Yes Target! Although we’ll be so happy when we can go outside for our Tuesday evening Urban sketching again, sketching at Target was a lot more fun than you might think. I had fun sketching the silly high heels and flip-flops on the wall behind them. Nobody seemed to notice or question why I was painting in the shoe department.
Left over Valentine Flowers, ink & watercolor
It was the night after Valentine’s day and there was the display of sad, wilting Valentines roses, on clearance, half off.
Remote Controlled Baby Swing, ink & watercolor
Whatever happened to sitting in a rocking chair holding the baby in your arms? This contraption had a touch pad remote control with 6 speeds and more. Someone told me he bought one of these only to discover it came in a million parts that was a nightmare to assemble.
Kensington Hilltop School, ink & watercolor (a beautiful school above a wonderful park at the very tip-top of Kensington hills)
In my last post I asked for advice on sorting and storing completed oil paintings on panels. Along with the good suggestions from readers, I found a fantastic website that provides the answers to these and many other questions about proper handling of artwork and art materials of all kinds.
The website is AMIEN.org (Art Materials Information and Education Network), “a resource for artists dedicated to providing the most comprehensive, up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased factual information about artists’ materials.” They are part of the education department of the Intermuseum Conservation Association.
AMIEN’s forums are the place to find information to all our questions about proper use, handling, storage, shipping, application, etc. of art materials and finished art work or all kinds. Here is a portion of what they say (more here) about storing oil paintings on panels:
Store your paintings standing on edge, one next to the other, with a piece of acid-free paper loosely covering the face of each painting. You can tape the paper to the back of the panel and fold it over the front.
Ideally, you will put these paintings in a rack, elevated off the floor, in some location that is relatively dust-free and not subject to wild swings of temperature and relative humidity. Even more ideally, each painting ought to be separated from the others, but that would take a very large rack. Second best: You should not have more than about 5 paintings leaning against each other; separate the groups of paintings.
AMIEN’s forums cover topics like Watercolors, Pastel, Encaustics, Acrylic Paints, Supports, Grounds, Solvents and Thinners, Varnishes, Pigments, Color charts, Oil Paints and Mediums, Alkyds, Mural Paints and Techniques, Colored Pencils, Printmaking, Photography and Printed Digital Media, Matting, Framing and Labeling, Picture Protection, Crating, Shipping, Storage, Conservation, Hazards and much more.
About the sketch at top: Friday afternoons I have the pleasure of spending time with two lovely 11-year-old girls who still like to swing and play make-believe games on playground equipment. I discovered Kensington Hilltop School while hiking in the hills on the weekend and brought them there the next week. They played, I sketched, we had fun.
After ten years this very large rock sold to me as a “Moss Rock” and installed in my front garden has finally grown a patch of moss. It looked so pretty and the day was unseasonably warm and sunny so I couldn’t resist going out to sketch it. I sat on my porch and drew the mossy rock while my usually indoor kitties joined me in the sun.
And now my request for advice:
I need help figuring out how to sort/store my oil paintings. I have at least a hundred oil paintings and plein air studies on panels (probably more) that I’ve done over the past few years. I’m sure for some people it’s simple: just sell them all.
But if you’re like me and still have many paintings on hand, I’d love to hear how you organize, catalog, store and/or protect them from damage. I have many watercolors on paper in large flat files sorted by subject matter, with drawers labeled accordingly. But I haven’t figured out a good system for my oils.
When I get a request from someone wanting to purchase a painting it can be challenging to find it and I always have my fingers crossed that it hasn’t gotten damaged.
My questions:
ORGANIZING: Do you store your paintings by subject? Size? Date? Inventory number (requires entering in art tracking program)? OR…just skip the organizing and spend the time painting instead?!!
STORAGE: Should they be separated with wax paper when stored touching each other? Does it matter if they’re in the dark? My garage is fairly dry but not insulated so is affected by weather. Is it ok to store oils on panels in Clearbag envelopes to protect their surface?
At the beginning of the year I usually sort through the past year’s paintings stored vertically on shelves like books in my studio. I dump the losers, label the keepers, and move older paintings to shelves in the garage. This year I had the flu during my two-week holiday vacation so never did the “dump and sort” so paintings have piled up in the studio shelves and storage closet and there are more drying.
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Arhoolie Records held a “second line parade” led by the New Orleans-based Tremè Brass Band. The parade started with a fantastic concert at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park
In the video below you can see and hear the band (and me trying to sketch them, looking like a bobble-head doll as I look up at the band and down at my sketchbook. I’m at top right of the screen, starting around 30 seconds in, wearing bright green.)
After they played 20 minutes or so, we danced (and sketched) along behind the band to the Berkeley BART station, with many people twirling handkerchiefs or parasols in the air as is the tradition in second line parades. They performed another brief concert, and then more people joined in the parade as we moved along Shattuck Avenue.
