Categories
Art theory Painting Still Life

Acrylic glazing practice: Pear

Acrylic Glazing exercise

Acrylic on gessoed mat board, 8″ x 10″
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

Today I practiced acrylic painting techniques in my new book, “Acrylic Revolution.” This exercise started with a painting done in black, white and grey (known as a grisaille) to establish the form and shadows. I meant to photograph that stage but got too involved and forgot. When it dried I painted over it with transparent layers of paint thinned with glazing liquid). I had to do a bunch of layers to compensate for having made the initial grisaille too dark. Unlike watercolor which dries lighter, acrylic dries darker than it looks when you mix colors. This is because acrylic medium is white when wet and clear when dry. I haven’t gotten used to accomodating that change yet.

I also experimented with using acrylic like watercolor, trying various types of washes which all worked perfectly. I was less successful with oil-style blending techniques and will work on those some more tomorrow.

Categories
Acrylic Painting Painting Plants

Devil’s Tongue (aka Snake Palm) again

Devils Tongue Again

Acrylic on mat board, 27 x 13″
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I hadn’t posted anything for a couple of days because I’ve been working on this painting instead of daily sketches. I was determined to finish and post it today, and did, even though the photo isn’t great. I worked from a watercolor I did on site, and a bunch of photos I took of this odd stinky plant on a walk a few weeks ago. I did some sketches for composition, trying to make sense out of all the crazy foliage happening in the photo and to decide what to emphasize, eliminate or move. I did a couple of small value studies too. Then I just had at it, working very loosely in acrylics. To check values, I set my camera to black and white and took a picture. I could immediately see I need more light areas and where. I painted in layers, using thickened and thinned paint in many layers and glazes.

My main goal with this painting was to experiment with trying to make acrylics work like oils (except without the toxic solvents, lengthy clean-up and slow drying time). There was a ton of learning that went on as I worked on it.

I’ve done a lot of reading on acrylics, much of it contradictory or out-of-date information but finally found an excellent new book called “Acrylic Revolution” by a Golden Acrylics (the brand I’m using) working artist named Nancy Reyner. It’s the book on acrylics I’d been hoping for. Detailed up to date information about how to properly work with the various mediums and paints to do whatever you could dream of doing and more. It’s a great book and tomorrow I’m going to experiment with some of the techniques in it to try to better understand how to do some of the blending techniques and ways to get soft edges, to be able to work more like oils.

Update: This is a Dragon Arum plant (Dracunculus vulgaris), not as named in the title of the post.

Categories
Flower Art Painting Watercolor

Iris wet-in-wet

Iris wet in wet

Watercolor on arches paper 10×10 inches
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I drew this in pencil from an iris I cut from my garden tonight. I painted each petal or group of petals with water and then dropped in paint, working one section at a time. As each section got less wet I added a little more paint for detail, still trying to keep the overall effect loose and free. If it wasn’t so late I would have added another layer of water and darker paint here and there, but I have a great new book on acrylics I want to go read so I’ll keep my notes here short, AND avoid overworking the painting,  just for something different.

Categories
Drawing Faces People Portrait Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Drawing Faces

Faces-2-JMc

Graphite and watercolor in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook
To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes

Faces3-JMcG

These are two more faces from my project of drawing faces from a book of character actors acting that I  explained in a previous post here. This actor was supposed to be a soccer dad whose daughter just scored a winning goal in the first picture and a Hells Angel preparing for a confrontation in the bottom picture. Drawing the top picture I could really see what all the muscles in face were doing to pull his skin here and there.

I had to draw the first one twice–the first time I didn’t get things lined up at all. I seem to always want to make faces and their features symmetrical whether they are or not. I try to straighten tilted heads, make mouths the same size on both sides of the face even when the head is turned so that it’s shorter on one side. The second time I looked more carefully at angles and where features lined up with each other and their sizes in relation to each other and I got closer to reality.

Categories
Cartoon art Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Polar (Bipolar)

Polar (Bipolar)

Digital illustration in Corel Painter started from scanned sketchy ideas drawn on the back of a receipt sitting on the kitchen table.

This week’s Illustration Friday challenge is “Polar.” I first thought of polar bears of course, but I did a polar bear illustration before for Illo Friday when the word was DANCE. Next stop on the train of though was “bipolar.” I hope that this image won’t be considered insensitive. I’ve done some reading about bipolar disorder in relation to artists, since many famous artists and writers have had this disorder. Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry who is also bipolar wrote Touched By Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament and An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (bipolar disorder used to be known as manic depressive illness).

I was inspired to do Illustration Friday today because I received an email this morning from the editor of an-inflight magazine for a middle-eastern airline asking for permission to use my previous illustration for phobia in an article they’re publishing on phobias. The internet is sure amazing the way it connects people all over the world!

