A Quick Dip In the Ink

Daily Ink Number 7
Bearded Irises

Just a quickie today...I've got to find a way through the stacks of paperwork here, or something is going to get lost!

Here's my ink from this morning.

October 2008 Goals

Daily Ink Number 6

This post details my goals for October.

Business

• Write draft of article for online submission.
  

Artwork

• Oils - 3 paintings a week
• Daily Inks - 1 per week day
• Sketching - 10 sketches in the sketchbook
  

Research

• Paint 1 copy of a Degas pastel.
  
• Study some Degas work and focus on his composition.
  

We Three Pumpkins Are

We Three Pumpkins Are oil on gessoed board, 8 in x 10 in

This is my entry for this week's Different Strokes from Different Folks challenge.

I've been very intimidated by the quality of entries the last few weeks...so, I figured I better enter once before I lose the nerve!

It's my 14th oil painting.

Virtual Sketch Date - September

oil on gessoed board, 8 in x 10 in

Above is my entry for this month's Virtual Sketch Date.

Thanks to Sharon for the reference. It's a beautiful reference, but honestly, in the end I had to abandon it.

I sketched this four times in the sketchbook. Then I started to do a CP work on vellum. As that progressed I remembered why I decided that I needed to find a new main medium. After my five false starts, I decided to put the reference away. I came up with another sketch (in CPs :D) from my memory - a simplified version. I decided to paint from the simplified sketch in oils.

At a few points during painting I consulted the reference, but each time it just made things worse. In the end, I just went from the simplified sketch and gut instinct.

I thoroughly enjoyed the painting, even if the false starts were frustrating. Can't wait to see the other entries!

And as for the oil painting...well, this was my first piece on gessoed board and I love it! Canvas will just never feel right again! :D

September Goals Review

Daily Ink Number 4 Acrylic Inks and Brush on WC paper

This post is a review of my goals for September.


Business

• Donation - I donated a piece of artwork. I had a sticker label on the back. I also handed out a few business cards. (An important part of this goal was to get the stickers and cards and begin using them.)
  
• Write an article for online submission - This goal never happened. I think it needs baby steps...like write a rough draft, refine the draft, and submit.
  
• Update website - this didn't happen. Part of the failure was laziness, part of the failure was that I have been mostly painting and that stuff isn't exactly advertisement quality yet.
  
• Consider uses of new sticker labels and business cards - I've handed out a few cards.
  

Research

• Finish Oil Painting for Serious Beginners - Didn't finish this book, but read 4 others on oil painting.
  
• Begin Joseph Albers' Interaction of Color - Didn't begin this, but I'm satsified with my reading this month.
  

Artwork

• Oil Painting (3 paintings/week) - I did six oil paintings so far this month (one is for VSD, you can see that on Saturday). That is about half of what I had hoped for. Mostly the shortfall is due to "life" happening. However, I do think I am learning..some painting time was given over to reading when I felt I needed to read and think before just slapping paint down and making the same mistakes again. As well, the "daily ink" project is helping my brushwork just as much as painting with oils.
  
• Finish a second graphite piece for card collection. - This didn't happen. I decided to spend the time painting rather on graphite. I wasn't as thrilled as with the "first" one for the card collection anyway. In short, the "card" project needs further development.

I'll give my goals for October in a few days, probably Monday. The VSD is tomorrow!

Pure Oily Fun

Lean On Me
8 in x 8 in, oils on canvas panel

This is tonight's effort, from a photo of two of my sons.

This was pure fun! I just really enjoyed the oils tonight. As this was just about values rather than color, I was able to focus. This built up bit by bit...I kept stopping and sitting back - trying to see what brushstroke was needed next...the image just emerged from the canvas.

I used white and my limited "masters" palette...yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and paynes gray.

More Daily Inks

Yesterday I wrote that I was going to try and do a small "daily ink" - a 5 to 10 minute sketch with acrylic inks done from a thumbnail image. Gathering the newspaper this morning I was struck with how lovely my roses looked against the house. I snapped a few photos and did the above after breakfast.

Daily Discipline

Recently, I picked up Painting More Than Eye Can See by Robert Wade. I purchased it for two reasons. One, I really like the pictures in it - I love this painter's style. Two, the cover...he took an ordinary photo and turned it into a fabulous painting. I have loads of ordinary photos, I'd love to know how to get more out of them. I am very interested in creating more than a photo can show. I'd like to make my paintings express more than just reality, I'd like them to express reality as I see it.

One of the exercises that he encourages is painting daily...but not in the way you'd think. He suggests doing a 7 or 8 minute (4x6 in) "postcard painting." The idea is to just get used to watercolors, how they are applied, how they blend, etc. It occurred to me that I could take this idea and make it my own...

My New Daily Discipline Idea

• spend 5-10 minutes a day doing an ink and brush painting (although Vivien Blackburn posted today about sketching in oils, so that may happen too)
  
• perhaps use a small format, although for this one I only had 9in x 12in paper available.
• do the painting from a thumbnail image of one of my photos. I am gradually building a library of my own photos, so all I have to do is open a directory, pick a thumbnail and paint from it. The idea is that the image is too small for me to really know the details, this should force me to just concentrate on values, patterns, and suggesting rather than truly delineating everything. (In short, force myself to be a bit more painterly!)
• Above is my first effort, it was really fun to have only a few minutes and just whip out the inks, splash around, and throw them back and be done. The photo was taken on vacation this year, a view of the dry creek bed, trees (which are sadly dying and not really green), and distant mountains in Forest Falls, CA.
  

The book is all about the artist being the "director" and manipulating elements as she sees fit. He calls this idea "visioneering." Essentially, having a vision in your mind of what you want the painting to be...the mood it expresses, the perspective you want to give on a place, etc. He stresses using the fundamentals to accomplish this...reflected light, values, atmosphere, figure placement, etc.

