The day I painted in this meadow was gorgeous: warm and sunny with the air full of the scents of spring and the sounds of birds, bees and frogs. The plein air painting I did wasn’t worth posting but served as a memory guide, along with my photos for this painting. It is painted with Golden Open Acrylics on a RayMarArt canvas/hardboard panel.
I know I’ve been a bit quiet here lately—just a bit of spring fever and choosing to be outdoors and/or painting, not at the computer. (:
First the Good Day: I had fun sketching this artist painting at the Berkeley Marina during our paint-out today. Unfortunately that fun was sandwiched between two Bad-Day things.
The second Bad Day thing is the worst: I came home from the paint-out and discovered that my Gmail account got hacked and sent spam to everyone in my address book. UGH! I researched the problem and took all the recommended steps to fix it: changed my Gmail password (and am now halfway through changing all my other passwords), checked all my security settings, ran 2 virus checkers and 2 malware checkers which all came up negative.
If you received one of the spam messages, please accept my apology. And if you clicked the link or replied to the message, then just to be safe, please change your email password too.
The first Bad-Day thing was that on my way to the paint-out there was a big accident just beyond the exit I needed to take to the Marina. Traffic wasn’t moving and people started getting nasty. First they started driving on the shoulder of the road, trying (unsuccessfully) to get to the exit and off the freeway.
Then big SUVs and pickup trucks started driving up the curb onto the dirt, turning one pre-exit lane into 3 lanes of cars squeezed together, jockeying to get ahead of each other. Then two SUVs ran into each other, blocking things up even more. Of course all three lanes had to funnel back into the same lane at the exit ramp but those pushy guys got off first.
I was really upset because our plein air group had hired David Savellano to lead a watercolor sketching workshop for us and I was missing it! I was so frustrated just sitting there watching beastly, rude drivers instead of enjoying art and sea air at the marina. Finally, inch by inch I made it to the exit and arrived half an hour late to the demo.
Naturally, I had a little trouble loosening up when I did the boat sketch above, but after taking a lunch/attitude adjustment break, returned for more, determined to get loose and just play. The sketch at the top of the post was the result. During the critique David gave me great reviews for both sketches which made my day and believe, me, I really needed that on a day like this!
It’s springtime in California and those famous “golden rolling hills” are actually a million shades of green right now, thanks to all the rain (which we probably won’t see again until next winter). When my plein air group went to Borges Ranch in Walnut Creek last month for our paint out, I used the time to hike, sketch and take photos. Then I made the painting above in the studio from my photos memories of the day.
You can see my recent sketches of Borges here. The two Borges paintings below from 2009 and 2008 help me see that I am making progress.
I really like going out sketching with the group and experiencing everything about the day without the frustration of trying to make a 2-hour painting as the light and scene changes completely. I’m better suited to doing sketches in the field and paintings in the studio.
Last Sunday I tried again to paint on site. I thoroughly enjoyed the sounds of birds, crickets and frogs in the meadow where I painted in the sun along the bay in Benicia. The painting was a 50-50 flop that might be salvageable but I took some photos which I altered in Photoshop to match my memories, from which I will make a painting
The best part of sketching tonight was running into beautiful Martha, who promises to rejoin our Tuesday night sketchcrawls again in a month or so. By then it will be light and warm enough to sketch all evening in comfort. The sun was setting and it got cold while I sketched the roof of the Produce Center above. I could see a crowd lining up for pizza at the Cheeseboard Collective where a jazz band was playing. I could hear the music but wasn’t close enough to smell the pizza, just the scent from all the local dogs who’d visited the bush behind the concrete bench where I sat in front of Bank of the West.
I wouldn’t have thought to sketch this old vegetarian Chinese restaurant (above) until Cathy suggested it as a subject. I’d never noticed the interesting second story before. It was fun to draw quickly (Cathy was nearly done with her sketch when I started) and loosely (using my Lamy Safari while wearing fuzzy gloves for warmth which kept smearing the ink and caused the pen to keep slipping).