Categories
Colored pencil art Drawing Dreams Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Dream drawings

Dreams6

4/14/07 In bed in a hotel where the roof was leaking through the chandelier and in the closet so the hotel staff came in and hung a blue tarp over the chandelier.
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Today’s post are the little drawings I do each morning upon awakening of my dreams the night before. These are all from the past week. I draw them in what I call my AM/PM notebook (a square Handbook Journal Co. notebook that I write/draw in each AM & PM) using a Liquid Expresso pen. I bought three of these notebooks and a bunch of these pens and don’t much like them but for morning scribbling they’re fine. The ink dissolves if it gets wet which I forgot when I colored these tonight with water-soluable colored pencil and then couldn’t wet them without the ink running.

Dreams5

4/15/07 Marcy and I were in Santa Cruz jogging along a path by the beach. She got ahead of me and I kept calling, “Wait up!” but she got ahead of me and disappeared and I was all alone.

Dreams4

4/16/07 (The night before the Virginia Tech shootings) Dreamt a gunman came into my office and at gunpoint demanded I type some names into the database. People kept coming into my office and I mouthed “Call 911” so they did but the police were idiots and the gunman got away.

Dreams3

4/18/07 I thought a bad guy had broken into the house but it turned out to be the boyfriend of a Swedish roommate (don’t have one) and the jingling noise I heard was his ID tags on a chain around his neck. When I went in the bathroom the sink was full of little cubes of his shaving cream which I threw in the trash and then discovered it wasn’t the trash but was my roommates clean laundry which I’d now messed up.

Dreams1

4/19/07 (a super busy dreaming night!)

1. At a Japanese restaurant with a pool running through it that the waitresses walked back and forth in to serve food with their skirts pinned up in their waistbands.

2. Giving a talk in a high school class about why students shouldn’t smoke marijuana before school.

3. Riding my bike side-saddle carrying a boy from the class who was a friend of my son.

4. A bunch of Brian’s friends in an old car pull up in my driveway to spend the day hanging out in their car while I’m cleaning house.

5 . (below) I’m trying to get home and wander into a Siddha Yoga retreat center where they’ve just locked all the doors and they won’t let me leave while they’re doing their chanting.

6. (below) I’m still trying to get home and walk through a little boutique but the only way out is to climb up a shelf and go through an opening in it but my feet are too big to fit on the shelf/steps.

7. (below) Still trying to get home…there’s two high chain-link fences I have to get over. I literally fly over the first one and lose momentum and have to climb over the second one.

Dreams2

4/20/07
1. I meet a cute guy at a Catholic church where I’m sketching in a back pew.

1B (above #2) I invite the guy home for dinner but then he turns up his nose at my spaghetti made from a jar and complains about the cat hair on my table cloth.

2. Cody has a funny robot thingee that makes me laugh hysterically. Then he’s selling my supplies of toilet paper and other stuff from Costco that I keep on a shelf in the garage to a friend of his. I spent a lot of time laughing in my sleep last night.

If you’re still here reading this (amazing enough in itself!) I’d love to know:
(1) whether you find the dream explanations of interest or if I should just post the drawings (or neither); and
(2) whether my dream explanations feel like “TMI” … too much information…too revealing or personal, even though I leave out WAY more than I share here.

Categories
Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Shopping Cart (EDM 115) for Plein Air Art Supplies

Shopping Cart (for Art Supplies) EDM 115

Ink and watercolor in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook
To enlarge or see annotated details, click image and select All Sizes

This week’s Everyday Matters drawing challenge is to draw a shopping cart. I spent about an hour drawing my funny grandma shopping cart that I use to haul my plein air supplies around and then added a bit of watercolor. Before I got my new easel that has a shelf attachment, I needed something to use as a table when painting outdoors so the clip towards the top of the supplies in the cart is attached to a piece of foam core board. Once I’ve got my junk out of the cart I clip the foamcore board to the top of the cart and it makes a nice little table. Other items include a folding stool in a bag, my palette, brushes in a brush holder, a floppy hat, block of watercolor paper, a pad for sitting on the ground. I also usually throw in my small painting/drawing bag that has pens, erasers, teeny squirt bottle, kleenex, view finder, and other miscellaney. I either go out sketching with only what fits in a 6 x8″ bag or with my cart and everything but the kitchen sink. I like my comforts.

I experimented with Flickr’s annotating capabilities by noting all the items in the cart so if you’re interested you can click the image to hop over to Flickr and as you move the mouse over the little squares they will tell you what each item is. (Not that it’s so interesting, but I had fun playing with the technology). You can also see it bigger there.

