Artistic Aspirations

I am not the only one in my house with artistic aspirations.

When I got together to paint with a friend yesterday, we cleared off my kitchen table and set up there.  The first time my friend got up from her chair, one of the orange ones took over.

I started a painting yesterday, but had my usual problem where I couldn't focus well enough because I wasn't holed up alone in my basement. I welcome the opportunity to paint around other people, especially friends, since I want to get over this hangup.

Look at that newly set-up palette. My friend said that she always likes it when it's a nice fresh palette. I don't! I'm glad it was her fresh palette and not mine.

Egret In Marsh

My last post was so long, I'm making this one short.

#238 - Egret In Swamp - 8" x 8" - paper

It was tough trying to address the water and the shadows in the water, given that there were bits of brush / reeds in the water. I don't think I was successful, but it was fun to try.

A Look Back

Painting #236 filled up the last page of my favorite spiral notebooks for painting. When I first started, I quickly found Bee Paper Super Deluxe Sketch Books and early on I purchased 2 in the 6" x 6" size and 2 in the 9" x 9" size. Since then, I've added 2 of the 9" x 12" size. I work in all of the books at the same time. With multiple books, it's easier to prep a lot of sheets with gesso at one time, I can prep 2 pages per book, or 3 if I am really careful, without making a total mess of it all.

Fairly early, I decided that the smaller size book did not work for 6" x 6" paintings. With the spiral binding, the paper can shift a bit, so it doesn't work to paint edge to edge. I still have blank sheets in these smaller books, which are currently used to practice color mixing, painting whiskers and so on.

Since I work in multiple books at the same time and also paint on hardboard, each book lasts a long time. In fact, I finally finished one of the 9" x 9" books and I thought it would be fun to look back and see what I did and what I learned. I worked in this book from January 2016 to June 2018.

Here is the first page. Hurrah! It's a negative space tree.

Painted in 01/16

I worked on timed paintings.

Painted in 03/16

Painted in 05/18

I painted a lot of apples.

Painted in 05/16

I got frustrated and didn't always finishing a painting, even when I should have (referring to finishing the painting).

Painted in 2016_07

I played around with mixing color.

Painted in 04/17

Painted in 02/18

I had my first epiphany that the direction of paint strokes matters. These were painted one day apart. 

Painted in 10/16

Painted in 10/16

I completed a number of cat paintings.

Painted in 08/17

Painted in 09/17

I tried to tackle some tough homework assignments. The assignment involved sinks. I tried to make it "easier" by adding a cat. 

Painted in 10/17

I had a major epiphany regarding values and shapes.

Painted in 11/17

Even though I am a color fanatic, I learned that I like painting white things.

Painted in 12/17

This post covers about 25% of the pages in this book. Last, but not least, here is the last page of the book which I posted on Monday.

Painted in 06/18

Barn And Other Structures

In 2012, I went to a hoe down organized by friends who have an organic farm in Hutchinson MN.  This literally was a party to celebrate the end of the growing season (i.e. put the hoe down).  It was a potluck and included a barn dance. Most of the participants were from CSA-type farms in the area. I took several pictures of the farm buildings and now I wish I would have taken many, many more!

#237 - Barn & Other Structures

I started this one yesterday and completed it today. When I was working on the buildings, I kept thinking that this was going to be a terrible, terrible painting. After a short break and looking at it from a few steps back, I surprised myself that the buildings read pretty well. Certainly not perfect, but not terrible!  Things look vastly different over the end of a paint brush versus a few steps back.

How is life otherwise? Pretty good. Today is my anniversary and it started out with the arrival of a new flamingo. That's the good part of pretty good.

We still have no idea which friend(s) started the tradition or who is keeping up the annual tradition. All I know is that a new flamingo shows up every year on our anniversary. This year, the new one showed up some time between 10 pm and 7 am.

The not-as-good part is that I managed to cut my left thumb while making lunch this morning. It's not bad enough for stitches, but it was more than a surface cut. It still hurts. Later in the morning, I took a  break from working from home to go water the garden plot. While I was there I harvested some lettuce and managed to cut my right thumb. I'm really not sure how I managed to do in both thumbs on the same day, all I know is that having both of them bandaged is is annoying! I'm not superstitious so I don't think this has anything to do with it being my 13th wedding anniversary. However I've decided no more knives for me today.

Third Try Of A Simple Landscape

Here is take 3.

#236 - Simple Landscape Take 3 - 8" x 8" - paper

While I'm not sure my execution of this scene is improving, I am noticing more each time I look at my source photo. There is a large section of dark in the bottom part of all of the trees and greenery.  This time, I saw more than I did the last two times.

