PORTLAND DEMOS DAY 3: LINE!!! AND A SLIDE SHOW!!!!!

As luck would have it, my draw paired TEXTURE as a secondary element with LINE as the primary element.  These just happen to be my two favorite elements.  Here are my demos for the day.

The first painting is done on YUPO.  I used watercolor crayons, watercolor sticks and Dr. Martin Hydrus liquid water color straight from the dropper full strength.  Then I spritzed and sprayed with water and alcohol.  I am very pleased with the results.  I will work with this idea again!

The second painting was drawn on top of  an old painting that had been collaged with different hand painted tissue papers.  I used a Daniel Smith watercolor stick, a Stabilo watercolor crayon and acrylic inks.   I will be developing this combination of materials more in the coming months.

The class did some exciting work today.  Everyone is very engaged in the process.  I love when everyone gets into the spirit of experimenting and trying new things.  Sometimes what doesn't turn out is the best lesson.

I finally found a new place to create a slide show.  Thank you, Photobucket!!!!  Here are the paintings from day two dealing with shape and texture.

LAST DEMO FROM SDWS!

This is the last demo I did for the San Diego workshop.  It is acrylic ink on very thin YUPO.  I am still not happy with the background.  It turns out that alcohol removes acrylic ink very easily, so I will wipe out some stenciled letters, I think, to make the background more interesting.  I was experimenting with the surface.  Lots to explore here.   I am very frustrated that the Slide.com website isn't working properly and I can't get the slide show accomplished.  I can't figure out the Blogger version, either.  Maybe when I get home I will try again.d

I am on my way home for the next few days.  Repacking and leaving for a workshop in Portland the week after next.  I had such a good time with everyone in San Diego.  A wonderful group of artists and an amazing workshop team.  Overall a very impressive group of people.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Portland again.  I love going around the country making new friends!

NOW TO COME UP WITH A TITLE!

 

I am excited about how this experiment turned out!  I learned a lot and had the most fun painting on both sides of the paper.  There are a few things I wished I could correct but it isn't possible.  Overall, I like the image a lot.  This was painted with acrylic inks in a very watercolor like manner.  I was able to do some lifting and changing by brushing rubbing alcohol over the dried ink.  Interesting, I could not lift thinly applied color.  I was able to lift areas of concentrated color.  It was a little tricky painting back in and getting it to blend in.   The background behind the head turned out as I had hoped.  I used clear contact paper as a mask to keep the stamping from overlapping where I didn't want it.  This paper made positioning (and repositioning) the sticky paper very easy and it lifted off when I was done with no problem.  

Coming up with a title for the painting is a fun family game.  So far we have "Contemplating getting accepted into AWS" and "How about this one?" Feel free to jump in with any suggestions.

Painting on this surface was rather slow (for me).  I was constantly having to wait for areas to dry so I could check out how it looked or turn the paper over to work on the other side.  While I was waiting, I started reading a great book, "The Element" by Ken Robinson..  I am always interested in ideas about creativity.  I had seen Sir Ken on U Tube delivering a speach for the TED convention.  He is charming, witty, and entertaining besides being brilliant.   This book talks about all the different kinds of creativity, matching your talents with your passion and how we need a revolution in education so that everyone can find their uniqueness and harness this talent pool for the benefit of our country and outselves.  Now I want every member of my family to read it.  

DECISIONS AND SOLUTIONS!

This painting is one I re-photographed the other day.  It is titled "The Autumn of My Life".  It is on YUPO and utilizes lots of George James' special techniques.  It looks nothing like anything I have ever done but I like it and it was so much fun in the making.  That, in my opinion, is the purpose of my art...to have joy in the act of creation.

