Chris Federico, the owner of Eclection in downtown Kernersville, has opened the arms of her shop to the faithful few who love to come out and draw. We are really grateful for such a beautiful spot to be indoors for the cold weather, to have so many wonderful things to draw, to sip delicious tea, and even shop the unique, eclectic creations there if we want to!
Even though there are only one or two others who draw with me, I love having this regular spot in my week to get out in the world and draw. This is just one of the many drawings I’ve made this winter while sitting in the lovely “living room”. Each week it is arranged and decorated differently, using some of the unique creations from the shop. One time Chris even set up a still life for us to draw, gathering this and that off the “floor”. Now THAT’s rolling out the red carpet!
I won’t be able to be there this Friday, due to the Art Show happening the night before and needing to either recuperate from that or go in and do some tidying up from the show. But I look forward to next Friday, and the next. If you’re in the area on a Friday morning…come draw with us! Chris would love to have you!
Drawing with friends downtown Kernersville has been one of the highlights of my week since last Spring. We started out at the Factory and kept drawing through the summer there. then we moved to the Ciener Botanical Gardens in the fall and now we draw at Eclections, a wonderful artisan booth space with a cafe and seating area.
Sometimes we chat more than we draw…
Other times we’re quiet and concentrating on our sketches…
But most of the time we are chatting AND drawing, multi-tasking at its best!
Fall has morphed into winter here, although by today’s temperature, it feels like spring. We’ve been inside at a new awesome spot for drawing downtown Kernersville! It’s called Eclection (NOT Eclections, as my silly drawing indicates!)
This relatively new shop is a wonderful boutique filled with booths by various local artists and artisans. There’s a cafe inside with a marvelous seating area. The shop owner, Chris Federico, has an incredible flair for decorating and arranging the booths and all the arts and crafts. If you live anywhere near Kernersville, you simply must make a trip to see the terrific creations here. You might even get a bunch of your holiday shopping done here!
We will be drawing here through the winter months when it’s too cold to be outside. Chris really spoils us! We buy tea and sometimes a pastry. She has even set up a marvelous still life from all the terrific artsy wares for us to draw! Come join us! 10-noon on Fridays!
Just bring a sketchbook and pen…the place itself is inspiration for your drawings be they sketches, doodles, or chicken scratch! We welcome all! Click on the link below for more info and directions.
I’ve not been able to blog as much lately due to many wonderfully awesome things going on: the Ciener Botanical Gardens Art Show last Thursday, commissioned works due early December, several choral events our kids are involved in, holiday dinners with my gal friends, etc.
Tis the season to make merry and there’s been a lot of merry making going on! I’m thankful for all of it! But sometimes I’d like to slow down a bit, catch my breath, draw/write/process the event I just attended and then go at it again. Lately I’ve not had the draw/write/process part. That’s ok. Soon. Very soon. I can feel it!
I leave you with this little peek at the banner I had created for my recent Art Show. I was very pleased with how it turned out and how it expresses all the many things I love to do! Thank you so much for all who came out for the show! I loved seeing you ALL!
Put it on your calendar to come enjoy wine, hors d’oeuvres and music while browsing fine art & craft for your holiday shopping! Entrance cost is $10, and a portion of anything purchased goes to continuing the growth of our Ciener Botanical Gardens!
It has been a loooonnnngg time since I’ve done something like this and I’m soooo excited! I do hope to meet many of you at this lovely event! I will be featuring my drawings and paintings of downtown Kernersville, as well as offering Genevieve Cards and Prints.
This is a one evening event! Please come by and say hello!
For your invitation and ALL the details of this event, click below!
**Several of my works created on location at the Gardens and downtown Kernersville area will be displayed and offered for sale! The above drawing of Angel Trumpets was created while sitting at the Ciener Botanical Gardens drawing and enjoying the flowering purple basil next to it!
I’ve heard artists say things like, “I won’t paint today, the light isn’t good.” They prefer to have shadows cast under a brilliant sunny blue sky. I have always wanted to draw no matter the weather. No matter how gray. No matter the fog. No matter the chill. Fridays have been lovely to venture downtown and draw here in Kernersville. We had been camping out at the Ciener Botanical Gardens for several weeks. Blue skies or gray! Just last week, our cold fingers and toes chased us indoors! (more coming soon about our new indoor drawing locale downtown Kernersville!)
