With sadness we announce the passing of Bob Watson, husband of WAS-H member Carol Watson. Bob was a trailblazing former Astro player who, following a stellar playing career, became MLB's first black general manager. He also built the Yankee's 1996 team that won the World Series. Read more here

The City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs (MOCA) and Downtown Redevelopment Authority, in partnership with gener8tor announced this week a new initiative supporting Houston artists, musicians, creatives and nonprofit leaders affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Under the Houston Emergency Response Program, artists, musicians and creatives will have access to a free, week-long webinar series designed to identify and leverage critical resources in order to weather this ongoing public health crisis. 

As part of the program, participants will be provided with daily webinars featuring experts in the following areas:

• Sustaining your creativity and creative practice during COVID-19
• Navigating and utilizing TikTok to bolster your online presence
• Mental health and wellness resources for creatives
• Unemployment assistance and financial relief resources
• Fireside chat with Fernando Garibay, creative director and music producer on Lady Gaga’s Born This Way album

Velissa R. Chapa, legal counsel to the commissioner representing employers at the Texas Workforce Commission, will lead the unemployment assistance webinar.

In addition to webinars, daily one-on-one consultations to meet digitally with advisors on the above topics will be available. The gener8tor team will be working one-on-one with artists, musicians, creatives and nonprofit leaders to address the various issues they are facing during the COVID-19 outbreak.

gener8tor will also work with community groups interested in providing pro bono resources to artists.

Interested artists, musicians, creatives and nonprofit leaders may visit www.gener8tor.com/emergency-response-program/houston/creatives to register. The program will run from May 18, 2020 - May 22, 2020. All Houston-based creatives are welcome to apply.

“The cultural community it is the heart and soul of Houston,” said Debbie McNulty, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. “Right now, organization leaders and individuals are adapting and perservering to keep bringing us art, music and creativity when we need it most. We are thankful to gener8tor for joining our local response with this program and to the Downtown Redevelopment Authority for their support.”

“Artists, musicians and creatives are a vital part of building thriving communities. We hope to call on our network of mentors, investors and partners to support artists through this new Emergency Response Program,” said Joe Kirgues, gener8tor co-founder.

For more information on the Emergency Response Program, contact Abby Taubner at abby@gener8tor.com.

Congratulations to WAS-H member Gay Paratore who sent the following news:

Hi, I just got a call from the Texas Watercolor Society! I won an $1000.00 award for "Beach Babes". The judge picked it because it "made her smile". Made me smile, too! The painting is below:

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Kanya Kelly sent us her new artwork titled Fantasy Dreams. Here is what she wrote:

"I was creating a tree series. One of the series is "Fantasy Dreams". During the cabin fever of the lockdown I wanted to bring vibrant colors and cheerful moods to my work. So, I played with warm/cool values using wet on wet and wet on dry techniques. I only used loose goose brush to create lines, branches and tree trunks.

Using Sennelier watercolors I did not paint straight from the tube but let the colors mingle on paper instead of mixing on the pallet."

Kanya's painting is below:

Please share your latest wins, paintings and achievements with us - email washrag@watercolorhouston.org

by Jan McNeill
WAS-H Paint-in Co-Coordinator and Past President

The Painter's Key, a twice weekly art newsletter, recently had a thoughtful quote that I thought worthy of sharing with our WAS-H members:

Alone and Together (by Sara Genn)
...we need to learn in all kinds of ways — including by watching our mentors. Stumbling around in the dark, alone forever will take us only so far. Communities like masters programs, painting clubs and workshops produce artists that speak to the value of their tribe and the experiences gained in the presence of a collective. And so, what to do while we wait to be together?

If you ’re intrigued, I encourage you to check out this link for the free newsletter.  https://painterskeys.com/

The above comments about learning from communities and painting clubs really made me think of WAS-H. I have learned much in the past 20+ years that I ’ve been taking classes, attending workshops, sitting in monthly live demonstrations, and going on painting excursions. I know I would not have come this far without those wonderful opportunities. 

Yes, we are eager to get back together after this time of Covid-19 virus and social distancing!   And in the meantime, we are painting when we can and connecting with our painting friends.  

In anticipation, I have already renewed my annual membership with WAS-H, how about you??

