On Entering Into Painting with Acrylics

3563.

The recent fun and adventure of The Daily Paint By Number series has really turned me on to the idea of painting with acrylics as an ongoing thing.

There is a great deal about painting with acrylics that I've heard: They're versatile, vibrant colors, can be impasto'd like oils but flow and mix like watercolors. All this, I've found to be true, even with the cheapo barely-student-grade acrylics included in the Royal & Langnickel kits.

They are quick-drying, yes. But that's something you can learn to anticipate. These PBN acrylics dry in under a half-hour (hell, I think it only takes about 15 minutes), but if you stay on top of it and keep thinning it with a little water (just a drop, literally, will do) you can keep painting as long as you keep paying attention to the work. For someone who's using art making as therapy and meditation, this hits the mark exactly and satisfyingly.

Last night, at Powell's, I found a couple of great books on the deep information on painting with acrylics, generally. The Wife™ has a few books from when she was experimenting with acrylic painting and I'm looking into those as well. So, here, the exploration begins; I'll still work the PBNs, because when you want to do art but have nothing in mind, they're just the thing to practice one's touch and develop dexterity. Mixing paints is fun, too!

Yesterday, at I've Been Framed, I've gotten a few extra brushes. I already have a number of watercolor brushes of various sizes, but so far, for the detail that PBNs sometimes call for, the #2 Round is proving to be a real work-horse. I got a #1 and #2 Round made by Grey Matters by Jack Richeson, and spouse found a #2 Round Liquitex in the bargain bin out on the sidewalk.

I strongly encourage anyone wandering in the Foster Powell area and looking for real art-supply bargains to check the bins out on the sidewalk in front of IBF. Such great found-objects, clearance and used-but-still-usable art supplies you'll find nowhere else in town, and it's one of the man reasons why IBF is a gem.

So, I Needed More Acrylic Paint For My Paint-By-Number Habit ...

3530A.

I've been playing about with Paint-by-number again. The set I bought last year at Powell's has eight panels in it, and I'm on number five, which is the Statue of Liberty, here:

The set was produced to leverage the popularity of the book Paint by Number: The How-to Craze That Swept The Nation by William L. Bird (and published by Princeton Archtectural Press) into some art kit sales. There's a small book on the projects with text by Dan Robbins, the OG of Paint-by-number, the man who helped start it all with the Craft Master series by Palmer Paints, back in the day. It's not a bad set, and the pieces in it have been quite fun (I don't recommend it for anyone with significant visual impairment, as the lines and numbers are very small and very dimly printed - I have to take my glasses up and almost put my nose down to see the lines and numbers clearly).

But, perhaps it's my long time away from painting but of the twelve standard-sized paint-pots included, more than one of them are nearly out of paint. Maybe I used too much, I don't know.

However! The Craft Warehouse in Gresham to the rescue! It's at 687 NW 12th Street in the Gresham Station development. The Wife™ dotes on this store, and it's not hard to see why; if they don't have it, you probably don't need it, as far as craft supplies go. There is a section devoted to acrylic craft paints and more brushes than you can shake a mahl stick at, and it was there that I found a whole card of 16 acrylic colors, several of which correspond pretty well to the colors I'm running down on.

Behind you can see the twelve original paint pots in the box that the kit came in. The sixteen colors on the card, below, are beautifully fresh and pretty much the quality I need to do the rest of the PBN pictures (one hardly needs artist-quality acrylics to do these). And ... on sale for $5.44! Yes, such a deal.

Another boon I found was the Fine Art department of Craft Warehouse. Simply put, it's a fully-stocked, well-inventoried section; it could stand on its own as a small full-service fine-art supply store on its own! That's above-and-beyond for a craft-supply store, which usually has a small selection of rather pedestrian art supplies; this has graphite, oils, watercolors, acrylics, pretty much everything. So, it'll stay on our radar for certain. For an art-supply needer living east of 148th in The Numbers or anyone in the Gresham area, it's certainly a stop you'd want to make if you couldn't get in to Blick or Artist and Craftsman or I've Been Framed down in Portland.

Now, I'll move on to completing the other PBNs in that little kit you see behind it there.