It was nearly dark when I started the sketch above, but I couldn’t resist this wonderful old car from the time when big was better. I wish I’d drawn it across the centerfold instead of fitting it on one page because I see I’ve compressed the width, especially the front which was just as long as the back. But I feel pretty pleased, considering I drew a car (not a subject I’m “good” at), in the dark, with a fountain pen held in thick fuzzy-gloved fingers.
The tulip trees (Saucer Magnolias) and tulips were blooming when we painted at Blake Gardens on a sunny Friday a week ago. Of the multiple sketches and paintings I did of the scene, I think I’m happiest with the one above, done in my journal when I got home, from a combination of memory and photo. I clipped the text from their brochure and pasted it on the journal page.
Here is the final painting and below that are the steps in between:
After I picked my spot to paint and set up my easel, I did several thumbnail sketches (left below) to plan my composition. While each thumbnail improved on the one before it, none were great compositions and as a result neither was the plein air painting I did on site.
I was working with Golden Open Acrylics, my first time trying them outdoors. A Golden expert suggested I put a drop of Golden Open Acrylic Thinner atop each blob of paint to keep them moist when painting outdoors. Instead, thinking I was so clever, I mixed about 25% thinner with 75% water in a spray bottle and misted the paints occasionally.
But I should have taken her advice as my method didn’t work. She’d warned me that adding water to the Open paints will make them dry faster, which it did, and they started getting icky-sticky about the time I needed to quit and head for the critique anyway. Indoors they stay wet all day and in a closed palette, for a week or two.
The plein air painting was so UGLY that I’m glad I only expect my plein air paintings to be learning studies. My plein air painting goal is to fully experience and participate in a scene and embed my memories of color, light, texture, sounds and scents.
And there were sounds and scents: not only were the many magnolias overly fragrant, but shortly after I set up, two gardeners fired up a gas-powered industrial-strength chain saw, cut down a huge tree and sawed it to pieces about 20 feet away from me. The sound was horrible and the smell was worse.
Below is a photo taken when I first arrived, cropped into a more pleasing composition. I like the diagonals and the way shapes of shadows and colors lead the eye into and around the painting.
From my watercolor sketch and the photo above, I started working on a studio version of the painting. Below is the underpainting with the main shapes and colors blocked in.
I liked just as it was and was hesitant to paint over it so I left it for a few days before working on it again until it decided it was finished.
After waking up way too early and having loads of extra time before I needed to leave for my plain air painting session today, I somehow managed to get late anyway. When I finally got to our meeting place—Borges Ranch on the Shell Ridge Open Space in Walnut Creek—I decided to leave my easel and acrylics in the car and hike the ridge trail with my sketchbook, watercolor kit and camera.Then when I was heading back for the critique, I stopped at the barn and painted the quick sketch above.
Often when I’m plein air painting I’m jealous of all the people who are enjoying the day by hiking the hills instead of standing in one spot trying to capture all the abundant nature in two dimensions on a little piece of canvas. So this time I joined them and it was heavenly. After exploring for an hour or so I found a spot on the trail beside a large muddy pond where I sat and painted the picture below. It doesn’t make sense as a picture but when I look at it I can hear the buzzing bees (must have been a hive in a nearby tree), the birds chirping, and can feel the warm sun shining on me.
This was the first sketch in my new journal with the Legion Multimedia paper. It’s a dream to sketch on; the pen slides right along. The paper is nicely sized and while it won’t take the abuse that Arches cold press will, it does hold up pretty well as long as you don’t try to do more than 2 or 3 layers. This slight limitation will hopefully me keep me moving on to the next sketch instead of overworking one to death.
After the critique (and my lunch) it was mealtime for the farm animals and I couldn’t get any of their attention. This guy looked at me like I was really annoying.
Only the rooster seemed to have places to go and things to do.
