The Holidays are coming at the Milford TV Station!
Every two months we rotate the art show at the Milford TV Station. We arrange our drop-offs on the last Thursday of the month preceding the show. The drop-off for the upcoming November-December 2019 show on the theme of “Small Works” is Thursday, October 24th, 2019 from 6-8pm. Normally we do the last Thursday of the month but this October the last Thursday is the 31st, and people want to be home for that.
“Small Works ” is anything small and ideal for gift-giving. Explore the possibilities!
This date is also the take-down for the existing “Autumn” show. If you’re not able to make it for this pickup date, please wait until after the reception to stop by and retrieve your art. That way the show is up for its full publicized period.
Drop-Off (and previous show pick-up) Thursday, Oct 24th, 2019 6-8pm The public is warmly welcome and encouraged to attend the drop-off, to chat with the artists. Many artists hang out to chat during this period. Artists – please bring food or drink to share!
Public Reception Thursday, November 21th, 2019 6-8pm Milford TV will supply the food and wine for this one. Family, friends, and artists are all welcome! BVAA artists should feel free to bring along bin art, notecards, business cards, and other similar items as they meet-and-greet our visitors.
Show Details for the Artists The Milford TV Station employees create the labels and perform the hanging for us. There is no need to use the BVAA online submission form to indicate what you’re bringing. Simply be sure to label the back of each piece with its title, your name, contact info, and the price. This show is for BVAA members only and is free to participate in.
The Milford TV station does not take any commission on sales. Neither does the BVAA. This is an ideal sales venue, and we do see sales regularly at this venue.
Most artists bring in three to four items but if you have more which match the current theme that’s great! The items can be any size or shape – Milford has a great hanging system which can accommodate pretty much anything.
Every two months we rotate the art show at the Milford TV Station. We arrange our drop-offs on the last Thursday of the month preceding the show. The drop-off for the upcoming September-October 2019 show on the theme of “Autumn Splendour” is Thursday, August 29th, 2019 from 6-8pm.
“ Autumn Splendour ” is anything at all having to do with with autumn and foliage. Explore the possibilities!
This date is also the take-down for the existing “Summertime” show. If you’re not able to make it for this pickup date, please wait until after the reception to stop by and retrieve your art. That way the show is up for its full publicized period.
Drop-Off (and previous show pick-up) Thursday, August 29th, 2019 6-8pm The public is warmly welcome and encouraged to attend the drop-off, to chat with the artists. Many artists hang out to chat during this period. Artists – please bring food or drink to share!
Public Reception Thursday, September 26th, 2019 6-8pm Milford TV will supply the food and wine for this one. Family, friends, and artists are all welcome! BVAA artists should feel free to bring along bin art, notecards, business cards, and other similar items as they meet-and-greet our visitors.
Show Details for the Artists The Milford TV Station employees create the labels and perform the hanging for us. There is no need to use the BVAA online submission form to indicate what you’re bringing. Simply be sure to label the back of each piece with its title, your name, contact info, and the price. This show is for BVAA members only and is free to participate in.
The Milford TV station does not take any commission on sales. Neither does the BVAA. This is an ideal sales venue, and we do see sales regularly at this venue.
Most artists bring in three to four items but if you have more which match the current theme that’s great! The items can be any size or shape – Milford has a great hanging system which can accommodate pretty much anything.
CANCELLED – CONTACT CAROL TO DISCUSS THE NEXT CLASS.
Oil paint has been the medium of choice for a wealth of famous painters. Leonardo da Vinci. Claude Monet. Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Paul Cezanne. There is just something spectacular about the beauty of oil paint which captures the eye and the imagination.
Whether you’re a raw beginner or an experienced painter, this oil painting class will take you to the next level. It’s full of personal hands-on advice and a warm, welcoming atmosphere!
Talented painter Carol Arnold teaches a monthly oil painting class at the BVAA Alternatives Uxbridge Community Gallery! Carol is a member of Richard Schmid and Nancy Guzik’s Putney Painters! All levels of painters are welcomed with open arms. The focus will be on drawing, edges, values and color. These are areas which a beginner can practice and an advanced student can hone to perfection.