[pdx_art] Bwana Spoons at Muse Art & Design, May, 2015

3202.

I have been unfairly keeping this to myself. Bad on me.

Muse Art and Design, the splendid art and inspiration supply store at SE 42nd and Hawthorne, has been holding the occasional demo and seminar. And they get better and better. The one back in February stays in my memory banks, and the one I've dithered on reporting on, this one, in May, was simply fun.

Bwana Spoons, Muse Art and Design, May, 2015.

The bespectacled man in the picture above should need no introduction if you exist in any of the intersections of art and illustration worlds currently percolating around the Portland area, but if you do, this is Bwana Spoons, and he produces trippy illustrations, but he works in chaos.

But more on that anon. The subject of this visit was the release of a line of acrylic gouaches, Acryla Gouache. This, a line of utter vibrancy by Holbein, was something of a revelation. I hadn't imagined that gouache could be anything but a watercolor, but here it was, a gouache created of acrylic … a resin color.

The wet consistency is lovely, thick, rich, creamy, creamier even than water-based gouache. The colors are memorable, and, amusingly, the assembled salon was going in big on a color called Opera, a brilliant pink-orange that is to your eyes what strong citrus is to your mouth.

I make no judgements by saying this; oversaturating your color response just might be the object you're going for. I found a cosmic humor in the way such a color was getting such an overwhelming, gut-level response.

The event was intended to demonstrate the color, and demonstrate it did. But it was also given over to a sense of pleasantly-chaotic play where people just dabbled with mixing the colors or came up with chaotically-inspired pieces. My favorite amongst the group is possibly this one, done by Peter, who runs the place. It started out as clouds and an abstract sun-not-sun in the sky … but it evolved into the most delightful flying snail I've ever seen, riding the air on a trail of fabulous:

You know not where it goes, all you need knowis that Rainbow Flying Snail wants you to be
fabulous.

Me and The Wife™ of course, had some fun. I was a little dry on inspiration today so we got Supernatural Orange Cat and Red Superhero. Wife did Rainbow with Shazam Outline. It was fun.

But, as to Bwana Spoons and chaos? Let me put it this way. We all fancy we can take a few disconnected strokes, pencil marks, what-have-you, and evolve something interesting out of them. Bwana started playing in his sketchbook with just a big, serpentine wave of color. Little-by-little, a detail there, an extension there, an overpaint in another place, and the fabric of that painted space began to take on depth and meaning, as though it was evolving itself through him. 

Skill, he has. I was watching the changer changing the changed and the changed changing the changer, though. It was something on a higher level. And this …

… is the utterly amazing (and maybe a little disturbing) result. The original fat squiggle is on the verso side of the spread and, like a sort of strand of DNA, it gave birth to the rest. And the real reward for the viewer is that it looks so accomplished. That's the true polish of skill. 

Bwana Spoons' website is: http://www.bwanaspoons.com/

Muse Art & Design is, of course, http://museartanddesign.com

[PDX, Type] At Muse Art & Design, Hand-drawn Type Rules The Register

3168.

Another visit to +Muse Art and Design, another few art supplies to satiate the jones for such things. Great visit with Peter and Vaughn, of course.

It was a busy day there. We got there on Sunday just before a sort of an afternoon rush, and I couldn't help but notice there almost everyone there was smiling and happy. I guess Muse has the same effect on just about everyone. It's just that way.

Something that made me happy is a hand-designed ad posted on the pillar near the register:

It's gone up during the last couple of months, and the Spring Sale verbiage is not by the original artist, who I understand is a newish employee there. But that's great design there … I love the classy art-deco-ness of it all

And there is a Spring Sale at Muse. You might want to check this out. Something else worth the checking out of is the other side of that column, which is all original artist…

Whether or not the idea of sugar-alcohol-based low-VOC spray paint is your deal, looking at this lovely hand drawn, highly-artistic type should be. 

[art] Meredith Dittmar At Muse: Creative Process From The Inside Out

3088.

On Saturday, 17 May 2014, as the May offering in Muse Art and Design's Artist-to-Artist talks, Peter and the crew hosted an artist I'd not heard of before: Meredith Dittmar. This is Meredith:

Meredith Dittmar at Muse Art and Design.

