Taking Care of the Art

It isn't finished but I put it in a frame anyway. As long as it is tucked away I will never finish it. And I need it safe while it is out. So here we go... framed and sitting on the little bookshelf by my bed waiting for me to figure out how to work the issues.

Part of me really likes this the way it is and doesn't want to futz with it too much. In person the pillars really glow and the tile is starting to shine a bit. The issue I have is that the face isn't complete on the fountain head so it doesn't really look like a lion to me. Also... the background doesn't recede enough for my liking. I'll figure it out.

And while I am figuring out the painting. I will figure out what kind of words I will add to it. I almost think that is half the problem. After all it was the title page for an article in a travel magazine and the blank spot is where the title went. Perhaps that will be a gouche situation. Maybe in gold or an aged bronze.

Photos and Sketches

Spent the morning at the library with the BF. He did his homework and I spent the morning taking pictures for the Unintended Tour photos. During the shoot I came across a smallish maple dripping heavily with the clusters of helicopter seeds. No better time to practice with the macro setting. 

It was a slightly windy day so there was a a lot of waiting. And while I was waiting for the clusters to quit swinging the camera focused in the macro setting and presto-westo! A perfect macro shot. 

 

Then there was this gem of a cluster in pink. It took a few minutes to get them to be still but I got my shot. 

Of course there  was still some time to kill. So I sat down across from the BF and started sketching. Totally ruined two micron pens to make it happen. Of course, they were old and weren't going to last much longer anyway. 

And the final result.....

Something totally blog worthy. :)

Breaking Through the Blocks

There is this thing that happens to all artists when creative periods ebb and flow. We  get a bit panicky, we want to rush to create a huge body of work and we lose the focus of the experience for the perception of success in having a quantity. Art is one of those things, like wine, craft beer, catching fish that can not be rushed. And forget the hand painted mass production. If one painting takes 40 hours and you need one hundred to make a profit that is 100 weeks of the same painting. No one has the werewithall for that!

The problem of ebb and flow doesn't just affect the quantity of works. It affect each individual piece. That is some thing that I had not thought possible since I love to paint as much as I do. I know that there is the period between works when the energy has ebbed and starting again is hard. But to have the excitement dissipate mid-work.... that is newer to me. With moving and taking on a new position at work I thought that my dry spell was just because I needed some inspiration. Which I did. I thought it was because all of my creative wells had been neglected... which they were. So I did what I always do. I stuck my head in some books and got myself motivated again.

Or so I thought. I had a stack of periodicals to help me jump start some ideas over at the geeks blog. And then I found a travel magazine that hit on almost all of my interests. And I thought.... I have to paint that. So I started.

And got stuck. It is a new technique. I have paints that I haven't worked with as often as I would have liked since my preferred blend was accidentally left behind in the move. And I was breaking open a pad of watercolor paper that I had not really used a lot. It pills, sadly and that has cause a bit of frustration as I am unsure how to correct for it or incorporate the pilled area into the texture that I am looking for. So I have set it aside so that I can let my subconscious brain have a go at the problem solving.

And I stepped away from the work to do something entirely different. It is a glorious season for photography as you have seen. And anywhere the boyfriend and I go I have my camera with me. There are day trips almost once a week where we explore his old haunts and I am able to go back and take pictures of places that mean something to the family. But I still can't figure out this piece. I am stuck somewhere that I don't know how to navigate.

So I painted something else in a different style from one of our day trips.

And one day while waiting for schedules to gel and deadlines to happen I popped into the library for some instruction and inspiration.

I found a few volumes of Splash. And in volume 2 I found a few answers to the dilemma at hand.

• Step away from the work and get outside
• paint something else and let your subconscious work on the problems. 
• seek advice

And that is just a bit of the advice from artists who have been featured in the yearly anthology have offered for encouraging breakthroughs. But the biggest help is knowing that the kind of struggle that I am going through in this piece means that there is a breakthrough waiting for me on the other side, perhaps a quantum leap in understanding or skill if I will only be patient with the process. 

This 

is the confounding bit of art taken from a NatGeo travel mag with a new technique for me.

With some distance I can see a lot of places where this is working. And still a few places where I am terrified to continue for fear of losing the strength of the line in the underpainting, which was all done in Prussian Blue. The book called for Cobalt but I don't have any in my stash. Indanthrene might have been better but it stains too so I don't know about that anymore.

