November meeting

The First Coast Pastel Society held its November meeting last week at Reddi Arts in Jacksonville. It was great to see our society continue to grow! It shows that there is a need for our organization this area. We are already up to 35 members and hope to see more before the end of the year. Remember, if you join now you will get a membership good through the end of 2013.

Our President, Lyn Asselta, gave a demonstration on framing. Framing a painting well is key to a good presentation of the whole image. We will be holding our first member show at Reddi Arts next May, and they have reserved the right not to hang works they feel are improperly framed, so this was a timely presentation for all of us.

Lyn had a list of all the tools she uses to frame her works, and gave demos on how to frame with a mat, how to frame without a mat, and how to frame depending on if you plan to frame your work permanently or plan to remover the painting from the frame at some later time.

We had over 20 members in attendance, which is our best turnout yet for one of our meetings. In addition to the great demo the members who were present all received 3 free pastels from Terry Ludwig, a gift to the members from our Vice President, Richard Lundgren, who had been given the samples by Terry.

Lyn shows how she attaches a painting to a backing board.

And also shows how she attaches the wire for hanging, once the painting is framed.

Everyone was so interested they had to move up closer to get a good view. They didn't want to miss a step.

Next month is our usual plein air day, but since it's December we're not sure what to expect of the weather. So instead we plan to hold an indoor paint-out at the St. Augustine Art Association, where we will have have several still lifes set up for members to work from. This will also be our holiday party,  so stay tuned to this spot for a lot more details as we get them all worked out.