VACATION

Several years ago, three other watercolorists and I spent a week right on the ocean in Maine. Barb had rented a wonderful old cottage for us to enjoy near a very picturesque fishing village. The deck of the cottage was about 12 feet from the edge of the ocean, and we were in a wonderfully secluded cove. Paradise!

This was the view from where I sat painting each day. Watching the tide come in and go out, watching the continuous display of beautiful skies and sunrises, as well as seeing another part of the world never fails to inspire me to paint. The rocks or boulders were worn from eons of waves hitting them, and they were still enormous.

All my life people have told me to paint what I feel, express myself, say what I want to say. Great... except I never had ANY idea what I wanted to say. If I knew, I would've said it out loud.

In Maine that summer, I finally realized that painting lets me express what I want to say in the very best way that I can express it. Painting is my voice to help me know what I'm feeling and experiencing, and often, it's while I'm painting that I get in touch with feelings that I had no idea were there.

Anyone else like that? You have no idea what you want to convey or express until you've got it down with paint on paper. Then maybe you finally know what it was you wanted to 'say.' Probably if I knew ahead of time, I would just say it out loud and not paint it.

"VACATION" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 11 x 7" COLLECTED

SUMMER

It seems like I haven't painted for forever and haven't posted for over a week either, so here's a REALLY old painting done in the late '90's. The up close study shows the textures of the old wooden sign.

Back then, I'd never use black and still seldom do. The blacks here are just dark colors in separate puddles from my palette, then allowed to mix on the paper. I think I used Ultramarine Turquoise (a mixture of phthalo green and French Ultramarine,) Quinacridone Violet, Indanthrone, and Quinacridone Burnt Orange. All were from Daniel Smith Company in Seattle, WA.

I love the depth of color and richness that happens when darks are created this way, plus both a warm black and a cool black can easily be made depending on how much of each color is used.

Miskit was applied VERY carefully to protect the edges of the white feathers and the rope. I use an 00 rigger brush dedicated for just applying miskit, then rinse it really well in GOOF OFF before washing it with Dawn Liquid Detergent, then hot water to clean it out.

The painting is really a contrast of darks and lights with just a bit of humor thrown in. This pelican lives in Bonita Springs, Florida, and it's evident that he WAS fishing from that dock.

Enjoy the rest of your summer if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. We (grandkids and me, plus my honey when he's not at work) have spent time everyday at the pool... two more weeks of grandkid fun before they must head home. This week it's just the two girls, so life seems nearly casual this morning! Oh yes, I DID paint yesterday - little toenails and fingernails, some orange and some deep pink! I love painting, and I LOVE being a grandma.

"NO FISHIN'" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 15 x 22" COLLECTED

Impromptu YUPO

This painting was done as a quick, impromptu demo for last month's batik workshop..... and it's done on YUPO paper. YUPO is a slick, plastic-like surface that will last for ages and ages. Painting on it with watercolor and fluid acrylics results in even brighter colors than if painting on regular watercolor paper.

At the end of August, I'll be teaching a YUPO workshop here in my studio, to introduce some unique and different approaches to using YUPO. All kinds of mediums will be used, from charcoal to Caran d'Ache crayons, even inks. Our subject matter will be limited only by our imaginations, and I'm looking forward to a great workshop.

Check out more info on the right hand side bar if you're interested in the workshop, but right now, I only have room for four more in the workshop.

"IRENE'S BRIDGE" Transparent Watercolor on Medium Weight YUPO 11 x 18" COLLECTED

ADJUSTMENTS

Batik adjustments are easy enough to make once the wax is removed and the batik is adhered to either canvas or acid free watercolor paper. The posts here show the final result first, along with the stages the batik went through after I'd ironed the wax out of the rice paper. This was one of the demos done for the Craftsummer Workshop which I taught a couple of weeks ago at Miami University.

This final painting, posted first, shows the many value changes as well as color and shape adjustments, compared to the original, shown next. The artists at Craftsummer only saw the batik as seen below, with the warmer overall temperature and paler border.

I'd planned for a cool temperature painting with a warm focal area, but that just didn't happen. Many adjustments had to be made to improve the painting, and I decided I'd rather sacrifice some of the batik effect, if I had to, in order to pull off a better painting.

