 As Reg and I have arrived at a destination we plan to stay at for a while, I have ordered the small prints and some fridge magnets, from the Warby Hut, painting I did a few weeks back and I will do a big clean and sort of the stock in the caravan, over the next week and send out the prizes won while we were travelling north. The print and this fridge magnet from my art work of Warby hut is supposed to take about 10 days to arrive here, I paid extra for a quick processing of the order, knowing it’s probably going to arrive a week after the promised day given that I am in north Qld. The image above is of the small limited edition art print and the image below is of the business card size fridge magnet from my art, which is only $5. Including postage within Australia. Warby Hut, is reproduced from the image of the original pastel artwork by Kathy Shell.    The finished artwork, The Warby Hut by Kathy Shell is on the left A photo enhanced brighter version is on the right hand side. Which version do you think would be most suitable to make the print? I have received a lot of requests this month to paint commissioned art works. This is my training, this would be my love, but my lifestyle does not allow me to accept commissioned art work now, I paint for the love of it when I can fit it in. I am in retirement as a professional artist The few paintings I now do are entirely 'free choice both in subject and how long I need to take to complete them. This is the only way I can fit painting into my lifestyle, which has changed from being the artist who writes to the writer who paints. My writing takes me across a wide variety of subjects from short story writing, a novel in planning stage, reference books, booklets and articles through to wrinkle cream reviews and my ten blogs where again I can enjoy free lance creative freedom. I write about Art, in this my 'A Creative Life' blog at Kathy-Shell.net Travel, in my 'gone bush blog' at gray-nomad.com Fitness at Artslim.org. Blogging in my 'A bloggers's Muse' at bloggermuse.com My Kathy Shell page in facebook, is where I publish all my blogs. The photo for the Warby Hut, artwork, as provided by one of my Kathy Shell page on facebook’s, ‘fans’. Kathy Shell on Facebook If you have a photo of your own, you would love to see painted,, (if I do use it I always send a print as thank you), then view my Kathy Shell page, and click ‘like’, then place your photo in the fan’s photo album on the left hand side of the page and every time my fan’s page increases,, by another 100 , I paint one of my fan’s photos to ‘celebrate’ and say, ‘thank you’, to my fans. J . Thank you for your support of my gallery items for sale and affiliates advertised products, so I can afford to continue to do E How lessons. My sincere appreciation to all those decent people who do the right thing and respect copyright and support artists who give their time and skills over the internet, by supporting their web sites, with a purchase. Thank you :-)   With beautiful soft artist quality pastels and loving the texture of the paper, I lightly worked over the acrylic underpainting, lightening the sky so it contrasted with the mountain. Show in the side image, I am creating haze over the mountain. I also took this softening with the pale ultramarine blue into the tree line behind the hut, creating an airial perspective appearance of greater distance and at the same time reducing the overall appearance of green as I wanted to create the effect of softer lighting of early morning or late afternoon, much as I had viewed this scene myself. Working in a confined caravan setting I made a compromise on the composition of the finished art work due to the available time I have to paint. I am not fully comfortable with compromising any part of my art standards and that is the reason I do not paint very much anymore. I am very much an all or nothing person. I do want painting to become a part of my new life as a carer though know it can never be what it was when I was the Internationally acclaimed artist with my own multi award winning gallery.  I have 9 trays of pastels with three trays placed in each of three boxes. One box is for my cool colours of blue and blue green or blue violet. I have a yellow to yellow orange, yellow green and white box. Then a red to red violet and orange box. Then within these boxes, I have divided my trays into the dark, the medium tones and the light tones. I find this system easy and efficient to work with and pack for travel.  Working into the shadows over the entire painting, placing dark ultramarine blue everywhere it is medium dark regardless of the actual colour of the object, as I want a beautiful colour harmony for this painting, that at least I have the time to do. I accentuate the split opposite colour harmony of blue blue violet, yellow orange and red orange. I subduing, though do not totally overwhelming the green in the original photo and underpainting.  