To kick off the new year, Vonda Evans came by to impress us with colored pencils.
As breathtaking as her finished pieces are, they take a long time to create. So a week ahead of the demonstration, she visited with our program director Jason Wallace, who offered her a tour of the Sheerar Center auditorium. The big challenge was to find a way to present her techniques to the audience while she is working on a flat surface.
(When two artists are tasked with solving a creative problem like this, something interesting is guaranteed to happen.)
The solution came in two parts:
- Instead of working on the stage, Vonda wanted a more intimate setting — she decided to work in the aisle among the audience.
- Since the usual overhead mirror table can’t zoom in and magnify the fine details of Vonda’s technique, Jason decided to present her demonstration with a camcorder hooked up to a projector.
The result..
Vonda in the foreground, her work magnified in the background.
This was the first use of a projector at a Guild meeting for something other than digital photography.
Every little pencil mark counts!
We gazed in wonder, blissfully unaware that it was already 9:15pm!
Note: The camcorder and homemade lighting on the right, and the projector on the left.
"You can get closer and you still won't see any pencil marks.."
That's the poster for the.. wow! Vonda did that!
It was a success! It was informative! And it went past 9:pm and nobody noticed! Several of our members have been fans of Vonda for quite some time, and this demonstration helped the rest of us find out what we’ve been missing all these years.
We want to thank Vonda and her husband Frank for visiting with us, and we hope to see them again soon!
—
Our next meeting will be on Feb 28 and will feature oil painter Larry Clingman.
Stillwater Art Guild 
Leave a Reply