She works in polymer clay: Fimo, if I remember correctly. She takes it and assembles it into the most enigmatic ways and shapes; view her website, the picaresquely-named CorporatePig.com. The splash page will give you a big ol' taste; click through to her homepage and thither to the portfolio. Cute characters cavort amidst abstract confections that are possessed of the hint of a mathematical reverence and resonance that is hard to put a finger on but tickles the imagination.

There's a reason for that. During her talk, she mentioned that her father was an engineer and her grandfather was a NASA rocket scientist. She didn't elaborate, but it's not hard to presume that she fairly swum in scientific verities as a youngster. Another anecdote seemed to suggest that she also has something of a suspicion of authorities; when learning vowels in school she was schooled up on the traditional five plus the sometimes-sixth, her father corrected this by saying that the sometimes-sixth was a full-fledged vowel, no sometimes about it, and furthermore there was a seventh*.

When relating this at school, this lowered the proverbial boom, and her father stuck up for her. I'm not sure of the eventual resolution, but bless that man, right?

Meredith struck me as a brilliant human who appreciated knowledge while at the same time rejecting the 'it has to be' structure that knowledge is sometimes unjustly straitjacketed into, at least by way of authority. She worked, by a sort of gestalt way, to cause me to come to the conclusion that while there is a great deal that is knowable, capital-E-Everything is unknowable, or at least not-quite-completely-knowable, which appealed to me on a Tao level. And my impression was that this was a tremendous informative data line on her own work.

She shared with us a lot of images of idea boards that she kept. Patterns, clippings, fractal patters, mathematical formulae scampered about on them in happy semi-anarchy. The genius expressed … the jelly somehow nailed to the wall and not nailed to the wall, all simultaneously, which is a heady experience for any armchair philosopher and aspiring artist trying to find direction.

In retrospect this formed a sort of base stratum for what was happening concurrently. Everytime I think of it, I get a little more impressed and in awe. See, she never showed off much of her work, but she showed off a great deal of her working, or at least her possibility. At the beginning  of the hour-long talk, she distributed small cut pieces of Fimo and invited us to play with them at will, but without taking our attention from her. She did her talk about her life and influences and work, and I kneaded my bit of Fimo about without taking it too seriously.

My bad there. A word on that presently.

At the end of the discussion about her and her work, she asked us to take part in two 'experiments'. They both involved yet another lump of Fimo, but we were to listen to two recordings of physicists discussing quite abstruse concepts: the first, from its discussion of spin and color was no doubt relating to quarks, and the second was completely beyond me, but I did recognize the word eigenvector, though about the only thing I currently know about that is how to spell it. The important part about working was to simply observe your hands working the clay into whatever shapes the environment moved you to create, to get into that zone, and if we slipped out and got too self-aware, to pause a moment and refocus on the process of molding.

This is the stuff she plays in the background when she creates and the idea, as it seemed, was to see what sorts of things her audience would create. Whether she was compiling any sort of result or even per se looking for one we weren't clear on, and I suspect that wasn't the point anyway. All we walked away from the experience with was the experience, left to do its subliminal work on us; photos of past exploits showed spirals, geometric patterns, interesting prettiness.

Just before she left I got the chance to chat for a few minutes and found her intellect quickly drew me into a sort of orbit in which I started actively applying the experience to where I hope my own artistic growth takes me. I know this sounds kind of crazy, but she would say something and it would start this whole intellectual cascade, or at least that's what it seemed from my point of view. At this point, it's hard to put it into any specific words (never mind how prolix I've gotten here) what effects this is having upon me. Every time I look over the experience, it opens up again like another level of a Matrioshka doll.

She did talk for a moment about fractals, come to think.

Crazy.

The experimental process that she took us through, though, suddenly gelled for what I think it was, and what it will forever mean to me: the most effective look at the fabled creative process that I've ever had and probably ever will. She, as nearly as possible, without excess motion, deconstructed her own creative process for us, let us in, then reconstructed it about us so that we were suddenly on the inside looking out. I can draw parallels between the way I create when I'm in the zone and what she does, and see where it's different, and I can't put any of that into any less than the most clumsy of ramblings, but it's there for me. Elegantly and economically, and it continues to have impact after the fact because it worked on so many levels that one can only see when in the rear-view.