The window in the upper left and the archway in the lower right really needed help, as did the strength of the shadows on the steps. I also wanted to add some cool teals and turquoises to the warm areas to help alleviate the heat of the painting.

The corners all needed to be darkened to help 'enclose' the painting, but even after doing that, I felt that it still lacked depth. Darkening the border considerably and minimizing the diamond shapes in it helped give the painting a better sense of depth - - - compare first pix with third one - shown here with lighter border.

My original photo, below, shows the scene that inspired this batik, but I used lots of artistic license to create a better composition. My goal was to capture the feelings I had while we were in this incredibly beautiful little village. I left Linda out of the painting and wondered later if the painting might have been more interesting if I had included her. Too late now, though.

A close up of the focal area shows details of the temperature changes - last pix posted here - as well as the stronger colors added for the flower areas. There were really a lot of adjustments on this batik, but not as many as on the one I'm working on now.

During one of the last days at Craftsummer, I was painting hot wax on this batik to completely cover the whole sheet of rice paper. Suddenly, I realized I had my other batik-in-progress UNDER this one. Where I'd just added the hot wax, it soaked into that underlying rice paper batik-in-progress.

A couple of the artists helped me carefully pull the two pieces of waxed rice paper apart, and now I must iron off all that 'mistake' wax on that bottom batik. YIKES! Once I re wax the shapes, I hope I can continue that batik and pull it off. We'll see.....

Batik is an intense process that's very time consuming, but well worth it. I won't give up on that batik-in-progress yet, since I already have a lot of time invested in it. If it doesn't turn out, I'll still have some beautiful pieces of colored rice paper to use for collage later.

Finished Painting at Top of Post ---
"COMO COUNTRY" Transparent Watercolor Batiked with Hot Wax on Kinwashi, with Sumi Ink, mounted on Wrapped Canvas 18 x 24"

Detail of focal area

GREAT ART & NEW FRIENDS

Teaching a five day workshop is invigorating and fulfilling for me, (as well as exhausting.) As a teacher, I get to watch wonderful, creative artwork being born as well as get to know some fascinating and often unusually talented artists. The supplies we use and the techniques we employ give us similar vehicles to uniquely express who we are as artists.

Each person's use of color, line, shape, and texture is different from the next. Approaches varied for each assignment, and the results were stunning. Some of the batiks were over two feet long, but most were between 12" and 18".

Batik is an intense method of creating art using hot wax to preserve shapes. We all learned from each other, from our successes and from our failures.

It seems that each painting expresses a special part of that artist in a way that only she can express. The happy accidents along the way added to the mystery of making art. It was a wonderful week. Thank you all for being such a great class, for working so hard, for making it fun to be with other artists. The hardest part for me is always saying "goodbye" at the end.





Linda Lyons - 12" square circle design

DeeAnne Helm - Harbor batik

Emily Hostetter - City lights

Sondra Karipides - Daisies

Kathy Storrie - Venice

Sarajane Steinecker - 12" square leaf design

Irene Friedman - 12" square design

Jenny Koch - 12" square design

Amber Michaels - Portraits with collage

Andrea Stewart - 12" design

BATIK CLASS AT MIAMI U

Here are some more of the exquisite batiks created last week in my workshop. When they were completed, some were adhered to white watercolor paper while some were mounted onto a wrapped canvas. All are originals, designed by each artist. More to come in the next post, too. ENJOY!

Sondra Karipides 12" square design



















Kathy Storrie - Hands

Andrea Stewart - Fluid design with border

Amber Michael - Drink of water

Sarajane Steinecker - 12" square on Itchimatsu rice paper

Linda Lyons - Non-representational batik mounted on canvas, with embellishments

Irene Friedman - 12" square on Itchimatsu rice paper

Jenny Koch - Lily pads

Emily Hostetter - 12" square on Itchimatsu rice paper

DeeAnne Helm - 12" squares

Anne Bongiovanni - floral batik

That's all until the next post.

BIRTHDAY BOY

Our first grandchild is NINE YEARS old today! So hard to believe. The joy he brings to our lives is awesome. He's such a blessing.