Carol makes these classes fun and inspiring, while supporting you to the next level of your growth!
This monthly class usually meets on the first Thursday of every month from 6-9 pm. We are experimenting with other days to see how they work.
Cost: The maximum class size will be 10 students, to ensure plenty of hands-on time for each one. If there are only 1 or 2 students registered for a class, the class will be cancelled. If there are 3 or 4 students, each student pays $20/hr for the class = $60 total. If there are 5-10 students, each student pays $15/hr for the class = $45 total.
Invite your friends! Share the news! The more students which attend, the less you pay and the more fun it is to learn from each other.
When: Monday, July 8, 2019 6pm – 9pm
Where: BVAA Open Sky Uxbridge Community Gallery 5 South Main Street Uxbridge, MA 01569
There is a TON of free parking immediately next to this building. It is fully and easily handicapped accessible.
If you’re interested in painting, drawing, and illustrating, we have the perfect Saturday lined up! It’ll be a great time with laughter, conversation, creativity, and the space to stretch out!
We’ll do hands-on help with Instagram for anyone who brings in a smart phone or tablet!
Open Paint 10am-3pm For the entire day, it’s an open paint! All are welcome, including the public, family, and friends! It’s free! We have watercolors and acrylics on hand, or bring your own if you wish.
If the weather is nice out, visitors can also embark on an Uxbridge sketch walk. We have the maps all ready.
When: Saturday, July 6, 2019 10am – 3pm
Where: BVAA Open Sky Uxbridge Community Art Gallery 5 South Main Street Uxbridge, MA 01569
Our Saturdays at the gallery include an open paint session where all styles of art are warmly welcome. Whether you’re 12 or 102, whether you’re a new beginner or a seasoned artist, we would love to have you. It’s completely free to participate in the open paint. You can bring your own paints or we’ll have watercolors and brushes to share.
There is a TON of free parking immediately next to this building. It is fully and easily handicapped accessible.
Feel free to show up for some or all of the day to paint. Some come for just the morning, some for the afternoon, and some for the entire time. There are several options on the same block to grab lunch if you’d like. We also bring in a pizza and those who want slices chip in a few dollars.
Our Saturday events are free, casual, relaxed, and fun! All levels are welcome.
Ask with any questions – we’d love to have you join us!
This Uxbridge gallery is supported in part by BVAA member dues, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and by ValleyCAST. The space use is kindly donated to us by Open Sky Community Services. Open Sky uses this space for client activities during weekdays. They allow the BVAA use of the space – and its gallery walls – on evenings and weekends.
If you’re interested in painting, drawing, and illustrating, we have the perfect Saturday lined up! It’ll be a great time with laughter, conversation, creativity, and the space to stretch out!
We’ll do hands-on help with Instagram for anyone who brings in a smart phone or tablet!
Open Paint 10am-3pm For the entire day, it’s an open paint! All are welcome, including the public, family, and friends! It’s free! We have watercolors and acrylics on hand, or bring your own if you wish.
If the weather is nice out, visitors can also embark on an Uxbridge sketch walk. We have the maps all ready.
When: Saturday, June 29, 2019 10am – 3pm
Where: BVAA Open Sky Uxbridge Community Art Gallery 5 South Main Street Uxbridge, MA 01569
Our Saturdays at the gallery include an open paint session where all styles of art are warmly welcome. Whether you’re 12 or 102, whether you’re a new beginner or a seasoned artist, we would love to have you. It’s completely free to participate in the open paint. You can bring your own paints or we’ll have watercolors and brushes to share.
There is a TON of free parking immediately next to this building. It is fully and easily handicapped accessible.
Feel free to show up for some or all of the day to paint. Some come for just the morning, some for the afternoon, and some for the entire time. There are several options on the same block to grab lunch if you’d like. We also bring in a pizza and those who want slices chip in a few dollars.
