Paducah Art and Music Festival
I met a few artists at the Paducah Art and Music Festival
There were a few artists that did well at the "Paducah Art and Music Festival '08" In general though the number of artists was too large for most of them to do as well as they were accustomed. Time will sort it out I suppose.
The quality of the artists was really superb. Like all such art shows, patrons have regional tastes and there were many artists who didn't click with this crowd. The turnout was good but not good enough for the number of quality artists that showed up. Tuning the "artists to client ratio" may help the show attract and keep the quality of entrants in the future. I will have to talk to the show organizers.
Crystal Carol does Indian art and really does well at south west shows. She paints on hides and textured surfaces and recreates cave paintings. she also sells jewelry with her drawings on pendents. She does a lot of horses and figured she would do OK in Kentucky. Well Paducah, is somewhat west of Horse country so Crystal had to survive mostly on jewelry sales. I think she made expenses. Crystal found out I had made Beads in the 1970's and I ended up trading a couple of hanks for one of her prints. She said I made the most unique beads she had ever seen. I'm such a sucker for flattery. I found out she has been featured on HGTV Art Across America. Way to go Crystal.
Lu Fuller has her studio in Maysville, KY. She is a nationally recognized and very skilled watercolorist. Her work reminded me of Christmas card prints and when I asked her she said she had in fact done many cards for Hallmark.
Lu has a pretty face. I debated leaving out some of the lines around her eyes but found they were too important for capturing the life and expression in her face.
Thank you, Lu.
I met Mark Hanna in front of Bonnie Berry's BBerryCreative shop in downtown Paducah during the "Downtown After Dinner" activities. This is a regular Saturday night event during the summer in paducah. Bands and street entertainers set up on Broadway and strut their stuff for an appreciative audience. (or not as the crowd votes with their feet.) Mark was doing quick sketches of people who would sit for him. It is something I would like to be able to do. Currently I use the computer like a crutch using the mouse or stylus to edit the lines until I fee they are right. Free hand in real time is real scary because your mistakes are so public. I am getting better at learning what to draw and maybe if I practice I'll someday get the skill to do it. Mark did a sketch of me and also of Bonnie. He did Bonnie in about 10 minutes. I reached over and took a snapshot of Bonnie. Then in the privacy of home and the freedom of several hours I did my own version.
This is Mark's version done in about 10 minutes. I think for street entertainment this is about the upper limit of peoples attention span. Better would be 5 min. This will take a lot of practice and real economy of line. Mark's drawing is good but in it Bonnie looks much younger. Bonnie is my age and there is a certain dignity of age and experience that gets lost if you try to draw too much flattery.
I was reaching over Mark's head to get my reference photo so my angle is a bit different. Bonnie is one of the hardest people to photograph I know. Every time the camera comes out her face goes tense. This is the best drawing of her I have done so far. I think the implied curvature of the front of her left shoulder done by foreshortening part of the width of the neck ring in her sweatshirt was a nice touch.
Christine Columbarini works wonders in clay with her husband Louis at their studio in Tennessee
This is my first attempt to show someone with tinted glasses. For some reason one of her eyes appears bigger. It is as if she were farsighted in her right eye and not the left and the prescriptions are different for each eye. Either that or I just goofed. It is also possible that the faint images of her eyes that show in my reference photo confused me. Should have taken more photos. Her watch seems to say 3:10 but my photo data said it was 4:35. Haven't figured that one out.