May 7, 2013 May 8, 2013

I have been having pain in my right arm and numbness in my right hand since November. Yesterday I had my physical and the doctor thinks I have inflammation of a nerve that runs down my arm and into my hand. Treatment has started and I won’t be able to do much with this hand and arm for a week or two so I thought I would “go back to the beginning”. In 2007 I realized that my love of art extended to the point of creating serious art. I have always been a drawer and a doodler and have taken occasional watercolor classes but my paintings were based on lessons in books or paintings of photographs  from calendars. I had never created art from scratch. I also had done NOTHING for 14 years. I dove in head first and have continued to learn and grow over the last six years.

I have always been fascinated by concepts and enchanted by certain words or groups of words. In 2008 I stumbled on the concept of the “Golden Mean” and started trying to think through interesting ways to use this concept. The painting below  was my first try and the first painting I sold in a gallery.

Tree – 2008

I started with the silhouette drawings used to differentiate different categories of trees in one of my landscaping books (for example; pyramidal shaped deciduous tree). Then I used a free form diagram of a landscape plan as the back ground. I have always been fascinated with calligraphy and oriental art so I integrated the word Tree and tried to give it an oriental look (today I could write TREE in actual calligraphy!) I had enormous fun with this and am still pleased to look back at it.

 

May 2, 2013 May 3, 2013

I hope all of my crayon paintings do not look the same to you. For me they are all different because I’m thinking about how to get differnt looks and how to handle different surfaces as I do each piece. I am always learning something new…

I was able to complete two more postcards.  On the first one I worked with greens, which are always hard for me…how do you get strong value differentiation? This one I punched up with red and a little yellow.

Postacrd 4

The second postcard used my favorite blues, violets, greens. I applied much less crayon than usual in order to determine how much was enough. Usually I apply crayon very heavily because it gives a nice, glossy, almost mosaic like, quality when dry.

Postcard 5

I got a nice, soft look on this one. Still haven’t “cleaned up” the edges on any of my postcards. It’s faster to do several at one time.

April 28, 2013 April 30, 2013

I have been playing with my crayons again. This time I tried to scale up from the small sizes I’ve been doing (5″X7″ and 6″X6″) to a quarter sheet of paper. I worked on a block of Arches 140# cold pressed (CP) paper. I wanted to use many colors and a swirling design because I was thinking about a fiesta or festival of some kind. Dancing, fireworks, movement and color – that’s what I saw in my minds eye. This painting has three layers of crayon. You have to be really careful or the colors all just melt together to form mud. I am still learning about using the crayons and I love many of the colors. Some are dramatic, deep and rich while some are packed with pastel punch. Oh yeah! enough to keep me enchanted…

Fiesta

April 25, 2013 April 26, 2013

I really admire Barry Coombs and his ability to inspire artists both old and new. I love to watch his blog and to learn (from a long distance away) along with his local students. He recently started a new set of classes so I am going to tag along as I can find time. Here is the link to Lesson 1.

I started by sketching a draft of the composition I chose. I always move things around and reorganize the components – at least a little.

BC Lesson 1 Sketches

Then I worked on planning the color scheme and got a sketch I liked the first time .

BC Lesson 1 – Color 1

I did two more color sketches. The first used the warm color scheme that Barry uses so much in his “set ups”. I just blocked in the shapes and the colors were OK but didn’t grab me this time.

The final color sketch used primary and secondary colors. Once again I blocked in the shapes and I wasn’t dazzled with this color scheme either. All of the color sketches are done in my AquaBee sketchbook. I probably won’t have time to turn these into a painting but completing all of the sketches has been excellent practice for me.

BC Lesson 1 – Color 3

April 21, 2013 April 22, 2013

I had several meetings last week and one of them was a brainstorming session…that one left my head spinning. My monkey brain would not be quiet! Any way, I have been able to spend a small amount of time creating. Below are two new postcards. I like both of these…really fun to paint.

With both of these little pieces, I enjoyed the look of shattered glass and the interesting paterns. The surface of the postcards is smoother than the notecards and gives a different look.

Postcard 3

I haven’t touched up the edges yet. I am using Dr Martin’s Bleed-Proof White to touch up the edges.

April 13, 2013 April 15, 2013

In an earlier post that you can view here, I talked about Indiana Autmun 2 and how challenging it was to create. This painting is done on plate finish illustration board and it was the first time I worked with this surface. I was not happy with the lower corners of the painting and was playing around with cropping. I couldn’t find a cropping format that worked. I was planning on taking a full sheet painting and cutting it down to half sheet or quarter sheet size. While painting Indiana Autumn 3 I had the earlier painting on an easel for the “living with it” phase and I decided my approach to cropping was wrong. I finally decided to take 3″ off the top and bottom. Affter that I did two pours of paint to unify the painting better. Lots of details for you but at this point I’m much happier with the painting.

Indiana Autumn 2 – Cropped

As I’ve mntioned, one of my struggles with this series is that the main color scheme is made up of mid-value colors. The struggle for me has been to add diversity and excitement with darker values.

April 11, 2013 April 12, 2013

You may be getting really tired of hearing me babble on about my notecards…good news! I’ve run out of notecards so I switched to POSTCARDS! As I mentioned yesterday I had forgotten to get photos of two of my notecards so I shot a photo of notecard 6. With this one I started trying straight bands of color and I chose purples and grays for this painting.

Notecard 6

I wasn’t kidding when I said I started doing postcards. I found an old pad of Cotman postcards that I took to Mexico on a vacation several years ago. The paper is 4″ X 6″ (slightly smaller than the notecards) and I am taping off a 1/4″ border. The colors were applied in organic shapes and are pale colors such as flesh, spring green and pale peach…I wanted a soft gentle look. The postcards are smoother than the Whatman notecards which have a rough surface.

Postcard 1