We always enjoy a visit to Saul’s Deli in Berkeley for sketching and dinner. I got my usual grilled trout dinner but was too hungry to draw it before eating. One of the owners of Sauls, Karen Adelman does the wonderful quirky drawings on their menus and website and always makes us feel welcome to come and sketch there.
More Saul’s sketches from my pals Micaela, Sonia and Cathy on our Urban Sketchers site.
When painting outdoors, lighting is controlled by the sun, clouds, atmosphere, and time of day. But in the studio you get to choose your lighting source from window light to bulbs of all kinds. In an article about color in the March 2011 Artists Magazine, Scott Burdick suggests an experiment to compare the effect of cool and warm light sources: Set up a still life of primary-colored objects and paint it twice; once under a warm light and again under cool light. That’s what I did in the studies above.
While I’m not sure I captured every nuance (or get the drawing just right), it’s interesting to see how different the same-colored objects and white background cloth look under different “temperatures” of light.
I did these two studies in Peggi Kroll-Roberts‘ studio, with the subjects lit by 150 watt incandescent bulbs which have an even warmer color temperature than the bulbs I used in my two top studies. The actual goal of the study on the left was to paint the scene (cantaloupe and watermelon slices) with as few brush strokes as possible. The assignment for the one on the right was to group and paint the shadows with one color only.
Lighting technical stuff:
Yes Target! Although we’ll be so happy when we can go outside for our Tuesday evening Urban sketching again, sketching at Target was a lot more fun than you might think. I had fun sketching the silly high heels and flip-flops on the wall behind them. Nobody seemed to notice or question why I was painting in the shoe department.
It was the night after Valentine’s day and there was the display of sad, wilting Valentines roses, on clearance, half off.
Whatever happened to sitting in a rocking chair holding the baby in your arms? This contraption had a touch pad remote control with 6 speeds and more. Someone told me he bought one of these only to discover it came in a million parts that was a nightmare to assemble.
In my last post I asked for advice on sorting and storing completed oil paintings on panels. Along with the good suggestions from readers, I found a fantastic website that provides the answers to these and many other questions about proper handling of artwork and art materials of all kinds.
The website is AMIEN.org (Art Materials Information and Education Network), “a resource for artists dedicated to providing the most comprehensive, up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased factual information about artists’ materials.” They are part of the education department of the Intermuseum Conservation Association.
AMIEN’s forums are the place to find information to all our questions about proper use, handling, storage, shipping, application, etc. of art materials and finished art work or all kinds. Here is a portion of what they say (more here) about storing oil paintings on panels:
Store your paintings standing on edge, one next to the other, with a piece of acid-free paper loosely covering the face of each painting. You can tape the paper to the back of the panel and fold it over the front.
Ideally, you will put these paintings in a rack, elevated off the floor, in some location that is relatively dust-free and not subject to wild swings of temperature and relative humidity. Even more ideally, each painting ought to be separated from the others, but that would take a very large rack. Second best: You should not have more than about 5 paintings leaning against each other; separate the groups of paintings.
AMIEN’s forums cover topics like Watercolors, Pastel, Encaustics, Acrylic Paints, Supports, Grounds, Solvents and Thinners, Varnishes, Pigments, Color charts, Oil Paints and Mediums, Alkyds, Mural Paints and Techniques, Colored Pencils, Printmaking, Photography and Printed Digital Media, Matting, Framing and Labeling, Picture Protection, Crating, Shipping, Storage, Conservation, Hazards and much more.
About the sketch at top: Friday afternoons I have the pleasure of spending time with two lovely 11-year-old girls who still like to swing and play make-believe games on playground equipment. I discovered Kensington Hilltop School while hiking in the hills on the weekend and brought them there the next week. They played, I sketched, we had fun.
After ten years this very large rock sold to me as a “Moss Rock” and installed in my front garden has finally grown a patch of moss. It looked so pretty and the day was unseasonably warm and sunny so I couldn’t resist going out to sketch it. I sat on my porch and drew the mossy rock while my usually indoor kitties joined me in the sun.
I need help figuring out how to sort/store my oil paintings. I have at least a hundred oil paintings and plein air studies on panels (probably more) that I’ve done over the past few years. I’m sure for some people it’s simple: just sell them all.
But if you’re like me and still have many paintings on hand, I’d love to hear how you organize, catalog, store and/or protect them from damage. I have many watercolors on paper in large flat files sorted by subject matter, with drawers labeled accordingly. But I haven’t figured out a good system for my oils.
When I get a request from someone wanting to purchase a painting it can be challenging to find it and I always have my fingers crossed that it hasn’t gotten damaged.
