Off On Another Tangent

I have gone off on another tangent. I think it will be a good one and lead me back to having a regular art practice again. I started following an artist, Jim Musil on Instagram and he started to offer an on-line subscription to learn his process.  At first, I signed up for 1 month, but when I saw the quality of what he was offering, I changed that to a full year subscription.  

His process is very different. One thing he does is create his images from a combo of drawings, photos, and artificial intelligence, so it is heavily composed.  The first month was focused on his painting process, so this will be shared later.  Another big difference is that we also are using fluid acrylics. 

I think it's going to be a good contrast to what I've learned and how I've worked up until now.

There also is a very active Facebook group and it seems like a good group of people.  People are both kind and constructive in their comments.  

We are all working on off of the same image.  Here are the process photos so far the very beginning with creating a drawing using graphite tracing paper through painting the light clouds.  

These clouds may not be 100% finished, but they are far enough along that I don't want to do anything else with them until I'm farther along with the rest of the painting. They turned out okay.  Actually, I feel pretty good about them given that it's the first time trying this, along with everything else that is new.

That's all for now about this. 

I'm not being chronological with this post.  Here is the last piece I did for Art 4 Shelter.  This was with Neocolor IIs.

Lots and Lots and Lots of Choices

Sunday was the last painting class and I am a little sad about that.  It was good to see Kat and learn from her.  It was good to have homework.  It was a really good group of people.  

One part of our homework was to paint from a photo taken by one of the people in the class.  I tend to stay in my comfort zone and paint relatively simple scenes most of the time.  In comparison, this one had a lot going on.  Also I took the assignment literally and painted directly from the photo.  Cropping or adjusting it did not occur to me.  There was a good overall discussion about this in class, so that was learning moment.

The other learning moment was just about everything with this painting.  It really drove home that all of this is a series of choices.  Some work and some don’t.  I am feeling more comfortable with that at the moment and don’t feel as constricted or stuck. 

I worked on this on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, since I’ve had to work in smaller blocks of time.

In class on Sunday, I started a landscape and did not get very far with it.  In class, it was hard to find my way.  When I got lost in the drawing, I ended up putting some of the pieces in the foreground to help place things.  It felt good to work this through to completion when I finished it up tonight.  Once again, I was more aware of all of the choices and that some worked and some did not.  

I like the reference photo and am sure that I will revisit it at some point after I’ve tried some other landscapes.  

Learning, Again, and A Look Back

Tomorrow is the last week of Kat’s painting class.  I’m a little sad about that but am so happy that it’s gotten me painting again, plus I’ve really enjoyed the group of people in class.  

In so many ways it felt like starting over and/or that I have been relearning things.  One of the things that surprised me (but shouldn’t have) is that continuing to show up and work in the face of frustration is the best thing to do, because usually some sort of break through or ease tends to follow.  

This week painting has been enjoyable and I feel like several of my paintings just sort of happened.  Not everything has worked, but I’ve felt more presence and ease.  The prior week everything felt like a struggle.  

Here is one of the two paintings since I last posted.  I am almost done with the annoying black paper that I purchased and am using up!  Darn paper.  It tears sometimes into the painted part when you pull it up.

I went a little overboard with the reflections back up on the paper, but I explored that a lot this week along with just picking unabashedly loud background colors.  

The look back is, of course, to three years ago today.  When I was looking at my phone, Google popped up a series of photos I took exactly three years ago and it was like traveling back in a time machine.  Even before I looked up my blog post from that day, I remembered that it was a Wednesday and I had been planning to go to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see an exhibit that was closing soon.  I decided to risk going, because I really wanted to and I also thought it might be the last opportunity to do something like this for awhile.  I remember not touching any door handles with my bare hands and other things like that and, at the time, those precautions felt so foreign.  

I suspect a lot of people will be looking back and thinking about the before time.

At times, I’m aware of the continued impact.  One area is that while I enjoy and crave social connection, it’s so much harder to initiate.  Really long or large social interactions also seem to take a lot more energy than the before time.  Last week was the MONDO juggling festival and when I was talking to some friends, I felt reassured that I am not the only one feeling like this.  

One of the other losses throughout much of the pandemic was my art practice.  I just could not muster the energy and brain power to keep it going, so I let it mostly drift away and it’s taken three years to get back to a new starting place.  

