Category: Watercolor

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Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

How NOT to Start a Workshop

Coffee spill

Ink & watercolor in Aquabee sketchbook (larger)

I’m taking a figure painting workshop this weekend from Randy Sexton in Crockett, CA. It’s two full days of painting a beautiful model both nude and clothed in exotic gowns. Although I was excited about the workshop, I was also exhausted and stressed after a very difficult week at work, topped off by spending Friday evening doing my taxes (ick!).

Early this morning I packed my oil painting gear into my rolling cart, stuck a big thermos cup of coffee in my backpack, and rushed off to Crockett. As I got out of my car I felt my back suddenly go into spasm. Across the street another workshop participant was unloading her supplies. As I waited for her I tried to stretch my back by doing a sort of Downward Dog yoga pose holding onto the handle of my cart.

I felt a searing hot pain go down my back. At first I thought it was another spasm and then realized it was hot coffee pouring all over my backpack, down the back of my light green shirt, and dripping onto my shoes. I’d forgotten the cup was in my backpack and worse, had forgotten to close it all the way.

I managed to enjoy the class today despite all of the above. We did multiple 20 minute paintings and then a couple 40 minute poses. It’s quite a challenge to do an entire oil painting in 20 (or 40) minutes from a model, but extremely good practice. Most of my pieces today were “scrapers” (scraping off all the paint to reuse the panel) but maybe tomorrow with longer poses I’ll have something worth saving (and posting).

Now to go take a painkiller and rest up for tomorrow’s class — which will start even earlier thanks to stupid daylight savings time!

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Art theory Dreams Illustration Friday Life in general People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Leap (year) * Illustration Friday

Leap

Four watercolors, framed together 24×32″ (Larger)

This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Leap” in honor of leap year, this February 29, 2008. But the paintings and sketches in this post were actually made twenty years ago. They were inspired by two dreams recorded in a 1988 dream sketchbook (below) and a class in color theory I was taking at the time, based on Joseph Albers work. The images include references to the seasons; times of day/night; the elements of water, fire, earth, and air; and tarot symbols.

The dreams that night were showing me a choice I needed to make in my life. Then as now I was fascinated by computers/technology and art (a perfect combination for an art blogger, no?). But my dreams pointed out how the time and energy I was spending on the computer tied me in knots and stole from my creativity.

Here is the image from the first dream that night: A computer tech “boiler room” full of electronics, miles of wires, computers, monitors, and icky nerds frantically, obsessively, working non-stop at their computers with no time to even look up. It was a nightmare really…full of tension.

Leap-1988

In the next dream I left that scene and I was running free in a field and it felt really good.

Leap-1988-2

And then, from a quote I’d heard somewhere, this image and words.

Leap-1985

When I awoke I knew I had to make the choice for life, freedom, and art, and quit spending so much time at my computer.

I guess like anything else in life, it comes down to a matter of finding balance and making choices about what’s really important. If I remember to ask myself whether I’ll feel happier at the end of the day if I’ve spent my time drawing/painting or working on the computer, I usually know which to choose (Art!).

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Berkeley Drawing Outdoors/Landscape Painting Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, Berkeley

Mrs. Dalloway's Book Store

Ink & Watercolor in Strathmore drawing sketchbook, 6×8″ (Larger)

After my dentist appointment today I took a walk up to College Avenue in the Elmwood district of Berkeley, foraging for lunch. I chose Ferrari’s Deli where I had a delicious grilled “Perugia” sandwich (roasted pork sirloin, black truffle butter and Asiago cheese on toasted ciabatta bread). I sat a sidewalk table to eat, with a view of Mrs. Dalloway’s bookstore across the street. Then I got out my sketchbook and started drawing, sad that I’d left my watercolors in my car, half a mile away.

I took a couple photos (fearing I wouldn’t remember all the colors, like the orange reflection of Ferrari’s awning appearing in Mrs. Dalloway’s windows) and then added the watercolor at home tonight. The paper in this sketchbook is not designed for wet media but works fine if you don’t overwork it. I like it because it’s just the right size, the paper is nice, especially for drawing, and quite inexpensive.

