Categories
Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Outdoors/Landscape Painting People Photos Sketchbook Pages

Can’t Stop the Seasons: Magnolias in Bloom

Magnolia Bloom, ink & watercolor wash
Magnolia Bloom, ink & watercolor wash

A new storm is on its way in but this morning was sunny so I took a walk in the neighborhood and discovered Spring had arrived overnight. The magnolias were blooming along with some other flowering trees.

Spring Trees, ink & watercolor wash
Spring Trees, ink & watercolor wash

The Jehovah’s Witnesses were also out in full bloom, a whole parade of them canvassing the neighborhood. These folks were waiting while their colleagues knocked on the door of a house on the top of the hill.

Witnesses on the Hill, Ink & watercolor wash
Witnesses on the Hill, Ink & watercolor wash

One of their team told me she liked to paint too, and then offered me some reading materials. “No thanks,” I said. “But it’s really, really small,” she said. It was a small pamphlet, but why would she think that would change my mind,  I wonder.

Can't Stop the Seasons
Can't Stop the Seasons, Photo

I thought about drawing this but decided a photo was good enough. Seeing the new season bursting forth in front of a sign saying “STOP” made me think about the ways we try to control things by making laws and rules and posting signs, and yet Mother Nature rolls along, no matter what we puny humans have to say about it.

I’m trying to use one sketchbook at a time and so, despite being tempted to switch to a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, I continued on in my Strathmore Drawing sketchbook. It’s not watercolor paper but is great for ink, is my favorite size (6×8″) and is light for carrying because it only has 24 sheets. It does wrinkle a bit from the watercolor, and it’s not good for lifting out color or heavy application, but it’s a good compromise between quality of paper and size and weight.

Categories
Drawing Gouache Painting People Sketchbook Pages

“Freddy and Frederica,” a book review

Freddy and Fredericka, Gouache & ink, 8x6"
Freddy and Fredericka, Gouache & ink, 8x6"

I’ve been listening to a dumb book, Freddy and Fredericka, when I’m painting and I’m so glad I finally  finished it. I don’t know why I kept listening for all 26 hours. It’s a silly farce about a bumbling, imaginary Prince and Princess of Wales sent by the King and Queen to New Jersey on a quest to take back America (but really just to get the couple out of the country because they were embarassing fools).

The funniest part of the book was unintentional. It’s the way the book is read aloud. It’s narrated by a gentleman with an uppercrust English accent who  doesn’t even try to do American accents.  So all the Americans in the book, from southerners in Alabama to New Jersey motorcycle gang members speak with the same English accents as the Royals. The only laugh I got from the book was hearing the motorcycle tough guy talking with an English accent instead of with a New Joisey accent.

The book makes fun of the British monarchy as well as American politicians and culture. Maybe you have to be British to enjoy the book or maybe it’s just me.  I’ve never been a fan of farcical humor that uses silly names, misunderstandings and ridiculous plot lines to get laughs.

Categories
Oil Painting Painting Photos photoshop Still Life Studio

Artichokes in Oil (paint) & Color correcting in Photoshop

Artichokes, Oil painting on 8x8" Gessobord
Artichokes, Oil painting on 8x8" Gessobord

After deconstructing one artichoke to paint in watercolor (previous post) I decided they were too old and worn out to bother cooking them, so why not paint them instead. I’m finding how important it is to take breaks when I’m painting. Each time I took one (because someone came to the door, I had to go to sleep or have lunch) I was surprised at seeing the painting with fresh eyes. It gave me a chance to strategize, stop futzing around in one area that wasn’t working and just needed to be scraped off and started over, notice that the values needed strengthening, etc.

At a certain point I recognized that this is as good as I can do for now. I’ll learn a little more and be able to a better on the next piece. That is so much more satisfying than trying to bring the piece to the level of the bar I keep raising or trying to make it as  good as the painting of other artists’ work I admire.  As a good friend said to me yesterday, “Compare…and despair!” and he was so right. Another friend pointed me to this from Desiderata:

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Artichokes, easel & palette in the studio
Artichokes, easel & palette in the studio

The multi-colored card on my easel is a Gretagmacbeth ColorChecker that I use when I photograph art work. Sometimes I use the white square to set my cameras “white balance. I always include some or all of the card when I take the photograph so I can compare the colors on the card to the colors on my monitor to see if I’ve got it right.