Well, when you are in the Autumn of your life, there is no time to waste!  With the help of my son, Bill, who actually understands how all this technology works, we discussed his research into recovering data from a crashed hard drive.  I only  had two companies to work with because it requires a special room with a super clean environment and local, small individuals don't have that set up.  I could go with company "A" who is an authorized agent of the manufacturer of the hard drive (which was only 2 years old and still under limited warrantee i.e. they will replace the hard drive for free but not pay for the recovery....the hard drive was $235.  This authorized agent's cost of recovery $700 up to $2700. OUCH!!!!  If they couldn't salvage anything, no charge.   Recovery company "B" agent of a competing brand of hard drive, equally qualified to do the work, even on my brand, BUT it would void the warrantee by the hard drive manufacturer.  Company "B"'s recovery charge a flat $1500.  No charge if they failed to recover data.  Everything on my computer was backed up except the photos, so that was the only data I was interested in.  I get to see what they recover and then decide if I want it.  No charge if I don't want it even after they did the work.  That relieved me of my biggest concern...paying $1500 for data I still have on my computer!   I reasoned that the odds of the cost being less than $1500 with company "A" were remote and the odds of them being the full $2700 was a real possibility, so I opted for the known quantity and forfeited the warrantee replacement.   Staples Office Supply is handling the whole thing, so we took it there and they will pack it up and ship it off.

Now, I still need a backup system.  A good friend who had this very nightmare situation a few years ago uses a device called a "passport".  It is so cool!  The size of an IPhone, it has a 500GB capacity and uses a USB port connection for $120.  I can get a second one as a backup to the first and store zillions of photographs without using up all the memory in my laptop.  My new Snow Leopard operating system is backing up the computer EVERY HOUR!  It has something called "Time Machine" which allows you to retrieve lost data.  Sadly, it wasn't installed at the time of the big hard drive crash.

I will update this saga when I find out the results of the recovery effort.

I am sharing all this as a cautionary tale.  I hope others take the time to back up their valuable information so they don't have to go through this.  There are businesses that store data for you on the internet for a yearly fee of around $45.  In retrospect, that sounds like a bargain compared with the cost of retrieving lost data, plus there is no guarantee that it is even possible to get it back.  Blank cd's are cheap and a good way to store your photographs.  This is the best new years' resolution you could make.

RUINED...WIPED OUT...RE-PAINTED!

Well, the glazing got away from me and I lost the light. Decided to use alcohol and wipe out the highlights. Bad idea. This is how you learn, the hard way! Well, the lifting was blotchy and the glazing had a seamless quality so the two didn't go together. I then decided to go more opaque and that finally killed the delicate glazed appearance that I liked in the beginning.

So now I can throw the thing away, go completely opaque or I can try and lift off much of the acrylic with alcohol. I opted for the last idea. The good news when you have ruined something is that what every you try next, it can't really harm anything. What a freeing feeling. I am intrigued with the idea that alcohol dissolves acrylic, so I wanted to see how this works. I put some alcohol in a dish and used a sponge roller to soak it up then I ran the roller over the painting a number of times. I took some paper towels and rubbed as much acrylic off as I could. This is the stage I took the first photo.

When the surface was dry, I reintroduced some charcoal. Next I brushed a coat of glazing medium over the surface, lifting the smeared charcoal in places. I worked back into the image with some additional glazing of a few colors, used a few stamps and then drew a little with a Japanese brush pen with permanent ink.

I like the final result. It is more mysterious, gritty and painterly than the first idea.

BACK IN THE GROOVE!

Sometimes, I think I have lost my ability to produce good work. I guess it is like writer's block. When everything I do is unsatisfactory to me, I start to get depressed, worried, anxious. I was feeling scattered and unfocused. I was struggling with simplifying this image more and couldn't come up with a value plan. I just decided that I needed to get some paint on the paper. The beauty of YUPO is that you can keep changing things so I figured if I just started, I could make decisions and changes along the way. I had drawn the image on the paper with a watercolor crayon stuck in my new drawing stick. I wanted to make the background on the left dark, at least on the top, but the YUPO had other ideas and I kept lifting it off. After I finish the hands, I will adjust the background and see if I can't get the value darker. In the meantime, working on YUPO is always a learning experience. Now that it is coming together, I am having fun trying different techniques to get the paper and paint to bend to my will. Wish I could take Sandy Maudlin's YUPO class. Now there is a master of the medium!

Tomorrow I sit at Gallery Concord. I should be able to finish the painting. If you find yourself in the area, stop by and say hello.