I Don't Care What Color The Water Actually Is

When I started this one I said to myself "I don't care what color the water actually is", so I just tried to stay true to the values. I had to repaint the grassy area, since it was too dark originally. Now that I'm  done and looking at the picture, the sky turned out too dark. Darn! While I was painting I noticed how light the sky was and thought I had my paint light enough.

#235 - Bridge In Minnehaha Park - 8" x 8" - paper

Overall, I am feeling less intimated about approaching a landscape painting (a/k/a - those things in life with many, many elements to figure out), at least in the comfort of my home. It's easier to say to myself, I think I'm going to try this part in this way and see what happens and that is a good place to be.

Lately, I've also been thinking about super vivid mode. My camera has a setting called super vivid and it helps create beautiful pictures. Sometimes, it feels to me like it's cheating a bit, by enhancing reality. This slightly puritanical outlook carries over into my painting. If the colors are on the muddy side in my source material, I tend to stay too faithful to that and that doesn't make a very interesting painting. It's also a weird quirk, since I love saturated colors. With this one, I turned up the super vivid setting in my head, although I went more muddy with the bridge and the upper trees and sky since they were very muted in my picture.

Broken Streak

I had a long streak going. While painting, I have been cleaning my paint brush using the can with water rather than my water glass. An almost 2 1/2 year streak was broken today.

Take Two

Take one occurred during painting class and I never posted a picture of it. I also never finished it. Take one was the pinnacle of frustration when I had no basis and no understanding of how to break landscapes up into cohesive pieces or shapes. The first step has been learning how to see differently. Slowly, I am learning this or at least experimenting with it. It's an interesting process going from not being able to see or process something at all to taking baby steps towards taking in visual information differently.

I am so glad that I took another session of painting classes with Kat. I learned so much. As a result, take 2 went better. Plus, I enjoyed painting this scene this time.

#234 - Scene From A Car Window In Quebec - 8" x 8"- paper

TGIF!!

Until I opened the paper this morning, I forgot that "The Incredibles 2" opens today. The first one is probably my partner's favorite movie or has to be close to his favorite. Since I am working from home today and he can ditch work a little early, we bought tickets to a 6:00 pm showing. We never seem to go to as many movies as we plan and we mostly go to them when they hit the second-run theaters. I can't wait until it's time to go to tonight's movie!!!

I started this landscape yesterday and finished it today.

#233 - Dirt Road Near The Cabin - 8" x 8" - paper

Painting landscape after landscape is helping. While I can't say that I like any of my landscape paintings, I am enjoying the thought process and trying to improve. There are several things I feel good about with this one. There is more of a distinction between the foreground, middle ground, and background than usual. The trees in the background recede to me. These trees really were an extremely dark green and I decided to use a blob of pthalo blue red shade in my green mix. I like what it did. While I don't care so much for the foreground trees, I do think the different parts of the painting read as being distinct. It was fun playing with different types of paint strokes to try and do this.

My plan is to keep working on landscapes, although I will take a break at some point during the month. One of things I learned from the recent session of painting class is that I need to occasionally re calibrate by doing some 10 minute paintings or one stroke paintings. Plus, it's good to mix up painting from pictures and painting still life.

Two Tries Of A Simple Landscape

I took a break from water. These two paintings are from a picture I took at the MN Landscape Arboretum. The picture was taken mid-day with the sun overhead. Much of the picture was dark and I'm not great at adjusting for that. Still I really enjoyed painting the sky with this first attempt. The trees ended up being overworked with layers and layers of paint.

#231 - Simple Landscape Take 1 - 8" x 8" - paper

In the second one, I tried to not overwork the trees.

#233 - Simple Landscape Take 2 - 8" x 8" - paper

At first, I painted the dark shrub in the middle and left the shadow black. I didn't like how it looked, so I gessoed it out. I still don't like how it looks, but I'm ready to let go and move on.

Back To Landscapes

I continue to encounter all types of different issues when I try to paint a landscape. Rather than shying away, I'm feeling stubborn. My goal is to focus on landscapes for the rest of June from which I hope to gain some additional skills or ways to think about or approach a landscape painting.

This seems like a reasonable response given painting #228. I got lost while trying to do this painting. In spite of adding a 4 x 4 grid to the picture and to the painting surface, I managed to goof up the depth of things, so I decided not to finish it. This feels like a different chapter in the same book. When things like this happen, it's frustrating, but at least I can work to improve on things I'm aware of. There are many other problems with this, but messing up the depth of things was the biggest. I also think this was an issue when I went out painting plein air over Memorial Day weekend.

#229 - Minnehaha Creek - 8" x 10" - paper - not completed

In that vein, here is a painting from a smaller cropping of the same picture of Minnehaha Creek.

