ISSA Show!

The annual International Society of Scratchboard Artists annual show opens next week in Vancouver, BC!  

I have three pieces in the show (shown below, you might have seen them in previous posts).  It is going to be an amazing collection of scratchboard art from all over the world - so if you have any opportunity to go check it out I strongly encourage it!!

(Click the image to go to the show's online preview!)

I feel incredibly fortunate to be a signature member of the ISSA.  I love that beyond being just a member, I actually know the founders of the society and was around (virtually, as is the way with things these days) during its conception.  The ISSA folks have been doing great things to help advance scratchboard art as it's own, legitimate fine art medium and among those things is the annual 'scratchboard exclusive' show that they hold.  

 "A Dog Named DaVinci" 8x8" (c) Pam Boutilier

Those not involved with this medium might not realize that it can be a tough one to categorize, and most juried art shows (the kind that help you gain recognition and sales and that are often a part of an artist's professional life) don't give much thought toward scratchboard art.  It's not that scratchboard art is refused or anything, it's just that you usually have to specify what medium or category your art is.  

 "Intensity" 4x16" (c) Pam Boutilier

Often the choices fall along the lines of 'Oil Painting', 'Watercolour', 'Pastel' in which 'Scratchboard' is rarely an option... so 'Other' it is.  If they categorize more generally: 'Painting', 'Drawing', 'Mixed Media' do you choose drawing because it's a line-oriented medium?  But the colour is painted on, and for my whiteboards the background is all brush-applied ink.. so does that make it a 'Painting'?  Not really.  Very often we are left to our own best interpretation and hoping that the jury panel agrees.  There has been no standardization.  This is a frustration for scratchboard artists, but also might be a turn-off for other artists starting out in the medium.  Part of the goal of the ISSA is to make scratchboard art a recognized medium in its own right and alleviate some of these problems.

"Storm on the Horizon" 4x4" (c) Pam Boutilier

The annual ISSA show is a fabulous event!  Not only is it a one-of-a-kind collection of some of the best scratchboard art from all over the world, but if you are lucky enough to attend in person (which sadly I will not be this year) there are workshops with some amazing artists.  I've met and hung out with these folks and can vouch for the fact that you'd be hard pressed to find a more warm, friendly, down-to-earth and interesting group of people.  If you are an artist and at all interested in scratchboard I strongly encourage you to try to attend the ISSA workshops (or you can purchase DVDs of previous workshops on the website here).

Thank you!

I just want to send a thank-you out to the cosmos for all the people who so graciously accommodated me today - they won't likely be reading this blog, but I felt the need to express the gratitude in my heart (beyond the feeble words I gave them).  

Thank you, and I hope I can pay the good karma forward :)

Oh fleeting youth....

It's official... I'm old.

It's not that I celebrated my 38th birthday last week.  Moreso that the birthday gave me an opportunity to hang out with members of my family who are, let's say a level or two higher than me in this RPG we call life.  That, combined with a looming deadline for the upcoming ISSA show, made me painfully aware of something that has been creeping up on me for some time.  I'm getting old.  Or at least my lenses are.

Last summer at a conference I noticed myself occasionally leaning my head back to look at people I was chatting with.  Meh, whatever... I work from home and don't usually have to stand and talk to people, I was probably just getting more introverted right?

Then in the months that followed I started slowly picking up momentum on my various (and, oh, there are many... but that's another story) scratchboards, but I was finding the task more tedious and less fun than I remember.  Was I just spreading myself too thin with other activities?  Was I losing interest in the medium? Not really, I still loved the idea of scratchboard but the execution was becoming a bit of a drag.

Then I go do dinner with my family and amidst the typical showing of photos on various phones I was confronted with a new frequency of the ladies pulling out of glasses to facilitate the seeing of said photos.  "When did you first start getting farsighted?" I asked tentatively, recalling the familiar scene of my mother holding something at arms' length in order to read it.  The reply was a chilling "Oh, around 40".

* sigh *

Then I came home and started to prepare for the ISSA deadline... and it became uncomfortably clear (or rather... blurry) that I can no longer focus on scratchboards at my typical working distance, and so what I've been doing is working further and further from the board.  For some forms of art that might be okay, but with the fine detail of what I do there is a distance where I can focus on the board but I just can't see the subtleties of the lines!

So I will be making an optometrist appointment.. but in the meantime I picked up a pair of cheapo reading glasses at the drugstore, and lo... I can see my scratchboard!!  Scratching when I can see what the heck I'm doing is a LOT more fun, and I was able to get a TON of work done in the past couple of days.  Unfortunately I look like this...

 
With these little glasses I could see the scratchboard but then I also had to look at my reference... suddenly I understood why the iconic 'old lady' always wore her glasses on the end of her nose, she just didn't have bifocals!  To anyone over 40 reading this, go ahead and laugh.. I honestly have never thought about the concept of bifocals or what it would be like to need them.  To anyone under 40 reading this... your turn will come!! Also, get off my lawn!!  * shakes fist *

I hope to post more often as I have some great things happening with my art this year...  I'm on a mission to develop my 'artist's voice', I'm revamping my website, I'm hoping to start taking pet portrait commissions again at some point - but it's all going to be different than how I've done it in the past, and I'm SO excited about it all!  But more on that to follow... for now, to prove that I ~am~ working, here's a quick shot of my current workspace (with a portion of the works-in-progress that I'm currently grappling with).

Now, however, I need to go have some fiber and get to bed.

Life Drawing Day

Finally I was able to hitch onto a life drawing class locally, it's been quite awhile but it was as enjoyable as ever.   Nothing helps you loosen up like a bunch of 1 minute poses! 

I keep meaning to do gesture drawing of my cats... it occurred to me today that they'd probably be happy to give me a dozen 30 second poses followed by one three hour pose.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here are some of the final sketches from today's session (I won't horrify you with the gesture drawings! (The paper size is 18 x 24" for reference).