Smitten With My Own Knitten

When I photograph things, sometimes my phone wants to help a little too much with the colors. I like the colors better in person. After one pattern repeat, here is the front of my fox paws swatch.

Here is the back.

This is in my favorite yarn, which is a worsted weight. I thought it was going to be a swatch. I love it so much that it may have to be a scarf instead.

Tee Hee

It makes me so happy when a piece of my artwork ends up on a promo piece for Art 4 Shelter. The dock at sunset is one of mine and it's on one of the versions of the postcard sent out to advertise the event. It helps that I sent in 7 or so pieces in January. It might also help that Simpson Housing Services is one of my clients. Even so, I really enjoy it when this happens.

This is a terrific event. Mark your calendars now!  It's on May 15th from 6 pm to 9 pm at the Machine Shop in Minneapolis.

Another Helper

On Friday, look who showed up to help me while I was taking a picture. The step stool was close to the kitchen bench, so Dorian showed up. She is 17 years old with arthritis, so jumping up on stool is out of the question. It made me smile that she is just as interested in what I am up to, as the orange ones.

I started this painting before the pepper, but finished it after the pepper. While the start was good, the middle was horrible middle. I thought about abandoning it before finishing, but you don't learn as much that way. Since it's not a favorite, it's not getting a separate, close up picture.

#329 - Mr. Biggs Take 1 - 6" x 6" - hardboard

Dorian is quite a character. Yesterday, it was close to her breakfast time when I sat in the kitchen chair meditating for 10 minutes. She walked across my lap several times. When I didn't respond, I could sense her sitting on the arm of the chair and after several moments, she let out a very loud, indignant sigh.

In my last post, I don't think I explained the knitting thing very well. Normally, when you do increases in knitting, it makes the fabric wider in the horizontal plane. With stacked increases, it makes the fabric longer in the vertical plane. If you do stacked decreases in a different part of the fabric, you can play with your fabric without increasing the overall width.

What An Exceptionally, Super, Fun Day!

Today was Yarnover. I signed up for a class with Xandy Peters to learn the techniques needed to knit Fox Paws. Wow. The techniques were super cool, as was the instructor, workshop, and pattern. Essentially, all of this involves making stacked increases and decreases.

Here is the front side of my swatch. The green area shows the stacked increases. The blue area shows the stacked decrease. Ignore the visual distraction in the form of a boo-boo in the green and pink garter area prior to doing the increases. I wasn't paying enough attention with the front and back in the garter area. It's a swatch, so it's fine.

Here's the back.

This would make a lovely bottom of a mitten or a sleeve on a sweater.

After that, we cast on and started a swatch of Fox Paws to test our color choices. Since I am using worsted weight yarn, I could either make a scarf out of my swatch or I might do a different pattern of Xandy's which uses this technique. 

It's hard to capture in words how much fun I had today!

Truthfully

I like to paint from pictures more than from life, a lot, lot more, so I avoid painting from life unless I am in a  class or something. Although, I would like to do some plein air painting. In order to grow, I've finally realized that both are necessary and needed. So that I don't completely avoid painting from life, I am going to do a minimum of 2-3 paintings from life each month.

Last night, I purchased some food for tonight's dinner. That meant one shot at painting the red pepper, which should become part of tonight's chicken and green curry dinner. This was a semi-timed painting. I'm in the middle of a cat painting, but last night was a good opportunity to paint from life.

#330 - Red Pepper - 6" x 6" - paper

I like the form and volumes in the top and right side about as much as I don't like the paint stroke hugging the middle of the pepper from the left to the center.

Something is currently happening with my painting and drawing. I feel like my mark-making vocabulary or something like that has either expanded or improved somehow and I am enjoying how this feels, while it lasts. When I first started trying to draw and paint, it felt like there was a solid, impenetrable wall between me and what I wanted to learn and do. Today, the wall seems just as thick, but it seems to be made up of a number of curtains or veils and that one of the many, many ones recently dissolved.

