Calligraphy Workshops are Bringing Classy Back!

We recently hosted our third "Modern Calligraphy for Beginners" workshop with local instructor and artist, Jenna Rainey of  Mon Voir and had an absolute blast! Since the first class last fall, we have seen a surge in interest from artists looking to enhance their handwriting. Jenna's personal style is effortlessly chic and her contemporary approach to this traditional art form is refreshingly casual.  Requiring little more than a pen,paper, and some patience, students of all skill levels find themselves easily enamored with how their handwriting is transformed in just an hour or two. 

Before students even uncap their inkwells, Jenna had the class take a few deep breaths to release any tension in their shoulders, arms, and hands, with a simple but profound warning, "if you are anxious at all, it will show". The beauty of calligraphy lies in the subtlety of the hairline strokes and consistent spacing between each of the letters, which, with practice, become second-nature. Even the most uptight students among us eventually describe the learning experience as relaxing; the gentle drag of the pen across the paper, the shiny, swirling trail of ink, the steady downward strokes, and feather-light upward flicks of the pen are almost therapeutic. 

Jenna's workshops are revolutionizing the calligraphy medium as we know it- this is certainly not your grandmother's calligraphy! Whether you're a visual artist hoping to enhance your handwriting, looking to DIY some stationery for a special event, or even thinking of becoming a professional calligrapher, "Modern Calligraphy for Beginners" is the perfect place to start building your skill set and your portfolio!

For details on future workshops: click here

Check out Jenna's website here

2014 SCAS Staff Gallery Show

Our first annual San Clemente Art Supply Staff Gallery Show was a huge hit! We want to say a big thank you to everyone in the community who came out to support the artists and check out their latest work. We spend hours everyday talking to customers about their projects and aspirations, helping them pick out the right materials and tools, and lending our expertise on all artistic matters and mediums it was time for the tables easels to turn! The work on display was as unique as each of the artist's personalities; vibrant abstracts, surrealist portraits, traditional oil paintings, and textured sculptures showcased the artist's diverse backgrounds and interests. 

The Gallery show followed a community painting event with local artist, Drew Brophy, and coincided with the North Beach Art Walk which takes place on the second Friday of each month. Be sure to stop by to view our "Spooky Art Show" during next month's Art Walk on October 11th between 6-9pm. For more details on the event and to find out how to get involved please contact us: info (at) scartsupply (dot) com.

Thank you to everyone who helped make the show a success!

From Rick Delanty 7/2012

 "Now

here’s a drawing of a historical bit of San Clemente architecture that has grown into the hub of an art community: where artists can purchase materials, take classes, have work framed, and meet each other as representatives of the growing “Art Appreciation Society.”

The garden bursts with color like a flower bomb, the turquoise-trimmed windows promise enjoyment inside, and the Spanish-styled metal gate opens into a little Disneyland of art tools, papers, paints, pens, brushes and books.

This must have been how Tolkien imagined the world of the hobbits: a place of ultimate serenity, activity, and peace.

Long live San Clemente Art Supply!" Written by Rick Delanty - Click here to visit Rick's Web Site

Excerpt from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac

This excerpt is lovingly shared from Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac".

 

August

The Green Pasture

Some paintings become famous, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes.

I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye.

Like other artists, my river is temperamental; there is no predicting when the mood to paint will come upon him, or how long it will last. But in midsummer, when the great white fleets cruise the sky for day after day, it is worth strolling down to the sandbars just to see whether he has been at work.

The work begins with a broad ribbon of silt brushed thinly on the sand of a receding shore. As this dries slowly in the sun, goldfinches bathe in its pools, and deer, herons, kill-deers, raccoons, and turtles cover it with a lacework of tracks. There is no telling, at this stage, whether anything else will happen. 

But when I see the silt ribbon turning green with Eleocharis, I watch closely thereafter, for this is the sign that the river is in a painting mood. Almost overnight the Eleocharis becomes a thick turf, so lush and so dense that the meadow mice from the adjoining upland cannot resist the temptation. They move  in mass to the green pasture, and apparently spend the nights rubbing their ribs in its velvety depths. A maze of neatly tended mouse-trails bespeaks their enthusiasm. The deer walk up and down it, apparently just for the pleasure of feeling it underfoot. Even a stay-at-home mole has tunneled his way across the dry bar to the Eleocharis ribbon, where he can heave and hump the verdant sod to his heart's content.

At this stage the seedlings of plants too numerous to count and too young to recognize spring to life from the damp warm sand under the green ribbon.

To view the painting, give the river three more weeks of solitude, and then visit the bar on some bright morning just after the sun has melted the daybreak fog. The artist has now laid his colors, and sprayed them with dew.The Eleocharis sod, greener than ever, is now spangled with blue mimulus, pink dragon-head, and the milk-white blooms of Sagittaria. Here and there a cardinal flower thrusts a red spear skyward. At the head of the bar, purple iron-weeds and pale pink joe-pyes stand tall against the wall of willows. And if you have come quietly and humbly, as you should to any spot that can be beautiful only once, you may surprise a fox-red deer, standing knee deep in the garden of his delight.

Do not return for a second view of the green pasture, for  there is none. Either falling water has dried it out, or rising water has scoured the bar to its original austerity of clean sand. But in your mind you may hang up your picture, and hope that in some other summer the mood to paint may come upon the river.