Again, this wasn't anything particularly new, but he wrote with such confidence about manipulating basic elements to achieve what you want...well, it just makes me want to have a go with some ordinary photos.

Wade also offers the following encouragement "whatever I have achieved I've done by working my fingers to the bone. I've practiced until my eyes were so sore I couldn't see straight. I've driven myself to keep on going when I could cheerfully have dropped with exhaustion at some weird hour of the morning." (Wade, p.100)

I've never been one to stay up until the wee hours, but that statement does give me hope that with hard work, I will persevere.

Training Your Artistic Eye to See

I mentioned in my last post that I have been reading a fair amount about painting, I thought this week I would share some good quotes and thoughts that I've come across.

Lately, I have been struggling with what to paint. My subject slump stems from a few different things. For one, at this point, painting anything is a struggle - to get a convincing anything is tough, so I'm trying to choose things that I consider "easy successes" rather than subjects that inspire me. Secondly, as I believe in concentrating effort, I want to keep painting similar subjects so that I can improve more quickly - however, as the subjects aren't really inspiring me, it is getting harder and harder to carry on with them.

All that to say, when I came across What Shall I Paint? by Hazel Soan this weekend at the library, I picked it up. I don't think the book gave me any information that I didn't already know, however, it did apply some ideas in new ways for me. She mentions at the outset that an artist needs to focus on the two dimensional qualities that make a painting work...shapes, patterns, etc. That much I knew. In the past, I would choose a subject then work to make sure that the tones, patterns, notan issues, etc were alright. (That isn't a bad way to proceed, but if you can't choose a subject, it doesn't give you anywhere to go.)

So I tried one of Soan's exercises for training your eye to see subjects everywhere. I decided to draw negative shapes - the shapes between objects. (This was particularly nice because I've been in bed with a nasty head cold - I always read in bed so I constantly read exhortations to "draw what's in front of you" when I'm in there and I can never manage to do it from the view I have in there. Well, that has changed!)

Above you see some of those sketches. In the end, they aren't fabulous pieces, but I did find that I got excited about the shapes and patterns made. Even though the subject matter was clutter, I really enjoyed the sketching. I would imagine that if you did exercises like this all the time, you would improve your eye and begin to see interesting shapes and patterns made from tonal groupings all over the place.

Values and Sticking With It

Last night I picked up my brush again after an unintended break of over a week. Let's put a positive spin on it and say that I learned a ton...you always learn more from mistakes! :D The quick sketch above is portrayed here in black and white because it was the second effort and I just wanted to use up the paint I had put on the palette paper. The colors, in real life, are awful, but I wanted to see if I could get the values right, irregardless of the colors.

This was the first effort of the evening. Clearly, I lost all the edges of the rose and it came out rather boxy. Originally I intended some other smaller flowers on the right, but it was better to just paint over those with a dark green ;D.

I carry on in the battle to learn to paint...today, I picked up a few books at the library and an interesting one secondhand. Let's hope all the reading begins to inform the painting! :D.

From My Garden

Well, the week has not gone as planned. Yesterday I spent some time photographing clippings from the garden...I hope to get to these beauties tonight!

Note also that the virtual sketch date is on for September...it's a lovely photo.

Service to Return Shortly

We've been housing some friends from Houston, escaping hurricane Ike. I also went to a conference this weekend (where I donated a drawing...more about that experience later!)

I hope to have a painting session Tuesday night, so there will be a post soon!

Thanks for your patience.

In The Trenches

Thank you to those who encouraged me yesterday, by phone and comment. I'm still battling it out with the oils. I do really enjoy working with them, even if I find the skill at the end of the handle a little lacking ;-). This is last night's effort...not a great photo, but we're in the midst of several gray rainy days here.

Painting Is Hard

Yes, painting is hard. This is tonight's effort. You'll have to take my word that I thought about composition, negative shapes, values, form, color (dominant hues, complements, discords, etc), brushstrokes, lost edges, hard edges...none of that really shows.

Hopefully the frustration wears off tonight and the excitement of learning returns in the morning!

Working Out An Idea

This weekend, not having enough time to pull out the paints, I decided to try out a few ideas. First, I had an idea for a painting...three pears lined up, view from the front of the line, two knocked down, one in back still standing. Second, I had been reading about having a dominant hue and triadic color schemes.

Above you see my efforts. Not great, but it's sold me enough on the concept that I'll try to get some pears today and try and take it from there.

First Painted Roses

Roses
9 in x 12in, oil on canvas

Irregardless of my name, I do love roses. Amazingly, they do grow for me. They aren't my favorite flower, but they are close. I have always wanted to paint some. After enjoying them in the garden this afternoon, I decided to make my first attempt at painting them.

One thing I noticed tonight while painting, I had trouble seeing with the glare from the lights. I think I may need to move beyond holding the canvas in my hand to having an easel...does anyone have any ideas on how to make a cheap easel? Just something to hold up a stretched canvas?

I'm going to go read about oil painting and learn something...

Just for a Laugh

Things have been busy here...but thought you might get a laugh from seeing my son enjoying himself on vacation this summer...the blue lips are from drinking blue Gatorade - thanks Grandpa! :D

September Goals

This post lists my goals for September.

Business

• Donate piece of artwork. Have sticker label on back with web addresses on it
• Write an article for online submission
• Update website
• Consider uses of new sticker labels and business cards
  

Research

• Finish Oil Painting for Serious Beginners
• Begin Joseph Albers' Interaction of Color
  

Artwork

• Oil Painting - 3 paintings a week
• Finish a second graphite piece for card collection.