Our Saturday events are free, casual, relaxed, and fun! All levels are welcome.
Ask with any questions – we’d love to have you join us!
This Uxbridge gallery is supported in part by BVAA member dues, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and by ValleyCAST. The space use is kindly donated to us by Open Sky Community Services. Open Sky uses this space for client activities during weekdays. They allow the BVAA use of the space – and its gallery walls – on evenings and weekends.
When a piece of work is evaluated for an art show, one of the key features most judges look for is a healthy range of values. For a number of judges, this is the most important aspect of an artwork.
Just what are values in terms of an artwork’s presentation?
In this context, the term “value” refers to the lightness or darkness of a given area of an image. This isn’t about the color of the area. It’s about its relative lightness or darkness compared with other aspects of the painting. For that reason, value is also called “lightness” by some.
Let’s look at Turner’s painting “Dutch Boats in a Gale”.
If you imagine this as a black-and-white image, you’ll see that there is a full range of grays represented. It goes from the nearly-pure-white of the tops of the waves, through the softer white of the sail, to the medium-dark of the clouds, all the way down to the near-pure-black of the shadows in the waves.
In general you want to avoid pure white or pure black. Those aren’t colors usually found in nature. You want to aim for a black which is made up of dark colors – dark blue, dark red, and so on. You want your whites to have a tinge of something in them – yellow, green, whatever is appropriate.
The human eye is generally drawn to the brightest spot in the image. In this case the eye is swept in by those frothy white waves to the bright sail, which is the center point of the image. Then from there the eye flows back toward the ships in the distance. So the use of values also influences how the eye moves through the image. This is also key.
An artwork is like a book laying open to be read. Where does the eye start? Where does it flow? Values strongly influence that, along with shapes and forms, which we’ll cover separately.
Let’s look at another artwork. This is “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth.
Where does your eye go first? To the brightly lit young woman. Note her shoulders are not pure white, but they’re nearly white. The eye then follows the woman’s gaze out toward the house, which is much darker. The door is nearly black but it isn’t quite black. Between those extremes, there’s a full representation of values here.
Sometimes in photography images can get “blown out” where the whites are too white, or it can get underexposed where the blacks are too black. Those are tricky challenges to fix. To show a well balanced photo, here’s work by one of our BVAA members – a true master – Al Weems. He wins prizes frequently at our shows. This artwork won first prize at a recent show. Judges often praise his exceptional technique with his range of values.
This image also shows that rules always have exceptions. In this image, it’s the central dark tree which tends to draw your eye first, because no white area “stands out”. Al carefully balanced the whites so that none competed with that tree for the focal spot.
To review again, values aren’t necessarily about black and white. Rather, values are about the lights and darks. It’s often just easier to think about values by thinking about an image in black and white. That makes all the shades of gray become easier to visualize.
But what about pop art styles, which are more of a cartoony / stylized presentation? Let’s look at The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. This is a woodblock print, so by necessity it was done with only a few ink colors. Even so, Hokusai was able to get a range of values to be represented, from the light end down to the dark end.
There is definitely a sense here that it’s an abstraction of the scene, rather than a realistic version. The colors are bright and the light / dark contrast is emphasized.
But, even so, the whites aren’t glaring white. They don’t create a “solid field of empty”. There’s enough softness / tan in the white that the eye can move through it. The eye tends to be caught by the big area of light in the top left, and then the eye flows down through the wave, to the boat, and in to the white-topped mountain.
There are darks here but again, they’re a deep, deep blue, rather than a solid black. There’s texture and dimension there.
Now, it’s also fine to remember that there are always exceptions to rules. Let’s look at “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Vermeer.
That background is fairly black. The collar is fairly white. Your gaze tends to go to her eyes first, because human eyes are what we naturally tend to look at. But then our eyes tend to go down to that white collar, which draws us along to the shiny earring. The darkness in the background fades away and becomes non-existent.
This background may look black on your screen, but it’s actually a gently textured dark-dark-brown so it’s not as sharp against the image. It lets the main image stand out better.
