Walter Jones plein air

What: FCPS plein air event

When: Saturday, Feb. 6, 9 AM to 1 PM

Where: Walter Jones Historical Park, 11964 Mandarin Rd., Jacksonville, FL 32223

Please come join us for our first plein air event of 2016. Let's hope for somewhat warmer weather than we had this past weekend! We will be meeting at Walter Jones Historical Park, a 10-acre park located on the east bank of the beautiful St. Johns River in Mandarin. The park includes the farmhouse, barn, outbuildings, sawmill, nature trail along a riverfront boardwalk, picnic area and restrooms. The park and farmhouse are handicapped accessible.

The park is varied enough to offer different sorts of plein air opportunities, and yet small enough to feel "cozy" so we can all be fairly close together as we paint.

For the water lovers we have that available, as well as woods, paths, and buildings. There should be something for everyone.

Even possible wildlife! I'm looking forward to it and hope to see lots of you there. As usual, please feel free to bring a picnic lunch. We enjoy eating together after we paint, and having a show and tell for those who would like to share their work from the morning. 

Happy Anniversary to us

Wow, can you believe it was 4 years ago this month that we held our first meeting as a Society? Look how far we have come in four years - amazing workshops, great juried shows with fantastic judges, member shows open to all at various venues, and of course a growing membership.

We had 21 people gather for food and fellowship and a great presentation this morning, which included two guests, both of whom joined the FCPS by the end of the meeting!

This morning we were pleased to welcome Tom Carney from Multimedia Art Board, a family-owned company based out of Buford, GA, founded by Tom's mother back in the 80's.

Their product line has grown over the years and now includes surfaces especially for pastels.

Tom brought various items for sale, and a whole bunch of small pieces of his pastel surfaces that we were free to play with and experiment on.

Among their new products are their pastel surfaces on bright background colors, and Tom says these have been popular sellers since introduced earlier in 2015. The surfaces come as 320 or 500 grit, though Tom had only the 320 for us to sample, but a nice fine surface which held pastels well and took layers

Most of us tried a sample or two out. Here is a little 5-minute quickie done on one of the bright yellow surfaces for example. So FCPS members, check your email for a special offer available to us for this coming week only. The site is: http://www.multimediaartboard.com/

Stay tuned for our first plein air of 2016 in February. More details to follow, Keep your fingers crossed for nice weather.

New Year is coming

What:    First FCPS group meeting of 2016
When:   Saturday, January 9th, 2016, 10:00 to 12:00 noon
Where: Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach

Yup, almost time for a new year to roll around as the First Coast Pastel Society gets ready to celebrate our fourth anniversary. I hope we get a good turnout as we have a very exciting demo scheduled for the meeting. As Karen Rose told those of us on Facebook:

Kick start 2016 with the next meeting of the First Coast Pastel society Saturday Jan 9th at the Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach. A representative from Multimedia Art Board will be giving a presentation. Know someone who'd love to join the group bring them along.
http://www.multimediaartboard.com

And Lyn reminded us:

Also, bring some pastels with you so you can try the boards

It should be a good meeting and I hope to see you all there. Note the date, January 9th. I had January 2nd on my calendar right up to the moment I went to write this blog post. I would have been in Ponte Vedra all alone! Don't be the one there all alone. Mark your calendars!

Our exciting project

Remember Lyn's words from before our December meeting:

Girault Pastel painting:  Michele Aplin, the rep from Girault pastels, sent us a good-sized box of random pastel pieces.  We'll start a painting, from a photo reference, that we can finish up during the next few meetings and then auction off to help fund some new items for our growing library.

Well we started the painting at our December meeting. In between socializing, and painting the Christmas Cake, members were encouraged to come add some marks to the painting, based on the reference. Lyn got the painting off to a great start!

A few members here had begun to add some of their own interpretations to the scene.