In a few days I'll be able to sit and paint again.... waiting for the rain to go away and the road tripping to be done for a bit. 

with a background

 

Here it is with the first layers of background color. I wanted to contrast with the poppy pods and went with orange-pink ( a mix of Holbein's Opera and Green Gold from Windsor Newton) but the yellows and greens in the iron patina washed out.

At least with the obnoxious amounts of poppies the wash pushed them into the background a bit so that I could pick out just a few to high light with details.

Then the problem becomes the poppy fading into the background. I am debating the addition of some lavender tones to the bottom of the background around the poppy petals. I know green won't work and I don't want to do brown either because I want to keep it bright.

The bottom of the poppy, where all the goodies show through the paper thin leaves could be made a bit purple near the stem and then that color could come up to background and fade up..... I don't know. I am a bit stuck here to be honest.

But it gives my brain something to do when I get overwhelmed with moving again. Or with the idea of finding a second job. Interview's today.

And the plumber keeps setting off the fire alarm with his torch. You'd think he would take the batteries out of the thing.

 

 

Watercolor project: first phases

 

 

First phase of watercolor with a piece of ironworks from the old state hospital gates and some poppy pods; I'm not sure that I should have continued much past this point. I like the lightness of the pods and the mere suggestion of their presence compared to the in your face look I have looking at phase two.

 

However in phase two the iron works do stand out much better and some of the poppy pods faded into the background to keep the foreground from being too busy. And I do see that the frame is off, it needs to be extended to the curve of the poppy tendril at the bottom. And I need to deepen the shadows on the frame. I may have to do some fancy fret work along one of the sides.

 



Happy Birthday (late) to my Pen Pal

Art for the Soul

In the midst of house hunting, hamstring recovery and dealing with a few personal hang ups I find that I am overly stressed right now. Gee whiz, who wouldn't be right? Well, it seems like the logical thing to do is double down and get things done. But I can't. My mind is spinning a million miles a minute and flung about a hundred hamsters off the wheel. I can't sleep with all these things in my head. So I did what we tend to do.... I picked up a brush.

Actually the first thing that I picked up was a Watercolor yearbook of sorts. It was a dollar at the Goodwill store. the BF and I were out for a few looks at places and stopped there for a break. I found this book. And then when we got back to my house and had a look at all the things that need to move I felt guilty about bringing a book into that mess. Until he said that we had to make sure that the art stuff went first. And not only does it get moved first but that he would rather it be out in the living room where it is easily accessible.

Ladies and gents.... I do not have to hide my art supplies. He'd rather look at that than the antiques. Score!

And so I am working out a watercolor. Just for something to do. It helped to have the Watercolor yearbook for inspiration. But the other thing that helps is this damn blasted long Winter. I need some colors. I need some brightness.

And I need to have some way to relax. And that is what art is. A way for us to relax. I've been thinking of art for profit for so long that I forget about art for the sake of art, for the sake of the soul. And that is why we do art.

Art for the soul.....

Thinking Spring

I think this is going to be my facebook cover.... I don't know. One of my friends asked me if she could use the last post as her cover which got me to thinking. The previous post really was not formatted for facebook. So I have no idea if it is going to let her do what she thinks it will.

But it did give me an idea for this one.

So more noodling........

Over Winter

As is the rest of this half of the world.

It's been a long cold lonely winter.... well not so lonely. But certainly long and cold.


West Bay is frozen over and it looks like a shanty town out there with all the ice-fisherman taking up root. And who knows when it will thaw enough to take those shanties off the water.

Lake Superior is frozen over so I expect to hear that some half wit has decided to grab some gear and head for Canada. Wouldn't that be a thing to tell the grandkids!

I forgot canned goods in the back of my car and they are frozen solid. That should be a fun conversation with myself when I try to open them.

And then there is the ever frigid drive to work. Which, will quadruple if we get the apartment that we are hoping for. And then the inevitable moving stuff in the snow. Because.... well.... this stuff isn't going to melt any time real soon and we are hoping to be in and settled before Easter.

Today, in the hope that Spring will come faster if we think on it really hard.... I have been noodling around on Picmonkey. Took three hours to erase the background of my watercolor and add in the whites that the camera made grey and then just a short little 15 minutes to add text and assorted goodness to the thing to have some thing to share. Not too shabby.

Damask Sunflowers

Another failed watercolor transformed with a few layers.

Well Said

We have to make mistakes. As artists, as people. It is how we learn. Mistakes made with the honest intention of learning, developing and growing are stepping stones. I make mistake all the time. But I am not always certain that I am learning from them.