Stay Safe!

by Ksenia Annis, Washrag Editor

The beginnings of my audiovisual (AV) setup date back to when I decided to pursue my art full time. The immediate need was the ability to properly light and hang two-dimensional art for photographing. To this end, we installed track lighting on two walls and the ceiling of our landing. Using 5500 K (degrees Kelvin) color temperature bulbs, this enabled easy photo shoots as I produced my art. As time progressed, my AV need shifted from still photography to video as the business focus shifted towards demonstration and education. For the production of online classes, I needed the ability to video art pieces during painting. This required a camera mounted to shoot vertically down.

Originally, I purchased a metal floor stand with a “selfie ring” - a circular light with a camera mount in the middle made for video bloggers. I mounted a cheap web camera on that stand, aimed it at my drawing table and filmed my first class. The thing I didn’t consider was that every time I moved at my table or applied a slightest pressure to it, the whole contraption shook and I had to cut shaky frames from my videos.

A ceiling mount was an obvious solution and the contraption you see in the photos is our homemade engineered solution. It is a box on drawer slides for horizontal adjustments with the same 5500K lights. An old camera tripod bungeed to the box mounts the camera. It is helpful to have a business partner skilled in engineering solutions such as this. A note of caution with ceiling mounts. Most Houston homes have air conditioning equipment in the attic and it turns out ours was directly above my upstairs studio space. This resulted in unacceptable vibration being transmitted to the camera. I spent the first summer using this setup with the air conditioning off during shooting - we all must suffer for our art. Fortunately, the air conditioning was old and failed the next summer. The expensive replacement is not located above my studio and does not vibrate the ceiling in any case.

Of course, I needed a way to record my voice and the Yeti Blue microphone and boom you see is used for all audio recording needs. It is extremely sensitive. It also required the air conditioning to be off or it would record too much background noise. I love my new quiet air conditioning system for giving me comfort while working!

All AV recording is done directly into my Asus laptop. It is a high end gaming/graphics laptop purchased because I needed portability and the power to drive the Adobe Creative Suite I use to process my product. I no longer need that portability so my next computer will likely be a tower style PC as you can get much more power for less money. I also have a professional level video monitor so that my colors are displayed as true to life as possible. This is an important part of producing quality prints. It is helpful, but not entirely necessary for video production.

For online classes, the majority of the camera work is focused solely on the work. I add the reference photo on screen, in post-production. In order to do that I needed software capable of displaying a second video source. For this we chose Open Broadcaster Software (OBS Studio).

Online classes require introduction and ending sequences (intro and outro). These generally present the artist so I needed the capability to also video these sequences. We decided to use “green screen” and post process the backgrounds. Here you see our second floor landing converted to “green screen” production studio.

In October 2019 we went to Florida where I taught a class at our friends’ art studio. I brought my artwork, my materials, my projector, but I forgot to bring my camera! We bought another one of the same type at the local BestBuy and I thought I’d return it after my guest tour was done.

When we came back home, I decided to expand my video production to YouTube live streams and online live classes on Skilpe.com. This meant I needed to shoot simultaneous video of the art in progress and the artist working. Luckily, my prior equipment and software choices made this a simple matter of adding the Florida purchased camera to my existing setup. This camera mounts to the light ring I now use for the green screen head shots; it feeds into the OBS software, which is capable of multiple audio and video source presentation. The boom mounted microphone feeds into OBS and records the audio. OBS allows easy live streaming as well as recording.

The setup was complete when I bought an iPad stand, so that I can show slides or a reference photo via screen mirroring using Lonely Screen software (free). All the devices are plugged into my laptop via a USD hub (unless you have a custom built computer, there will never be enough USB ports for all this stuff).

Here is the list of hardware and software I use for video streaming and production:

Green Screen Paint

http://www.andrewseltz.com/2016/02/22/green-screen-paint-how-to-pick-the-right-one/

Track Lighting – Big Box home improvement stores or lighting stores

5500K Bulbs -Lighting store or Amazon

High end gaming/graphics computer- Video processing is intensive computing. Adobe Creative Suite requires heavy duty computing power to run smoothly. Consult an expert before purchasing.