She taught me something without actively teaching a thing. How rare is that?

Oh, and the 'bad' I was talking of? I realized, on review, that giving us the clay at the beginning was also an experiment, but with different terms. There's that Matrioshka doll opening, again. And every time I think I've come to a conclusion on a thought generated by this, no fewer than two paths shoot out.

Clay isn't my medium, but she just might be amongst the most important artists I'll ever sit in on.

And you'll please forgive the rambling; each time I go over the experience I am once again beMused. It's hard not to be distracted.

*The classic 5 vowels are, of course, A, E, I, O, and U. The sometimes-sixth would by Y, naturally. The unknown seventh was cited as W. It makes logical sense, when you think of the sound the Y makes, which is fluid like a vowel, not staccato like a consonant, and any Welshman or woman can tell you quite naturally that W is a vowel (consider that the Welsh spelling of the English house name Tudor is Twdwr). 

[art in PDX] Used Books at I've Been Framed

3038.

One of our favorite places on this or any other world, I've Been Framed, also sells art books, did you know?

This picture, nicked from IBF's Facebook stream, shows a little less than the half of what they have on offer. You'll have to wait 'till Monday to shop (they closed today) but a trip to see if they have some stuff to interest is highly indicated.

However, that one on the upper right there, the Dorling-Kindersley The New Artist's Handbook, by Smith, you can't have. And do you know why?

Because I bought it. I got there before you did.

Hey, you snooze, you lose.

[art] You Can't Legislate A Man's Neck; or, Art in the Art Supply Store by the Employees

2997.

This is one reason why I love my favorite art stores, and one reason why we have to have more than one.

I have rhapsodized in past missives about my two beloved east-side art supply sources, I've Been Framed and Muse Art and Design. Today's IBF's turn for some sloppy love. They both have different characters, each unique from the other, both like sides of a whole.

Kind of like this taijitu here.

Both are friendly, both are crazy knowledgeable, both almost-unsanely-affordable, but where Muse is cool, ordered, and tailored to fit its location, IBF is kinda wild, kinda wooly and exuberantly unafraid of being what it is. And, today, what it is is a happenin', accidental gallery for its employees.  I wasn't looking for anything this day, The Wife™ was. I come out of the long corridor of decorative papers …(and tho IBF on Foster is in a small building, it seems to go on forever … like 'dis …)

… and I look at this, and can't stop giggling.

Flesh Beard. You can legislate a lot of things, but you can't legislate a man's neck … Well, yes and no. In American culture you certainly can't argue the point, but during the French Revolution they legislated a whole lot of men's necks, if I understand what goeth on thereth correctly. Turning about a quarter of the clock's turn to the right, we have a windowpane simply full of delight.

There is some connection between Nathan (whoever he is) and coffee (or, perhaps coffeee) that we will have to leave to more learned heads … Erich VanDaaniken, say, or Richard Hoagland, perhaps … to puzzle. At this time, I can only bask in the infinite power of such a connection.

Another incident where the inanimate speak. First, it was 'bacon bits'. Now …

I guess that colors having an off day. GEDDIT? OFF … COLOR!!! Let's try it with the bonus Commonwealth U: OFF COLOUR!!!! My God this is comedy gold!

A couple more for good measure, or least odd measure

It's the newest model, 70s cool, with all the options (as noted)

Stravinksky from the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain school.
And whooo's your Daddy? I guess we'll never know.
The illustration of the building façade? You know I'm in love with this.

Is it any reason a visit to IBF leaves me feeling kid-antic inside, and full of the idea of the possible?

My recommendation to you, dear artist friend, is to also adopt both IBF and Muse. Do it. Don't argue with me. Just go.

And don't forget to stop and smell the art along the way.

[art] Hillsdale Art Supply Company … Art Is Local, Now In Southwest Portland

2970.I've been following their adventures since they debuted on the Book of Face.