Today's Commute

Today, I was working at a client in the North Loop. I left early and was prepared with my camera. Hurrah!  I lucked out. I drove along West River Parkway until I could park the car and walk back. Here are my two best pics. One cropped. One not. It was hard to get clear ones, since the camera was at full zoom (60x). Given that and the awkward angle I had to use, it was hard to keep the camera steady.

This eagle is on West River Parkway behind Fairview Health Services. The nest is close by and is way up in the trees and will be hidden soon after the leaves come out.

As I was standing there shooting pictures, the executive director of the client where I was going to do work drove by, stopped her car, and said "good morning" out her window. She lives in the neighborhood and is the one who told me about the eagle's nest, so it was surprising, but not that surprising.

When I showed her several of my pictures, she told me about another eagle's nest on West River Parkway down past the Lake Street bridge. I stopped there mid-afternoon on my way home. This one is in a pine tree and is situated in such a way that it is visible now and will remain visible. As I drove up, one of the eagles was flying away. I chatted briefly with someone who lived on the block and who was walking her dog. She said that there are owls in the pine trees 2 blocks north of the eagle's nest. 

It's pretty cool that I live in a city and both of these nests are about 1 mile from my house. 

Ow, Ow, Ow

Yesterday, I trellised all of my black raspberry plants in the yard, including installing better trellises in one part of the yard. While I always try to be careful, I ended up looking like I got in the middle of a cat fight.

I am continuing to practice drawing faces. In the next session of the online drawing class I am taking on Sktchy, the goal is to do quick studies focusing on capturing overall proportions quickly and loosely, not to finish or go for perfection. We are being encouraged to work on the same face 3 or more times and just to practice, practice, practice. I’ve been doing this while I feed the cats.

This morning, I was quite pleased with this one. In truth, there are times that I can’t believe I am doing this, that they end up looking like faces, and that, most of the time, there is a resemblance.

Hodge Podge

Last night, I started a 5” x 7” version of my monarch butterfly picture. Given feedback from Kat from the online class, I wanted to give this one another try. Plus, I like to go back and revisit things, especially new objects. With very little time, I drew it out and did one layer of paint for the flower petals.

This morning, I though about backgrounds and did a test run. First I just put down some different colors of green paint. On the right side, I tried dry brushing. On the left side, I used a paint layer thinned a bit with thinned down matte medium, the stuff I used in Carl’s class. I don’t know what I am doing, but it was enjoyable to play in this way and it’s worth exploring further. The issue I am thinking about is how to soft edge in acrylic without using open acrylics?

If I decide to experiment with the thinned down matte medium, I will need to run two palettes, since the matte medium gets on the brush and back in the palette and it really changes the consistency of the paint strokes. 

This morning, I finished the butterfly painting. It was a hodge podge of a process. I started by timing myself, but abandon that. I used a variety of brushes, including a round 2 since there was no way I could get the small bits in the butterfly in a controlled way in a 5” x 7” painting. Finally, the background is multi-layered. First, I did big splotches of different colors of green, almost like a patchwork quilt. I should have taken a picture, since it had an interesting look to it (interesting in a good way). I remember when MS, when of Kat’s other students from an earlier in person class, did several paintings this way and I really liked the effect. However, my overall values were too close to the flower and butterfly, so I couldn’t leave it like that.

Next, I tried to dry brush with a lighter shade. TM, another one Kat’s other students, used this technique in wonderful ways. I wish I would have paid more attention! While it lightened things up, the effect I got was that it looked like dry, scratchy, little paint strokes and I have been working hard to get away from this. Finally, I just added several layers of paint thinned with matte medium.

#328 - Garden Monarch - 5” x 7” - paper

This one is for Art 4 Shelter.

I want to think more about different types of backgrounds, so here are several categories / short cuts for thinking about them:

• MS style - bold blocks of color.
• TM style - dry brushing. 
• CO style - paint thinned with thinned matte medium.