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Art theory Berkeley Drawing Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

North Berkeley Library & Freedom from Junk

North Berkeley Library

Ink and watercolor in 6×8″ Strathmore Drawing sketchbook (Larger)

This sketch is all about pausing in a busy day to sit and draw, taking advantage of a little sun between rainstorms, and enjoying feeling free. Until I began the sketch, I hadn’t realized how beautiful (and extraordinarily complicated) the landmark building (photo) of the North Berkeley Public Library is.

Freedom from stuff

My feeling of freedom came from filling three shopping bags with books I no longer needed and taking them to my favorite used book store, Black Oak Books. They gave me store credit for two-thirds of the books (which I promptly traded for three books I had on hold).

I could have sold the remaining bag of books on Amazon or at another used bookstore, but decided to just let them go. I dropped them off at the library as a donation and walked out empty handed, feeling quite pleased. Instead of rushing on to the next task, I plopped down on a bench and started sketching.

Now I have space on my bookshelves and room in my car (the three bags had been hogging my backseat for two weeks). And I love that wonderful spacious feeling that comes from removing clutter, whether physical or mental, from my life.

About the sketch: As you can see, my study of perspective hasn’t quite paid off yet. (The doors and windows slant the opposite direction from the roofline of the front wall). I drew with a purple Micron Pigma pen and then added watercolor at home. I tried to remember the colors of the walls but realized I didn’t pay enough attention to what was in light and in shadow. To practice using visual memory, I purposely didn’t take a photo or look at one on line.

So now I can see that my visual memory needs work, along with my perspective drawing. How great to know that there is no end to learning as an artist. I never have to worry about getting bored. Painting and learning are my two favorite things in life!

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Drawing Life in general Painting Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Ladies, Stand Up for Your Right to Pee Standing Up!

Pee Standing Up Tools

Ink & watercolor, 7×10″ (Larger)

Plein air painting means spending the day out in nature … but what to do when nature calls and there’s no restroom? The guys can just face away, pee on a tree, and preserve their modesty. But we women have to find somewhere to squat with knickers around our ankles, fannies exposed.

After my first painful experience in this situation (too much coffee, no place to hide) I wondered what more experienced plein air painting women did. My research led me to the devices pictured above that allow women to pee standing up, without having to drop their drawers. All you have to do is unbutton and unzip your jeans enough to slip one of these nifty devices into position and you’re ready to “go” with no body parts exposed.

I practiced first at home, trying out all three of items illustrated above. My favorite is the purple one, called the Whiz. It’s reusable, works perfectly and lets women wee anywhere that men can (just remember not to pee into the wind). WhizBiz’s website recommends it for active women for hiking, snow activities, climbing. It is flexible and can be squished small for carrying. WhizBiz is in Australia but ships internationally. I received my order in about a week.

I also liked the Urinelle, which I ordered from Magellan’s travel supplies. They recommend it for foreign travel when bathrooms are unavailable or too nasty to use. The Urinelle is made from stiff paper and resembles a snow cone cup. They are disposable and can only be used once, which could get expensive since they cost a little over a dollar each (sold in packs of 6). They are very easy to pack or carry since they are flat until you open them for use.

Of the three I tried, the only one I did not like was the Caring Hands TravelMate (the blue one above). It is too small and not at enough of an angle and…well, I’ll spare the details except to say I’m glad I was testing it in the shower. I wrote to the company and asked for a refund but they didn’t respond.

Peeing standing up is so much fun! I keep a Urinelle in my purse and another in my car, just in case. When I go out painting I carry the Whiz in my backpack. It’s saved my fanny several times now.

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Art theory Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Early Theory of Perspective

Illustration Friday

Early Theory of Perspective

  1. The world is flat and ends at the horizon.
  2. As you get closer to the horizon you get smaller and smaller until….
  3. You fall off the edge and disappear…
  4. And that’s why it’s called the “vanishing point.”

This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is the word “Theory.” Since I’ve been re-learning perspective and reading about the progression of artists’ attempts to create the illusion of depth and space, I thought I’d propose my own history of what the earliest thoughts about perspective might have been.

My continuing exploration of perspective has led to me making a fool of myself as I walk around, closing one eye and putting my hands up to match the angles on buildings and trees as I look for vanishing points and check how angles and lines relate to one another.

I tried to demonstrate to some co-workers as we went out foraging for lunch how the horizon is relative to the individual viewing it, not a fixed location. Nobody was going for it though, either trying to prove me wrong or having more important things to think about, like whether they were in the mood for soup or salad.