Here are some of the paintings I've painted over the years of him, several of which have been posted before. All are watercolor on Arches or Fabriano, 140#CP. My favorite's of him and his dog.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRANT!!!

NO SLIDE SHOW

After spending lots of hours trying to post a great slide show of last week's Batik Workshop, using Flickr, Picasa, and slide.com, I give up. Nothing worked. Help???!!!???

Nevertheless, here are a few of the fabulous pieces our class painted, using watercolor, sumi ink, and hot wax. More to come.....

First three batiks by - Anne Bongiovanni, (man to right,) Jenny Koch, (nets to left,) Sondra Karipides (landscape with sun)

Fish batik by Andrea Stewart

Circular designs by Emily Hostetter

Porch by DeeAnne Helm

Abstract design by Amber Michael

Abstracted design with border by Sarajane Steinecker

Fruit by Kathy Storrie

Color design by Linda Lyons

Waterfalls batik by Irene Friedman

FIREWORKS

All day long, actually for the past week, we've been hearing the sounds of firecrackers and other fireworks being shot off to help celebrate our nation's 233rd birthday. Fireworks are really tricky to paint with watercolor, so here's my effort for celebrating - a rendition of a gentle evening at the lake with a beautiful red, white, and blue sunset, without fireworks.

This is a very small (for me) watercolor done as a demo many years ago in one of my intermediate classes. With the exception of painting the little duck in after it dried, this landscape took about ten minutes to create.

The focus was to let the water and paint do as much of the work as possible. Using the paint brush to deliver the paint to the paper, then getting out of the way, was the hardest part.

It used to be so like me to want to mess and play and touch up, and it was way too easy to overdo a good thing. But it's so true that watercolor does its best when it's allowed to flow and mingle on its own.

Happy Fourth of July, America!

"CELEBRATION" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 11 x 7" COLLECTED

FIVE PAINTINGS

The five paintings above, along with the reference photo, show my slightly different takes from one inspiration. I know that I've completed several more paintings of the same subject - one very dark and somber - one very, very colorful and patchwork quilt looking - and the rest I can't remember. For several years, I didn't take photos of my work, and now I regret that lapse.

All of these have watercolor in them and are more or less in chronological order, with the first one being painted about 15 years ago. It was done using masking tape to protect previously painted areas as I darkened more shapes to build up the painting. The tape's all removed now. It's a technique I continue to use today because I like the batik looking effect it lends to the painting where the paint leaks under the pieces of tape.

The second one is a collage with watercolor, using rice papers to build up texture on the paper. It was easy to create the delicious textures of those old walls with the layers of various rice papers.

The third painting was done on watercolor paper that had a layer of white gesso painted over it first. The paint 'floated' on the gesso-ed surface, drying in irregular ways that helped establish the textures of the walls and street.

The fourth painting began with one good white shape and three 'cool temperature' shapes touching it. The white shape went off the page on three sides, originally, but now is hard to find. The process of using a good white shape initially in the painting was a springboard to help establish a sense of unity and focus in the painting.

The fifth painting is the batik with hot wax that was just posted last week on this blog. Check out that post for more info about how it was done. When I see these five together, I think I really prefer the first one the most. Do you have a favorite? (I still regret having sold that first one.)

You'd think I'd be so tired of this painting by now, but I have plans for another approach --- or two or three dozen. Mike Bailey (click to check it out) has painted one still life over 90 times - so look out. I'm not anywhere close to that yet.

There are so many ways to approach this painting, and the only approach I've used so far is to try different techniques and design processes. I have yet to focus on an element of design as being more important that anything else --- and certainly texture would be the first element I would emphasize. And I haven't yet pushed the picture beyond the confines of realism. That's an aspect begging to be explored. And I don't remember ever painting the scene on YUPO, either. The things that await me in the studio....

But this next week I'll be away from the computer to challenge 15 other artists at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. We'll be using hot wax, four different rice papers, watercolor paints, fluid acrylics, canvas, and various inks as we explore other ways to create gorgeous batik artwork. It'll be fun to share some of their finished batiks here on my blog when I get back. See ya then.