2015 - Third anniversary!

What:    FCPS General meeting
When:   January 3, 2015, 10 AM to 12 noon
Where:  The Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach

Wow, can you believe that we are headed into 2015 already? That means we will be celebrating the *third* anniversary of our group's official founding. Just think how far we have come in the past three years. We have hosted wonderful workshops, had great shows and wonderful plein air events. We have grown to over 50 in membership. I hope many of you will be able to be with us this coming Saturday as we ring in the new year together.

New years are always a time for new and fresh beginnings, and that includes artistically as well as personally. As we grow and change as artists we also change the ways we enjoy doing things. Somehow that item that seemed so perfect a few years ago now just seems to be gathering dust in our studios, but it may be just the item some other artist is looking for! Maybe over the years we have learned some things that help our art that we wish we had known about much earlier.

That's why our January meeting is called Tips, Tools and Trade.

Our wonderful President, Lyn Asselta, describes our meeting like this:

Each member attending the meeting is asked to bring along his/her favorite "pastel tip or pastel tool".  This can be anything from a painting tip to a particular tool that you just can't live without.  Even better if it involves something you've made or "repurposed" that you use in your studio or en plein air.  This portion of the meeting will be sort of like a show-and-tell...but you'll have between 3-5 minutes to share your tip or idea, so please keep that in mind.

You will also have an opportunity to bring along UP TO 5 ITEMS to trade, give away or sell.  If you have very large items (like easels), please leave them in your car and bring a photo of the item into the meeting.  We will be doing this toward the end of the meeting.

This is a great way to get off to a fresh start without any big financial outlay. Let's think of what we all want to share with our fellow pastelists to make 2015 our best year ever.

Happy Holidays

Can you believe this is our *third* annual holiday brunch and still-life paint out? Amazing to see how time has flown, and how far we have come. We woke to heavy fog in the morning, but despite that we had a nice turnout of 22 members who came to the brunch. Between us all we probably contributed enough food to feed 100 more people! What a variety of foods on offer.

Because the food looked so good and was ready to go we didn't waste too much time in trying to get it all set up and ready, and letting people go through the line to fill their plates.

Our President, Lyn, let us all get a fair amount of food under our belts before she called out attention to a brief business meeting about upcoming events for the 2015 year.

On either side of the room we had two still lifes set up - this one of a Scandanavian "Julbock"

and then a couple lovely vases with flowers.

Before painting began however we were all presented with goodie bags! We all got a bunch of Faber-Castell polychromo pastels, courtesy of Faber-Castell who has decided to stop producing open stock pastels and only make them for sets, so was giving away some of their remaining open stock.

We all got a nice variety of colors to play with and to add to our existing pastels. Once we finally finished eating we all had a chance to then sit down and paint from one of the still life setups available to us. Following are some of the paintings produced by the group, all in various levels of completion of course. We had about two hours to work, and of course it was all for fun to share the morning with our fellow pastelists.

That's it until out 2015 kick-off meeting on January 3rd. In the meantime I hope you all have Happy Holidays and a lovely New Year. See you soon!

Holiday Brunch

What:      Holiday Brunch and Still Life
When:     Saturday, Dec. 6, 9 AM to 1 PM
Where:   Cultural Center of Ponte Vedra Beach

Come join us for our third annual indoor paint-out and holiday brunch. Bring your painting supplies if you choose to paint a still life, or come out just to join with your fellow artists. Please bring a brunch dish to share with your fellow pastelists. Pot lucks are the best. I look forward to seeing what we all bring!

I know many of us were eager to try our hands at a still life after Donna Biggee's wonderful presentation last month, so this is a good time to try one.