Author: Val

Chaulk on Black Paper

Rendering with chaulk on black paper is one of the most FUN classes I have had the honor of teaching at Home School so far! White on black. Have you ever tried to only draw the light on a subject? It is so different to apply the artist brain to the task of drawing the highlights instead of shadows. Wow!

Here are some sample demonstrations made during this course this year. Fifty-five minutes with a dozen students. You would not believe how good all the students are getting so fast. It is a real amazing course and I have put a couple pictures earlier.

Stack of Stools

Sneaker

Bubbles
9″w x 12″h chaulk on black paper. Imagined bubbles drawn on black paper with chaulk.
Salt Shakrer
12″w x 9″h chaulk on black paper. Imagine an open glass salt shaker with it’s metallic lid laying away from the shaker.
horse sketches
Three horse faces drawn in chaulk on black paper as a study before an airbrush project.

Still Life Vases Foliage Wolf

Art Teacher’s Weekly Cleanup

This is what an Art Teacher’s Weekly Cleanup looks like. Fun, fun, fun!

Art Class CleanupYou know I have absolutely nothing else to do, right? My Kitchen decor changes every week as I wash out and restock pallets, then replace missing colors. Then, wash all the brushes so they will last.

I also do the pen & ink pen tips in solution and wire brush the accumulated ink. Then refill the little tiny “essential oil” bottles full of India Ink. All, so that 24 Home Link students can have the best art experience possible next week. I love my job!

Watercolors, Pencil, and Chaulk

I have been doing watercolors, pencil and chaulk recently. Some plein air, some in classes and admittedly, a few from a pile of unfinished in the studio.

I have been doing watercolors, pencil and chaulk recently. Some in plein air, some in classes and admittedly, a few from a pile of unfinished in the studio.

Watercolor

I was invited to paint at this beautiful plein air site. It is at a beautiful home’s deck on top of the hill overlooking Wolf Creek in northern Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Wouldn’t you love to live where this was your view every evening throughout the year? This is why, I love doing plein air so much, I get to do what I love the most outside in some of the most amazing places on earth.

Wolf Creek Sunset D3026
14″w x 10″h watercolor on 140lb paper.

Chalk

A recently done still life done using chaulk.
Still Life Tomato With Graters & water containers

Pencil

Pencil drawings have always been quite numerous in my line of work. In fact, I used to do a finished pencil rendering of any subject before I would attempt to paint it. I guess with time constraints, that has morphed into doing sketches on final paper surfaces and painting directly from there. I find myself painting very lightly, “a sketch”,  then painting the final piece right away in darker values.
Here is another strange still life setup to show the differences of drawing reflective surfaces with other surfaces combined. The base of the arrangement is a stack of plastic water well holders from the watercolor class. Two metal hand cheese graters are leaned on the water well containers. Then, the final touch is a red tomato sat on top. It was a good challenge and all of us stretched our artist minds to get it going in one hour.

Still Life Black Japanese Vase
12″w x 18″h pencil on paper

This is an ornate black vase with beautiful Japanese paintings of blossoms going up the length of the vase. The way it catches highlights was a little difficult to capture but worth the effort required. A simple white rose is placed in the vase. This arrangement gave us an infinite number of shapes and shades to practice. It was an intense hour-long session that needed some follow up, “studio” time to get it finished up.

Glass Vases & Leaves
12″w x 18″h pencil sketch on paper

This began in a drawing class intended to show how to draw see through glass objects. Starting with a blue towel arranged with wrinkles under the vases. We sat a beautiful crystal curvy shaped vase next to a cube vase with various leaf vines draped around them. An hour later, it is brought home to the studio to sit in a pile of sketches to spend a little time and finish later.

Demo Sketch of a Horned Owl

OwlGreatHornedPencilJ5725This is the demo sketch of a Horned Owl brought home from a Clayton Home School Pencil Drawing Class. Classes are only 55 minutes long so I am not always able to finish the subject we choose in that amount of time.

Finishing What You Start

But, finishing what you start on your own time is truly worthwhile for any artist. And, NOT accumulating stacks of unfinished sketches and paintings in a corner of my studio is a great lifelong goal for me.

Afterschool, donating 30 more minutes on this sketch at home looks like this (below).

OwlGreatHornedPencilIt is worth it to finish your sketches? Yes.

Check out another older blog post about finishing…

With just a little bit of effort you change this sketch’s destination and also improve your skill level as an artist.

Adding 1/2 hour

  • Changes this drawings destination of being laid in a stack of papers, and later thrown away later, to becoming a treasure worth putting up on the wall.
  • Helps the artist in you to practice and learn how to finish anything you start. Abandon the half way done mind-set. Improve your artist skills by forcing yourself to choose which details and rendering styles you will use.

Give it your best and you will never have to wonder about it later on. We in the creative fields tend to easily abandon a project before actually finishing it. It is simply in our nature. It is easy to change this tendency in ourselves by resisting the urge yo throw more into that pile. Instead, practice finishing something and experience the joy of accomplishing a job well done.

Finished this Duck Patrol

DuckPatrolF1225I just finished this Duck Patrol watercolor painting, a 9″w x 12h” on 140lb wc paper.

I started on location at the Coeur d’Alene Lakeshore in northern Idaho. Sitting in an area named Tubbs Hill that is just south of the North Idaho College campus. I was painting the well known scene when a duck kept coming over to me and checking me out. After multiple photographs I did a quick water closeup with two versions of the duck laid out in it. I finished it in the studio using the photographic references I had.

You can see more of the process for this one if you look at this previous post.

