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| Rosemary Buczek design, my attempt at monochromatic painting... |
In the "better-late-than-never" department, here is my post on the
IAMPETH convention, which took place in Milwaukee in early August.
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| Me & Jane Farr |
Best part by far: hanging out every day with
Jane Farr and basking in her talent, knowledge and all around wonderful-ness. We pretty much owned this corner of the hotel's spacious and beautiful bar. Miss you, Jane!
Watching the masters in action was well worth the price of admission (to the conference, not the bar, although it wasn't unusual to see artists like incoming IAMPETH president
Bill Kemp or
Barbara Calzolari set up at a table in there...). I also got a sneak peek at
Harvest Crittenden's masterpiece certificate for IAMPETH president and conference chair
Debi Zeinert in progress. Here, she's gilding. What Harvest can do in a hotel room in between classes and socializing, I can only dream of doing with a six-month sabbatical on a desert island!
As it happens, "A Study in Monochromatic Painting" with the inimitable
Rosemary Buczek is the only class I took that Jane did not...and her excellent
blog posts on the workshops of
Joe Vitolo,
Pat Blair,
Kathy Milici,
Barbara Calzolari will tell you all you need to know about the other classes I took!
Here's the article I wrote for Penman's Journal:
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| Rosemary Buczek |
Rosemary Buczek:
A Study in Monochromatic Painting
By Friday morning of IAMPETH week I was thoroughly steeped
in black and white, and wondering if perhaps I ought to have signed up for something involving color. But “A Study in Monochromatic Painting”
was my next scheduled class, and it turned out to be just the ticket: while it is true we worked with just
one tube of Winsor Newton Paynes Gray (and a touch of Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bleedproof
White), the result was exquisitely colorful!
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| Rosemary Buczek sample sheet for workshop |
Master Penman Rosemary Buczek guided us step-by-step with warm
enthusiasm and expertise. With the
smallest dab of Winsor-Newton Paynes Gray--and an armload of brushes, rulers,
pens, water containers, blotting towels, and other assorted supplies--forty eager
IAMPETH members set out to embellish her beautiful rendering of the apt phrase,
“The pen is mightier than the sword,” in the style of P.W. Costello and other
early 20th century engrossing artists.
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| Rosemary Buczek design |
Starting with the basic design, printed on very
heavy hot press paper by Rosemary’s husband Steve, we re-outlined the shapes
and letterforms with pen and waterproof ink. Not only did this give definition to the design, it was a
good way to acquaint oneself fully with all of its details.
With our pointed round watercolor brushes (#0 #1, #2), we
created small sample sheets for ourselves, practicing painting the
Paynes Gray in a variety of ways and creating levels of color saturation: dry
into dry (for the darkest, most opaque shades) and dry into wet, wetter and
wettest (for progressively more transparent tints). We learned how to use the light of the paper to give further
dimension to the design elements, and very helpfully, how to correct when the
paint did not distribute itself as intended by rewetting and moving the color
around.
We then applied our newly-learned techniques to the study
piece, beginning with the sections to be painted in the darkest shades and
working toward the lighter areas.
Thanks to digital technology, we were able to watch in enlarged detail
as Rosemary demonstrated the teasing of color from the darkest areas to the
lightest, creating a background shadow that set off the piece
handsomely. Some letters were
painted with the very palest tint, others with the deepest shade; both were
embellished them with bits of white applied with ruling pen and pointed pen.
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| Rosemary Buczek design |
To be sure, Rosemary was able to
de-mystify a technique which, with practice, will be simple and dramatic
addition to this engrosser’s bag of tricks! It was a fun and inspiring class.
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| Rosemary Buczek design |
end of article
The banquet on the final night was great fun, with Joe Carbone apparently playing "Where's Waldo?", appearing in every picture I took!
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| Elizabeth Kenney & Joe with special party headpieces? |
Next year: Albuquerque. Be there!
In April the Berkeley venue, 
And the entire week we had the strangest feeling someone was watching us...