Periwinkle Magic

I love the magic of mixing color.  When I set up to paint last night, I used a periwinkle piece of paper because I liked it with the other colors.  Time has been limited, so my set-ups have been rather slap-dash.  

I try not to get hung up on getting the exact color, but also wasn’t sure how to mix a periwinkle with the colors on my palette.  Last night, the magical thing happened where I just mixed rather than get all tight and constricted by consciously thinking about it.  I didn’t labor over it or spend forever trying to mix it.  At one point, it just seemed like adding a little Phthalo Blue Green Shade was the right thing to do and, viola, a periwinkle color appeared!  It also was pretty darn close to the color of my paper. 

One Stroke Per Color

Both painting yesterday in class and today at home, I have felt so free and I think it’s opened me up a little to seeing things I don’t normally see.  The assignment has been to do one stroke per color, so I’ve been enjoying trying to get as much mileage out of each paint stroke as possible which has meant both being strategic and just going for it!

While I think playing with color, overall, is one of the reason I’m drawn to painting and using a limited palette, I’m also really having fun seeing how many ways I can make a size 10 bright brush twist around places I want to go. 

After fighting with myself all last week, this is such a welcome shift.  

Here are the two paintings from class, yesterday and last night’s painting.

Ahhhhh.  The blue shadow of the paper bouncing up on the orange was so pronounced it was easy to see.  When I got this one home, I did work to fix this a bit, so it conforms to the shape better. 

This is last night's painting.  I should have stopped a bit earlier, since I did start to get a little fiddlely, but I was having too much fun. 

This might be a good way to thing about approaching the "base" layer of my paintings, since one of my bad habits is to delve into detail too quickly!

This pear is past it's prime and I think I need to buy another pear.  Mixing up Pthalo Blue (Green Shade), Hansa Yellow Opaque, and Quin Magena into the "dirty" yellow-green of a pear has added to the fun so far this week.    

A Series of Unfortunate Choices

A different person in the class committed to paining mugs all week and wasn’t thrilled about it.  I was actually a bit excited to try some new things, but was surprised by how much I struggled.  It was a tough week.  Time.  Drawing.  Composition.  Paint strokes.  Concentration.  You name it.

This may sound incredibly dour and negative, yet it’s actually not that bad.  It’s good to be painting again.  It’s good to paint a little every day, even on really busy days.  Last and most important, it feels like I learned a lot.

Here are this week’s paintings.

There are the paintings from class last week. 

I Am Not A Baseball

One of the pieces of citrus fruit I am painting is a mandarin and I got it because of the part on the top that looks like a little hat. The first time I tried to paint it, the hat did not work out. This time it went better and this one is not an orange baseball. 

It may sound a little woo-woo, but most (or all) of the time when I paint I think I’m just in my head/brain.  Since that’s where I am most of my life, I am trying to be more present by occasionally doing things like being aware of my feet on the ground and stuff like that.  When I was painting this one, I made a concentrated effort to stay more aware of my physical presence and also to consider the object that I’m painting in a different way.   

Here are the other two pieces to round out the week.

I almost always set things up in a particular way.  For this one, the fruit was placed on its side.

Class is today, so here is the last homework piece from yesterday.  I started down the path of too many layers in the orange and lost the individual paint strokes, which led to losing distinct parts of the shape. Rather than stop, I added layers that were more like washes.  

This week one of the things I enjoyed the most was working on mixing different colors of orange, in addition to just getting back to painting every day. 

Orange Baseballs

The last two nights, I have thought about the idea of painting while I'm also feeling connected and grounded right after I'm done painting for the evening.  Tonight, I am going to try remember to actually do that before I begin.  

Before we had two storm fronts that moved through and dumped a ton of snow, I purchased two different types of citrus to use as I practice.  I'm rusty, so I'm having some trouble building volume and shape.  As a result, I think these more closely resemble orange baseballs rather than my actual citrus subjects.  That's one of the bigger challenges.  

On a more cheerful front, I am enjoying mixing colors and playing with paint strokes.

It's also been good to get the area where I paint a little more organized. 

Blimey, It’s A Limey

Monday night after juggling, I really, really, really needed to paint. My head was buzzing and I thought that a 10-minute painting would be a good way to chill.

It was. Plus, I liked the end result.

Orange You Glad To See Me?