Here’s what my favorite book (so far) on perspective says about the horizon:

Eye level rises and falls with the level of your eye, wheher you are down near the floor, sitting, standing, in a tall building, or in an airplane. The eye-level plane extends an infinite distance in all directions and at a remote distance coincides with the horizon, which the eye level is often called.

I can’t really explain why this concept so intrigues me, but I just can’t get over it. I loved the way Brittney Gilbert, writer of CBS5.com’s blog “Eye on Blogs,” titled her link to my recent post: “The Horizon is You-Dependent.”

It just makes me wonder what other facts of life that I’ve taken for granted are only perceptual, not actual. Is reality completely subjective?

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Drawing Dreams Life in general Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Dreams: Definitely not on the best dressed list

20080208-Macys

Ink and watercolor in 5.5″ square sketchbook (larger)

Last night I dreamt first that I was shopping in Macy’s and a snooty salesman looked me up and down and made fun of what I was wearing. He offered to help me dress better and recommended $100 flip-flops with made of thin green nylon (like they make sleeping bags from) with criss-crossed shoelaces that held the flimsy things on your feet.

“The latest thing,” he told me. I wasn’t going for it.

Carrying on the poorly-dressed theme, the next dream was that I was wandering around Los Angeles, looking for a bus to Santa Monica (a suburb of LA where my mother lives) wearing only a large (but not large enough) shirt.

20080208-shirt-only

(larger)

I wasn’t terribly embarrassed by this partial nudity, having gotten used to it from all the time I’ve spent in previous dreams completely naked in public.

In real life, I don’t go out naked, though I did spend a summer nude in the early ’70s when I was 22, camping with 6 friends at a beautiful spot in the Siskiyou National Forest, 10 miles down a dirt road from the town of Happy Camp. The temperature in the afternoons reached 117 so nudity seemed pretty reasonable.

Running by our campsite was the perfectly named Clear Creek which fed into a wonderful swimming hole surrounded by huge boulders, perfect for lying on and diving off of.

We were the only ones there during the weekdays but on the weekends the occasional truckload of Native Americans from the nearby reservation would come out to swim or a family might camp for the weekend. The guys in our group would put on bathing suits when we had visitors but us hippie girls stayed au naturel for the duration and nobody seemed to mind.

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Cartoon art Colored pencil art Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Hamster Brain, Part Two

Silence of the Hamsters

Ink, colored pencil & watercolor in 9×12 sketchbook (Larger)

In yesterday’s post I wrote about what I call “Hamster Brain” (when my mind gets stuck spinning in a hamster wheel of “shoulds” and I can’t figure out what to do next and so do nothing). I was going through an old sketchbook and found this illustration I did in 1999 on a similar day of “my brain on hamsters.”

When I read the journal entry it was interesting to see that I’d figured out back then what was really going: a fear of not having enough: not enough time, and maybe not enough talent or skill either as I faced the artist’s version of writer’s block…that icky fear that seems to come around when I finish one project and am faced with the blank canvas/sheet of paper. I’ve learned to encourage myself and turn off those critical voices but every once in awhile they sneak up and get me when I’m not looking.

Today was so much more enjoyable,  even though it was pouring down rain. I did my errands, went to the gym, and painted. Sometimes it takes a hamster-brained day like yesterday to make me really appreciate an ordinary day that is joyous just by the absence of negativity and blocks.

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Life in general Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Stanley 93E Box Cutter & Polish

Stanley 93E & Polish

Watercolor on hot press paper, 5 x 7″ (Larger)

Yesterday at work someone had left a strange little still-life set up on a table in the ladies restroom: a little cosmetic bag and a a heavy metal box cutter (well, to me it looked like a still life, probably nobody else would have thought so). I recreated it on my drawing table tonight, adding a bottle of nail polish that I keep in a similar cosmetic bag.

I like the way the box cutter came out looking like a fish with a little rooster comb on top (the brass thingee you push to move the blade in and out). It felt so good to do this painting after a frustrating day in which I never made it out of my pajamas.

