Finished two more alcohol inks

This first one I worked on a couple of days struggling but then finally finished it to my liking 

This is "Dreamy Forest' on YUPO paper, 9"x5"

The next one started out as a flower however the inks said, "Nope not today this is what I want to do"  so here is my unflower.

Another attempt

After two days I came up with this sky as I see it.  Am finally learning sort of how to use these inks and it is fun as it is always a surprise and the inks have a mind of their own how they will mix.  I will continue on trying to get expressive landscapes done this week and weekend and then back to trying to do credible blooms.  But am having fun and that is the main thing.

BACK TO PAINTING FINALLY

It has been a couple of years since I have posted, health issues, family issues, life getting in way.  Am not apologizing just stating a fact and am so pleased to have started painting again.

I began back with watercolor on a couple of challenges.

This first was from a childhood friend of the Buckingham family, Marc, from a photo I took in France.  Just kind of shows his roguish character.

Next I worked on a little girl from a workshop I took last summer in Florida with a teacher Stephie Butler but never finished it.  Well, I jumped in and finished it.  Parts I really like, many parts I don't but I finished it the best I could with the satisfaction of learning some techniques.

Am working on another watercolor , a tiger, but have put it aside as I registered for an e-class in alcohol inks with Alexis Bonavitacola as teacher.  I am so pleased and am learning so many things in this class.  Alexis is a great teacher and she not only is showing techniques but giving us inspiration talks,music, things to ponder about ourselves and of course the techniques of AI.

I am taking this at my own pace but am painting or reading each day.  Below are a few of my works so far.

And a few more

I will try and add more paintings as I complete them. 

I must say this medium is fun and exciting, has a mind of its own but one can create wonderful abstracts with it and expressive flowers and landscapes. 

May 2012

Well I didn't get any more painting done that last week of April but I had started something for another challenge and finished it on May Day so I am counting it for May.

The challenge was to paint something monochrome using one color and concentrating on values.  I picked a photo that I had taken at the zoo several years ago as I really liked the light on him.  I also decided to paint loosely as to me that just suited this guy.  I chose burnt umber as my color of choice after trying out several other colors but it gave me the warmth that I was going for and also a warm light tone.  It is painted on Arches 10 1/2 x 14 1/2



I was really delighted how this turned out.

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.







January 20, 2012

Here we are with the January YOP. I chose to paint a setup that I had done. I must have taken 50 photos of different types and fruits and crystal bowls after one of my painting friends had challenged us to do so. I scoured Goodwill as I don't have many crystal bowls and this particular setup I photographed out on our deck one day in the fall when the sun was actually shining here. Here is the photo I chose.

I loved the fresh colors of all these fruits and gave me different colors to work with. I tried with and without a cloth, like the cloth better; also tried many angles to get the reflections in the crystal.

I transferred the painting to 10 x 14 from transfer paper. I really tried to get all the crystal bits in it but....not so easy. If I did it again I would transfer larger so it wouldn't have been so difficult to do the crystal.

I tried to take my time and have been working on this slowly for two weeks. Had some hiccups along the way but worked through them. Paints I used were gamboge, perm. red, C. blue, sap green, lemon yellow but also mixed some of my colors mixing gamboge and lemon yellow; blue and red and for the dark background I mixed prussian blue and magenta; grapes I mixed the sap green with lemon yellow. And other dips and daps from my pallette. Had some struggles with getting a shine on the apple and orange but did my best on that. In the end of am quite pleased with the outcome.

Don't know what the challenge for the month of February will be but meanwhile I have quite a few possible paintings drawn out and want to try a few different things.

January 10, 2012

Well, I'm doing okay so far this year.  I am trying to do a little 15 minute sketch every day, only started this week.  It is supposed to be of things around the house or plein aire.  Well it's too cold for outside right now, that will come later but I will try all kinds of different things.  Here are my first two.

Need to do mine for today.

Another thing I was working on was smushing.  Don't you love that word?  My roomie from a get together last summer who also gave several wonderful demos, shows us different things on our Painting Friends site.  The latest is smushing.  You kind of move the paint around after applying on dry paper adding water and smushing it so it blends.  It is a kind of fun way to do this.  We worked on pears.  I wasn't very happy with mine at first so I sent it to Mollie and asked for advice which she gave willing and cheerfully.  I took much of her advice and here you can see the before and after using her advice.

I guess I'm just too impatient and in a hurry to finish something.  I find though having another's eye on what you are painting is extremely helpful.

Well, I'm off to find something to draw for today's sketch.  Keep your brushes wet!

JANUARY 6, 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS

Making all kinds of resolutions to myself including doing something art related every day preferably putting paint to paper but maybe just some drawing practice which I desperately need since I don't draw well or watching DVD watercolor demos. 

 I finally finished a painting I started for the December challenge for the PF site which was an entire rose.  I changed it up by cropping it, just because and used unusual colors for me.  Only used 4 colors mixing bluish purple with cobalt blue and a red (not sure but a bright red) produced a lovely violet with enough water added.  Then I mixed a peachy color with gamboge and the same red.  I was fairly pleased with the results.  At least I have been working on this since the beginning of the year to finish it.  Size is 11 x 15 on a paper that I'm not sure what it was.   Still love my Arches paper but happen to have this piece of paper so used it.

Thanks for looking.  I hope to be more productive this year.  Have lots of ideas not just need to put them to paper.

December 20, 2011

Well, we are fast approaching Christmas and the end of the year.  This month I really haven't been good at painting every day so will probably get coal in my stocking.  The one painting I did get done was a Christmas card for a PF friend Amelia and then used it as my family Christmas card.  Usually I try to get a painting done just for the family card and a different one for the exchange butr this year just got behind.  Here is the painting I did and sent so Amelia has the original and I just have a copy.  Plan to paint this again so I can frame it as I have done in years past and I bring all the paintings I did for each year out and hang them and that is part of our decoration. 

I really was thrilled how this turned out.  Will redo this is a larger size. 

I didn't get my YOP painting done even though I love to paint roses but.......  Hope to work on it after Christmas and still post it before the end of the year.

Have done loads of baking and went to a  Christmas cookie exchange.  The two crystal platters in the front of the table were some of the cookies that I baked this month.

And then my DH and I celebrated our 47th anniversary yesterday the 19th.  Here are a couple of photos from those ancient days.

So there you have it.  Now have to concentrate on shopping, wrapping, more cooking AND PAINTING.

November 28, 2011

A little bit of an update on what I have been working on.  My YOP (year of painting) for November was fun.  I loved the photo that we used and I cropped it a lot.  I love reflections and autumn so had fun with this.  My steps were to first crop it on the computer here

Then I sketched out on plastic where I thought the darks should be

And finally I just had a blast using autumnal colors, trying to create reflections and doing the canoes.

I probably could have cropped it more and will definitely try this painting again maybe crop it differently. 

I also have been working on  another exchange of Christmas cards and finished it after trying twice, not liking the first one shown below   Just didn't turn out like I had in my mind so did another one that is totally different than this one.  Have finished it but won't post until I send and the person receives it.

So now want to start on another card to send to a few select folks.  One thing about doing some of these paintings is I at least even with all the hustle and bustle find time to paint just a little almost every day.  This is a good thing.  Need to do it more.



November 1, 2011

Nice way to start the month, I finally finished the crystal that I started in August in Florida of a gathering of painting friends.  I am fairly please with it and now will move on to other paintings.

Arches 140# 14" x 20", using maingly DS paints.  Photo by Mollie.