Happy Thanksgiving! (and Sketches)

We will be having a great Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for being here with David, Lisa, Cole, Christy and her fiance, Nick. Lisa has been working hard for us to all have a wonderful day and food. David will cook the turkey. I will watch football with David and don't have to do much. My day of being lazy and not cooking. Yeah! It was great to be with Joanna, Larry and Jennie the night before we left.

This is a photo of us from our last visit. Nick is not in the photo. I haven't managed any new photos, maybe tomorrow.

For Scavenger Hunt 155, I sketched at the airport on the way here. They are in a 6 x 8 inch sketchbook with a Micron 05 pen.


Number 5, game, the guy on the left was playing a game on his iPhone. And number 6, friend, that is Gene with his back to us. He is my best friend. He appears to be floating over the stool, he is an angel too. Heh, heh. Number 7, travel, a beverage/food counter in the Austin Airport.

Number 8, stranger, a guy working on his computer in Birmingham. I wanted to practice a hat on a head but the guy wouldn't be still. He was working on a computer, too, but he just kept looking around. I think he must have been talking on a phone, too, or something. Moved too much.

Anyhoo, Happy Thanksgiving! Hope your day is just great, where ever you all. Thanks to our troops overseas and nearby and those that gave their all. We owe them our freedom. Thanks to the firemen and the police that keep us safe at home. I am so thankful to be an American!!

Happy Birthday, Jennie!

It is Jennie's Happy Birthday today. We celebrated last night with a good meal, family and friends. She was pleased with her gifts. It is always good to see the "kids" all together. (Except for David and family. We will see them tonight in Kentucky.)


You can see how pleased she was here. Photo with the iPhone.

Here she is at about age 6. She has always had that smile!

Website News of Sorts

I have been slowly revamping my website: www.jocastilloart.com. I can't personally preview it on a PC so if you find any problems looking around, I would appreciate an e-mail. I notice that when I view my Contact Jo page on an Opera browser, the sign up spots for the newsletter and blog, the background is black for some reason. I can't change that, it is the widgets I use, I suppose. On Firefox and Safari they are grey. Hmmm. Not too many use Opera, but it is interesting, eh?

It is easier to update my website now with Dreamweaver to just point and click for links and the pictures. It was so slow to type in every html code for three or four pages when I moved a painting from "Available" to "Archives" for example. I won't bore you with the details of that. I am working on getting all my archives, links, plein air adventures and such back on my site. They probably don't get many views, but I like having them there so that I can look up things easily and they are there stored nicely in order, a little history, so to speak.

I am now ready to get out a "monthly" newsletter which I haven't done since July. Sorry to those of you that signed up and have not received any. When we get back from Kentucky I will get out the Christmas issue and will hopefully be back on track.

A seasonal painting that I had forgotten about. :) It is 11 x 14 on sanded paper.

My blogger artist for today is Robin Neudorfer in California. She has a plein air excursion for her post today. I think she is another artist I "met" on wetcanvas.com. Check out her Still Life Drawings, too. They are great.

Scavenger Hunt 155

I managed a few sketches for Scavenger Hunt 155 while watching the UT Football game yesterday. I used the new Prismacolor pens then added colored pencil and a sharpie. The Prismacolor pen looked orange in the light I was using but it looked more red later so I added some yellow Sharpie. The Sharpie soaks through the paper much more than the pens did. These are in the 7 x 10 inch sketchbook.

Number 1, living room. Or at least part of it.


Number 2, red, Gene's little Radio Flyer. It is about 16 inches long. Number 3, orange, the center for the team. They showed him straight on a couple of times and I thought that would be a player that is sort of still for a second or two. Then after I started sketching, they didn't show that view again. So he is a little bit weird. I only got his head and shoulders started, so the stance is surely so far off. Sigh....... And it is not "from life" but of course they were all moving around on TV. :)


We are leaving for Kentucky very early on Tuesday morning and I hope to sketch on the trip. We will be flying and coincidentally on the list this Hunt are travel, stranger and a couple of other items I might see in the airport or car. I will be in touch down the road.

Concert and Art .. ConcArt II

For those of us that missed ConcArt II at Johanne Morin's, you can get a review here and listen/watch a video of Ken Barker playing in concert. Sorry to have missed this. We went last year and it was wonderful. She is a great artist and Ken is a great pianist. You can still see and buy some of Johanne's paintings. Get e-mail notifications or RSS on her blog so you can be invited next year!

