Untitled (someone's house) pastel, 12x12 inches, sold
This is my First Place win from Saturday's Quick Draw Event in Historic Downtown Marble Falls, Texas! Check in was at 12:30pm but the starting horn wasn't going to blow until 2pm, and we'd have 90 minutes to paint any scene between 1st and 5th Streets on Main. It was a glorious sunny day - absolutely perfect weather, but I knew because of the sun that I wouldn't be able to really choose my location until very close to 2-o'clock.
By 1:30 I was pretty sure I wanted to do a window with reflections, and had narrowed it down to the window of the Uptown Theater, as seen from an angle, with some of the building across the street. A little more abstract than I'm used to, but I thought I might be able to pull it off, although I did wish the 'open' sign was lit.
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But since I still had 30 minutes to settle down, I took one more walk down the street, all the way down to the Coffee Shop where I'd had lunch. The Coffee Shop was charming, but already had a couple of artists planted around it. I glanced to my left... and stopped! The sidewalk passed under some overgrown bushes like a tunnel, dappled shadows falling across the walkway, and turned a bit on the other side, in the light, and there were some tall red flowers growing along the side. I felt the excitement building! I had my scene, I thought for sure. But because it was a path, and one must always walk a little farther to see where it goes... on the other side of the hedge there was this house!
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There was the light! There were the dappled shadows! There was the window with intense blue-sky reflection! And the walkway and steps, creating dynamic diagonals! I smiled and ran for my stuff.
At the 2:00 starting gun, I used the method learned in
Terri Ford's workhop, and washed in a mostly complimentary pastel underpainting with denatured alcohol, but used my own board primed with gold primer, as I'd tried this once before and liked the results. I managed to get a couple of shots along the way...
I finished 10 minuted before the deadline at 3:30.
The 25 unframed paintings by 25 artists were auctioned of at the Old Oak Square at 4:00. I was happy to see mine go for $250, which was the second-highest bid next to
Bob Rohm's painting. A portion of the proceeds goes towards Marble Falls childrens' art educational programs.
A big Thank You to
Daniel Adams of Inks Lake, TX, for judging the paintings and awarding mine First Place!
This event was a preview of the "Paint the Town" Plein Air Event which takes place in the spring, with a full fledged silent auction of framed paintings done over a day and a half of painting in Marble Falls and the surrounding area.
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