The thing I’m happiest about with this painting is that the colors are unapologetic. Even though I love bright, saturated colors, I have had a bad habit of dulling my colors when painting. I am also pretty pleased with the butterfly’s antennas. I’ve been practicing cat whiskers which don’t look like toothpicks.

Spring Cold

Darn, darn, and darn. I had a really good streak going. However on Tuesday night, I started coming down with a cold, making me feel pretty cruddy all week. Art for the most part went on the back burner, except..........

I signed up for a Drawing Faces with France Van Stone through Sktchy's online art platform. While the Sktchy app is only available for Apple devices, the classes are on the regular web. This is France's  website. This class just came out, but it also is one that you take at your own pace. While I have signed up for online stuff here and there, my track record of actually doing or finishing online classes is terrible. I am going to try and do a better job at this. Currently, I want to work on and finish up Kat's online class and this new one. One is for painting. One is for drawing.

This week, I watched the week 1 video. The "homework" was to work on drawing some different zentangle shapes to loosen up and relax the hand and to do some blind contour drawings of faces on Sktchy to get the eyes and hand in better sync with each other. In my addled state, this worked very well, especially here and there while I was sitting and feeding cats.

I enjoyed drawing the zentangle shape. I think it helped with getting some control, but a loose kind of control. The blind contour drawing started out shaky, but has gotten better. I can see the value of doing a both of these as a warm up. If I do several blind contour drawings in a row, it's amazing to see the difference in the first one versus the third one. It's like my eyes and hand are creating a more direct linkage to each other, while at the same time decoupling from or bypassing the brain.

This morning, I had a good run of several blind contour drawings and here is my favorite. Ignore the floating eye in the corner. This was from an abandoned start, since there was a cat on my lap who insisted that I should be paying attention to the cat and not looking at my iPad and drawing.

Different Paint Brushes

I decided not to work on a specific painting today, but rather to play with some different brushes. Getting over GPS (goopy paint syndrome) opens new possibilities.  I did 4 quick, not very accurate, drawings of a portion of a monarch butterfly wings and tried painting them with 4 different brushes.

The obvious conclusion is that the filbert brush was a terrible choice. No surprise there. Mostly as I kept working with the different brushes, I found myself really thinking about how to use a brush more effectively for a sharp line or edge versus fill in color more broadly.

Just as the first time I dabbled with using different paint colors helped me learn how to better mix color with my regular palette, I hope this will give me some ideas and things to think about and work on with my paint strokes.

I Have A Secret

This is unrelated to painting. I have a secret. There are plants growing in my basement.

Last week when we had snow, sleet, drizzle, hail and rain when I felt annoyed by the weather, I went down to look at my plants. Here are two thyme plants, one tiny oregano plant, and one sage plant, which I started awhile back from seed. In the back corner, you can see an orange butterfly weed.

I have cut way back, so I am starting less plants and enjoy it much more. Since I gave up one of my community garden plot in the fall and the other one several years ago, I have much less space to grow things, since I have a small yard and much of it is shady. I am hoping this means I will be growing less, but enjoying more, plus enjoying going to the farmer's market.

This year, I only started 9 tomato plants and will probably plant 5 of them. All of them germinated on the two snowy days last week! It made me very happy to go down and see new, little plants push up out of the soil.

Faces

I am still practicing faces using pictures from Sktchy while I am sitting with the cats when they eat in the morning. Here are several recent ones.

They are a bit cartoonish, but at the same time I do see a basic likeness when I am done. While I have been selecting people with long faces, my drawings are too long!

Next up is a timed painting. I planned to work on it for 15 minutes. Instead, I did 20 and still wasn’t happy, so I just went a little crazy with it. My biggest problem was that I didn’t do a very good drawing. I've been painting on paper prepped with black gesso. It felt good to paint on hard board prepped with black gesso instead.

#327 - Purple Teapot - 6" x 6" - hard board

New Realization

Frequently, I think I am sloppy with my paint strokes. I drew out and started a painting last night and tried to finish it this morning. My paint strokes for the flower and leaves were sloppy. Since I liked some things about the moth, I painted over the rest with gesso, added gridlines and redrew the scene.