With the card included in the photo, I can correct the colors in the photo using the Levels tool in Photoshop:

  1. Select the “white” eyedropper in the Levels menu and click it on the white square. This sets the white level so that white in the photo is pure white, not greyish. Sometimes this is all that’s needed.
  2. If the black square doesn’t look black enough, I do the same with the black eyedropper in the black square. Setting this range of black to white really helps, especially when there is no black or white in the painting.
  3. To remove a color cast (e.g. when the gray square looks greenish pinkish) I use the grey eyedropper on various spots on any of the gray squares until the color cast is gone and gray is gray.
Categories
Flower Art Glass Gouache Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

My Prickly (Artichoke) Heart

Artichoke Heart, Ink & watercolor on hotpress Arches paper
Artichoke Heart, Ink & watercolor on hotpress Arches paper

I think the soft, flowery heart inside a prickly artichoke perfectly illustrates my feelings about Valentines Day. I love artichokes and the heart is always the best part, but you have to work to win the right to savor it. I was surprised how soft, gentle and flexible the leaves were when I peeled them off to get to the heart, compared to how tough they are when they’ve been boiled. I’m sure there’s a good analogy there about love and tenderness, but I’ll leave that to the poets.

I first tried to do this painting using a sketchbook I hadn’t tried before: Maruman Art Spiral, that has what looks like cold press  watercolor paper in it. It started dissolving when I tried to lift paint or glaze more than one layer. Yuck. I wasn’t at all happy with the first try below and started over.

Artichoke heart on crummy paper
First attempt on crummy paper

As I wrote in my last post, the past few weeks have been rough. When I finally got in the studio today. I began by wasting an hour trying to rescue a painting of 3 artichokes I’d started last night and finally decided it was unsalvageable. I felt uninspired, clumsy and like everything I tried to do is crap.

Then my cat jumped on the drawing table to sunbathe under my lamp. I had a brush in my hand, my gouache palette open, a sketchbook I wanted to finish and a willing model. So I did quick kittie sketches with paint, trying to get back in the flow. It helped get the juices flowing again, although my inner critic was still harping at me, telling me these were crap too.

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Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but they’re bright and colorful and were fun to do, and the stupid sketchbook is filled and on the shelf.

Categories
Glass Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Adding Injury to Insult

Minneola tangelo, 6x6", oil on panel
Minneola tangelo, 6x6", oil on panel

No, the injury and insult referred to in the title of this post does not refer to this painting of a Tangelo. It explains why I haven’t posted lately.

First I had the stomach flu (or was it food poisoning from the dreaded peanut/salmonella scare?) The next week  while waiting at the doctor’s for my flu shot, I felt a little tickle in my throat and wondered if I might be getting a cold. I was. It wasn’t terrible, and went to work all week.

When the weekend arrived I expected to feel better and get to paint. But the cold (or was it the flu?) hit full force. For the next 5 days it hurt to think, let alone do anything creative. On day 10 my doctor prescribed antibiotics and I began to recover.

That Friday night after a 10-hour work day, my cat Fiona begged me to come play tag with her. She loves to run through the house chasing me, and me, her. My house is perfect for this game because it’s quite long. It was originally two flats, mirror images, that I connected with a doorway, so it’s a nice long run.

We look completely ridiculous, but it gets us both a bit of exercise. We’ve tried to teach Busby, my other cat, to play, but he doesn’t get it. He comes out of the closet that he’s been sleeping in to watch us, with a confused look on his face.

So there I was running after Fiona when I felt a “snap” in my calf and then a sharp pain that made it nearly impossible to walk, except with a sort of peg-leg gait. When I called the advice nurse he ruled out all the really bad possibilities  (broken things, torn apart things, blood clots, etc.) so apparently it’s just going to take some time to heal. It’s been four days and I’m still limping (and coughing).

Despite the limp I was determined to paint this weekend, and chose a delicious Minneola tangelo sitting on the lid of a glass refrigerator container. I liked its funny little poofy crown. I learned that Minneola is both a city in New York and a combination of a Duncan grapefruit and a Dancy tangerine.

I wish I could push rewind and go back one stage on this painting. Knowing when to stop is one of the hardest things in painting.