My questions:
ORGANIZING: Do you store your paintings by subject? Size? Date? Inventory number (requires entering in art tracking program)? OR…just skip the organizing and spend the time painting instead?!!
STORAGE: Should they be separated with wax paper when stored touching each other? Does it matter if they’re in the dark? My garage is fairly dry but not insulated so is affected by weather. Is it ok to store oils on panels in Clearbag envelopes to protect their surface?
At the beginning of the year I usually sort through the past year’s paintings stored vertically on shelves like books in my studio. I dump the losers, label the keepers, and move older paintings to shelves in the garage. This year I had the flu during my two-week holiday vacation so never did the “dump and sort” so paintings have piled up in the studio shelves and storage closet and there are more drying.
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Arhoolie Records held a “second line parade” led by the New Orleans-based Tremè Brass Band. The parade started with a fantastic concert at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park
In the video below you can see and hear the band (and me trying to sketch them, looking like a bobble-head doll as I look up at the band and down at my sketchbook. I’m at top right of the screen, starting around 30 seconds in, wearing bright green.)
After they played 20 minutes or so, we danced (and sketched) along behind the band to the Berkeley BART station, with many people twirling handkerchiefs or parasols in the air as is the tradition in second line parades. They performed another brief concert, and then more people joined in the parade as we moved along Shattuck Avenue.
The parade ended at Freight & Salvage on Addison Street where we were again treated to more great Dixieland music. By then I was pretty far back in the crowd so gave up trying to draw the band but noticed these guys on the roof videotaping the event as we arrived.
This was one of those “It doesn’t get any better than this” experiences: Fantastic live music, sunshine and sketching! I knew the sketching would be challenging because of the constant movement, so only had as my goal to have fun and give it a try. I definitely had fun!
Following in the footsteps of Kathryn Law’s 36 (!) color studies inspired by the Peggi Kroll-Roberts Limited Palettes video, I returned to doing more of my own. As Kathryn explains on her post, it’s all about learning what your colors can do.
The four at top I did yesterday, after switching back to regular oils (mostly Winsor & Newton). Below are some that I did previously using Holbein Aqua Duos water-soluble oils that I fell out of love with.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is a really fun exercise. The idea is to discover about all the variations of value and hue that you can make with just two colors (plus white) and to experiment with using both cool and warm colors for the light or the shadows. It can be done with any medium (with watercolor you’d use two colors and vary the amounts of water instead of adding white).
Doing exercises like this is also a great way to have fun with paint when time is short or if there’s a big scary painting that you’re not quite ready to begin.
Sketching at Brennan’s Bar and Hoffbrau in Berkeley is always fun. When we met there for Tuesday night sketching last month Cathy had just returned from her sketching workshop that was held at Disneyworld in Florida so the first part of the evening was her amazing show and tell. You can see her Disneyworld sketches on our Urban Sketchers blog here and here and Micaela’s Brennan’s sketches are here.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “muffin-top,” it’s the bulge protruding above the belt from wearing too-tight jeans, especially widespread [pun intended] a few years ago when fashion dictated ever lower waistlines on pants with shorter tops).
This was my first sketch of what I saw in front of me, just trying to do something simple to warm up before tackling more complicated stuff.
After rambling around Romania, seeing beautiful summery farmland, busy cities, and a shepherd walking his sheep down a village street, suddenly it was Christmas with nativity scenes in front yards and this wonderful snowy hayride (virtually, of course via Google Streetview for the Virtual Paintout).
Yesterday I’d tried painting a different Romania scene (below) but soon realized I was laboring joylessly on a hopeless painting, fighting paint the consistency of toothpaste. I gave up, scraped off the panel (glad I’ve gotten smarter about when to cut my losses), and returned to Google’s wonderful new MapCrunch.com where I found the above photo.
Le Bateau Ivre is a cafe I used to visit often when I first moved to Berkeley so it was great to rediscover it with my Tuesday night sketch group. The food is wonderful and the atmosphere warm and inviting. Le Bateau Ivre is in an old house on Telegraph Avenue and each room has its own charming personality and decor.
I fell in love with the classical music playing in the cafe and was holding up my iPhone to the speaker, hoping that the Shazam or Soundhound apps could guess the recording. The owner of Le Bateau Ivre saw me and asked if the music was too loud. I explained what I was trying to do and she ran to get the CD and showed it to me. I took a photo of the cover which I later pasted on to this page. The CD was Heinrich Ignaz Franz van Biber: Sonatae a Violino solo of 1681.
Jana Bouc, Artist 