Playing by the BART station (note guy recording sound with mic on boom)
The parade ended at Freight & Salvage on Addison Street where we were again treated to more great Dixieland music. By then I was pretty far back in the crowd so gave up trying to draw the band but noticed these guys on the roof videotaping the event as we arrived.
Gathering at Freight and Salvage
This was one of those “It doesn’t get any better than this” experiences: Fantastic live music, sunshine and sketching! I knew the sketching would be challenging because of the constant movement, so only had as my goal to have fun and give it a try. I definitely had fun!
Sketching at Brennan’s Bar and Hoffbrau in Berkeley is always fun. When we met there for Tuesday night sketching last month Cathy had just returned from her sketching workshop that was held at Disneyworld in Florida so the first part of the evening was her amazing show and tell. You can see her Disneyworld sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog here and here and Micaela’s Brennan’s sketches are here.
Muffin-top guys at the bar
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “muffin-top,” it’s the bulge protruding above the belt from wearing too-tight jeans, especially widespread [pun intended] a few years ago when fashion dictated ever lower waistlines on pants with shorter tops).
Warm-up sketch at Brennan's
This was my first sketch of what I saw in front of me, just trying to do something simple to warm up before tackling more complicated stuff.
Falling behind and worrying about catching up can be stressful when it’s about work not accomplished, tasks not completed. But in the case of my blog, being behind on posting is a good thing. It just means I’ve been doing lots of painting and sketching with less time for the computer (a goal for this year).
I did the sketch above on the day I was preparing to leave for a weekend painting workshop. I reminded myself that I was officially on vacation, which allowed me to slow down enough to stop and sketch while out walking to do errands instead of rushing back home to get packed.
This sketch came in handy last week at work, when I wrote and illustrated a blog post for our literacy organization’s blog. My post’s subtitle was: “Two birds with one stone” (intentionally leaving off “kill”). Our clever editor suggested changing it to “Feed two birds with one scone.” So then I needed a sketch of a scone to accompany my two birds. Since I always have my sketchbook with me I was able to scan the scone sketch. You can see the result on our Reading Apprenticeship blog here.
And I will get that backlog of artwork posted soon!
The El Cerrito Honda dealership was kind enough to allow our Tuesday night urban sketchers group to come and sketch in their showroom. There were chairs and tables for us to sketch and paint in comfort and interesting architecture and cars to draw. I remember boys drawing cars all the time but never thought that someday I’d go out of my way to draw cars too.
The artist Rebeca Garcia Gonzalez told me that she likes including cars in her paintings because they remind her of jewel-like candies. In this post she not only included cars, but got a passerby to stand and pose for her and included him in the painting!
Shark Honda, ink & watercolor
I drew this car at the end of the evening and it was so close to me that it got way out of proportion and then started looking like a shark with whatever that thingee was on top. It’s good to develop the ability to see and draw cars because they’re everywhere, and leaving them out of a scene can look strange.
Artist Beth Bourland told me a funny story about this car sketch on her blog. She kept working on her drawing after the cars drove away. Some passerbys looked at her sketch and then at the empty street in front of her, and back at the sketch, wondering if she was seeing things.
North Beach Pizza in Berkeley is housed in a former International House of Pancakes. Pizza is a sort of large pancake, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want it served with maple syrup. We had a good time eating, chatting and sketching the night away, six of us in one cozy booth.
You can imagine my glee when this gentleman in full Mohawk sat down across from me on BART. Entranced by his cell phone, he never noticed me sketching and held perfectly still. It must have taken him a long time to get his hair to stand up so perfectly–and why? Especially first thing in the morning? I awarded him a sticker (on his page) from National Geographic.
Shellfish Shells, original version, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
A shellfish company saw a previous shell painting of mine and commissioned me to paint one for them to use as a background on their business cards. They shipped me a box of their oyster, clam and mussel shells to use as reference. I created the above sketch in my Moleskine watercolor notebook and sent them the file for their review.
Close up: Accidental texture caused by painting on reverse page
On the next page in my Moleskine, I sketched a landscape and painted it with juicy washes, something I do on the 140 lb watercolor paper in my hand-bound sketchbooks all the time. Without my noticing, the water seeped through the lighter-weight Moleskine paper, wetting the shell painting on the previous page.
Some of the mussels’ paint lifted, creating the wonderful texture (close up above) that I probably couldn’t have achieved if I had I tried. The only downside to this “technique” is that some of the lifted paint printed on the opposite (fortunately blank) page.
I wasn’t worried about the change in the art for my client because I’d already created a high-resolution file of the original. And as it turned out, they asked me to do another version with two different kinds of oyster shells and more clams, apologizing for changing their directions. I’m happy to paint as many versions as it takes since shells are one of my favorite subjects.
Jana Bouc, Artist 