Chris Beck

Now that the January/February 2014 issue of The Artist's Magazine has reached subscribers and is in bookstores, I can share the paintings I created for my guest column on masking fluid. 

The article features expanded steps in the creation of both Arabesque and Pelican Dreams as well as several other illustrations to help you make the most of masking fluid, regardless of your choice of subject matter.  If you aren't a subscriber or don't have easy access to a shop that carries the magazine, you can order a paper or digital copy by clicking here or going to the link in the sidebar.

The addition of gouache (pronounced "gwash" -- opaque watercolor -- for more info, check out this page on the Daniel Smith website) to your watercolorist's bag of tricks opens up possibilities for surface embellishment and the use of lighter colors on top of a dark base of transparent watercolor. In Pelican Dreams, I spattered gouache on the background both to tone it down and add visual complexity. Gouache would be off-limits in certain national exhibitions that require transparency, but there is a long history of using gouache, sometimes referred to as bodycolor, to add highlights and depth to a painting.

 Pelican Dreams

watercolor and gouache, 8" x 6"

Chris Beck

Schnozz made his debut here about a month ago, and is just back for an encore visit. He's painted strictly with transparent watercolor.

Schnozz

watercolor, 6" x 6"

Chris Beck

In other news -- I'm sorry to report that I have closed my Zazzle shop.  I discovered quite by accident that they had disabled the design controls I put on my mugs and stamps and allowed buyers to apply the images to different products in the same category. That meant the images were being distorted to fit shapes they were never intended to be displayed on. After going around and around with customer service, I learned there was no option except to re-post every item and reset the controls. And since Zazzle has periodically made other changes that required me to repost some of my products, I have no guarantee that they wouldn't disable my controls again. I cannot constantly monitor something that was supposed to be a fun, no-hassle way to share my work.

And more sketches...

I've been playing more with Paper 53 on my iPad.  This is just a quick Christmasy scene that I made up -- mostly so I could make snowflake dots!!  I'm learning a lot about getting deep color, using the tools with white or light colors to lift out areas (the glow around the stars and candles, for example), and generally having way too much fun!!

Earlier in the week, I did a favorite little critter from my past. There's a long story behind my interest in frogs and someday when I'm feeling nostalgic, I'll share it here.  I used the frog drawing to try out the felt pen tool and also to work on my smooth washes.  I'm pretty happy with the results!!

I also got another stylus after reading reviews online.  My new stylus is a TruGlide -- with a fun red case and a microfiber tip -- and, happily, it was quite inexpensive. It zooms around on the screen like an Olympic figure skater and is great with the drawing/painting app. Between the Sensu brush and the new stylus, I should be able to create a wide range of effects.

Onward!! Have a great weekend!!

More fun with the iPad...

 

Almost every year, my fascination with Chinese Lanterns leads me to buy a bunch at the local supermarket floral department with the intention of sketching them or including them in a painting. And every year, I eventually tire of them sometime in December and discard them -- mission unaccomplished.  Not this year!! I am so intrigued with the Paper 53 app on my iPad that I sat down after dinner the other night and came up with this little drawing.  I'm learning as I go.  The short video tutorials included with the app cover a few basic operations and the rest is just a matter of experimenting.  I discovered I really like the pencil tool in the expanded tool kit: although it doesn't give quite the same control as a real pencil, the line appeals to me.

In the last drawing, I used the "loup" feature which allows you to create a magnified area so you can add text or fine details to a drawing. In this one, I discovered that I could reverse the areas that got a bit too dark by selecting the pencil tool and a cream color from the palette and cross-hatching the areas that I wanted to de-emphasize. Overlaying them with lighter color washes mellowed out the line work.  I'm still not happy with my handling of background washes -- they're a bit too splotchy and clumsy looking for my tastes. That's my next challenge.