Categories
Flower Art Plein Air Watercolor

Irises Plein Air

Irises

Watercolor on Arches paper 12 x 9″ (scanner cut off inch on bottom)
To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”

I work from home Monday mornings and when we finished a conference call at 12:30 my boss said, “Bye Jana, now go have a nice afternoon painting.” So I did! But first I had lunch in my sunny backyard on the chaise lounge, eating a salad and reading a book on painting. Then I dozed off and had a lovely outdoor nap (I’m so much happier since I gave up being a workaholic!). When I woke up, I made a cup of coffee and got out my wonderful Valpod watercolor easel which I set up on the sidewalk in front of this bunch of irises in full bloom in my front yard.

irises in progress

Stopping point before moving indoors

I drew the irises in pencil and then quickly started painting since the sun had moved and the shade was quickly moving over the flowers. The roses behind them were already dark in shade. I got as far as the picture above before moving indoors for dinner. After dinner I worked a little more on darkening the background and negative painting around the stems and leaves, trying to suggest lots of foliage without drawing it all.

Categories
Acrylic Painting Flower Art Painting Plants

Cactus Flower Again

Cactus Flower Again

Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 16″
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

I started this painting a couple weeks ago and posted it in progress here and also did a watercolor from the photo here. Originally I was going to block in the shapes and colors in acrylic and then paint the final layer in oils but enjoyed working with the acrylics and stuck with them. I think it’s finished, though it might benefit from some cleaning up and touching up here and there.

I was listening to a digital book from Audible.com called “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert while I painted. It’s a sort of spiritual travelogue of her journeys to Italy, India and Bali. I actually preferred a book I listened to previously on a similar theme: “Holy Cow” by Australian, Sarah Macdonald. Both women are journalists who find themselves in India because of relationships. Gilbert is running away from a bad breakup and Macdonald is following her journalist lover to India where he is a stationed as a reporter. Both managed to get book deals to write about their travels and their spiritual seeking. Holy Cow is funny, interesting and irreverant while Eat, Pray, Love takes itself and it’s spiritual quest much more seriously.

My favorite book I’ve listened to lately was “Water for Elephants” by Sarah Gruen. More about that another time…

Categories
Flower Art Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Jana’s Emergency Clinic and Hotline

Purple-vine purple-vine-sketch

Ink and watercolor in 6×9 Aquabee sketchbook and ink in my AM/PM journal
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

Since my studio time got thwarted by emergencies this afternoon (read about it below), I just took a few minutes to do this watercolor using the little sketch on the right as a reference (a branch of the tree outside my bedroom window that I did this morning in my AM/PM journal). I was really surprised as I drew the flowers how many different shapes there were since at first glance all I saw was a bunch of little round flowers.

I’d planned to have the whole afternoon and evening in the studio but right after lunch, Brian, the young man who lives across the street, came over and asked me to call an ambulance for him, that he was having trouble breathing, felt dizzy and faint, had a headache, and that something was wrong with his vision. At the same time, I got a call from work with technical problems that urgently needed my help.

The good news is that I went through this a week ago with Brian. I had called 911 for him, knowing that strong young men don’t knock on the doors of total strangers asking for that kind of help unless they really need it. My living room was soon filled with half a dozen incredibly handsome and hunky firemen and emergency medical techs while their fire engine and ambulance waited outside. They checked him out and took him to the hospital where he was told he was having an anxiety/panic attack, they gave him a pill that put him to sleep. When he woke up he was OK and was sent home.

I know people who have panic attacks and I get stress-related migraines and I was sure that’s what was happening with him, so I knew what to do. Instead of calling an ambulance I sat him down, gave him a brown paper bag to breathe into (to reverse the effects of hyperventilating–dizziness, faintness and the sensation of not being able to breathe). While he sat on my couch doing that I sorted out the problems at my office by conference call.

Then I asked Brian (who I’d only met last week) what had been going on in his life (other than being a job-hunting African-American male in the U.S. which is stressful enough). He said that a year ago he’d had a good job, was writing and performing music with his girlfriend and was happy. Then they were in a horrible car accident in which he’d had a head injury, fractured a vertebrae, had a collapsed lung and had been in a body cast for 3 months. Right after he got out of the hospital his best friend was shot 17 times and killed. He and his girlfriend drifted apart and he misses her.

At this point work called me again and so did his mother. Switching back and forth on the two lines, I solved the work computer problem and explained to his mom what was going on. She said she didn’t know why he was stressing right now, since everything seemed fine. I told her how he’d never dealt with all the trauma he’d experienced and listed the traumas. She said, “That’s true…AND we had a house fire and lost everything–that’s why we moved to this house in September.” While we were sitting there a bill collector called him on his phone, and I’m sure that’s getting to him too.

I explained to him what I know about depression, anxiety, stress, migraines, medication, grieving, the importance of counseling, etc. and then I gave him the phone numbers for the local free clinic with volunteer doctors and peer counselors and also the number of the Suicide Prevention Hotline where he can call anytime to talk to someone when he’s in that panic attack condition. I hope he will use those numbers. I’m glad to have been able to help him but I can’t be doing this regularly!

He’s such a bright and sweet young man who’s been through so much! I know if he just had help working through everything he’s gone through and a chance to cry and grieve his losses he’d be able to get on with his life. It’s such a crime that there’s no public healthcare in the U.S. If you know of any good (free) counselors who would be interested in helping him in the East Bay area, please let me know.