Frisky posts, come-hither art supply photos.

Awww, you know you had me at phthalo blue.

Around the side of the Jade Dragon Restaurant, at 6327 SW Capitol Highway, in the Hillsdale Center, in downtown Hillsdale (notice a pattern?) there is a little gem of a store you have to see and enjoy.

Appropriately named, it's the Hillsdale Art Supply Company.

It's a search, but it's worth the find.

Just go in the door behind the modest sign …

… and then enter a cozy-yet-spacious world. In the words of the owners, it's a small shop in Sw. Portland, run by two, artist moms. We sell New  Recycled Art Supplies and some locally made art too. It's a terse yet apt description.

It's a small shop, yet it seems large.

What caught The Wife™'s eye was this case full of used pastels. She loves pastels; this is still a land I have but to timidly explore. These are good-quality useds; not junk, but art materials looking for someone to give pastels a try.

Fill a bag with what catches your eye, fork over a fiver, and they're yours.

They have pleasant knick-knacks. I used my digital camera to take a pic of this analog TLR, because meta.

The used and recycled art … seriously, westsiders, you need to get in here. There are retired drafting gear, airbrush paint and airbrushes (no compressor, alas, but anyone cagey enough to find pretty used airbrushes probably have a line on a compressor already), bits and bobs for scrapbookers …

We were most pleased with the variety that Hillsdale could pack in their cozy space, and the good quality.

Here's a find. Wife is a Crayola nut. Collects Crayola sets. And when she found this:

… where do you think it went? Home with us? Oh, yeah. And the chalk was in terrifically usable condition. This other box of chalk:

Well, its contents were near-to-pristine, even if the box was pleasantly-distressed. I'd use that photo for a color reference.

They're not all about used, you want the new, they got it. Good prices on the Golden acrylics:

Got watercolors, Gamblin oils. Yeah, they're serious about it. As well as about the art. There's funky, quirky art and sculpture all over the shop, all for sale.

Hillsdale is part of the new breed of local art supply stores, joining Muse and I've Been Framed in the class of art stores run by artists, for artists, both tyro and experienced. Classes are offered; enthusiasm is obvious. The new breed of local art supply stores are as much about making new artists and getting them to make new art as it is to sell to people who are already arting around.

Lots of good reasons there: more people making more art are having more fun in the trying; more art around is a more colorful world, and creating repeat customers (hey, they are a business, so no harm there!)

Here's a look at just part of the recycled items wall:

Any scrapbooker or collagist that steps away from those shelves without an inspiration should just go have their pulse checked, because you probably don't have one.

Only (so far as I know) available at Hillsdale is this nifty Portland wrapping paper. Have a look:

… send your friends in other towns (who wish they lived here, c'mon, you know everyone wishes they were really a Portlander) packages literally wrapped in Portlandia.

The cute knicknacks – just can't outro without sharing this, which we all laughed at:

You read that tag line right, pard. Safe. Fun. Constructive. 

I mean, I don't doubt it's fun … but Safe? Constructive? I can see the manufacturer used a dictionary that's loong out of date.

We're fortunate here in Portland. Local artists wanting to create other artists … a people's artist paradise we are. Stores like Muse, IBF, and now, Hillsdale, lead the way.

Support Hillsdale, you westsiders.

Follow their advice. Go out … and MAKE ART.

UPDATE: Looks like I'm not the only blogger who's noticed: see http://tansydolls.blogspot.com/2013/06/hillsdale-art-supply-company.html

[art] Radio Station Stationery In The Close Out Bin At I've Been Framed

2923.I've gone on and on about our favorite art-supply sources. I get silly. Sorry about that, but being smitten, you get silly in public.

Our faves are faves for slightly different reasons. I've Been Framed's superpower is getting castoffs and closeouts. When you walk into the friendly storefront on SE Foster Rd just off Powell Blvd, you know what you're walking into, but you can never be completely certain as to what you'll walk out with.

Like this, today:

This, my friends, is retired stationery from KKRZ - Z100. It's nostalgic. It comes from not too long ago, the age when Portland radio didn't suck, back when you could find more than conservatalk and Yet Another New Groundbreaking Country Station.