I practiced making more deliberate and careful brush strokes on a small, practice space.

This afternoon, I painted the flower and leaves again, plus worked on the moth a bit more. For the flower petals, I used a size 4 brush. In the past when I have tried to use a small brush, I haven’t been able to get enough paint on/in it. Hurrah!  Getting better at mixing paint, thanks for Kat’s videos fixed that problem.

I timed it. It took 35 minutes (10 + 10 + 10 + 5). It took a lot of time since the flower was fussy and needed more than one layer. I like this second attempt much better.

#326 - Backyard Pollination - 5" x 7" - paper

Timed = Less Angst?

Who knew that timing oneself when painting could led to less stress and less angst rather than adding to it? In Kat’s online class for lesson 3, she asked participants to keep track of the time they are spending. I decided to do this, plus also time myself more actively. The self-designed rules are that I get unlimited drawing time and before I start painting I decide on a set amount of time. Whatever amount of time it is, I divide it into 3 chunks. For each chunk of time, I set a timer which goes off. I have been using a visual timer (as an app, not a clock) rather than a countdown timer. When the timer goes off, I stop, walk away for a moment, regroup, and set the timer again. After the last timed segment, I take another short break and give myself a few more minutes to add a few finishing touches. After the timed painting of Dorian, I have finished these two paintings in this way.

There have been a lot of positives and I think I need to add this to my mental tool kit. Most important is that it keeps me working at a reasonable clip without feeling rushed and without overthinking things. Plus, it forces me to step away, which I know I should do but don't. It's also prevented me from falling down the rabbit hole of "something is not working and I must dwell, focus, and fixate on it until I can make it better", which by the way never works. While I am not necessarily reaching that magical feeling of flow, it does help me turn down my analytical mind and turn up my doing mind. I've been walking away from painting feeling refreshed and happy, even if I look back at my painting and see things I wish I would have done differently or better.

Here is my first attempt at painting a beautiful handmade mug that a friend gave to me last year. Total painting time was 15 minutes. I don't like the shadow or the colors that I used in the shadow, but I think I am happier with the overall painting than I would have been if I used unlimited time to paint it. I really think painting this way might help me develop some better habits.

#324 - Favorite Mug - 6" x 6" - paper

Last night, I painted from one of my many, many butterfly pictures in my backyard. I grew a section  of zinnias along the alley just for the butterflies and was richly rewarded. Also, there is something very special about painting a plant which I grew from seed.

#325 - Backyard Butterfly - 6" x 6" - paper

This one was painted in 30 minutes. The stamen of the flowers became a gloppy mess, although the flower "reads" better in the picture than in the actual painting. It also seemed like I got closer to painting how I felt about the background, rather than trying to paint each individual green thing in the background. That felt good.

Who knew that using a timer could be such a good thing?

As an aside, I've been using a visual timer when I work. I set it for 45 minutes and focus on whatever task is at hand for the 45 minutes. When I am done, I take a short break or a long break and repeat. It's been helping me feel more focused and productive. When I am working, I am working, and when I am not, I'm not. 

Evolution Of A Timed Painting

This was a fun experience to document. Recently, Dorian was on the green chair and the light was good. I've mentioned before that she is difficult to photograph, since she looks down and away from the camera. I took some pictures anyway. Overall, I didn't care for this one.

My first thought was to delete it. Instead, I cropped it.

It's not too bad cropped, which makes me think that I've been deleting too many pictures without seeing if they look better when cropped.  Tonight, I decided to time my painting and to do so in 10 minute increments. The time I spent drawing was not timed. Here it is after 10 minutes.

Here it is after 20 total minutes of painting.

Here it is after 30 total minutes of painting.

I did a few, quick adjustments, but didn't time them. It was only a minute or two. This painting is the closest to the image of Dorian that I carry around in my head. I think it's because of the eyes.  

