April 2012

So here I am only one week left in April.  This month the only thing I worked on was a challenge that my roomie Mollie (from PF Splash) posted.  She had gorgeous poppies in her garden (she lives in TX) and gave us a demo and told us to have at it.  So I took one of the photos is this is what I did with it. 

I actually took photos along the way so it is sort of a WIP (work in progress).  I really didn't know if it would come out like I had envisioned but actually it is close to what I was thinking.  Maybe not as neat as I would have liked but I finished it and I still have a whole week to accomplish some other paintings.

I chose one of Mollies photos and then enhanced the colors a bit on the computer to get a brilliant red which is what I had in mind for this poppy. I traced on tracing paper and then again to 10 x 14 WC paper. I had mixed a lot of colors on paper as seen below.

I first began applying Napthol red in varying values trying to put in light and darks sort of. I also then mixed a real dark of diox purple and ultramarine blue so that I could get an idea if I thought it was going to work. On some of the petals I tried to do glazes of peryleen maroon to show the napthol underneath it,

I continued to work on various petals but then decided to work on the center to see how that would work. I had gotten this cool phalo yellow-green DS and never used it so used some of that, some sap green put in a bit of lighter napthol and tried to carefully put in the really darks.

On the green pods I used a bit of the phalo y-g and some light sap and threw in some DS sleeping beauty gen. tourquoise.

At this point I did send it to Mollie and asked what she thought as I really didn't have confidence although I liked the bright colors. I vascillated on the background but the info she sent back to me confirmed what I wanted to do. So I mixed darker bits of the colors in the poppy but added some phalo blue and peylreen here and there and did a couple of coats to make it as dark as I wanted. And this is it the final.

I learned a lot painting this poppy.  Will definitely try poppies again as I just love them but now need to move on and pick something else to work on or finish some of the paintings that I have started and need to finish.  Big decisions. 

March 2012

The month of March I did  more art work but this time I experimented with a few things.

One thing is I started on this painting from a photo I took in Puerta Vallarta several years ago of an elderly gentleman who was on a ferry that we were taking to another beach.  He just fascinated me with the cowboy hat, nice tan, whitish hair and really blue eyes.  So I started to paint him but this is just the beginning of the painting as I got involved in other things this month so haven't finished this gentleman as yet.

As you can see he needs a lot of work on his face, try and get rid of the pencil lines which are too dark but it was a start.

Then I decided to try experimenting on canvas using the technique of tissue paper, gesso and then painting and I really liked the result.

Here was the finally.  I saw the bird that had appeared as a "happy accident" so enhanced her a bit and added a bit more color.  Am quite pleased with this and plan to do more as it is relaxing and fun and one never knows what is going to show up.



Oh goodness the next experiment was a challenge for our March YOP (year of painting)

This was taken at Cannon Beach for my 70th birthday celebration when my bro came out and surprised me.

And now the disaster.

I started out okay sort of made a skin tone mixture of rose madder, cob. blue, and yellow ochre. Then I mixed up a mix for the wrinkles of ind. blue and q. rose and a bit of y.o. So I put the lines and shadows and did a glaze of gamboge very pale thought I could get a glow (not) and then did a covering of the skin tone. Well, it just went from bad to worse. One time I took out to show DH and said, "My God you look like an ancient old woman!~~~! You look like your mother." He still sees me as that lithe previous photo, (this photo not included in this blog but suffice it to say it was a photo of me in a bikini in Mexico) bless his heart. So that is one bonus of this. Well I just kept messing and making more of a mess and laughing the entire time. So I had great fun with this and I am going to keep it in my studio as something to make me laugh as to how awful it is.
Hope you enjoy the laugh and my humor. It seemed funny last night.

February 2012

Wow, it has been such a long time since I have posted a thing on here.  I really want to keep it as a record of things that I attempt in art and any improvements I make in artwork.  I have been trying to do something with art each day even if it is watching a DVD, reading about a technique, cleaning my studio (in order to mess it up again) or actually painting.

In February on the painting friends site that I am on we worked on our pallettes and finding out what mixed with what.  Our first task was to make sort of a chart of the colors we had on our active pallettes.

 I sort of took a combination of what I use but by no means showed all.  I also don't pay attention to the numbers but try to pay attention to the transparency of the paints. I really haven't used cads in a while, I have a lot of quins, many new ones which I haven't tried, and I like them. I don't arrange by warm and cool but by color. In case you can't tell I LOVE color. I also hate to waste paints so I have tons of pallettes with paint on them but then can't remember what they are so kind of guess and try and go "Oh that's cool".