Art mistakes are the easiest for me to learn from since I am so much more comfortable with paints and compositions than I am in the realm of friendships and conversation. I always find myself digging a deep hole without knowing how I've done it. People baffle me. Art not so much.

Something Light for the Darker Days

My color study in watercolor for an acrylic painting. I love both paintings so much I would have a hard time letting either original go. Again... the beauty of digital technology. Just not sure that I like the faded purple edges this time... should have gone a bit brighter. That might be the problem with this one. But at least the yellows still really pop.

Fruit & Jar

 

 

Seriously. There is nothing like editing software to fix all of your mistakes. Okay.... maybe not ALL. But the glaring mistake of the apple in the original is completely wiped out and this thing has more character in it now than it has otherwise.

 

 

See?

 



Stargazer

I love the way this watercolor turned out. But I wanted to do more; just didn't know what I wanted to do. With the digital editing process you can play with a lot of ideas without worrying about destroying a painting that can take several days to accomplish. You can also do more than one thing to it.

For example: my stargazer in my signature stamping style

 

 

Or I can do a little wishful thinking and turn it into s piece of graffiti that looks chalked or sprayed instead of water colored.

I wish graffiti were as creative as this in our town instead of the
raggedy tags we get when the kiddies think no one is looking.

 

It doesn't take long at all to alter your own art. And like I said.... you don't worry about ruining it with experimentation.



Digital Art is Quick Success

It's like my mom always used to say, "You can't do for one without the others screaming." So instead of going to bed when I got home, which would be the smart thing to do. I made a banner for this blog. With luck I can show you the progression before I dump the scraps from the computer. Keep your fingers crossed that I kept a good record of my work.

You were supposed to keep your fingers crossed. Of course I only saved twice.

Well, at least you can still see what I did. After cropping out all the background crap from the watercolor, I added some filter layers which put a wee bit of a spotlight focus on the forward most plum.

Then I added some overlays from picmonkey's postal collection. Each "stamp" was hand tinted to color match the plums, faded and the eraser tool removed the marks that fell across the plums so that the fruits would continue to stand out. Then a layer of blood splatters tinted to look like spilled paint because that is the idiotic thing that I did in the original painting which I've not known exactly how to work around. So... play up the mistake. And since the blog is called "spilt paint" it seems to make a lot of sense.

After that the corners and the text were the only things to do. Except... I wasn't exactly happy with the flatness. So I added a drop shadow and fiddled with it. Picmonkey lets you adjust all of the shadow elements just like a regular photoshop program. With the color picker tool I was able to keep a harmonious color scheme. Because of the choices I made I was able to make it look like the kind of hand stamped cards I used to do, using double sided foam to add depth. This gave the effect of the stamped postal images being stamped off onto the "scrap" which instead of being thrown away became the matte for the main image. That was a framing trick we employed at work to avoid the waste that otherwise might pile up while making sample cards to send to clients.

I even thought this would be a cool print without all the officious poop that has to compose a blog header. I was quite happy with it at that point. More than I have ever been with the original. Though I do think that I am being quite hard on myself. And should probably stop.

New Media indeed

So now that I know where I can play and do a reasonably good job adjusting the real world art that didn't exactly turn out as I hoped it would to make something much better in the digital realm.... well I think that I am going to get a reasonably good base of work to sell as prints.

Steal this and I will have to send something menacing after you....

 

 

The brilliant thing about digital is that I can keep the original hard copy that I am actually terrified of modifying in real life and muck about as much as I want to amending it until I find something that I really like and would be more than happy to offer as prints.

 

I had intended to trim around the petals and leaves at the side to force some creative matting. Either I have talked myself out of such a complicated brewhaha though it would make a stunning framed piece. Or.... I realized that there is not enough cutout material available to make it really work the way I envisioned. I am not sure which is more likely. And I am having a hard time justifying the cost of printing (even a lowly photocopy) to play with the concept just yet. Add to that the embellishments that I envisioned going onto this are not exactly available yet.... I have to find a way to generate my own. And well.... this has been stuck in the "now what?" queue for a while.

 

Enter picmonkey. And now I have something a lot closer to what I originally envisioned. The embellishments are not precisely what I want. But the beauty of digital is that I can work it without worrying about recreating the base water color painting. Whoo hoo!

 

 

So as far as print costs go: To get the cheapest print cost I have to supply the digital file exactly as I would have it appear in print. If they photograph it and do a couple of tweaks it is 60.00. If they photograph it and spend the amount of time it takes to make it EXACT to the original then it is 125.00. I don't have that kind of start up. But.... I do like the way that this has turned out. And I would not mind having this as a print. I feel like it needs a bit more tweaking. But I now know that I can have what I was looking for and I can start at the cheap prices and start making money sooner.