Yeti Blue microphone and boom stand

https://www.bluedesigns.com/products/yeti/

Logitech C920 webcams

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/hd-pro-webcam-c920

Selfie Ring and Stand

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0751932RT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Ipad stand

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FFLK7AM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

OBS Studio – https://obsproject.com/

Free software that allows you to arrange the feed from all your devices into a “scene”. It has camera control features and can be used to record video, or stream live on YouTube and Facebook.

Adobe Creative Suite - https://www.adobe.com/

- Premier Pro and AfterEffects are two powerful programs I use to edit videos and create animated sequences and titles. Audition is the sound recording and editing program that integrates with Premier Pro.

We also have file server and backup (Western Digital MyCloud Ultra), https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/network-attached-storage/wd-my-cloud-expert-series-ex2-ultra#WDBVBZ0000NCH-NESN

Those video files are huge and large storage is essential. We also need to be able to easily share files as Patrick, in addition to engineering, also writes copy, films green screen and reference shoots and edits video and audio. The file server allows us to easily work on the same project.

I love working on videos. Even though it is sometimes nerve wracking to do them live, after all it is a lot of fun to connect with fellow artists and art lovers.

I hope you check out my YouTube channel and my classes - more info can be found on my website - tummyrubb.com. Please let me know in comments what you think and if you have any questions! 

What does the WAS-H Plein Aire Coordinator, Louise Bateman  do while self quarantined?   She gets out her Plein Aire equipment, sets up in her driveway and paints a Nandina bush.    The painting was not worthy of posting, (her inner critic was very loud), but just being outside, wetting the paints, and putting her brush to paper, made some of her stress melt away.   Perhaps tomorrow's painting will be worth posting.    She challenges all the other plein aire painters to send in what they are painting!

GENERAL MEETING & DEMO  via ZOOM Conference
(new, temporary format)

   April 5, 2020  2:00 pm start

Join the meeting via your phone or computer using ZOOM. Directions will soon be  mailed to all members so you can download ZOOM (easy and optional), and then join the fun by clicking on the link you will get in the email. ZOOM is the most popular way to video conference, much like FaceTime, but designed for multiple people.  You will also get to cast a vote for the upcoming slate of officers. Come see what all the buzz is about and learn another way to easily connect with those at a distance (family, friends).

Meeting: 2:00 p.m.

Demo: 2:10 - 2:40 p.m.

Demo Artist: Ksenia Annis, live from her studio:

Artist's toolbox: 3 materials I use to enhance my water media art
Watercolor on white paper is always beautiful, but sometimes artists, in search of inspiration, want to try something different and to add materials and tools to their artistic arsenal. Ksenia recently purchased three new (to her) art materials, and tried incorporating them into her water media pieces. She will demonstrate how she did it and discuss the results.

If you have questions about using Zoom, please head over to this link - https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206175806-Top-Questions

On Friday, March 13, 2020, Association of Teaching Artists, Teaching Artists Guild, Creative Generation, National Guild for Community Arts Education, the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, and Teaching Artists of the Mid-Atlantic hosted a free webinar to address how the COVID-19 health crisis is affecting teaching artists. A rich list resources discussed in the webinar (and more) is hosted on the Teaching Artists Guild’s website - https://www.teachingartists.com/

Houston Arts Alliance is providing a COVID-19 Damage Assessment Survey and other resources on their website - https://ready.haatx.com/

Dear Friends,

Six weeks ago, when the WAS-H volunteer community was excitedly engaged in preparation for the IWE, we could not have imagined the current crisis we are living through. It reminds me of the important role art plays in society during times of crisis. Creativity is born deep in the human psyche, generated by every kind of human experience imaginable - including crisis and stress! Taking time to restore and renew ourselves is important. Today we are launching an on-line gallery of the 43rd IWE show. Take time out of your day to view these 90 beautiful pieces of art. They will lift your spirit! Eric Wiegardt, our juror, focused on artists whose work demonstrated creativity, originality and heart, as well as skill and proficiency in watercolor.

Please check our website regularly for updates about WAS-H events. And please — take care and stay safe! This is a great time to pull out your paints, take an on-line class, watch those watercolor videos on your shelf. We are going to reinitiate our 30 Watercolors in 30 Days Corona 2020 Paint-Off for you to post your work! It will help us all to keep our spirits up.

Take care and stay safe,

Kathleen Church
President, WAS-H