Duplication

I once had a discussion with my sister about why it is I don't "paint a bunch" of a painting that I've done that I really like. Her thought was that since I was the one who painted it I should be able to duplicate the painting stroke by stroke. It is a beautiful theory. But it is just a theory. Right before I packed up the shop amd moved everything into storage I did some studies to practice with some new watercolor pigments. And, I did pears.... it was easy. The pears were on the counter so...

You can see that there are some very obvious differences in the two pears. The colors and composition are the same. And really that is all that you can hope for. The reason for this is that watercolors are done with layers of washes and the water will never run the same way twice. And depending on your energy level and how physically ready to work you body is, you will never move your brush in exactly the same way twice.

Look at the background of the two pictures. The upper right corner of the large one is streaked and the overall shape in the corner retains a strong suggestion of wood panel which is what I was going for. You can also see that there are distinct variations in the colors of the dioxizine wash with the deepest wash remaining at the buttom. In the smaller version the colors ran so much that there is little variation and the vertical lines disappeared. In this one the background has the same curvaceous quality as the subject itself. The smaller one loses some dynamic qualities as a result.

Now look at the lower right corner of each in the foreground. In the large one the foreground is so blurred and the variations are so indistinct that it loses focus and allows your eye to travel along the lines of the pear toward the stem without really hesitating or confusing your brain as to where it should look first. This was intentional. I intended that the same should be true in the smaller one. But it did not work that way. The brush strokes and paper were both too dry to achieve the desired effect.

In the midground of each, you see the shadow worked itself differently. In the large painting the shadow is a sharp and soft edged puddle of deep color. In the small one, the shadow is all sharp edges and rather uniform in its medium shades.

Then look at the shape of the pools of colors in the pears themselves. Each one worked out differently even though I did the same layers of colors in the same order. The smaller pear has a deep rounded sharp edge to segment the wide and narrow parts. The large pear is rather indistinct in this regard so even though we read it as a pear it does read a little less rounded and somewhat flat sided there. The stems are also different.

The one I like the best? The first one. The large pear. Why? Because the only thing that really detracts from the composition is that softer  edge between the wide and narrow globes of the pear body. The pools of color are more defined... but I can take a wet brush and calm some of those edges even now. It is a more dynamic composition than the smaller one.

3 hour card

So the boss is turning 40. And for his birthday he is being flooded with cards. I knew about this 2 weeks ago and tonight just got around to making it. Two or three days ago I knew what I wanted to do and have been working out in my head how this was going to happen. And I almost knew the colors. The boss is male so I wanted to keep to boyish kinds of colors. And I did a "boyish" kind of theme because he is so dang young looking. He is always smiling and is super Uber friendly... in the hospitality business you have to be. So here we go:

Birthday Cupcake
brown "chocolate sprinkles",
sculpted paper "gum paste
flower" & striped "paper liner".

I started with a sketch after looking at cupcake photos on line. You'd think that a cupcake would be a simple thing to whip out. But like so many simple things in life... you really have to look at what is in front of you to truly see it. Cupcakes are just one of those things. So I cut my first pieces from the sketch paper, laid it out on the printed paper and cut.

It was after I started laying the pieces out to add some chalk ink shadows that I realized my stripes were not vertical which made the whole thing look tippy... and someohow the frosting got sloppy and looked like a Cupcake Wars reject. So I cut again.

Did I mention that I did not even start on this until 12:30 a.m.? 

When I had the cupcake bottom & frosting cut out and proportioned to fill most of the card plane, I used chalk inks and the direct to paper method to create shading. The blues and greens on the frosting did not show up in the photo... the fault of my camera skills. Next I cut a strip from a floral pattern and edged it with a redish chalk ink. Then using a ribbon punch form ek Sucess, I punched across a green paper, edged it in brown and hit it in places with the same redish ink. Chalk inks dry faster than pigment inks, but not so fast that you can handle it right away. So while those pieces dried I sculpted a 3D embellishment.