By the end of the meeting the painting looked like this. I guess it has a ways to go before we can auction it off! But what a cool project. I think everyone there added at least a mark or two, It will be coming to future meetings so we can continue with it. I hope everyone gets to participate in the work, and what fun it will be for whoever gets to take it home for keeps.

Not to mention, our next meeting is coming up pretty soon - stay tuned for a few more details. It's hard to believe the new year is almost here, and we will be celebrating our 4th anniversary. What a lot we have done in a mere four years, and 2016 will be amazing for us also.

Enjoy the holidays everyone and stay safe. We look forward to getting together again in the new year.

Happy Holidays!

There were seventeen of us who got together yesterday to enjoy some seasonal cheer and togetherness, with our annual pot luck holiday brunch.

As usual everyone contributed lots of amazing food, and there was no reason for anyone to walk away from the table hungry, and lots of leftovers too. I took mine home and stuck it in the freezer to bring to another holiday pot luck this coming week. 'Tis the season. :-)

We also had a holiday gift exchange this year which we conducted roughly following these rules:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange

Although the gifts we brought were not "white elephants", but very nice art and pastel related gifts, and you could not really go wrong with any of them, though we had a few laughs as gifts got swapped around as people made their choices.

After the meal and gift exchange we had two projects we could work on. One was this lovely, festive, and delicious-looking still life that Lyn set up for us (and nobody ate while the painters were working). The second project deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned for more details about that in the next day or two.

Holiday Party tomorrow!

What: Annual Holiday brunch and still life
Where: Cultural Center of Ponte Vedra Beach
When: Saturday, December 5, 2015, 10 AM to 1 PM

Your blogger was away for a week at Thanksgiving and time sort of got away from me! Suddenly it's time for our annual holiday party and I have not even blogged yet. Luckily our wonderful co-President, Lyn Asselta, has sent messages to the group, so I'll just cut and paste her fine words:

If you plan to attend, please bring along a small "brunchy" type of snack to share. It's pot-luck, so bring whatever you'd like!

Also, we have a couple of activities planned...

Gift Exchange:  wrap up something you don't need from your studio...it can be new or gently used ($5 - $35) and we'll have a gift-exchange during brunch.

Still Life Painting:  Lyn is bringing a still life set-up. If you'd like to paint, bring along a few pastels and some paper, or just bring your sketchbook!  Keep it simple...and enjoy some painting time with the group!

Girault Pastel painting:  Michele Aplin, the rep from Girault pastels, sent us a good-sized box of random pastel pieces.  We'll start a painting, from a photo reference, that we can finish up during the next few meetings and then auction off to help fund some new items for our growing library.

Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting!

If you're unable to attend, we wish you a joyous holiday season and we'll see you in the new year!! Cheers!!

Alpine Groves

Ha! I found this post sitting in my draft folder. How didn't I notice it was stuck there? Better late than never, here is our first paint-out of the season at Alpine Groves. Many of our members said how much they enjoyed the place, with wonderful views of the river.

And beautiful old oaks covered with Spanish moss. It was a little gray and overcast however, with threats of rain. We did have a few mild sprinkles, but nothing to prevent painting.

It was a fairly cool morning though, and some folks found sweaters and light jackets were necessary to stay comfortable when remaining in one location for a while.

A number of folks found this old building fascinating, and it was in a nice protected location away from the chilly breeze coming in from the river. Plus they had a good table staked out where we could all gather for lunch.

We were joined for the morning by a bunch of folks from the First Coast Plein Air Painters. I'm often out of the loop and didn't know they were coming, so was so amazed when I arrived in the morning to see all these other artists showing up that I didn't even know. I thought it was just one of those weird coincidences. LOL.

But no, they had been invited to join us, and it made for quite a large and lively group. It was also fun to walk around and see what other folks were doing with different mediums. They are an active group so good folks to hook up with if you are a plein air fan.

Almost time now for our workshop with Tom Christopher. Folks signed up for that should be in for quite a treat. I better get this post out the door before workshop posts!