Volume 52 Issue 8

This Project is funded in part by the City of Richardson through the Richardson Arts Commission

April 16, 20196:30- 8:45 PM Richardson

Public LibraryDemonstration Artist

Walt Davis - Watercolor

Walt Davis, signature mem-ber and past president of the Southwestern Watercolor Society, began painting in watercolor over thirty years ago. He studied first with Faith Helen Foust at Eastfield Community College then with Bud Biggs.

His painting, Katy-did, Katy-didn't, won the Margery Soroka Memorial Award in the 2013 American Watercolor Society competition in New York and was included in the Society’s traveling show that year. Davis became a signature member of the Society in 2015. Davis has won multiple awards from the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies and the Southwestern Watercolor Society.

He later attended workshops with Doug Walton, Louise Cadillac, Carole Barnes, Frank Webb, Mark Mehaffey Richard Joseph Zbukvitch, and noted bird artist John P. O’Neil.

Davis has taught watercolor, figure drawing, and plein air sketching at Eastfield Community College, Amarillo College, Panhandle Art Center, San Angelo Museum of Art, and in his studio in Commerce. He has conducted demonstrations and workshops in Amarillo, Brownsville, Dallas, San Angelo and nine other Texas cities. His paintings hang in private collections in Washington State, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, and cities throughout Texas.

His work has been accepted into exhibitions of the American Watercolor Society, Southwestern Watercolor Society, Texas Watercolor Society, Richardson Civic Art Society, Greenville Art League, and Western Federation of Watercolor Societies. 1

MARCH DEMONSTRATION Jo Moncrief — Acrylic Pour Demonstration

Jo is a self-taught artist. She has taken painting and ceramics courses in college and has taken workshops and classes from artists whose artwork she admires.

She began her demonstration by first making sure the area, table and artists were well-protected for spills and splatters in a pour. She explained that she uses inex-pensive plastic bowls from Dollar Tree for paint, which can later be peeled out of the bowls to use and incorpo-rate in other artwork if desired. She also uses condi-ment plastic bottles or sports bottles to hold paint and paint combinations which can be mixed in bowls, or poured directly from the bottles. She uses golf tees to plug these bottles and puts Vaseline on the tips so they don’t get stuck from dried paint. She has found that the best mixture of paint is 3 fingers from a tube of paint, 2 fingers of pouring medium and 1 finger of distilled wa-ter. The paint needs to have body and not be too thin. Some describe the consistency as that of warm honey. She saves a lot of money on paint by reading paint la-bels and finding cheaper paint that uses the very same ingredients as more expensive ones. For example, her favorite yellow is PY83 which she mixes with her base colors to make many other colors. Creative Inspirations is a brand she uses often. The first letter P is the abbre-viation for pigment. The letter (or letters) indicates the color. Y means yellow, R means red, B means blue, O means orange, V means purple, G means green, Br means brown, Bk means black and W means white. The number identifies the chemical formula of the pig-ment. Different brands have different names for their colors, but the pigment identification will be the same regardless of the brand name.

She begins each painting as a wet into wet pouring of colors. This method allows colors to explode, mingle and blend with each other - creating magical, unique and unpredictable effects that simply cannot be painted by hand. She follows the same basic design that works well in realistic or nonrepresentational works. Allowing the paint to flow, she uses composition, hues, values, principles, and elements of design, contrast and the rule of thirds while working through a painting to final-ity. She often checks for a good balance of values with grey scale photos on her phone. If two colors are too much the same value, she adjusts a color to make one lighter or darker than the other. She tries to stay around 3 values. She’ll also use a notan of a photograph to get inspiration for an abstract design. A notan is an ideal type of study for finding the shapes and patterns that serve as the foundation of every composition. Notan is a Japanese word that means “light-dark balance.”

Her color palette is very simple: She uses an 80/20 ra-tion of warm and cool colors in her paintings. She often uses a complimentary color of the dominant color for an underpainting. Any color that shows through is exciting. She suggests learning about Munsell colors. There is agood article on the Munsell color wheel at https://munsell.com/color-blog/visual-analytics-color-harmony-complementary-analogous/. She advised artists to iden-tify the painting’s bias—what color does it lean to-wards?

She sketches in charcoal lines to map out the rule ofthirds for her basic composition, trying not to make the center of a painting the focus. To make texture, she’ll use modeling paste on top of the gessoed canvas. Shecarves styrophone plates to use as ink pads on deli pa-per to make various textures that she often incorporates in her paintings, too.

Upon completion, her artwork is sealed in a UV polymer varnish that protects the surface from dust and dirt and helps to prevent fading due to ultraviolet radiation.

In 2016, two of her paintings, Turbulence & Tranquility and Searching for What Was, were accepted into North Light Books’ fourth annual Best of Acrylic competition Acrylic Works 4: Captivating Color! The book was released in May, 2017. The artwork accepted in the book shows excellence and originality in acrylic paint achieved via a variety of styles and subjects.