"DOUBT" ACCEPTED INTO CWA NATIONAL SHOW!

This is the portrait I did of Preston Metcalf, the assistant curator at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara, California. He was gracious enough to give me permission to do anything I wanted with the photos I took of him. It may be a case of "be careful what you wish for". Many times I take pictures of strangers and keep on going. This time I made sure I had permission before I did anything other than for my own amusement. This image is so tightly cropped that I think I will attempt to float it instead of putting it under a mat. This painting is watercolor and acrylic on YUPO.

My son finally diagnosed my computer problem! I am lucky to have my techno saavy kids around to help me out. First he thought I didn't have enough space on the hard drive, so I spent hours sorting and moving hundreds and hundreds of photos to an auxillary hard drive to free up space. I get very nervous when I delete photos but I did it anyway. Then he had to update all the programs. I couldn't do that before because I didn't have enough space. Well, after all that, I still had the problem of losing my internet connection. My son is a scientist, so he has the patience of Job to do research and he found a website where this very problem was being experienced by other Mac users and they all had broken antennas!!! Since it is built in to the computer, I have to take it somewhere and get it fixed. Bill thinks it is a design flaw in the computer and Apple should pay for the fix. Yeah! Like that's going to happen. Anyway, I am working on my old computer which I kept because it has OS9 as well as OSX and my accounting program only runs on OS9. I refused to pay $300 to get a new accounting program for the new computer that would work for OS X. I only use it once a year for my tax records. I think I can plug in my auxillary hard drive to this computer and access my photos. Otherwise, I think I can transfer them to one of those portable stick thingies and transfer it that way. I don't know all the words, but I am getting pretty knowledgeable with the tools. Keeping up with technology is a full time job!

NEW MONTH...NEW ELEMENT!

During the month of October, we are going to do our Frenchman focusing on the element of SHAPE. If some of you are just joining us, you can find the photo in my blog archives. I think I should have started with Shape instead of Line but now is a good time to introduce this element. After taking Donna Zagotta's workshop, I am much more impressed with the importance of shape. It is the structure of the composition. You will notice that line and shape can go hand in hand as the edge of a shape by it's nature becomes a line, even if only implied. For week one work with the Frenchman and break up the image into as many shapes as suits you. Then, consider simplifying the image into fewer shapes. Do this a number of times continuing to reduce the image to it's minimalist essence.

The above Frenchman was done on my 9 x 12 YUPO paper. I had ordered a set of SAI Japanese watercolor brush pens from JetPens the other day and was surprised to have them delivered today. Turns out they were sent from Mountain View which is less than 20 miles from my house! I had seen these pens recommended on a Watercolor Journaling blog and this company is the only one who carries them. I had a drawing from the Sunday Marathon on a sheet of YUPO that needed some color and then I decided to do one of the Frenchman, as well. I had such a good time trying lots of techniques and seeing what I could do with this new tool. I used the wire sculpture drawing of the Frenchman as my base. This was already a simplification of the shapes. I think the end result has the strongest element being texture but shape was the starting point.

DRAWING MARATHON TODAY!

Today I was able to go the the quarterly drawing marathon in Palo Alto and stayed for both sessions. It took a little trial and error but I finally figured out a combination of inks and pens, brush strokes and marks that gave me results I liked. I am posting my two favorite drawings from today and the rest that I liked are in the slide show. I was using India Ink with a brush, walnut ink with a brush and the Elegant Writer black pen and then a permanent fine point uniball pen. I took the phone book, my new pad of YUPO and a Watercolor travel book that I wasn't too fond of the paper quality. It was perfect for the materials I worked with today. The morning session had my two favorite models. In the afternoon, I switched to the long pose but didn't have an interesting vantage point so I started drawing the other artists around the model a la Charles Reid. That was fun. I was so happy life didn't interfere with art today.

LINE AS TEXTURE PAINTING #1 FINISHED

I spent a few hours today finishing up the painting. My biggest problem was getting the support board to be perfectly level. I am painting on a French easel in my "Library" space. It has 3 adjustable legs. I have a large art glass marble that I placed on the board. Which ever way it rolled I knew to raise that side. It took awhile, but I finally got the perfect adjustment. I usually work on a table when I am painting on Yupo or Tyvek so it is automatically level.