On the topic of values, though, you can see that the image still has a nice range of values here, from the lighter areas down through the darker ones.
To show what I mean about the grayscale version of an image, here’s the above image converted to grayscale. The only area which ends up solid black is in the top left and that’s probably a result of the camera’s sensor. You can see how there are a wide range of values shown, from the bright light of the collar to the darker areas of the eye.
Try this with your artwork. Turn it into a grayscale version and see what happens. Is it still clear? Do areas get muddy? Is there a representation of all sorts of different shades of gray in it?
So, to summarize, if you’re painting, whether with physical paints or computer screens, think about selecting or mixing your paints so you create those ranges of values. Stop thinking about color for a minute. Think about the lightness or darkness of what you’re working with. Is there a good spread of values, from the lightest lights to the darkest darks and a range in between? Have the darks become too muddy so they’re hard to see? Have the lights become blown out and glaring? Is there enough of a range?
Also, think about how you’re using values to guide the eye. Is there a specific bright area which catches the eye and gives the viewer a starting point? Do the values then help guide the viewer through the image? An image should rarely be “stagnant”. It’s good to have some sense of where the eye should go as it moves around the image. Even with something which seems a single subject, like the girl above, there is still going to be movement of the eye as the eye takes it all in. What is that path? How do values guide it?
If you’re doing photography, learn your camera’s settings. If possible, have the display flash for you if it detects areas which have become solid white or solid black. That helps you to adjust the exposure to fix the problem. Sometimes it’s necessary to “bracket” the image – take multiple pictures at multiple exposures – to get the full range in a final image. The technology of HDR (high dynamic range) images does this automatically for you. If a picture has been taken where a region has been lost to all-white or all-black, it can be nearly impossible to get the detail back in that space. So it’s best to get the photo exposed properly in the first place, so it can then be worked with.
Here’s the Wikipedia page on values and lightness, with examples involving shades of colors.
Our Third Annual BVAA Sunflower Show celebrates the sunny beautiful flower! The art show is in conjunction with a stunning lush garden of sunflowers out front of the Booklovers’ Gourmet.
Where? The sunflower art show is held at the: Booklovers’ Gourmet 55 E Main St Webster, MA 01570
About the Show If there ever was a flower which symbolized glorious summertime, the sunflower is the one. Did you know that nearly all of the 70 species of sunflowers are native to North America? They can grow to be up to six feet tall and they even tilt as the sun moves so they always face it!
The Blackstone Valley Art Association is celebrating this sun-shaped delight with a sunflower show throughout the month of August at the Booklovers’ Gourmet in Webster. Our show complements the stunning garden of live sunflowers which the bookstore is famous for. Come on out to admire the live flowers, appreciate the artistic versions, and explore the shop’s offerings!
Submissions The submission deadline for the sunflower show is Monday, July 22nd, 2019. We have limited wall space here for 20-25 items so what we’ll do is have each member submit one JPG of an artwork via email to info@bvaa.org they’d like to include. If we get too many we’ll do a Facebook vote. This show is open to all BVAA members and is free to participate in. This is not a judged show – it is primarily a visibility and sales opportunity. Any sales will include a 25% commission taken by the shop. The BVAA takes no commission on this show. Full BVAA terms: BVAA Show Terms and Conditions
Here’s the current list of what we have, both on Facebook and here on this website:
Drop-Off The drop-off for the Sunflower Show is either Tuesday, July 30th or Wednesday, July 31st between 10am-6:30pm. If you can’t make either date, contact Lisa via the info@bvaa.org email and she’ll arrange something. The Booklovers’ Gourmet shop will take care of hanging the items.
Public Reception The reception will be 2-4pm on Saturday, August 10th at the Booklovers’ Gourmet in Webster. Invite family and friends!
Pick-Up Pick-up for the show is Saturday, August 31st, any time during their open hours.
Theme This show is all about sunflowers! The Booklovers’ Gourmet is well known for their beautiful sunflower garden, which will be in full bloom during the show’s run.