Hamster Brain Part One

Fridays I work half a day from home, but today the half day stretched out into the late afternoon, due to problems needing my attention and because I got a late start due to spending a frustrating hour trying to reassemble my wonderful Capresso coffee grinder after finally receiving the missing part in the mail (it had fallen on the floor when I cleaned the grinder, and was promptly stolen and hidden by my plastic-gizmo loving calico cat Fiona). It turns out I’d put the burr grinder piece in wrong and it was jammed and I could not remove it and so the bean hopper wouldn’t screw back in on top. Now the whole thing needs to go back to Capresso for repair. Makes me think it’s time to give up coffee (again!).

It was the first sunny day in a long time and I wanted to get outdoors and paint…and I needed to get some exercise…and I had some errands and phone calls to make. Plus I had a bunch of studio art projects I wanted to do — some dream paintings, color exercises, and this one.

I got into one of those stuck places, going around in circles…I’ll go to the gym first, no to the store first, no outside to paint first, but really I should vacuum…I’ll just check my email….and around and around. I call it Hamster Brain, since it feels like running in one of those hamster wheels.

Finally, at 8:00 P.M. I pulled myself out of it, did about half an hour of Pilates (while simultaneously putting in my weekly call to my mother) and having accomplished both those things, got to my drawing table and made this picture. Now it’s 11:00 p.m. and I’m free! My weekend has begun and it will joyfully include exercise, painting, and as little erranding and hamstering as possible!

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Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Karma & How to Remove Oil Paint from Cat Paws

Ink & watercolor in handmade sketchbook

This evening Busby, my tabby cat, walked across four freshly oil-paint primed panels on my work table, each footstep lifting the paint right off the panel. There were painted footprints across the table, on a chair and along the floor leading to his usual hiding spot in the corner of my closet. He was curled up for a nap, his paws covered in paint.

Since cats lick their paws so you can’t use anything toxic (and fortunately the paint he stepped in wasn’t toxic–Titanium white). I found a solution that worked. (Disclaimer: I haven’t checked this with a veterinarian):

  1. Use canola, olive or other vegetable oil on the paws like a soap to moisten and loosen the paint.
  2. Rub paws and fur around them with paper towels to remove the paint.
  3. Put dish soap on a cloth and get it wet and sudsy and then rub paws with that to remove the oil and any remaining paint.
  4. Rinse paws under the faucet (or with a soap free wet cloth).
  5. Dry them with a towel and/or a hair dryer (optional).

This was just the last in a series of things that have gone wrong since Friday night when I did something I wasn’t proud of (minor but still….) and immediately thought of karma and wondered how it would affect me. Here’s what’s happened since then:

  1. I bought Microsoft Outlook to use with my new, fabulous iPhone so that I could upload to it my address book and calendar on my computer (currently in Palm software). I installed it on my computer which now crashes on startup and won’t allow me to login as me.
  2. My clock radio decided to die last night, repeatedly waking me with annoying buzzing sounds. The first time I jiggled it and it stopped (midnight). The second time I pulled out the battery and it stopped (1:00 AM). The third time I unplugged it and threw it in the trash. I set the alarm on my iPhone to wake me at 7:00 so I could make it my painting class in Petaluma.
  3. I woke up dazed and exhausted, and decided not to go to class. I went in the kitchen to make coffee. My coffee grinder was making a funny noise so I decided to clean it out, thinking there was finely ground coffee clogging it up. I took off the hopper and tilted the grinder and a little silicon sleeve fell out. I thought I put it aside to finish cleaning the grinder itself.When I was ready to clean the little silicon thingee it was gone. I spent an hour, seriously undercaffeinated and underslept, trying unsuccessfully to find it. I pulled out the trash can, thinking it might have fallen in there. As I sorted through the fish bones, old coffee grinds, and vegetable slime I came across my old friend the clock radio and thought of karma yet again.

    I never did find the silicon gizmo (my Calico cat Fiona loves playing with and hiding anything plastic that falls on the floor so maybe she stole it) but fortunately found the phone number of the manufacturer who agreed to mail me a new gizmo one within a week.

  4. I dug out my old little coffee grinder, which of course wouldn’t work. After I messed with it for half an hour, I finally got the little blades to spin. At last I had my coffee but by now it was nearly 11.
  5. Instead of having the day to do the creative art projects I’d planned, I was too sleep-deprived to do anything but mindless tasks like priming canvases.

I’ll spare you the details of the rest of the day. I think tomorrow I’ll see if I can’t undo my (minor) foul deed to halt this march of karma. Do you believe in karma?