The ink from the stamped images resisted the paint, creating some interesting effects. I will need to spray this painting with acrylic spray after I am sure I don't want to make any changes. I do this because the heaviest paint will remain tacky indefinitely. The spray seals it and gives an even sheen to the surface.

This painting is pretty wild. I limited my colors to Ultramarine, Alizarin Crimson, New Gamboge, Hansa Yellow Deep and Diluted Thalo Blue. This painting reminds me of a quilted image. It has future possibilities. I do think I need to tone things down next time. Hopefully, I will get my thick gesso tomorrow and can do a texture painting with it.

LINE AS TEXTURE PAINTING STAGE 1

I absolutely love Ann Bagby's paintings. She makes her own stamps. I have purchased the necessary materials to do so, but haven't taken that step yet. I have made some stamps with this very cool stuff that you heat with a stripper gun and then press into a textured surface to create a stamp. You can reheat this foam block with the gun and the image disappears and is ready to accept a new impression. I used one of those stamps in this painting. It is the area around the eye in the detail image. The rest of the stamps are purchased. Click on each image to bring it up in a separate screen, enlarged.

I drew my image on Yupo with a permanent finepoint pen. Then I created a stencil from tracing paper for each shape so I could stamp just the shape I wanted without slopping over into the adjacent area. I thought about keeping the stamped tracing paper to use as collage but decided it wasn't usable. I think next time I will use tissue paper for the stencil so I will have good collage material left over. After I finished the stamping using regular archival stamp pad ink, I redrew the lines with a heavier line. I'm not sure I like it better with a heavier line, but everything is an experiment and gaining knowledge for next time around.

This process is really forcing me to slow down! I need to embrace the process. I completed this step last night and started painting it today. Very slow going but it is looking interesting. This looks nothing like anything I have every done. It does have a graphic quality that I am seeing in lots of contemporary work these days.

I hope everyone is having fun trying new things. Can't wait to see what you come up with. I have added a number of new paintings to the slide show, so check it out again.

STAGE 3 PAINTING #1 FRENCHMAN WITH LINE

We're not used to the heat here in Foster City. The past few days have been HOT and we have no air conditioning. All my energy has melted right out of me. I need to finish this painting but thought I would post it at this stage and then lift out some lights and make further adjustments tomorrow and post the final version.

The October issue of American Artist is in the bookstores now with the Self Portrait competition winners. I guess it is official that I was awarded second place but I have not heard anything from the magazine. I find that so strange.

I am gearing up for the workshop in October in Ocean Shores, Washington. It looks like a fabulous location for a fun and relaxing week. There are a few spots still available if anyone wants a great art working vacation. Check my website for details.

If you have a finished "Frenchman with Line" painting, send it in. I will put up a slide show tomorrow.

SEPTEMBER CHALLENGE PAINTING PROGRESS

It was a great holiday weekend. The weather here in the SF Bay Area was totally glorious. Saturday I went with my husband to the King's Mountain Art Festival which is held on the crest of the mountain in a Redwood Forest. We splurged on an anniversary gift for ourselves and purchased a beautiful hand made display table that has different inlaid woods and some crushed turquoise stones imbedded in the knot holes. Sunday I went with a friend to the famous Sausalito Art Festival. By the time we paid the parking, entrance fee, lunch, gas and bridge toll, we had spent a pretty penny but didn't purchase any art work.

Today I was anxious to get started painting again, being so inspired by all the incredible art work the previous two days. I did three preliminary drawings playing around with different line widths. I started the painting on Yupo in a vertical position on the easel and using a 1" cheap bristle brush from the paint store painted the basic lines with diluted violet Hydrus liquid watercolor. The stiff bristles don't hold lots of paint so I had almost no runs. In fact, I wanted some runs in the background and had a difficult time getting this to happen. The first image (very poor. Sorry!) shows the results. Next I used a 1/2" cheap bristle brush with stronger pigment and went back over the lines. Lastly I used my favorite Lizard's Lick #4 Cheap Joe's brush with Cobalt and drew the fine lines. I forgot to photograph the second step until half way through the third step.