This month’s Virtual Paint-out is taking place in Norway. When I picture Norway it’s always snowing—silly me. I was amazed to wander the roads and see the beautiful summer light and perfectly maintained buildings and fields. There was so much gorgeous scenery it was hard to pick, but I couldn’t resist all the different greens in this scene.
Here is the original scene from Google Earth. I used Windows 7 cool “Snipping Tool” that lets you select an area of the screen to copy and save:
If you click to enlarge the image you will see the address of this farm in the top left. I played around in Photoshop to compose and crop the scene. Then I used the “Content Aware Scaling” feature in CS4 that allows you to compress a scene without distorting elements such as buildings or people. I wanted to fit the image on a 9×12″ canvas:
What’s really exciting to me about this painting is that I used Golden Open Acrylics to paint it. I am in love with these paints! [SEE less enthusiastic UPDATE AT BOTTOM]. They have all features that I love about oils and acrylics with none of the features I don’t like. I’ve been struggling with both those mediums for months and was going through an artistic crisis, considering giving them both up.
The problem with acrylics
I couldn’t stand working with regular acrylics because I like to layout a palette of paint and work intuitively, mixing as I go. Acrylics dry too fast to do this. (Yes I know you can mist the paint regularly and that there are special stay-wet palettes but I found they turn the paint to soup and smell bad after a couple of days). I also like to blend colors on the canvas and to be able to wipe off a passage if it’s not quite right. None of this is easy to do with regular acrylics.
The problem with oils
Because I try to use solvents as little as possible with oils due to their toxicity and smell, I can’t start with juicy washes for the first layer as I like to do when sketching out the composition with oils. And even with the minimal use of the least toxic odorless solvent (Gamsol mineral spirits) I found there was an odor (probably from linseed oil going rancid that was left in the solvent) that bothered me anyway. And then there’s the cleanup up dozens of brushes after a painting session.
Why I love[d] Golden Open Acrylics
Golden Open Acrylics do not smell, stay workable about as long as oil paints [update: they don’t really], can be diluted with medium and/or water, clean up with water, do not dry on brushes (for 24 hours at least), blend nicely and are just a dream to work with. When I quit painting last weekend I stuck a small, damp sponge on the palette, and closed my Masterson “Palette Seal” box. I opened it today, a week later, and the paint was still in perfect working condition, better than oil paint would have been.
While I admire thick, expressive, brush strokes in paintings, it’s not really my thing. I prefer working more thinly and that’s just the way Golden Open Acrylics are meant to be used: in layers less than the thickness of a penny. They can also be mixed with regular acrylics to modify the texture or the drying time. Or they can be combined in different layers, although it’s suggested to use regular acrylics as the first layer(s) before adding the Opens or waiting for the layers of Open Acrylics to thoroughly dry (2 weeks) before applying a layer of regular acrylics.
I think these paints are also going to transform my plein air painting. [update: they didn’t work for plein air; got tacky too quickly] I won’t need to bring solvent or a slew of brushes. I haven’t figured out what to carry for a water container or how much water I will need to carry for brush washing between colors.
Our first plein-air session of the new season is next Friday and I’m looking forward to playing with my new medium in a Non-Virtual paint-out too.
UPDATE June 30, 2010
After working the Golden Open Acrylics for three months I’m considerably less enthusiastic about them. The deal breaker is that the paint dries darker (about 10%, varies between colors) which requires guessing when mixing paint how much lighter to make it and makes it impossible for me to try to match colors I’m seeing . Other problems are the drying time which depends on the humidity and wind which makes painting outdoors with them next to impossible in my area. Unless there is no breeze and high humidity, even indoors, you have to work quickly before the painting starts getting tacky within an hour or so. But then it can take a really long time for the paint to dry completely. When trying to glaze on top of a seemingly dry layer, I’ve ended up lifting the previous layer instead and had to give up glazing.
I’ve now switched to Holbein Duo Aqua water soluble oils and so far and am finding them the best of all worlds. No color shift, artist quality pigments and pigment load, no toxics, no smells, easy clean up. I write about them here.
