NOVEMBER 2018 PROGRAM - MARLENE STEELE

Our speaker today is renowned Cincinnati artist MARLENE STEELE. She creates in oils, pastels, watercolor, colored pencil and calligraphy featuring portraits, figures and landscape. She has been a courtroom illustrator since 2004 and has established a regional reputation licensing visual images to media as well as private commissions. Some of her memberships and affiliations are:  the Cincinnati Art Club as a signature member; two year artist in residence at the University Club of Cincinnati; arts ambassador to Ohio by the Portrait Society of America.   Marlene also founded the Calligraphy Guild, a regional teaching guild with continuous programming since 1980.

Marlene came today to demonstrate how to paint on Yupo, a newer kind of paper that is plastic on both sides. Watercolor paints can be mostly wiped off with water except for sedimentary colors which will stain. She prefers Windsor-Newton colors since they were developed for Queen Victoria and have held up well through time. She uses no off brands.

She brought two framed figure paintings and painted a still life as a demonstration.

She draws first on Yupo with a red or blue pencil, sketching casually, holding the pencil loosely at far end. For skin tones she uses cadmium red, Naples yellow and alizarin crimson or raw sienna and ochre.

Marlene said she had always wanted to be invisible so she could really see. One of her favorite quotes is by the sculptor Noguchi. “To see far is one thing. To go there is another. “.    
                             
Respectfully submitted by Louise Allen.  Photos by Deb Ward.