Now I am contemplating where to go from here. I have thought of 3 or 4 options. If I want the line to dominate, I have to consider how the next step will impact the whole. I shall sleep on it.

JACK RED CLOUD ON YUPO!

I finally have the small room off the living room in our house called "the library" (because it has book shelves) set up to paint in. With winter coming, the garage studio is very cold and drafty. It took quite a bit of cleaning out but I think it will work out nicely. I purchased an Ott Light for the room. Now I have the "natural light" even at night.

This is my first painting in my new work space. It is still a work in progress. My order for Yupo came in, so I thought I would try to work on it for a change of pace. The first pass was a very wet mingled wash using New Gamboge, Indian Red, and Ultramarine Blue. I wanted the colors more muted for this subject, so I picked a dull red. I also love the rich darks this color helps create. While the wash was wet, I drew 2 faces onto the paper with a blue watercolor crayon. The crayon pushes the paint away from it and it also starts to dissolve, creating a very interesting effect. The pushing of the paint only happens the first time. Subsequent marks into a wet wash don't have the same chemistry. I let the painting dry.

Second pass I started to build the structure of the face using the same three colors with the addition of Payne's Gray. Notice the watercolor crayon marks in the hair. This is how the crayon works on this paper after there is paint on the page. Nice but quite different from the first.

I have worked some more on this painting today but haven't photographed it yet. They came to clean the carpets today so the dinning room furniture is in the breakfast room and the living room furniture is in my new "studio/library" and the carpet has to dry 24 hours before the furniture goes back....so I can't get back to my painting for awhile. Anyway, I feel like I am putting paint on and then taking it off, then putting more on then taking it off, yada, yada, yada. Yupo can be frustrating but I am having fun. I want to make sure to capture the hauntingly proud and resentful expression in this face.

DEBATE: COLOR VS. VALUE

One of the things I keep hearing is that if one is a realist painter then representing 3 dimensions requires value as the dominant element. The modern painters flattened space. Colorists fall into the last group. One needs to choose either color or value, but as Topher Schink described it, if one uses both it sets one's teeth on edge. I refuse to choose. I like both color and value. I resist flattening out the shapes and eliminating the detail. I find the detail interesting to work with. Here is my latest effort to combine color and value. Since color has value, if you get the value right, you can use any hue you desire and achieve three- dimentionality.

This painting is on Yupo. It started with random color intermingling. When dry, I sprayed it with an acrylic spray so it would't lift. The rest was painted with acrylic.

PAINTINGS FROM GEO. JAMES WORKSHOP

I hope everyone enjoys the slide show. I didn't get the full names of a few of the participants. The images are reversed, and the color is slightly off but you can still see the beauty and variety. It was such a fun group of people to spend time with. One person came down from Oregon for the opportunity to work with Prof. James. I have put my painting in the slide show and also posted it above. I like the color and value shifts. I had fun with the figures. They are from some of my figure drawings. The imagery in the painting is strange but it was fun experimenting with the ideas of paint application and light and dark patterns. Check out Sandy Maudlin's blog. http://www.sandymaudlin.blogspot.com/ She has shared some additional information for working with YUPO. As soon as I get a free moment, I want to try some of these techniques on the Tyvek.

GEORGE JAMES DEMO DARK LINKAGE & WHITE PASSAGE

Today was the last day of the George James workshop. Everything came together and people finished paintings with pretty amazing results for a workshop effort. I was able to photograph each one and I will post that slide show tomorrow. Today I am sharing the two small demos George did to explain his way of designing shapes. One strategy is to have dark shapes connecting through the painting. He calls this linkage. If you do the same with light shapes, he calls this passage. He demonstrated both. This is a concept I think I will be able to utilize in more of my paintings. It doesn't work if you are following the logic of how light works in the real world. He calls this "light logic". His method is arbitrary light and dark shapes with a focus on design and contrast. You create a very different kind of painting using this idea.

