Category: Glass

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Art theory Flower Art Glass Oil Painting Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Wax On, Wax Off (Breathe In, Breathe Out)

Rose in a Jar

Oil on panel, 12×9″
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The title of this post refers to words from the 1984 movie Karate Kid and also my process in this painting except for the painting it would be more like “Paint On, Wipe Off (Breathe!) Paint On, Wipe Off… ” (click on “Keep Reading” below to see photos of the steps). I’m not happy with the front flower but I’m ready to move on to the next painting. With each one I learn so much more, including how much more there is to learn!!!!

I had two main goals for this painting/learning experience:

  • Think in terms of “Whole Canvas”
  • Keep trying to understand how to work with oil paint so that I’m taking advantage of its wonderful qualities rather than fighting them. (I’ll keep trying!)

In my many years of watercolor painting, I worked hard to capture what excited me about my subject. I often worked close focus without much background, or just using the lovely white of the paper as my background to set off the glittering glass or glowing flowers I was painting. If the composition didn’t quite work out–no problem, just crop as needed with a mat and frame.

In oil painting the background has to be an integral part of the painting–you can’t just leave the glaring white of the gessoed canvas as your background. And you can’t crop a stretched canvas or panel like you can paper. I was struggling with this concept and finally it clicked. It’s just another way of seeing and, like peeling layers of the onion, the haze peeled from eyes and I could see that a painting is not subject & background — they fit together to complete the picture, just as night completes day. While an object that interests me enough to paint it is the focal point, I need (for now) to think of the PAINTING as the subject.

Continue reading “Wax On, Wax Off (Breathe In, Breathe Out)”
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Art theory Glass Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Kelp Pickles & Creative Blogger Award

Kelp Pickles from Sitka Alaska

Watercolor & ink (black & white in label) on Arches hot press in 6 x 8″ sketchbook
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The Pickles
A co-worker who lives in Alaska part of the year brought back delicious treats, all made from seaweed. These crunchy pickles taste like sweet pickles except better–with a touch of the sea in them. I love anything tasting of the sea, including raw oysters. Eating raw oysters is like eating peaches: the texture is the same, the soft bite through, and then the sudden juiciness. They always remind me of my childhood in Southern California where I practically lived in the ocean, tasting that fresh salty flavor every time I dove or got knocked under a big wave.

The Painting
I painted this from life (well, from jar) with a light shining on it. I added a few highlights with Golden Absorbent Ground, a product that also allows you to cover and repaint problem areas in watercolor paintings. It creates an absorbent texture that doesn’t bleed or dissolve and is similar to the original texture of watercolor paper. It’s best to apply in thin layers if you’re using it to cover an area to repaint it so that it dries smooth.

The Creative Blogger Award
Two art bloggers and wonderful artists, Nel Jansen and Bonny Racca, both honored me by nominating me for this award. I wanted to acknowledge their kindness and admit that I’m a naughty Creative Blogger. When one receives the award one is supposed to pass it forward, nominating 5 others, who nominate 5 others, etc. For a number of reasons I’ve chosen to opt out of that part of the process, but do appreciate the nomination very much! I’ve also learned these kinds of “pass it on” awards and questionnaires are called memes and their definition on Wikipedia is quite interesting.

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Glass Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Clover Honey Bubblebath and Bath Brush

Clover Honey Bubble Bath

Watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook
Click here to see larger

These lovely items were my birthday gift from my office and I’ve been dying to paint them. I’m probably going to do it again as a “real” watercolor too, not just a sketch like this one. I might give it a shot in oil too.

The bubble bath in the bottle is thick as honey and looks and smells like it too. It’s full of other wonderful things from the garden: lettuce, celery, sage, clover, bilberry, cucumber, rosemary and avocado oil. It’s called Gardener’s Greenhouse Bubbling Bath Clover Honey. It’s the nicest bubble bath I’ve ever had and the bath brush is lovely and soft. I used them last night for the first time and it was heavenly.

My cats had never seen bubble bath before, and being fascinated with anything watery, were transfixed. While I lay in the tub and read, they fished for pawfuls of bubbles, tried to eat them, which I discouraged (I tasted it to see if it really tasted like honey and sadly it didn’t–soap!) and chased them around when I fluffed some onto the floor for them.

I woke up at 4:00 a.m. with a headache today and had a really busy day, including practicing setting up for plein air oil painting by assembling everything and then painting in my own garden. I picked a perfect spot — my Japanese Maple glowing in the light–but by the time I had everything together, it was in the shade. I painted anyway, and the painting turned out fairly icky. But it was all about rehearsing and hopefully I found all of the problems and things I still need to make this set up work. More about that later…for now it’s time to catch up on the sleep I missed last night.

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Every Day Matters Glass Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

EDM 117 – Draw Something Round (Marbles)

EDM-Something Round

Watercolor in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

All day at work (which has been insanely busy lately) I was thinking about coming home and painting some marbles for this week’s Everyday Matters challenge – Draw Something Round. But I worked until 7:30 pm and then by the time I’d cooked dinner and eaten it was 9:00 p.m. I decided to give it a go anyway. The best thing that came out of it was the fun my cats had chasing marbles around the studio. I should have drawn that!

My intention was to be loose and fresh but I guess I was just too tired. Also, I decided a month or so ago that any watercolor painting I do at home would be on watercolor paper instead of  sketchbook paper since it’s so much better and more pleasurable to paint on which I regretably ignored. But at least I got a drawing/painting done today, even if it’s not great. And tomorrow is another day to try again.

Categories
Flower Art Glass Still Life Watercolor

Quick Camelia

Camelia

Watercolor on Arches paper, 7.5″ x 10″
To enlarge click image, select All Sizes

Tonight was painting group and it was late by the time we got around to painting (after looking at each other’s paintings from the past week and random chatting). I snipped a camelia off my bush and had an idea of a loose flower with ink over it using some new colors I got from Daniel Smith. Except the colors were recommended at the workshop I attended in February for creating textured backgrounds, not for delicate flowers (oops…Strike One).

While I was painting I got really interested in the glass bowl and completely overworked the flower (StrikeTwo). The colors were muddy (they would have been fine for an old textured wall though) so I started adding white goauche mixed with pink to get back the lights and made a mess (Strike Three, you’re out!) (Please pardon the baseball metaphor.)

I decided to wash off the flower and try again. With a small sponge and clean water I wiped off all the pigment that would come off, used my hair dryer to dry it and quickly and more loosely repainted. It’s cheerier now. Since I scanned the sketch before I painted, I can easily print out the sketch on another piece of watercolor paper and paint it again even brighter without having to redraw it (although the drawing was actually a lot of fun) except for straightening out the bowl a bit since I was working fast and didn’t notice it was a little off.

Here’s the original before the flower got washed off:

Camelia

(Ick)