#323 - Dorian - 6" x 6" - paper

Two Paintings

On Saturday, I went to Kat's studio for several hours. She had invited people to come by and paint for Art 4 Shelter. This is a fabulous event and I enjoy donating art to it every year. While it was a small group which showed up, it was a very enjoyable group of people! I finished one painting.

#321 - Cabin Hummingbird #2 - 5" x 7" - paper

The next day, I decided to time myself for an 8" x 10" painting. I really need to get back to doing homework for the online class. I'm working on week 3 and week 3 actually took place 3 weeks ago. It's not surprising that I'm behind, but I would like to find my focus. The goal was to just make decisions and paint, so I tried to work at a pretty fast clip.

#322 - Timed Cat Painting - 8" x 10" - paper

I gave myself unlimited drawing time. Actual painting time was 37 minutes. This one does not thrill me, but I am posting it anyway. I passed on posting two other paintings and I've always intended this blog to show it all without filtering out much.

Finding Time Here And There

Doing short spurts of drawing, while I am feeding the cats, means that I have been drawing a little every day. I am still exploring faces using pictures from Sktchy. The goal is to stay away from detail and just explore the shape of faces trying to use simple lines. I’m still using the back of fairly thin paper that I’ve already used on the other side. One morning this week, I set a timer for 15 minutes and had a lovely time just experimenting.

I’ve been trying to think about the different planes in a face, how necks attach to the head and things like that. Lips are a complete mystery to me and they are hard to suggest with the thick lead I am using. Still, I would rather proceed in this manner for awhile and see what I can learn.

One thought that shows up in my mind from time to time is to think about the 2-D images I am using as if they were 3-D. That was something that Suzann Beck mentioned in her class at Wet Paint. She also said to think about 3-D shapes you are using as if they were 2-D. It does cause me to look at things and consider them in a different way.

Here are a few of my drawings. They are quick and simple. I am not going for accuracy.

On the painting front, I’ve been finding bits of time here and there to paint. Here is a revisit of a landscape. It’s still not there. While values need to be more distinct, the shape of the land turned out better.

#319 - Landscape - 6" x 6" - paper

Getting Back To Normal

I seem to be bouncing between two states - hyper-busy (i.e. feeling more like a human doing rather than a human being) or completely lazy and/or unmotivated. It's a bit disorienting. Although, I think it's part of getting back to things being more normal. My honey is recovering quite well and I have the first draft of our taxes done, so I guess it's time for some additional normalcy.

From an art perspective, I am painting on more days than not. I've been working from this picture I took in Connecticut last summer. The tree is magnificent. I cropped it down for a 5" x 7" and an 8" x 10". 

I got lost in the 5" x 7" and abandon it. I tried again with an 8" x 10". While I went further, I didn't finish this one either. I started on the tree with the trunk and the darkest values in the leaves. I got overwhelmed, since I don't know how to represent what I am seeing, plus I also had trouble mixing my greens. It was worth it to try and I'll loop back to this picture when my skills are stronger. The person turned out okay. There are actually two people in the picture, but I edited out the second person who was mostly hidden.  

#318 - Comforting Tree - 8" x 10" - paper - unfinished

On the drawing front, I've been procrastinating for a long time. I will start in a direction and abandon it, until I start in another direction. Today, I did something that I've been meaning to do and which I really should do. I want to work on capturing the big pieces or chunks in a drawing, as part of training my eye better and learning to address the big picture before straying into the details. It's territory which actually scares me a bit, but in a good way.

Today, each time I fed the cats, I went onto Sktchy and tried to draw a rough outline and big shapes of some of the faces I've bookmarked. You can see lines showing through from drawings on the other side of the paper, but you get the idea. I'm using a lead holder which holds a soft 5.6mm piece of soft graphite, so I can't get into the details. Here are two of today's drawings.

 It was fun and gave me a different way to think about faces.  The cats get fed 4 times per day, so this gave me several small chunks of time to draw. Each time, my brain was tired by the time the cats were done eating. All and all this worked out well.