K&Comapny's Julienne pad has a beautiful magnolia paper. They were perfect to be my gum paste flower embellishment. Um... did I mention that I had the Food Network on while I was crafting? So yeah.... The magnolia is constructed from two layers. The main layer is sculpted with a stylus and cut along some lines so that I could make some of the petals pop up without adding bulk since this will be mailed. The second layed uses only the center portion of a second large flower. After those three petals were also sculpted with a stylus they were mounted with foam dots. I added a little rosey red to the petals to pull another color from the floral paper into the cupcake design.

Once I decided how it would sit on the frosting I eyeballed where the sprinkles would go. I used mono glue and a fine reddish brown glitter to finish it off. Next it was time to assemble the card. And it was hideous. I had chosen the black and white damask paper for the card instead of plain white because it would be more dynamic. But there was so much going on with the card that it got too busy. So I added that green panel edged with the brown chalk ink. Then I ran a black micron pen around the green panel to frame it a bit. Once I got it assembled I liked it a lot better.

The last thing to do was stamp the bosses name in white on the cupcake to tie all the colors together.

As promised.... the Smoking Jaguar

Smoking Jaguar watercolor center panel from handmade card.

The two glyphs are very obviously personal interpretations of the Mayan glyphs. My flame is far too ornate and my cat does not have the typical roundness of a Mayan hand.

My favorite parts are the stripes, the cats eye and  the three "beans" along the bottom. The washes worked out a lot better than I had hoped they would.

Why does the cat have an earring? Well most of the animal faces wore some kind of human decoration in the Mayan originals. I think that was so that the reader would know the difference between the writer talking about the cat in the jungle and the King with the animals name.

I've done two versions of this painting, trying to perfect the ideas. And each time I do it I realize that I like this version the best because the actual painting part... how it flows, is the most spontaneous of the versions.

Found it! From the archives of...

Now that I have this great awesome new camera, I have been digging through my storage unit to be able to present to you all the archives; art that I made before I started this blog. And honestly I am reaallllly upset that I didn't have a better camera to be able to share in glorious technicolor the work I've done while I have had the blog.

From the archives... in no particular order:

Color study of 3 1/2 mangoes.

This is a watercolor that I did in a few hours. It was supposed to be a quick study that serves three purposes: a. practice what we just learned in Glee Fenby's class about light and dark and how shadows are even less solid than we think. b. to not spend so much time in the thinking about how to paint but in the actual painting. I'm type A so I forget that easily. c. to lose the fear of watercolor. I had a bad experience in Mrs. Kozlowski's class with watercolor which stemmed from a stilted & stingy application of the palette. This resulted in my setting aside hopes of watercolor for 15 years.

Having Michelle teach me how to clean an ink pad, marker tips and then applying that to the wells of color in a tin gave me the confidence to play. I learned that you can make as big a mess in the tin as you want because no one at Bienfang was going to roll in their grave if you got purple in your yellow. And then... the gloves were off. I just didn't really "get it" until I had some formal instruction.

Color studies have always been employed by the "really good quality" artists... da Vinci did somewhat, but he was kinda ADHD before ADHD was cool. The old masters did this as a preliminary step to applying the colors of oils to canvas. It really does help you make certain you have the right composition before committing precious supplies to something that won't work. And this worked.

It worked so well I decided to name it "Mango Sunrise" and sign it. Then I loved it so much I put it in a frame. And that was just a color study. The painting that followed is one that you've all seen before.

3 1/2 Mangoes

What I like about the watercolor is that the light is there. The mangoes rinds have a watery translucence that they don't really have in real life and there is an expansiveness in the composition. What doesn't work for me is that they seem to float. It was just a color study and I was not worried about how they were going to "sit" on the page. Just how I was going to get those bands of colors in the rind and make the pit stand out.

What I liked about the acrylic painting to the right is that there is a festive quality with the purple and turquoise. I was just dividing the negative space to give some sense of placement without really knowing how I was going to finish it. So the effect I got was like boards from a market stall. And I thought Mexican fiesta once I figured out where on the color wheel the background colors had to come from.

What did not work for me was that the lightness got lost. I could have brushed more white across the top of the far left mango but the paint was sliding and not really sticking to the layers that went down before. And while you can go light over dark to fix mistakes like the purple chunk taken out of the top right mango... in theory, the more I tried to work out where my brush slipped the worse I made it and those very cool hash marks that happened by accident were going to disappear. All in all the yellow hashing draws the eye away from the boo boo so I decided to stop and leave it be.