Categories
Art theory Landscape Oil Painting Painting People Photos Places

Hannah’s Reflection

Hannah's Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16x12
Hannah's Reflection, Oil on Gessobord, 16x12

My friend Gina emailed me a photo with a note saying, “I like the light in this photo– for some reason I always think of you when I look at it.” Although I rarely paint from photos, especially those taken by other people, I just had to paint this one. My computer monitor is set up so that I can paint directly from the image on the screen which is a lot better than working from the limited colors in a printed image.

I’m not sure if I’m done yet, but I couldn’t see what else was needed so I stopped. If you have any suggestions for improving the picture, I’d love to hear.

Below are some stages of the painting.  I used a bit of artistic license: I gave Hannah a bit of a haircut and deleted Gina’s wonderful dog Bella because:

  1. The dog was competing with Hannah as the focal point and was about the same size.
  2. I couldn’t get Bella to “read” as a dog; no matter how hard I tried to draw her correctly, she just kept turning into a jackrabbit.

Top row: 1) the finished painting; 2) my painting start; and 3) a black and white version of the start to see if my values were on track.

Middle row: 1) & 2) the next two steps in the painting. 3) a view of a “color spot” layer that I made in Photoshop. I created a new layer, and used Photoshop’s Paintbrush tool to select (Alt-click) and paint spots of those colors because it can be easier to see the colors when they’re isolated. Even more helpful than the color spots is a color-mixing tip I learned from Dianne Mize on Empty Easel: you apply the color to the edge of  a small card and compare it to the subject until you get it right.

Bottom row: three views of the original photo. 1)  “Posterized” in Photoshop down to two values; 3) posterized with three values; 3) Gina’s original photo.

P.S. This park, which Hannah affectionately calls the “swamp adventure,”  is part of the East Bay Regional Parks. It is a river front park next to McAvoy harbor in Bay Point. It’s a little delta oasis in the sprawl of East Contra Costa County.

Categories
Art theory Oil Painting Other Art Blogs I Read Painting

Still Learning to See Color: Block Study (after Hensche)

Color study painted under halogen light, 9x12 in
Color study of blocks under halogen light, 9x12 in, oil on panel
Photo of setup (I painted from for blocks, not photo)
I painted from this setup (not from this bad photo)

This study was done to practice seeing, mixing and and painting the relationships of color and light on different planes. Theoretically these colored block studies should be done outdoors with natural light, but it was a cold windy day and I wasn’t feeling well (and still don’t—first it was stomach flu and now a cold) and so worked indoors. When I compare this indoor painting to those I did outdoors and posted here, I can see why it’s better to work outdoors.

This practice is based on the work of Henry Hensche. As Professor Sammy Britt says about Hensche on the Hensche Foundation website:

“Charles Hawthorne was the first painter…to put the “Impressionist concept of seeing” into a teaching principle. Hawthorne spent the last fifteen years of his life trying to understand what Monet looked for and how he painted.

Henry Hensche, an assistant to Hawthorne, perfected the concept of seeing and teaching color after Hawthorne’s death in 1930. Mr. Hensche taught and practiced this visual language of color from that first Summer in 1930 until his death in 1992.” [emphasis added]

I’ve studied on and off the past year with Camille Przewodek, a fantastic plein air colorist and former student of Hensche and I think I’m beginning to comprehend the concepts at a basic level (although the study above is a poor representation of that). Another painter who studied with Hensche, John Ebersberger, has created a Hensche Facebook group that is open to the public, for former Hensche students and others who are interested in Hensche’s approach to seeing and painting color relationships.  There are wonderful photos posted there of Hensche paintings and paintings by the artists who have carried on his approach to color, and to my mind, have  advanced it even further. Their discussions and critiques on the groups discussion board are also quite illuminating.

Painting colored blocks under different light is one of the techniques Hensche used to teach students to see that in every plane change there is also a hue or color change (not just a tone or value change), and how these colors change according to the light key (foggy grey light, bright sunlight,  early morning light, afternoon light).

This is not an easy approach and takes years of practice and study, best done with an experienced teacher like Camille Przewodek, John Ebersberger, Carole Gray-Weihman, Dale Axelrod (great links and examples on his website), and others at Atelier aux Couleurs Art Academy who offer workshops locally and internationally. I have found one book, Painting the Impressionist Landscape, that does explains the concepts (although I don’t think that author’s paintings provide stellar examples, especially compared to those listed above).