I have found that painting while outdoors is a real treat for me. It can sometimes be more difficult if there are weather conditions that get out of hand but still the bright colors are much more alive.  I find that more and more of my artist time is spent painting and drawing en plein air because I am getting more comfortable setting up outside.

You Are Not Alone

If you ever feel like doing this yourself, you are always welcome to join us. There are many like-minded artists at painting meetups by the Inland Northwest Outdoor Art Group on Facebook.

We are all going when we can and staying as long as we want. The main thing is that you can meet other artists who like to paint outside and make friends so that possibly you will be able to not have to go to strange new places all alone. Whenever I have joined this group it has turned out to be a really enjoyable outing and I get to learn something really cool from someone in the group each time. Some of my best friends are artist’s!

Art on the Green Coeur d’Alene ID

Art on the Green, in Coeur d’Alene ID was a lot of  fun this year (2025). There was all kinds of arts and crafts along with music and fun activities. I worked at the Plein Air Booth right across from the stage on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Aug 1st, 2nd, & 3rd). There was something like 30,000 visitors and art was tremendously present.

One of the funnest attractions for me was the amazing sandcastle. Wow! It was ginormous!

ArtOnTheGreen25_02
There were many more art booths that were filled with enormous talent, like other painters on site.

ArtOnTheGreen25_06
And let’s not forget the entertaining music with dancing.ArtOnTheGreen25_05

My job was to paint plein air and talk to people about doing painting outside. I will not bore you with multiple images at different stages. Here are a few examples from painting at the booth for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

nflowerSingleAOG2025_01 TreeAOG25_01 TubbsHill_01 SunflowerSingleAOG2025_01 SunflowerTwoAOG25_01
I will be looking at these to see if I should do some more finish work on them before calling them done. Anyhjow, it takes me awhile to recuperate from th crowds, heat and standing all day long and I am just now feeling rested so painting should speed up to a more normal pace soon.

THIS SATURDAY!!!

HaynesConservArea01
Inland Northwest Outdoor Art group members.

This SATURDAY at 8am, join us,

the Inland Northwest Outdoor Art Group for
PLEIN AIR PAINTING

HAYNES ESTATE CONSERVATION AREA

1712 E Leona Dr, Spokane, WA 99208

see more here: https://youtu.be/NROJlzemHbk

There is no better way to reward your inner artist! Pack only the essentials in art gear and come play with other artists outside.

This is the first of five summer events to help increase more artist participation in plein air painting in our beautiful region. Artist’s from our group will meet with up to 25 new participants on location, to paint together for 4 hours. We are not teaching a class, we are just artists painting together outdoors. If you are a member of this group you do not need to sign up to go, we just need you to show up. This Open Air Painting Meetup (Plein Air) is sponsored by the Libraries in Spokane (https://scld.libcal.com/event/14100798)

Tubbs Hill 04 Small

This view is what caught my eye at this location, it was a massive tree that fell down and made a bridge over the Little Spokane River. Over the span of only 4 ours the olors in this scene changed in so many ways. (Bring a camera)HaynesConservArea03

A Second Subject

duck05A second subject appears, as I paint en plein air with the Inland Northwest Outdoor Painters Group last Saturday (Tubb’s Hill in Coeur d’Alene ID).

You know how that goes don’t you?

Just A Second…

You see something that just really catches your eye, so, you grab a camera and take pictures as fast as you can. There are 6 different shots that I took.  There is really no choice, because, you sure don’t want to quit painting what you are already working on.

What kind is it?

When my subject appeared it was a single beautiful duck on patrol for goodies. Can you find this kind of duck on the ducks.org link? What kind is it? Message me the answer and win a free sketch. This one duck was so interested in me (us) sitting on the shore, that he/she came back again and again to see if maybe I had decided to share some kind of snack. I wasn’t eating, but, that is the only reason I could think of for so many return trips throughout the morning. I was not the only one who noticed. A fellow pléin air painter, Aimee, noticed this character too. Now, I am curious to see if she decides to paint it when she gets back home too.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Mix and Match

As I look through these photographs I realize that the water changes so very much, in every single one! Using my artistic privilege I pick my favorite positions and also sort through the best water patterns to do. During this process, I have a crazy thought of maybe doing each and every one of those water patterns and maybe even doing them in psychedelic colors, Hmmm… Neon green and yellow highlights and blue with purple shadows. WATCH OUT! The crazy artist is emerging out of me. I settle down my inner creative lady and convince her to just do one simple pair of ducks on the water (real water) before actually starting the project. If we want to, we can do a totally neon one after we finish this one.

duckPatrol03smThis is the, “Duck Patrol”,  painting beginning. You may notice that I have altered reality just a little bit by giving my single ducky/goose/waterfowl a partner to cruise the waters with.  With many swimming around in my photos to choose from, “Why not?” Life is so much more fun when we are lucky enough to have friends join us along the way.

Tubbs Hill Plein Air

Tubbs Hill 04 SmallI spent the early morning painting in plein air at Tubbs Hill in Coeur d’Alene, ID with friends of mine from the “Inland Northwest Outdoor Painting Group“. It was a great start to a weekend and was full a lot of fun as we all enjoyed ourselves. Come paint with us!

TubbsHillLocalPhoto03I thought it might be fun for you to be able to see how hard we work at trying to get that perfect photograph of THE PROOF SHOT that proves we we’re really painting outside and on location. Sometimes it take a group effort to get the right shot.

TubbsHillLocalPhoto04Just right!

Remember that, “Art on the Green, Coeur d’Alene ID happens during the first weekend of August 2025”, the Plein Air Painting Contest requires that you take a photo of your painting and setup at the beginning, during and at the end to prove you are really painting outdoors. Sign up ASAP!