Painting out with Regina, McKinney Falls

It was good for the heart and soul to get out and paint. Regina and I went to McKinney Falls on a near perfect day on Tuesday, November 17. Seems like ages ago. It rained all day yesterday and was rainy and cool this morning. It also rained last Monday, so our perfect day was right in between.

We have painted together there, before on a hot sweltering day. In fact we painted on the same painting. For that painting, Regina sat on a stool and painted and I stood up. Regina and I had a show together called the Pastel Pair and we featured the dual painting. After the show, we donated the painting to a charity event. It was interesting and different.

McKinney Falls
by Regina Burchett and Jo Castillo
Pastel on board with pumice, 16 x 20

This time we each put up our easels and painted separately. We also sat down to paint. We neither one do that, normally. I find that I paint better when standing as I step back and observe more often. My painting is usually better and less static. I also forgot a hat. Sitting in the sun and having my pastels in the sun is not a great way to paint. I think the painting came out much darker than it would have.

Regina, checking out the falls.

The falls from above.

Regina painting.

Jo (me) painting.

The start of Regina's second painting. I didn't get a photo of the first, maybe she will post it, soon. She did get up some photos, here.

This is the scene I picked to paint.

I worked on a Richeson board that I had used previously, I just brushed off the pastel, wiped it with water and had a nice gray toned board to start on so I didn't do an underpainting. I roughly sketched in the scene.

I started developing the background and try to work all over the painting and put some of the colors in all parts.

Nearing the end here.

This was where I left it as we ended our painting day. We left the State Park and went to Manchaca to see the art exhibit by the Artists of the South Corridor at Chucks Diner. We ate lunch at The Texican, a Mexican restaurant that serves New Mexico style enchiladas. We have been dining there since 1986, I think. You can read about the exhibit on Karen Hargett's blog. She is also in the Austin Pastel Society.

A close up of the center of the painting.

I decided to work on it some more in the studio.

This is the first fix in my studio. I just wiped it off and highlighted it again.

This is the second fix and the end. I won't put in any more time on this. It is darker than it shows here. It is lit up to take the photo and looks lighter for that reason. It seems that painting outside does that to me, I paint darker. It looks fine in the bright light, but dark in the house. Practice in plein air will help that ... right?

I also went to McKinney Falls with Sue Modrak when she was here. It was in February so the trees were very bare. There was not much water either. Sue and I were sitting and painting right where the water is in my painting this time.

Painting with Pans.....

I found a demo by Deborah Secor painting a sunset with Pan Pastels that is wonderful. I found it here on the Pastel Journal Blog.

Some of you may "know" Deborah from wetcanvas.com, Pastel Forum, and the International Association of Pastel Societies Convention. She has been a great tutor on wetcanvas and very sharing with her information and skills. She is located in Albuquerque, but I haven't met her in person. I always say, next time I'm there.

I checked out the video on the Pan Pastel site, where I found more videos. Have any of you used them? What do you think about them. Maybe they should be on my wish list for Christmas. It looks like it would be a new technique I would like by adding a sort of "brush" touch to pastel painting. Hmmm.

And here is a sunset painting of mine to spike your thoughts about sunsets and pastels.

Spanish Bayonets
16 x 20 inches on mounted Canson paper, Pastels

Hunting for Skethes and Pears Framed

I sketched a little on Saturday. It was Cole's, our grandson's, Birthday. I didn't post about his birthday this year, but we did call, he is in Kentucky. We will see Cole and his family for Thanksgiving there. It will be fun to see them all.

I got some new Prismacolor pens to try out. I will talk a bit more about them after some serious experimenting. Just to try them I worked on a Zentangle I think I will use that idea for the cover of my Sketchbook for the project at the Art House Project. (The Art House moved to New York from Georgia so the deadline is changed to January. I have more time to procrastinate.)So I was mostly playing, but then did a couple of sketches with them.

These are for Scavenger Hunt 154. Number 1, sleeve and number 2, nail. You can see the color a little through the paper from the Zentangle. I was heavy handed and the paper is thin. So the bleed or shadow is not bad for such lightweight paper.

Number 3, plastic. One of Gene's speakers for his computer. I like the pens so far.



The pears are not really framed, but I stuck them inside this frame and they looked so nice that I had to take a photo. You can read about them here and see them without the frame. The gold frame really brings out the reflections, I think.