Karen Russell Opening

Posted on by Thor

I went to the opening reception of Karen Russell‘s solo art show at Sam Flax (1800 East Colonial Drive) on July 9th. I arrived straight from my job at Full Sail. I had to buy a few brushes for my trip to Santo Domingo. I bumped into Karen and her friend George as I was shopping. Karen let me know that she had crackers and that spray on Easy Cheese. How awesome! I haven’t had Easy Cheese since I was a kid. This was turning out to be quite an auspicious  pinky raised affair. Karen had to run out to get a few more supplies for the opening.

Since I was early, I started sketching the room, leaving a few open spots for arts patrons when they arrived. I spoke with the store owner for a while and I’m very happy that he is now stocking quality sketchbooks.  Half of the Stillman & Birn sketchbooks had sold from the floor display that he had picked up from the Namta Art Supply Convention at the Orlando Convention Center about a month ago. He has started stocking the new quality sketchbooks from Canson and Strathmore as well. As he said, “This is the year of the sketchbook.”

Karen was dressed all in black, with oil paint dabbed all over her calves. She returned with a supply of Communion wafers. Gordon Spears tried one and he said it tasted a bit like an ice cream cone or Styrofoam. I tried a small white wafer as well, letting it dissolve on the roof of my mouth. Karen suggested that they taste better with Easy Cheese. I never did try that combo. Being Jewish, my wife Terry wondered if she would go to hell for tasting a wafer. Some guy told her that it wasn’t too late to save her soul. She avoided him the rest of the evening. Terry had Karen paint a nude of her. The angular painting stares at me as I try to go to sleep at night. Terry joked that we should buy all the paintings and then sell them for thousands of dollars more down at Art Basel in Miami. A store clerk talked about how locals don’t buy art. He knew of a couple from Orlando who purchased some art in a Chicago art gallery. The art was by an Orlando artist. They said that they never buy art in Orlando. “For some reason, people only appreciate art north of the Mason Dixie Line.” he said.

People sat in all the black “Darth Vader” studio chairs on display. A friend of Karen’s showed off all the abrasions and bruises she got at a “Sui-slide” party she had been at. Another woman had a broken finger. Darn, I knew about that party and didn’t go to sketch. I could kick myself. The model for one the paintings liked how she looked on the wall with a flower in her hair. Jokingly, she lamented the hunch back and saggy boobs. A couple bought the smallest painting for $65. A green dot went on the label. I love Karen’s work. The harsh knuckled fingers and angular figures remind me of Viennese Expressionistic art prior to the world wars. This show is on display through July 23rd.

The Year of the Sketchbook

Posted on by Thor

I spent three days at the Namta Art Materials World International Conference and Trade Show at the Orange County Convention Center. The floor was never really packed, but there was a constant flurry of activity at the Stillman & Birn booth. The line of quality sketchbooks were introduced at last year’s conference and they must have made an impression. The sketchbooks cost a bit more, but people are realizing that artists are willing to pay more for the quality. Paper matters, feel the difference. When Michael Kalman showed a colleague one of the early sketchbook, he was told, “You hit a home run with the paper.”

A person stopping by the Stillman & Birn booth said, “This is the year of the sketchbook, I half expect the easel manufacturers to introduce a new line of sketchbooks.”  This year, Strathmore and Canson both introduced new lines of quality hardbound sketchbooks. These new line of sketchbooks are scheduled to hit stores in July. I went to the Strathmore booth and thumbed through the prototype sketchbooks. A sales manager explained the different lines, paper weights and page surfaces. What really mattered to me wasn’t the numbers or convoluted naming conventions, I wanted to see how the paper held up to lines and washes. I already know that the Stillman & Birn books make my work sing so I’ve developed product loyalty.