For blues I use CB a lot and it is great for mixing purples although I have purple on my pallette when I'm lazy and don't feel like mixing. I notice that the two purples I do have are about the same, DS and WN although the DS seems stronger. I like cerelean also for skies, warmer ones, feel to me the CB makes a cooler sky to my eyes.

Yellows I have a lot as always trying to find a true yellow. It depends on what I am painting. I also have a lemon yellow when I am painting obviously fruit or want something to look really yellow and not green-yellow or brown-yellow; like gamboge for certain things and is a good mixer to make orange. I usually mix an orange but I use one premixed orange pyroll orange that I love but am out of it right now. Use burnt sienna quite a bit as I have different brands of it and as I said don't want to waste paints. Sometimes use BU to get things darker and also will use sepia sometimes but didn't put it on my pallette. For my real darks I will mix in UB with BU and get a nice dark almost black. Have phalo out as sometimes want some punch

Greens pretty much use sap and underwater green but again depending on what I am painting have a few other greens that I use.

Which brings me to reds and pinks and magentas which is kind of a mix between pinks and reds to me actually red-violets I have several on my pallette and several more in my paint boxes depending on what I am trying to paint. Use AC and quin red a lot, and a combo of the reds I have on my pallette using the magentas fairly neat to make dark shadows on say an apple or something.

I also don't clean off the middle of my pallette often as I like the mixes that are created there and will use that sometimes for backgrounds.

And then made some color wheels etc to see what I would get remembering to label all things. 

this one used permanent red with different yellows hansa, aurelin, azo and different blues ultramarine blue, cerilean and tourquoise geniune

this one used alizarin crimson and the blues


 Used three different reds Quin Red, Napthol Red, Perm Red and the same yellow gamboge and same blue cobalt







I then became really ambitious and decided to make a record of most of my paints, mix them so I would know what I would get mixing this one with that one.  I now have a record of these mixed colors using say all the reds I had with all the blues, all yellows with blues, all reds with yellows.  Here are the results.  I really got some neat mixes. 

 Okay spent the morning with my purples and found out many interesting things. In some of the blue only a smidgeon maybe a pin prick of certain reds was needed. Some blues I will only use for certain effects I found out some of my genuines from DS but they have lovely granulation or make lovely greys sort of separate ones very cool, also the light blues don't do too well making purple with the reds I used but can get some effective lavendars. I found some lovely burgandies which I love one in particular.




 

This next sheet GREENS.have some that I really love. If one uses less of the yellow or blue one can get some neat kind of siennas, greys, etc.



 

Okay finished the oranges and got some cool oranges. Tried with all kinds of reds and every yellow I had sort of. Found I got a lot of colors that could be a burnt sienna, really neat and other colors from light to dark depending on the proportions that I used or if it was a stronger red or not. Now my big task for today is take this info, clean off my pallette which is a Pike and decide which ones I want on that as an every day pallette. Then use another pallette to put the other colors that I love to use in some of the paintings and see how that works along with the duct tape suggestion or actually painter's tape with the names so I remember as so many look alike.

I then made a record of all the Daniel Smith paints I have so I would know since I have a lot.

I still have other brands of paints that someday I will do so that I know what they will produce. 

We then did a few little paintings using warm  and cool colors to see the difference. 

Okay I tried today on cups, cool and warm - First mistake went out and bought cheap papers for these samples and didn't check and ended up with 90# paper, hate it doesn't work, hard to control the color or whatever but I plugged on, will make sure cheap paper is 140# for next tries.

What I did was for cool cup used some Hansa yellow for the hit of opposite and the analagous colors were cob. blue, ultramarine, indrathracine (?) and some carb. purple.

Warm cup Hansa yellow, mixed orange from that and Napthol red and hit with some ind. blue and purple made from mix of N. red and ind. blue.

This time I remember to write down as I was using the paints as I tend to walk away a lot. Got a cheap pad of strathmore to do these studies still too cheap to use my Arches for these as there is no chance that they are framable, learning tools.
Warm pear, deep scarlet DS, napthol red MG, Hansa Yellow, orange is mix,

yellow pear, burnt sienna, gamboge, green mix of cerelean blue and hansa,

blue pear, blues, Ind. blue, cobalt, purple mix of phalo and Aliz. C, green mix of Ind blue and aurelian yellow

So this was the bulk of what I worked on in February.  Will continue with March in a new post.