Category: Still Life

Kelp Pickles & Creative Blogger Award

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date September 10, 2007
10 Comments on Kelp Pickles & Creative Blogger Award

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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Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Summer Corn

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper in 6×8″ sketchbook
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Yay! It’s the weekend at last. Today was about making a lengthy To-Do list and then checking things off, one at a time. I got halfway through the list but all the important stuff got done and I rewarded myself with a latte from Peets. By the time I finished cleaning up and organizing the studio I was too tired to work on an oil painting (which I do standing at an easel…with all those brushes to clean at the end). But sitting at my drawing table painting with watercolor and listening to a good book was just perfect.

First I drew with pencil, including every kernel, which was fun (thanks to the strong Peet’s coffee?). After I put a tiny dab of masking fluid on the kernels I painted every other kernel with a touch of the brush so that each kernel would dry separately rather than all blending together. I went back and added a darker golden color color to shadow each kernel and added some cobalt violet in the shadowy spaces between the kernels.

Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life Studio

Tomato Under Glass

Oil on gessoed Museum Board, 7.5″ x 9.25″
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I did this oil sketch from life in the studio yesterday evening. One of the “rules” of oil painting is to keep your darks thin, with no texture and you can see why on the background here. Those brushstrokes catch the light and draw attention to it. Here’s the preliminary sketch with the darks blocked in first:

Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Salad rubbish

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper (in sketchbook)
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After I chopped vegetables for a salad today I looked down at the little triangular rubbish container/drainer in the sink. It was full of cucumber peels, red bell pepper core, radish ends, and mushroom trimmings. I thought it was pretty enough to paint. So I did. Happy Labor Day to everyone who has the day off today. Now back to my fun struggles with oil painting…

Every Day Matters Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Studio Watercolor

Peach: EDM 133 & A peachy new homemade sketchbook

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date August 20, 2007
31 Comments on Peach: EDM 133 & A peachy new homemade sketchbook

Watercolor on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico hot press paper
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This week’s Everyday Matters’ challenge is Draw a Peach. I’ve been eating at least one juicy sweet peach a day all summer. I start the day with a peach cut up in a bowl of cereal for breakfast and have one cut up in plain yogurt for an afternoon snack. This variety is so huge that breakfast looks more like a bowl of peach than a bowl of cereal.

New sketchbook

I made myself a new sketchbook and this painting is the first page. Here’s a photo of the sketchbook:

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I didn’t have the inclination or patience to learn actual bookbinding for sketchbooks like Martha and Kate nor the budget to have them beautifully custom made for me like Laura’s. So I came up with a quick, inexpensive way to do it (mostly) myself. I tore two sheets of watercolor paper–one hot press and one cold press–in half and then in half, etc. until each piece was about 7 3/4″ by 5 3/4″. Then I sorted so that every other page is hot press/cold press, and brought the stack to Kinkos (a U.S. photocopy shop). I had them punch and bind it with a spiral wire thingee and a frosted cover and black back for which they charged about $6.00. The paper is way better than the Moleskines and Aquabees I’ve been using, the dimensions are more to my liking, it’s bound on the short side so can be used more easily in landscape format and the spiral binding lets me fold pages under (which means not easily drawing across two pages, but I rarely do that anyway).

The day after I made it I read about the way Miguel makes his own sketchbooks, using a Filofax (day planner) cover and punching three holes in the paper with a special Filofax punch. I’ll try that next, since I have a similar kind of day planner with a nice leather cover that I’m not using and could convert to a sketchbook. The only problem with that method is that when you finish the pages you remove them and box them and refill with new paper. The finished pages don’t remain an intact sketchbook.

Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Onion in watercolor

Watercolor in large watercolor Moleskine notebook
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I worked on an oil painting portrait all afternoon and evening with frustrating results. So I decided to do a quick watercolor sketch to comfort myself. I actually ended up doing this onion twice. The first version was yucky and overworked so I gave myself a few minutes more for one more try. Now I’m off for some bedtime reading about portraiture in oils and some sleep.

Life in general Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Remains of the Day

Watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook (Larger)

I picked up this feather and some sort of dingleberry/pod that fell from a tree on a walk by Lake Merritt (which has a bird sanctuary). I actually collected several feathers of different sizes, textures and colors that I wanted to draw. But trying to keep the cats away from the feathers got to be too much trouble so I put the others away. After repeatedly removing the cats from the drawing table I gave up and put this one away too, switching to drawing this little pod thingee.

Tonight my painting group got together at my studio after several weeks of not meeting and it was so nice to see everyone again and catch up on each other’s art, work, life, and families while we all painted. We’ve been together for at least 10 years (nobody can remember when we actually started), and though we’re all very different we’ve become a wonderfully close, supportive, loving little family. Together we’ve survived divorces, deaths of loved ones, romances (failed and successful), surgeries, cancer, teenagers, empty nesting (and kids who won’t leave home) and more. And all the while we’ve kept painting, learning, and growing as artists and friends. I’m so lucky to have their support and friendship.

Glass Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Clover Honey Bubblebath and Bath Brush

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 28, 2007
11 Comments on Clover Honey Bubblebath and Bath Brush

Watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook
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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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Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Quick Cantaloupe

Ink & watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
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When I was traveling across country many years ago, taking an old highway instead of a huge interstate, I stopped for breakfast in an old-fashioned roadside diner with wood panelled walls and big, dark padded booths. I was handed a typed menu covered in a thick plastic sleeve with red leatherette edging. There was a typo on the menu that said, “Fresh cantalpupe.” I’ve never been able to look at cantaloupe since then without remembering that wonderfully odd typo and saying silently to myself, “cantalpupe.” Try it…it’s so fun to say…but then so is cantaloupe with it’s extra, silent “u”. Shouldn’t it be pronounced cantaloope with that u in there?

And it tastes good too. Now I’m going to go eat my still life and go to bed!

Life in general Oil Painting Still Life

Rainier Cherries (Oil painting)

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date July 8, 2007
15 Comments on Rainier Cherries (Oil painting)

Oil painting on RayMar panel, 8×6″
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I’ve been dieting the past couple weeks, trying to take off the 10 pounds I put on over the past year and a half of blogging instead of jogging. It’s been made considerably easier by the wonderful fresh summer fruit I’ve been eating. I think the cherry season might be waning now, which makes me sad since these Rainier Cherries are more delicious than any of the junk food they replaced. I’ve lost the first five pounds and hope to be done with the diet before the succulent peaches, plums and nectarines are gone.

Oil painting is so much fun. I’m really enjoying working alla prima (with fresh paint, finishing a painting while all the paint is still wet, rather than letting it dry and painting in layers). I’m practicing this technique so that I can eventually try painting plein air with oils (but it will be a while before I’m ready for that.

Here are the steps in making this painting (if you want to see them bigger you can click on the images and and then click All Sizes:

The sketch with vine charcoal:

Blocking in the shapes and colors:

Almost done…should I have stopped here?

I had a hard time with the background, which is a white plate. It had some reflection from the cherries, highlights from the lamp pointing at it and a bit of shadow around the rim. I’m not sure if I should have stopped sooner or worked on this painting longer but since it’s about learning and practicing and moving on to try something else, I think I’m done. Any suggestions or advice very much welcomed!