Jason Das, an Urban Sketcher from Brooklyn NY was flown to the Convention by Stillman & Birn so he could work the floor looking for sponsors for the Urban Sketching Symposium in July. Jason stopped by the booth and I got a chance to flip through his most recent sketchbook. I get a visceral thrill from seeing artists sketchbooks. There is no pretense of existential artistic concepts, just raw sincere observation. Another artist named Donald Owen Colley was working at the Faber Castell booth. He uses Faber Castell Pitt brush pens to do his drawings in old ledgers. The book he was drawing in was from the 1860s. The pens are good for putting down warm and cool gray tones. I picked up a few Pitt pens and immediately started playing with them. The bold blacks in this sketch were put down with a black Pitt pen. Owen was hit by a car as he was walking in the International Drive area. Florida almost killed him. There were artists painting and sketching in many of the booths. I felt like a kid in a toy store.

Namta

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Namta, the Art Materials World International Conference and Trade Show was held right here in Orlando at the Convention Center. I was invited by Michael Kalman to use their line of premium sketchbooks and explain to prospective distributors how I liked using them.  Stillman & Birn, based in New Jersey, produces
premium quality sketchbooks. Their sturdy binding and wide range of
paper weights make them ideal for urban sketching with dry and wet
media. Michael is the nephew of Philip Birn (1911 – 2004), a highly admired
Viennese bookbinder who brought his Old World craftsmanship to New York
City in the 1950s. From his plant at 270 Lafayette Street, Birn
pioneered the concept of the black hardbound sketchbook, which he
marketed throughout North America, Europe and Australia. Michael and business partner Oscar Hernandez relaunched the
Stillman & Birn brand in December of 2010.

I’ve been having a blast test driving these sketchbooks. The paper is thick and rich and accepts watercolor washes on both sides of the pages. Michael explained that a sizing is applied inside the paper as it is made and also on the surface of the sheet. This lets the transparent watercolor washes glow like I’ve never seen before. The books come in five varieties, Alpha, Beta, Gama, Delta and Epsilon. The sketchbook that I take everywhere with me now is the Alpha hardbound sketchbook. It measures 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches and I suspect it will always be in my bag from now on. The paper is 100 lbs or 150 GSM and it has a subtle texture that I like.

The sketch above was done in a new line of sketchbooks that was introduced at the trade show. It is a hardbound Delta series with 180 lb, 270 GSM paper. I’ve never seen a hardbound sketchbook with such a heavy weight, cold press paper. The book is 8 1/4 by 11 3/4 inches, which opens up as a huge spread. This thick paper doesn’t buckle at all with heavy water color washes. The sketchbook is a prototype and the actual sketchbooks will be in stores later this year. At this conference I got to sketch and talk about art with fellow artists and distributors, which made it a pretty sweet gig. It felt good knowing that the sketchbooks that were stuffed full of my sketches, helped sell the product.

Miami Beach

Posted on by Thor

Stillman & Birn, a sketchbook manufacturer here in the United States sent me about seven sketchbooks to test out in preparation for NAMTA, an artist materials convention coming to Orlando in May. At that convention, I will be showing people the sketches I did and discussing the books from an artist’s perspective. I have been using, Handbook Artist Journals for the past three years to do all of the sketches on this blog. I have noticed recently that the pens have been making indentations on the Hand Book pages that show up on the back of the page. Since I sketch on both the front and back of the pages, this became a problem. For the past month I have been searching for a better sketchbook, trying Canson and Strathmore books. I just haven’t found the right weight and feel to the books I picked up at Sam Flax. Then out of the blue, I am told by an employee at Sam Flax, that a representative from Stillman & Birn wanted me to test out their sketchbooks..

It was Spring Break at Full Sail where I work part-time and my wife Terry decided to book us on to a cruise ship leaving from Miami and sailing the Caribbean. We drove to Miami Beach where we stayed at Elaine Pasekoff and Derek Hewitt‘s gorgeous condominium. It was a long drive and when we arrived, Elaine and Derek were out at a Passover diner. I went out on the windy ninth floor balcony and looked east towards the beach.

This is the first sketch I did in one of the new Stillman & Birn sketchbooks. I was delighted that I could lay colors down thickly and I loved how vibrant the colors were. I scrubbed some areas violently and with the previous Hand Books, the paper would come up in pieces, thinning the page. With this new sketchbook, I imagine my sketches will become more painterly and I can “work” the sketch with far more abandon. I can’t help but “geek out” about these new sketchbooks. I feel like a kid who has finally found a new indestructible toy.