March 27, 2017 March 28, 2017

As I walk at Ft Benjamin Harrison State Park I see the first signs of spring. The grays and browns are now accented by a froth of light green rolling over the landscape. The bushes are leafing out and lighting up the undergrowth with a gentle color and a clean fragrance. The skies are bluer and the breezes invigorate. As you may remember I tried a small color field painting using the winter colors I saw on my walks (here). I painted with my new acrylics and didn’t like the look of the canvas underneath. That painting was very small and I learned a lot about acrylics as I worked on it. I decided to create a new Ft Ben color field painting using burnt sienna to represent the leaf covered earth, a mix of light greens to represent the budding bushes, winter white to represent the sky and burnt umber to represent the trees. I started out by thinking about three blocks of color and a blue background. Then I decided to split the large upper block into three with white spaces between to represent the large, white sycamore trees that grow throughout the park. That was my starting point as  I worked on this painting.

The most important decision I made was to choose Strathmore Aquarius II paper as my surface. I soaked the paper until it was wet all the way through and then painted with my acrylics on very wet paper. I wanted blurry edges (the acrylics did run a little) and a soft look to the surface. My painting is 11 inches by 15 inches and, as you can see I further developed the idea of trees as I saw the painting develop.  I’m finding ways to love the Indiana winter!

 

March 26, 2017 March 26, 2017

Tomorrow I have my last Life Drawing Studio for this 5 week session. It has been a very different and valuable experience and I will enroll again later in the year. Probably the most beneficial thing is that I set aside 3 hours once a week for drawing.

I love to draw. I always have. I remember drawing  when I was in fourth grade and received a John Nagy  drawing set (obviously I was already drawing or I would not have received the set!). I used to create all of my own paper dolls copying stylish clothes from our Sears Roebuck catalog. I even buffed the surface of the paper with my finger to create the look of fur when I gave my doll a leopard fur coat. (not sure that Sears carried fur coats!)

During this last session I used all of the 2 minute warm ups for blind contour drawing and I also “blocked” my figure first hoping to improve the proportions of my figures. I felt like my drawings were better (though still imperfect). One thing I know…the human body is one of the most difficult things to draw!

This studio is at 9 am on Monday mornings. I call it my Nudes at 9 time… 🙂

 

 

March 24, 2017 March 24, 2017

After I completed my post yesterday I realized that I had never posted the completion of my third “Zone” painting. I completed Green Zone earlier in the week and it was sitting on my mantle undergoing continual scrutiny. This painting went through only one round of revision while the Red and Blue paintings went through many more as I continued to learn. This painting was completed entirely with a palette knife and I like the effect created by the broad swipes. This painting completes the series of “Zone” paintings inspired by the three abstracts in Penny’s apartment on the TV show Big Bang Theory (see more here). I like the spontaneous approach and have now started a new watercolor abstract that uses what I have always called my splash-splash technique (because I paint REALLY wet).  This process is also spontaneous and responds continually to the way the watercolor is behaving…not always predictable!

 

 

 

May 22, 2017 March 23, 2017

I have mentioned before that I put my paintings through a lengthy “living with it” period. I have my three acrylic abstracts propped up in my family room so I can scrutinize them. I thought you might want to see them together.

 

 

This final evaluation is very tricky. It is easy to ruin a painting at this stage. I don’t think that I will risk further changes. Your thoughts?

The painting behind my abstract is an original watercolor done by an Indiana artist named Jimmy Faulkner. My husband fell in love with it at a fundraiser. Paintings were awarded by lottery and – happy surprise! – my husband’s name was drawn. The painting could not have found a happier home. You can learn more about Jimmy Faulkner here. Be sure you check out the online gallery.

 

March 19, 2017 March 21, 2017

I have been working on my Green Zone painting and as I worked I decided that I was not happy with Blue Zone (published recently). This style is very new to me as is painting with acrylics. I am learning as I paint and am finding that I need several days of looking at and “living with” a painting before I see and have thought through how to deal with basic problems. I have now updated Blue Zone and think that it is finished. It is at the paint that I am saying to myself “Do not ruin it by continuing to tweak…don’t over work it!” With abstracts that is very hard to do – a squiggle here, a dot there. When is enough, enough? I hope you enjoy Blue Zone redux!

Just a note: Ruth, a fellow blogger, had asked if I had purples included in the painting and complimented the use of purple so I increased the use of different shades of purple. You can visit Ruth here. For Blue Zone I used the analogous color scheme of green, blue and purple and for Red Zone I used red, yellow and orange.

 

March 15, 2017 March 16, 2017

I wanted to continue to work on the creation of a series of three paintings inspired by but not replicating the red, blue and green abstracts shown in Penny’s apartment on Big Bang Theory. I posted my Red Zone painting a few days ago and now I have completed my Blue Zone painting. It is a 12 inch by 12 inch acrylic painting done on canvas. I focused on using spontaneous, swirling brush strokes. I also used a palette knife and toothpicks to create the painting. I used the toothpicks to swirl colors together rather like chefs do when making a marbled cake or cupcakes. The little white flecks are intentional. I was listening to an old 78 recording of Blues standards and the white flecks represent the crackling sound I heard as I painted. Painting like this is fun…you can just let go and play. And with this type of painting all accidents are happy!