The second part of his morning discussion dealt with entering competitions and the jurying process. I found this information very very valuable. He described the heirarchy of types of shows. Starting with local shows, then regional, national and lastly international. The competition increases as you move up in the heirarchy. The awards also increase. The larger the prize money, the tougher the competition.

There are two types of judging. One is a single judge and the other is multiple judges. A single judge has more time to look at the slides and review them to make his decision. In this case, where your slide was in the pack was not very critical. When there are multiple judges, they all get together and decide at one time. George noticed that the judges were being hyper critical of the first few trays to insure a top notch show. If there are 3 judges, then if all 3 vote yes the painting is in, if 2 vote yes it may be reviewed if they need more paintings after the first round of viewing is done. If only one or no judges vote yes, the painting is out. George decided to send his slides into competitions somewhere in the middle of the receiving dates to position his slide past the first trays because the slides are placed in the slide trays in order of being received.

If you are accepted into the National Watercolor Society, you have the option of sending in an additional 3 paintings in mats to be reviewed by a panel. If they feel your work is up to the society standards, they will grant you signature membership. I always thought it was a separate viewing from the painting in the show by a different group of people than those who selected the show paintings. It turns out they put a slide of the painting accepted into the show on the wall and then place the additional 3 paintings underneath that so they are seeing all 4 at one time. Therefore, it is best to have all 4 related in subject matter and definitely of the same degree of excellence.

The other piece of information I found interesting is that the American Watercolor Society has quotas on how many signature members can be in their yearly national show. They are competing against each other for these slots. That way there are always opportunities for the unaffiliated entries to be accepted.

George shared how he evaluates slides submitted for a show where he is the single judge. This is his method and not necessarily the way all judges do it.
He receives the submitted slides which have been placed in order of being received. He views them at his home and can take as much time as he needs to decide. He is given the total number of paintings he can accept for the show. This number is related to the exhibition space available. Let's say there are 700 entries and space for 100 paintings. The first thing he does is go through the slides and get a feel for the range of SUBJECT matter. The next thing he looks at is CRAFT (how well painted)
Next he pares it down to 200 paintings. If more than one slide was permitted to be entered per person, he eliminates all but one per person. Now, to get it down to the exact number of paintings for the show, he looks for STRONG DESIGN, STRONG COLOR and UNIQUENESS. The juror is always working towards a balanced show in terms of subject matter and styles of painting.

GEO. JAMES WORKSHOP DAY 3: 2 FIGURE DEMOS

Today was exciting to see how George James develops his figurative paintings. We also had the privilege of seeing his sketch books. If you want to know how to draw from memory with conviction, the sketch books reveal the answers...draw every day, draw everything, practice, practice, practice. No real surprise, here! I think he has drawn every image in Bridgeman's Constructive Anatomy Book. This was the first art book I ever purchased. I can still feel the thrill I felt when I first saw this book. I had to save my baby sitting money for a long time to be able to purchase it. I don't know where this book is buried in my house (I would never get rid of it) so I purchased a soft bound edition a few years ago. The original will show up sometime. Now, I am inspired to do more drawing from this book.

Regarding the slide show images: I was sitting on the far right shooting the overhead mirror, therefore most of the images are reversed and have some distortion. When I had a chance, I photographed with the painting in front of me. The two details where done this way. The color is off. Somehow it looks too yellow. I corrected as much as I could. He did a second fast demo of a head in 4 steps of values.

Tomorrow is going to be super interesting as he is going to give a lecture about how jurying works in art society national shows. He is most active in the National Watercolor Society which has it's headquarters in Southern California where he lives.

I have been chugging along painting the worst paintings of my life this week! I am receiving comments from some of you excited to see what I have done. I promise to post it, but don't have too high of expectations! I rarely have a good painting from a workshop. I find it a place to try new ideas and processes. It takes awhile to integrate this information into my work. George likes flat images, simplified shapes, hard edges, strong geometry in his composition, works almost exclusively with a flat brush. All of these things are contrary to my sensibilities....I like lost and found edges, round brushes, ambiguity, texture, line. So what am I gaining from the workshop? New ways of developing Composition ideas, texture techniques, new ways of working with watercolor paints, alternation of contrasts, new tools to manipulate paint. Lots to process and think about.