And the pit lost something in translation.

But I love this one. It is one of the things that I do not know I would ever sell because from start to finish, even considering the flaws, this was the most successful process I had within the scope of acrylic painting.

And it's just such a Damn Happy Painting.!

The beauty of living in the future, as Uncle Wil says, is that I can keep the original and with PoD I can make as many of these things as I want on just about anything. As soon as I have the right software I will open a shop at cafepress.com. In the meantime I think that moo.com will be printing some happy little greeting cards for me.

The Next Great Studio Purcahse

I do not know when this will happen. But it needs too. At only 92.00 I can't NOT get this one. It is the Leechwood Convertible Easel from Dick Blick. It looks like a great thing to have. Especially since I only have small spaces to work in.

If I ever get anywhere with a lot of space then I can have a couple going at once right?
Well... spent today sick as a dog after being sicker than a dog. All I managed was to unpack a few bags of supplies and set out to deal with the Poe challenge at Somerset Studio. Do not know that I will make the deadline. But will endeavor to do so.

I started out the same way that Mr. Trapp had us set out to study a poem. I made a thick margin down the right hand side of my page to make notes later. Then set out to copy "The Raven". I did not remember this poem being so long! Anyway. After the poem was copied I went back and wrote in the large margin the key things from each stanza that stuck out to me. And added any other pertinent notes from the treasure trove of information tucked into the nooks and crannies of my mind. Boy are there a lot of crannies!

Next I made the sketch.
What I want to do is going to require a great deal of math on my part. Harlequin windows for my interpretation on the latticed window through which the bird entered. YIKES! All kinds of math involved in this. I am not happy about it. But I can not think of any other way to get some kind of movement into the piece. And... it gives me lots of opportunity to bring rubberstamping into the project. The other thing that I am worried about is the process that I have decided on for setting the leading in the window.... could be problematic.

Anyway.... I'm off to ponder, weak and weary,
over many a quaint and curious episode of ghost hunting lore.....

Could this BE the new F r i e n d s ?

It would seem that almost everyone on my facebook friends list watches Castle. And I wonder, as my friend little sarah and I were texting back and forth even though we live in the same building... could this be the new friends?

When NBC ran Friends, those of us who were tight in our little group and enjoyed the show stopped the world for Friends. We got subs from TOGOs in the villiage or pasties from nextdoor and hunkered down for the night. And now, as the 4th season is set to open in less than 15 MINUTES! we are all a chatter with talk of getting all and sundry together for a viewing. It's kinda like Friends night but on a Monday at ABC and there is no clapping along with the theme song. Oh and its 10 pm instead of the earlier 8:30 ish.

Still.... how much fun would it be to have Castle nights? It would kinda be like David Hewlett's date night* but without the crying and the red wine.

Well gotta go. Soup's on. Literally. It's Bear Creek Cheddar potato with ham bits and extra cheese on top with a hearty dash of black pepper and garlic.

*David Hewlett is single-handedly responsible for at least three viewers. He tweeted about Castle and it being the date night goto plan. And I checked it out and was hooked. I brought at least 2 people aboard the Castle train. Way to go Hewlett. And Nate... if you see him at a Con  try to remember that he really isn't Rodney and thank him instead of punching him... even if that's what we want to do to Rodney. Thanx.

New Camera



watercolor of poppy seed pods

The camera is a GE X500 16.0 mega pixel with 15X wide angle optical zoom lens. It came with an 8gig memory card and I bought the case in addition to it. The whole kit and caboodle cost me less than 180.00.
This is a 3.5 by 7 inch watercolor. The shot is of just the top portion of the piece. And look how friggin cool this shot is. It shows all the variations: paper textures, the way the colors flowed across the paper for wet into wet blending AND clear pencil marks from the cross hatching I added when it was dry.

I am so excited. My next project from moo is going to be so much more cooler than the last with awesome clear shots like these. With the macro setting I was practically right on top of the paper and nothing is blurry. This will make all kinds of good things even better.