#230 - Minnehaha Creek - 8" x 8" - paper

I didn't sweat getting the color of the water accurate, but I did struggle with trying to figure out where the water was cooler in tone and warmer in tone. It seemed to be cooler in the light and warmer in the shadowed areas, which does not make sense to me. Given that and that I don't trust my eyes in making these distinctions, I want to keep thinking about the cool or warmth in the things I see.

Sometimes The Universe (Or Craigslist) Provides Something You Really Want

Once I started using the tabletop easel I borrowed from Kat, I thought to myself that it would be nice to have an easel. The first time I looked on Craigslist, this one was listed for a very modest price. I picked it up this morning. As a  hobbyist, I didn't want to buy new or spend a lot.

To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement.   

My Masterpiece

My masterpiece gets no respect from Hammett. Whenever I go to take a picture of a completed painting, one of the orange cats always appears and gets in the way. It must be part of their job description.

Here is the completed painting with no obstruction. It does seem like it's my masterpiece. It must be because it's so large. On the blog, of course, it looks like the same size of all of the other pictures I post, but in person it takes up a lot of space and makes a statement.

#227 - Dorian - 18" x 24" - hard board

This was a terrific learning experience, plus it was fun! I adore this cat. In truth, I adore all of them, but this one is the easiest one to love. Looking at this painting makes me smile.

I want to focus on painting landscapes, but I am also going to have to work on some additional, large cat paintings.

With any luck, I am purchasing my own easel tomorrow. It would be a floor model, not a table top version. It was on Craig's List and the price was right.

A Rambling Post

Sniff. I am still sad that painting class is done. I enjoyed the camaraderie in class and seeing what other people are working on, what they struggled with, what questions they had, and so on, even though I think I’m always the one who talked the most in class!

The other thing I miss is the structure from having homework and knowing that we are meeting each week. While I do pretty well when I’m not in a class, I also know that I push myself to get more paintings done when I am. Since class wrapped up, I’ve been a little busier with work. While I still do something painting-related each day, I haven’t been finding as big a block of time to work.

Moving on.......I am having fun working on the large painting of Dorian. Most of this journey is about experiential learning. What that means is that as much as I enjoyed class, learning from others, and getting feedback, the most important thing I can do to learn is to keep painting and I certainly intend to do that.

Painting on a surface larger than I’ve ever done has been a good, new experience. It’s interesting to work with a size 10 brush and feel as though your paint strokes are puny in size. The other interesting thing is that paint is not a scarce resource. The good stuff (Golden Heavy Body Acrylic) goes a long way. While it’s felt as though I used gobs and gobs and gobs of paint while doing everything on the cat except the eyes, so far, all I’ve used is the paint that was on my palette. I don’t need to treat the paint as a scarce or precious resource.

I hope to finish the big cat painting tonight. I got held up because I ordered some larger paint brushes, since I think that will help with the background. Two of the large brushes are on back order, but one of them arrived today. Hurrah! Of course in the short-term, it would have been easier to take Kat up on her generous offer to borrow a big paint brush along with the easel.

Here’s the size 10 brush in the regular brand I use, next to my new size 12 brush.

While I was waiting for the brushes to arrive, I started on a painting for Art 4 Shelter for next year. I want to set painting goals each month, so I don’t get into a rut or develop too many bad habits. One easy goal is to paint one Art 4 Shelter painting each month.

It was interesting painting (and drawing out) something on a 5” x 7” piece of paper using a size 8 brush at the same time I’m working on the monster-sized painting. It may sound silly, but this added to my understanding / experience of paint strokes. Also when I draw, I tend to draw larger than I want to so thinking about and exploring size and scale is good.

Here is the source picture. This is a friend’s cat and I love the pose.

Other than the background, I was feeling pretty good about this one until the whiskers. Yes, I am calling this one “Whisker Failure”. There’s no failure quite like a whisker failure (written more in humor than frustration).

#228 - Whisker Failure - 5" x 7" - paper

I will try again, probably from a different photo, for my June Art 4 Shelter painting.

When Did Dorian Get So Large?

Last night was the last night of painting class (sniff, sniff). I really enjoyed the group and I am going to miss our weekly meetings. For the last night, we painted large!!! My other classmates painted negative space trees on paper taped to the wall.

Earlier in the week, I made a large piece of hardboard (18" x 24"), cradled it, and prepped it with gesso. Kat let me borrow a tabletop easel, so I set up my very, very large painting surface. The #10 bright brush I was using was small compared to the painting surface. While it eats up a lot of paint and takes a bit of work to get enough paint in your brush, it's fun to make crazy, big paint strokes. I worked on this for a little over one hour in Kat's studio and was exhausted, mostly from drawing out what I was going to paint.

I set up the easel and painting in my basement late this afternoon and worked a bit more today.