Close up detail of part of the painting. This is the time in my life for me to share the skills I learned with those who now have the time to pursue painting as a career or lifetime skilled hobby. Painting works better than a herbal phentermine for me, it takes my mind off food and the effect does not wear off, it always transports me to an inner peaceful world, J, no matter how long I have been doing it.  I use a dark orange gold pastel for small areas on the mountain, the trees, and the ground, especially in the foreground and the corners as I wanted to darken these to keep the eye within the work. I have used this as accents on the building and the rough texture of the paper helped me achieve the effect of the colour only on a few high points, not a solid cover. My next bog with show the work at stage four, detailing completed.  Portrait Artist, How My Career Got Started. 02/23/2010
 Wedding Day, portrait in oil pastels by Kathy Shell I am often, asked, to tell people when I first became a portrait artist. I had been studying life drawing and figurative clay sculpture at Swinburne Technical College in the evenings and I was working as a housekeeper and carer for three young children during the day to earn my night school tuition and wagging secondary school so I could do what I wanted to do. I was twelve and very determined that I was going to be a professional artist and I was not going to waste my days learning algebra, geometry and French, which I never intended to use I had chosen to do an Intermediate Certificate and a Commercial Art Certificate through, International Correspondence School and had been able to select my own subjects, something I could not do back then in the traditional day school system. On what was my last ride home from secondary school on my bicycle, I was wild with excitement, singing, ‘no more schooling, no more books no more teachers, dirty looks’ as I approached the crest of the hill for the final downhill stretch to the turn off to my home. I was in a state of euphoria, that I had cheated the truant officer, of the joy of hauling me back, to a bricks and mortar school, where art, was suppressed. I wondered what it would be like to sail down that hill without doing what I had always been instructed to do, ‘apply the brakes’. I decided to find out. I reached our street corner, swung into it at full speed, streaked across the road, hit the curb, somersaulted off my bike through the air, flew over the nature strip and footpath, over the fence and landed plonk in the middle of someone’s recently softly turned cushioned earth. I came out of my stunned state, with the understanding of ‘well that is what happens, when you don’t apply the brakes’. I remember someone coming to my aid. With pride always having been my greatest sin, I brushed their concern away by holding back my tears, brushing myself off and collecting my bike, saying something stupid like, ‘ Ha- ha, I meant to do that’, and getting my wounded self and bike, home without letting on to anyone the pain I was in. I have no idea how I walked home, because after that I could not walk for months. My housekeeping job was gone, all I could do was watch over my three child charges in my child minding job. I also needed to keep the three children I cared for, near me, so I could watch over them, so I spent all day, every day, for weeks, drawing these three children playing near me or sketching solo portraits of their faces, which they loved and sat posing for time and again. I had adults dropping in to see my work and buying it from me. Horray! No more housekeeping jobs. The children were disappointed when their full time sketch artist recovered enough to improvise for myself a pair of crutches from old sporting equipment found in a shed and I could begin to get around again and back to my usual routine. That is my usual routine that no longer involved dodging truant officers thanks to my portrait art income now being able to pay for my correspondence schooling lessons and a routine that now did not include testing out what would happen if I did not apply the brakes when advised to. J Now I think of it, I still flaunt that rule slightly, just not when out on the highway or when driving. J Well that was life back in suburbia in 1958. No convenience of mobility products to help the average injured child get around, or places where you could research the best product for disability needs, such as mobility compare , back then, or if there was, it was for the rich kids.  Artifacts seller, a pastel pencil portrait by Kathy Shell Artists Soft Pastels! 01/19/2010
 Resourses for artists, working with Artist's soft Pastels. This information is for existing pastel artists. For those who have not begun working in pastels. my advise is, DO NOT DO IT. Beware of inhallation poisoning from the fine talc dust and pigmet. Instructions for Handling and shipping Pastels. From SQUIDOO:-ust click a link to go straight to that topic
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