 

This is a very popular piece. I have three people who want the original, two will settle for the print. So it is a good start. But I want to be able to let the original go without hassling the new owner for a trip to the printers.

 

And let's be honest. I am a bit scared to even attempt to price these things. I still am scared of actually getting paid to do this.

 

Everyone else gets paid to do what they love. There is no reason that I should not be paid for it as well. Just gotta get those damn voices in my head to shut up for a few months. :)

Missing No More

I'd forgotten for a while that I had framed some of my work to put up in the last house I was in before dad died. Death does weird things to your brain. Anyway, I was looking for some things to sell to the antiques dealer when I found a box labled "DEC". I figured there would be good collectibles in there. Instead I found framed artwork.

Among my pieces I found a Muscha reproduction, courtesy of Matt. And this:

framed Freesia with reflection.



Start to Finish: Box #3

And the jewel of box number three...

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. The preliminary sketch. On the left is a box of Tazo brand tea with the late 90s packaging design, a Martha Stewart mug from K-mart, the bowl to the Martha set and a dollar store vase that I thought was kinda cool. This is the most factual representation of those four objects. The "draw what you see not what you think you see" portion of sketching.

To the right is the homework assignment. One of the casualties of the box, this somehow was folded over and bent into an ugly curve. This was submitted for the monochromatic project. As you can see, I changed the packaging and made it anonymous, added fruit to the bowl which decided the color tone, eliminated the dimensional designs on the case and kept the mug about the same as the original sketch.

It made for great homework but not for frame-able art as in the picture below. Four is really not an ideal number of objects for a still life. It is generally accepted that odd numbers make a perfect composition. I won't bore you with the scientific reasoning. It is just so. Thus, I decided to pull a grape from the bunch and bring it far enough forward to be it's own object to give me five. The composition also needed more diversity in sizes. The other objects are too similar in size to be interesting without a straggler.

I especially like how the details in this close up turned out. And I love the macro function in the camera. Have I mentioned that lately?

The eyes don't always have it

Sometimes one encounters problems with art that are subtle and easily overlooked. And sometimes they are glaringly obvious.

Meet the glaringly obvious:

 

 

 

 This is my first attempt on the Italian vase. I saw this and remembered how excited I was to have successfully captured the painting on the vase, the dimensionality of the fruit and branch and the reflection of the vase in the whites. The whites are so hard to capture. But then when I stepped back I saw the gloriously epic FAIL!

The left side of the vase is squished and again the cherry right next to the vase is competing for the same space! Agh!!!! IT's a thing!!!!!!!!

Oh plus I hate the bright azure blue. It is too lapis. and the green doesn't even begin to match the intensity of the blue and none of them are the right tone for the colors in the vase.

Meet Artie: the inscrutible Miss Tessa

 
 
 



Because every warehouse has to have a supervisor stuck in the dark ages of technology to keep an eye on the minions, keeping them close but not too close, making sure they don't screw anything up... there is this gem of feline superiority.

My roomie's cat, Miss Tessa. Sometimes called Bugs, mostly she avoids me. I am not her favorite person only because, in true cat fashion, she only likes her human. And I am not her human. When I am in the basement she is always there. I think to make sure that I don't mess up anything that she has gotten accustomed to. And today.... I messed up her life.

I've moved a few things that I think she might have been using as cover to hide from the kitten. He is still a furry ball of furious energy and likes to torment her as all little brothers do. But he doesn't like to be where the action is. He'd rather critique after the fact than supervise during. Anyway, it took me a while to realize that I was being watched. For the longest time I thought that uncomfortable stared at feeling was coming from the lone window to the outside world. But no... it was a cat.


She was watching me unpack and photograph box number three.

The unfinished (obviously) start of a watercolor from about 2002 or 3. And a page from a block of water color exploring the technique of multiples on a theme. I think that it could be a successful trick for people who like to work in miniature. This learning experience taught me that I get distracted by the other blocks when I am working in another one. I do like the one top left. It is my color way. The bottom right is too jarringly bright. The red block? I got bored drawing those sunflowers.

Oddly though.... I don't get bored with stargazer lilies. Of course I grew them for my reference materials. But again... stargazers have a special meaning. And the sunflowers were to be marketable.

My great take away from this set.... I wonder if the masking tape will ever come off. It's been there for a decade.

A DECADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!! Really where does the time go?