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Her color palette is very simple: She uses an 80/20 ration of warm and cool colors in her paintings. She often uses a complimentary color of the dominant color for an underpainting. Any color that shows through is exciting. She suggests learning about Munsell colors. There is a good article on the Mun-sell color wheel at https://munsell.com/color-blog/visual-analytics-color-harmony-complementary-analogous/. She advised artists to identify the paint-ing’s bias—what color does it lean towards?

She sketches in charcoal lines to map out the rule of thirds for her basic composition, trying not to make the center of a painting the focus. To make texture, she’ll use modeling paste on top of the gessoed canvas. She carves styrophone plates to use as ink pads on deli paper to make various textures that she often incorporates in her paintings, too.

When she pours onto a previously painted canvas, she’ll often wet the surface to help the paint flow better. To help direct the pours, she’ll tip the canvas, use tools like putty knives, brushes of all sizes, and sometimes sprays drier paint with alcohol to create interesting patterns. She encourages experimenting as happy accidents often lead the paintings into un-directed designs. She has used additions of people, dogs or cats to create a center of attention on an abstract if it needs it.

She suggests stopping when the painting is 95% done, as more people overwork a painting than not.

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Art Demonstrations &

Show Schedule

Watercolor

Acrylic / Mixed Media

DEMO ARTIST

April 16, 2019

May 21, 2019

General Meeting and Art Demonstrations are 6:30p.m.– 8:45 p.m. Third Tuesday of the month, September through May

Basement Meeting Room, Richardson Public Library

PLEASE NOTE: The Awards for the Spring Show will be presented at the beginning of our regular meeting, with a slide-show of the winning artwork.

MEETING DEMONSTRATIONS

DATE

MEDIUM

Walt Davis

Ron Stephens

SHOWS

Regional Show

Huffhines Rec Center

Heights Rec Center

CIvic Center

Linda Clary

Denise Weeren

Denise Weeren

Jonesy McConnell

Debbie Langham

Mickey Archer

SHOW CHAIRMAN CO-CHAIRMANDATE

Apr 29 - May 28

Various

Various

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Jacklyn Blackerby

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Personal Art History of RCAS Members

I have been interested in art since a very young age and fell in love with watercolor while in col-lege. I graduated from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor’s in Interior Design and double minor in Architecture and Studio Art. Upon graduating in 2017, I moved to Dallas with my husband and our two dogs, Scout and Taco. I recently decided to pursue art as my career, fo-cusing on watercolor painting. I am inspired by nature and architecture and I love to capture the details and memories that make places unique in my art. I’m excited to have the opportunity to be a part of RCAS and become more involved in the art community here in Dallas!

53rd ANNUAL REIGIONAL JURIED ART EXHIBITON

and SALE May 1st to May 28th

Juror: Gene Dillard

Eisemann Center Green Mezzanine Gallery 2351 Performance Drive

Awards Reception Sunday, May 12 7:00 to 9:00 pm

Refreshments and Live Music

For more information www.richardson-arts.org

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PAINTING OF THE MONTH WINNERS

MARCH

Thanks to Asel Art Supply and The Wiley Art Gallery for their continued support of the RCAS Painting of the Month competition.

Please Support our Sponsors

John O. Cheney

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Richardson Civic Art Society P.O. Box 831027 Richardson, TX 75083-1027

Message From The President — Mickey Archer

Mickey

It looks like Spring might finally be getting here, even though it is cold and windy as I write this. Our Spring paint-out is coming up quickly and it is a good way to stretch your legs, dust off the ole pallet and brushes and see some of your RCAS friends. We plan to gather in the plaza area at Cityline (The State Farm complex ) on Saturday, April 13th. at 10:00AM for our Spring paint-out. If you’ve never gone to a paint-out or think you don’t have the right gear or say to yourself “I don’t paint that way”, just come out, bring a sketch pad and enjoy meeting your “Buds” for a morning of fun. There are a variety of scenes and settings to paint and sketch and plans are to paint for a couple of hours, have a short “show and tell” of our masterpieces then go to lunch at one of the local restaurants.

The Spring show is still up at the library and I’m always impressed with the number of really talented members we have in our midst. We will announce the winners at our April meeting and if you’ve entered this year, who knows; maybe you will pick up a nice award. Make a point to see the exhibit on the third floor of the library.

Take-in for our annual Regional show at the Eisemann Center is April 29th. and opens to the public on May 1st. This year’s show may be one of the strongest exhibits we’ve had in a long time. The awards reception is set for Sunday, May 12th. from 7:00 to 9:00PM at the Eisemann Center and you can’t miss it.

Happy Trails”

Changing of the Guard. Yes, it’s time to vote on next year’s slate of officers and chair people and if you’ve never served or it’s been a while since you’ve served, here is your opportunity.

What I’ve realized about having served in various positions over these past few years is how many members I’ve come to know and enjoy. RCAS is a totally volunteer organization and if you are new to the metroplex or just letting your friends do all the “heavy lifting”, maybe it’s time to pay back. We do have a few openings left for next year so just talk to one of the officers or chair people and we will get you “plugged-in”.

MAYRon Stephens

Acrylic/Mixed Media

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