Pastel Society of New Jersey

This is a photo from the fall meeting of the Pastel Society of New Jersey, showing the current members of the board. That's me in the aqua shirt there. :-) I'm now the 2nd Vice President of the PSNJ. What fun. We have our annual juried show coming up, with receiving this Saturday. If my painting gets juried in one more time I'll gain "Signature" status with the PSNJ. Keeping fingers crossed.

Update: My painting *did* get accepted into the show so I'm now officially a Signature Member. Our Juror was Rae Smith, currently president of the Pastel Society of America, so it was both a pleasure and an honor to meet her, and have lunch with her on Saturday. She did a great job picking the prize winners for our show.

Glen Ridge Congregational Church

Glen Ridge Congregational Church is the church I grew up in since childhood, and where I currently still sing in the choir, and act as Secretary of the Church Council. They are having a big fundraiser event next month, and have asked parishioners and others to donate items to be auctioned off. I was asked if I could donate a painting, and I found one I decided to donate. But then I got the idea that it might be a very cool idea to also donate a painting of the church itself.

So this morning I did this painting of the church. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and it's already been professionally framed. Talk about service! I dropped it off this morning with Ray at Livingston Gallery and he called back this afternoon to say it was finished already. Wow, great prices and great service too. :-)

Anyway, this is my typical 9x12, done on white Wallis, various pastels, but quite a number of them Unisons and Terry Ludwigs.

To be a Writer you must Write

Well, that's what they say about being a writer at any rate. I'm not a writer. :-) But they say if you want to be one you must write and write, even if you are not feeling inspired. I guess the same is true about being a painter. Sometimes you are not feeling inspired but you should paint something anyway. I was on such a high after I finished my "grandpa" painting, as I was so happy with it, that nothing else appealed to me to even attempt.

So finally I decided I had to be like that writer, and just *do* something - and something totally different. It was my last day up at the farm - so I just grabbed the first three objects that came to hand - without any care about their relationship (if any, LOL). So that included a small pumpkin, my birding binoculars, and the little jar I keep pastel dust in. Took those three, plunked them in an intertwined sort of way down on the kitchen table, and then painted them.

No it's not great art, but it was a good exercise. 9x12 Art Spectrum paper. This one goes into the drawer rather than getting framed, but it was a good exercise. Grandpa is going to a professional framer when I get home though!

Grandpa

Last weekend I went to a lovely wedding in High Falls, NY - for my daughter-in-law's sister. My grandson John, while only 13 months old, was supposed to be the ring bearer! Well, that didn't exactly work out as planned, LOL, but it's too long a story to tell here.

However the day of the wedding itself was just incredibly lovely and I spent the morning with everyone as they were getting ready for the big event in the afternoon, and just happened to capture a great shot of John walking across the grounds with his grandfather, my daughter-in-law's dad.

The instant I saw the photo I knew I wanted to paint the scene. And I wanted so badly for it to come out well. I was so sure I would screw it up, but I spent most of the day on it, and so far I'm still pretty darn happy with how it turned out!

This was done on a sheet of white 9x12 Wallis, various pastels.