The thing I don’t get about artists who always need sunny days with strong shadows, is that these gray days seem to heighten the color around you. Artists know that a grayed background, or surrounding area, causes the main subject’s colors to sing! This was certainly true as I looked at the beautiful roadside profusion along the Gardens’ wall.
The only thing that gets a little interesting on foggy mist-laden days, is that watercolors don’t dry very quickly…or really at all. This one was swimming in color for a long time. I eventually put it in the back of my car to “dry” while I drew in another sketchbook.
It’s always good to have more than one sketchbook going when you’re out drawing. That way you don’t have to stop drawing to wait for paint to dry.
I sat across the street from the entrance to the Gardens to attempt this one. It was really too much to take in…all the gorgeous purples and magentas growing along the border. I often call colors “delicious”. These were positively scrumptious!
I have an online friend and fellow artist who lives in New Zealand and paints and illustrates beautifully in watercolor. Hanneke recently posted some paintings of flowers and titled her post, “Practicing Flowers”. One of the things I enjoy about being a fellow WordPress blogger, is that we can chat back and forth with ease, commenting to the comments we make on each other’s blogs. I had commented to Hanneke about how her paintings didn’t seem like practice to me. They are beautifully rendered. Here is her response to my comment:
“Painting a lot lately and looking at other people’s art, like yours, somehow slowly changes the way I look. In flowers there is something magical that’s so beautiful and I’d love to try to find what it is. This painting is more a process of learning in seeing and enjoying what is there.”
I love this. The crazy thing that happens the more we paint is that we realize we are no longer after a finished product that says Tah-Da! Here it is! A flower! A face! A place! But we realize that what we are after when we paint is something inexplicable that comes THROUGH the flower or the face. It is something BEYOND the actual subject matter, something magical or spiritual, that transcends the structural beauty of the flower. THAT’S what we’re trying to capture…and THAT’S why it always feels like practicing. Always searching for how we can harness that “otherness” and express it in paint.
The above is an example. I sit down on Friday’s to draw at the Factory. The Beauty is there for sure. It’s not the flowers themselves. It’s not the dappled light. It’s not even the tranquil setting surrounded by age-old walls, a gurgling fountain, birch trees, picturesque lampposts. There’s something I’m wanting to convey that is coming THROUGH these things to me. I try. I try again and again. Practice.
I think I could practice my whole life. I hope I do.
It reminds me of a wonderful quote by C. S. Lewis:
“…The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
If you’d like to read the whole quote, click here. It would be worth your 2 minutes! As would your few minutes of trying to capture this Beauty in paint, or pens, or words, or music. Practice, practice.
Like Hanneke says, “..it’s a process of learning in seeing and enjoying what is there.”
I’m not sure that Practice makes Perfect. It only gets us a bit closer to expressing what’s behind it all.
I recently went through a phase. Ha! One of many I tend to move in and out of. It keeps things fresh. It keeps me on my toes. Different ways to view and then capture a place or a person.
All of my Flexi-Sketch drawings are done with multi-colored pens and Neocolor II crayons added in. I used both of these in the first drawing, as I sat downtown Kernersville at the Factory. You get a whole different feel when you switch up your mediums. The above portrait drawing was done at Barnhill’s Bookstore where I sometimes draw with other artists who love drawing people.
My teens are fond of a phrase I will use here: Pens, watercolor, crayons, pastels, whatever…”It’s All Good!”
And I have another one…all in watercolor to reveal to you soon!
Too Fun!
P.S. The Fountain sits in the middle of the courtyard, so you can sit in any spot around it and have a different view. I told someone the other day, I think I could draw at the Factory every day for a year and not exhaust all the lovely views!
I mentioned, in a previous post, Ladybugs, a quaint garden shop, that used to be open at the Factory. It closed its doors this summer, along with the wonderful book store Shakespeare and Co. I sat on the bench right in front of the shop’s window just a week or two before it closed, to draw and paint this. I could see some of the stuff inside…hence, the ladder. The window is beautifully framed by an ivy vine, pots of flowers, and a hanging fern.
I hope something wonderful comes to fill the empty spot.
Remember: If you’d like to peruse all the drawings thus far of my little town of Kernersville, click on the category in the right hand margin titled France Under My Feet.