 

Blue Zone, Acrylic on Canvas, 12″ X 12″, 2017

 

 

March 13, 2017 March 13, 2017

When artists have a painting that doesn’t feel right they will frequently turn their painting upside down and that will help them find the problem. With my abstracts I frequently try sitting them on each of the four sides to be sure the composition is balanced.

When I saw the photograph of Red Zone (posted a few days ago) I did not like what I saw. In the photo the areas around the outside of the painting looked bare, flat and uninteresting. Face to face the actual painting didn’t look quite so bad but it did have a problem. I decided to “tweak” the painting to increase the texture and color variety around the edges. To do that I actually worked my way around the painting always painting on the bottom side. I would rotate it 90 degrees as I moved from side to side. I do think it is a better painting now. In the future I will think of my photographs as a way to see my paintings through the eyes of an unbiased observer. Showing the good, the bad and the ugly!

 

Red Zone, 12″ X 12″ Acrylic on Canvas, 2017

March 10, 2017 March 11, 2017

Have you ever heard the expression “in the zone”? The Urban Dictionary defines “in the zone” as “Being completely unaware of what’s going on around you as you are so extremely into what’s going on right in front of your face”. In other words you are totally unaware of time or activities going on around you. When I draw or paint I am usually in the zone.

So why do I bring this up? Well, the path I followed to get to my latest painting is rather disconnected and a little weird but I wound up in the zone. I bought three 12 inch square canvases when my daughter closed her shop and I was trying to decide what to do with them. I love color and normally like to work with clear, crisp colors – like the primary colors.  Thinking about the primary colors led me to remember that I had often noticed three abstract paintings in Penny’s apartment on the Big Bang Theory television show. They attracted me and I thought they were lively and interesting.

I have never been able to see the paintings clearly but the idea of doing a lively square abstract in red sounded like fun. I would be able to work in acrylics which would be a good learning experience and I could use a process that was spontaneous to create texture. This led to the creation of The Red Zone. This is a play on words since I am usually “in the zone” or totally focused when I paint. As you can probably see, I built up the paint in three layers. Acrylics dry really quickly so I had to stop painting when the paint became tacky. When the paint was completely dry I would paint another layer building up different layers of color.

 

 

Here is Penny’s apartment with the blue, red and green abstracts on the wall at the right side of the photograph. What an explosion of color!

 

March 8, 2017 March 10, 2017

I live in Indiana and Indiana is a state that has four seasons. Spring is a season of beautiful pastels and vibrant reds and yellows (think daffodils and tulips). I paint Spring often, especially Spring flowers and flowering trees. During Spring the breezes are soft and fresh and the colors speak of rebirth. Fall in Indiana is a vibrant period of fiery reds, yellows and oranges. The maples blaze and lines of visitors roll through the state parks viewing the Fall foliage. It is a final burst of magnificence before Winter descends on the state. The drying leaves rustle and swirl like the long satin skirts of debutantes leaving a ball. Summer and Winter are not my favorite seasons and I rarely paint them. Why Summer? Everything is green! And the greens are basically the same greens. I get saturated with green. Walking at the State Park last year I finally understood why I am not inspired to create summer landscapes. I do love to create Summer still lives that include reds – cherry tomatoes on the vine and sparkling geraniums. But generally I don’t paint landscapes and when I do they aren’t very exciting.

That takes me to Winter. If we have a diamond surfaced blanket of snow and a big blue sky, Winter is beautiful but lately that has not been the norm. It is brown and gray and in March even the browns and grays are muted and faded. Walking at Fort Benjamin Harrison  State Park last Sunday I challenged myself to really look at the colors. To be specific and to find the beauty. I saw shrub stems that were a lovely lavender-red. I saw mosses that were a neon chartreuse green. And, because our Winter has not been a cold one, I saw green grass peeking between the straw colored dead grass. I thought about words that I would use to describe the Indiana Winter and the ones that came to mind were spare and sparse. I wanted to use all of this information to create a tiny painting using my new acrylics. My thinking process led me to “minimalism” and eventually to color field painting … at first simple, spare and plain but paintings that with long looking become meditative and complex with soft edges and textured surfaces. Now color field paintings are usually large paintings. For more info click here . I particularly like the color field paintings created by Kenneth Nolan and Mark Rothko. My challenge to myself was to see if I could create an interesting, exciting color field painting using colors I saw at the Park. I worked with three shades of brown and two shades of green. The background is a color called Champagne that is really lovely. I must say I did not realize it was metallic until after it dried! Oh my, Linda…pay attention!!!! Mistake or happy accident? The viewer decides.

 

Indiana Winter, 6″ X 8″ Acrylic on Canvas

March 6, 2017 March 8, 2017

This Monday I had my second Life Studio experience. Our model was male, lean and muscled and very good at holding challenging poses. I am using large sheets of newsprint for my sketches and am drawing with charcoal, ebony and graphite pencils. I also tried a sanguine Conte pencil this week. I want to draw with different types of drawing materials during this 5 week program. This is not a class. It is open studio and we all do our own thing. One artist works in watercolor and one uses her computer and completes her drawings digitally (the model was fascinated by this option).

I am working on my biggest challenges – hands and foreshortening…grrrrrr! Also for some reason I had trouble with proportions during this session. My eye-hand coordination was not as good this week.