Now I'm crying softly inside. Wait … okay. Bettah now.

Anyway, I've Been Framed.

You guys know the place. Go there, or you just have some issues, I tell you.

[pdx] Goodbye Jordie, Dean of Portland Store Cats

2871.We have sad news to report today. We have learned that Jordie, the official store cat of I've Been Framed, has crossed, as they say, the Rainbow Bridge.

We met Jordie some months back and, after coming out of his ultra-shy kitten stage, he stood athwart the back rooms of IBF, patrolling with catly poise. Friendly little guy too.

I was surprised to find out that he'd passed away … we were thinking it was about time to pay another visit to one of Portland's greatest art resources and get a few minutes of whisker time besides. He was quite the little gentleman by now, and I don't think he must have been more than two years old.

We should have visited when we thought about it, darn it.

Loved ya, schweetie pie. Sorry we didn't come by to say 'hi' more often.

Stop by Facebook to pay your respects, willyaplease.

[art] A ZKT Exclusive Interview With I've Been Framed's Newest Employee

2808I'll say it until I can't say it no more: Local art stores rock and there are two that are instrumental in putting the cream in our coffee, the art supplies in our bag, and taking the money out of our wallet. One of them is I've Been Framed.

We like our two favorite stores for mostly the same reasons. They're both staffed and owned by local Portlanders who are passionate about art and sincerely love their customers. They both have different approaches that mean you get a ton of good out of them and the prices are seriously affordable. They care about what they do and almost everyone who works there are artists themselves.

When you walk into IBF you get the idea that you've walked into a delightful collage that will also sell you art supplies. They not only have brands that you look for but they also sometimes have insanely-discounted clearance lots. IBF has a nice little framing department in the back, which is where they get the idea for the nam.

The employees at IBF, as I intimated, really make the store however. Really friendly, really care about the art. Really care about making your experience there a good one. A new employee has been added, and he's a sweetie. I understand he works really cheaply … mostly for Little Friskies. You can get a good idea of who it is when you enter:

He, like all great artists, goes by a single name … Jordie. He's still settling in, but he's got a warm charm all his own. After asking Mark for an introduction I was shown into Jordie's office, where he was busy at work, holding down the Adorable department, as well as some of the inventory.

Actually, he may have been on break. With a kitteh, it's hard to tell.

I'm not sure if he was up to a hard-hitting interview about the ins and outs of being the only known art-store cat in Portland, but I wasn't about to back down. Here was a story that needs to be told, and in the wake of the loss of Powell's Books' legendary store cat, Fup, the position of Dean of Portland Store Cats is still up for contention. The public wants to know if Jordie can make the grade. And I wasn't about to be swayed by purring and cute looks.

Oh, heck, he's a cute cat. Of course I was. But on to the interview:

The Zehnkatzen Times: Jordie, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us.

Jordie:

ZKT: You have the opportunity of working as the store cat in one of the two most awesome art supply stores in the Portland area. How did you feel when you realized that you're the point kitty here? Particularly honored?

Jordie:

ZKT: Indeed! A great opportunity. Now, you're settling in, getting used to the crush of customers coming through … they're very creative types. Do you find the artists that come in for supplies particularly inspiring?

Jordie:

ZKT: That's a great story. You never know who you'll run into here … I just helped an artist who was working on ancient methods for making gessoes figure out how to come by the circumference of a circle so he could lay out some calligraphy. You don't have to work here to learn something new! You do work here though … do you feel that you're luckier than most kitties?

Jordie:

ZKT: Yes, it is a special place. That's why we keep coming here, especially with personnel like yourself that make the experience so nice.

At that point, Jordie had some important item on his kitty agenda to complete and had to end the interview, but not before there were skritches and pettin's and purring. But, withal, it looks like Jordie has all the chops to be a great art-store store cat. He's still got some settling in to do, learning the ropes of a very important position, but it looks like he'll grow into the position just fine.

So, visit yourself some I've Been Framed … local art stores are cool, and local art stores are awesome. Also stop by Muse. Support your local sources. They matter.

And pet yourself some kitty when you can. It may not make you rich, but it will make you happy.