Even if I never learn to see and paint like they do, I’m sure the concepts I am learning will enrich my painting and it has already changed the way I think about light and color and form.

Categories
Drawing Gouache Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Hog Island Oyster Shells: Using Gouache Like Watercolor

Oyster Shells painted in Gouache in large watercolor Moleskine
Oyster Shells, Ink and Gouache in large watercolor Moleskine (SOLD)

When I had lunch at Hog Island Oysters a few weeks ago, I asked for a doggy bag to take home these oyster shells so that I could sketch them. I finally did it, and enjoyed drawing all the rumples and bumps and ridges. Then I painted them with gouache and voila! another sketchbook completed.

I’m finding that using M. Graham and Schmincke gouache paints as if they were watercolors is a very pleasing way to work.  I haven’t quite gotten the hang of using them properly opaquely, but using them transparently is quite exciting as they have more pigment load than regular watercolor.

To see if I could figure out what I was doing wrong, I studied my beloved Moira Kalmanbook, The Principles of Uncertainty, since she paints her wonderful, quirky illustrations in gouache. I  saw that what I was considering flaws and errors in my application are actually—at least in her work— just part of the character of painting with gouache.

Gouache is such a flexible medium. You can use it opaquely, flat and smooth as in posters; painterly like with oil paints; or transparently as if it were watercolor. Now I’m craving oysters again — some to eat and some to paint.

Categories
Dreams Faces Gouache Painting Sketchbook Pages

Dreaming in Color of Beautiful Birds

Woodpecker Dream, Gouache & Ink
Woodpecker Dream, Gouache & Ink

Do you dream in full color? I dreamt I spotted the most beautiful woodpecker, and in my dream I noted that it was in gorgeous golds, ochres and siennas. The woodpecker, aside from it’s unique coloroing, looked just like the California Stellar Jays I see in my neighborhood, complete with peanut in mouth and nothing like a woodpecker. (Not that I’ve ever seen a woodpecker, although I have heard them).

Lime Mohawk Bird, Goauche
Lime Mohawk Bird, Goauche

Then I spotted another beautiful bird with, as I noted in the dream, a lime-colored Mohawk. Actually, in the dream I think I called it a “faux-hawk” because there’s something about the way”faux-hawk” sounds that pleases me.  This bird made horrible Peacock noises.

Mermaid Hair, Gouache
Mermaid Hair, Gouache

The next dream carried on with the odd colored top-knot theme. The long, black, silky, beautiful, Latina hair of the girl next door had been bleached white and then died mint green so she’d look more like the Disney mermaid princesses she seems to like so much.

These were all done with gouache in the large Moleskine watercolor notebook.

Categories
Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Best House Cleaner in the Bay Area (Maybe the World)

Best House Cleaner
The World's Best House Cleaner

Have you ever had your house cleaned by someone so expert and passionate about cleaning that when you came home afterward it was like moving into a new house? I have! I know some people have their homes cleaned regularly, and it’s probably no big deal to them. But for me, it’s a special treat.

I was first given the wonderful gift of a complete house cleaning a few years ago for my birthday. Since then I’ve carried on the tradition myself, as a gift I give myself for the new year and for my birthday, conveniently 6 months apart.

What’s made this even more special is the person who does the cleaning for me now, my wonderful neighbor and friend Maria Reyes. She is professionally trained in the art of home cleaning, but also has a talent and passion for it, and takes great pride in her work.

I think she’s also part magician. She makes things look new that I thought were impossible to get clean (like the grout on my tile kitchen counters) and she gets everything done in 1/4 the time it would take me. And the cleaning seems to last for a long time, as if she casts a spell: “Good and clean! Now stay that way!”

I was so thrilled with my clean house this time,  that I filled a couple of pages in my sketchbook with little drawings of shiny things around my house — the pics above are a few of them.

If you’re in the Bay Area and are interested in having your home cleaned, I’d be happy to share her contact info with you. Just email me. She offers free estimates and does both regular scheduled cleaning and one-time jobs. Everyone whom I know that she’s cleaned for have raved about her work. She’s not the cheapest (or the most expensive), but she’s without any doubt, the best!