Warm sun, green hills, blossoming trees and a great Peet’s cappuccino to sip at an outdoor table while sketching was made even better by a pen that actually worked in my sketchbook. After struggling to find a pen that would not skip, scratch, smear, show through or bleed on the Arches 90 lb cold press paper I’d bound in my journal, I discovered that my Lamy Safari fountain pen was just right.
All of the pens I normally use were giving me problems. The Sakura Pigma Micron skipped, scratched over the textured paper when drawing, and was even worse for writing in the journal, whether I used my favorite .01 or a fatter-tipped .05.
I tried using an Ultra-Fine Point Sharpie since it would at least produce a strong line (above). But I found that the ink flowed too quickly, bleeding and spreading if held in one spot and worse, showed through to the other side. I also tried the Pitt Artist Brush Pen on this page, which worked OK but was a thicker line than I like for general sketching. The black ink in the finer-point Pitts seemed paler than the Microns, but it might also be that they resist the sizing on the paper more.
Prismacolor Illustration pens are similar to the Sakura Pigma Micron and Pitt Artist Pens and are very nice and comfortable to hold. But they too performed poorly on the Arches CP. In the sketch above I was trying to do a contour drawing of what I saw on the BART train but my lines were barely visible until I redrew them with a Sharpie.
Then I tested my Lamy Safari F-point fountain pen and was delighted to see that it was a pleasure to write and draw with on the Arches CP paper.
I’d last filled the Safari with Noodlers Black Bulletproof ink, which is supposed to be waterproof but actually bleeds a fair amount when a wash is applied after it’s dry. I used a dip pen to test Platinum Carbon Ink and it held up better, barely bleeding at all.
So I squirted out the remaining Noodlers in my Lamy and refilled it with the Carbon Platinum ink. I’ve been a happy sketcher ever since. The ink is a rich black, doesn’t bleed, is great to write with on this bumpy paper, and is comfy to hold. Yay!
Now that I’m halfway through my journal it’s time to prepare for binding the next one. I’ve been testing papers and I think I’ve found the one. When I finish my tests I’ll post them. I have a feeling I might have found the perfect paper for ink and watercolor journaling.
This month the San Francisco Bay Area is the locale for the Virtual Paintout (we paint from a Google Maps street view image). At first I was disappointed; I live in the Bay Area so I wouldn’t get to explore new territory like last month when we painted Corsica.
It seemed a little silly to paint from a map picture instead of from life but having just spent the afternoon on Telegraph Avenue, it seemed a natural subject. This tie-dye T-shirt stand is practically a permanent fixture on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft.
Although it’s right across the street from the University of California Berkeley campus, I don’t think I’ve seen a student wearing tie-dye since around 1975. Even old hippies don’t wear tie-dye anymore. So who buys these things?
I felt like painting in oils, but watercolor seemed a better medium for this subject. So I printed out the image (which I cropped from the original Google snapshot) and then sketched and painted the scene in my sketchbook. Here’s the original map and image on Google.
I painted this from a Google Earth street view photo for the Virtual Paintout blog. For the month of January they are painting Corsica, France from images on Google Earth. I’d heard of Corsica but had no idea where it was so it was fun to learn a little about it. And I’d never really explored Google Earth before (except for looking at my house) and was amazed. You pick a spot and then click the arrow to move further down the road, not knowing what you will come to until you get there, just like real travel. You can also swivel the view to see what’s off to either side. A town named “Mute, Corsica” intrigued me so I started there for my virtual travel.
I spent way too long exploring Corsica and only had a couple hours left to paint last weekend once I’d picked an image. But the painting went really well and I probably should have just left it as it was. But I came back to it today to do some “finishing.” But I’d lost my focus so did some painting, wiped it off, painted, wiped off. Finally I gave myself a pep talk: Focus and Finish! I did.
Fini.
Jana Bouc, Artist 