Marble Falls TX Quick Draw

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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