For my online painting class with Kat, it’s timed painting week. In the past in the classes I’ve taken in person, that’s meant doing a simple 10-minute painting. The official homework goes beyond that, but I kind of need the simple 10 minute paintings this week. For a warm up, I did 4 of them yesterday in one session. Usually, I hit my stride at about #3. Not yesterday! I completely lost my focus on #2 and #3, plus I had too much moisture in my palette for #2. It’s been challenging keeping a decent moisture level. The basement is cold, so I run a space heater in my painting area. That really dries things out!

I took a picture after I had worked on each one for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, I like the first one the best, except for the background stroke on the right hand side which is really distracting.

For all of them, I did a little additional work, although I gave up on #2 and #3. I like where I ended up with #4, which is the lower left-hand corner.

#312 - 10 minute paintings - 8" x 8" - paper

Not One Stroke Per Color

One stroke per color went out the door with this one. I painted this on Saturday.  When I need to focus more on building the shape, I abandon doing one stroke per color. This turned out more muted than I planned, but I got closer to the shape, including the top than I had.

#311 - Sumo Mandarin - 6" x 6" - paper

Tomorrow, I am taking a several hour drawing class during the day at Wet Paint. It's called "The Science of Seeing and Its Impact on Portraiture".  Part of the class description said "This class teaches the science and psychology of how our eyes and brain see and interpret visual information. It will also teach you why drawing errors occur and how we can use our bodies and time-tested techniques to draw more accurately", which is why I wanted to sign up for it.  For me, it's also a chance to rest and focus before his surgery on Thursday morning.  

I've been thinking about and trying to notice what and how I see. I copied the following from today's posting of a blog I follow.  The overall post is a big long and rambling, but it contained a lot of good stuff.  It was from an interview from On Being that Krista Tippett (not my favorite person in the world, but someone who does interesting interviews with people) did with Maira Kalman.   

"I absolutely think that a museum is one of the deepest places of meditation that there could be, maybe even more than a library, because you’re looking. In a museum, you’re not reading — I mean, you’re reading a little bit, but you’re basically just wandering and looking. And once again, the function of the brain, what happens to the brain is very different than, I don’t know, than being in a supermarket — even though I love being in a supermarket. So wait a minute. I love supermarkets. I love to look at all the packaging. To me, that’s a little bit like a museum. But that’s a digression. I think that we have the opportunity to understand silence around us, and really looking, all the time. There’s always the opportunity. And there’s never a lack of things to look at, and there’s never a lack of time not to talk."

I See

Yesterday morning, I started with painting the person looking out into the woods. After that, I bounced around. While I liked the person, I didn't like what I added after that.

I gessoed over the area of the path and walked away.

Last night, I went down to finish. Something clicked. I kept looking at the person thinking that he turned out and all I had to do was imply the shapes, values, and colors of the different parts of the person. I thought “why can’t I do that with the rest of the scene”. Why does my brain go into this whirling vortex of overdrive when faced with a whole rather than focused on one small part? After that, it felt like I got out of my own way and I could finally see things like how the path curved in the photo. The different parts and pattern were visible to me. While they were always there, I could finally start to see them. Even better when my hubby got home and I showed him the painting, he could identify the person I painted!

#226 - Looking Into The Woods - 6" x 6" - hardboard

Sometimes I feel like a need a better or an updated manual on how my brain and eyes work.

Stone Arch Bridge

The best type of day is when you have painted something that you like or mostly like. The next best type of day is when you've painted something you don't like, followed by the worst type of day when you haven't painted at all. This doesn't mean each day has to result in a finished painting, just that something painting-related occurred, since I have to keep reminding myself that painting does not include just the time you have paint on your brush.

This is today's painting. There is more that I like about it than I don't, which is a big deal for me for a landscape painting. The best part is that there is a background, middle ground and foreground. I don't know how it happened or how to try and do this next time. It might be a combination of the background greenery being really dark, plus looking to see the outline of the foreground greenery and trying to keep it distinct (thanks Kat for the feedback in last week's class).

The values seem truer to me than what I've been doing lately and that helps cover for the fact that some of my colors are off. I wish I would have made the lightest bits under the bridge a warmer color, but I fussed with this enough. At least, I can look at it and say "that should have been a warmer color". As far as the water is concerned, I'm trying to see different colors, so I picked a picture which had some readily apparent differences. While I don't like my paint strokes for the water, I do like them for the trees. At first, the bridge railings looked to fussy to me, but I'm starting to like them.

#225 - Stone Arch Bridge - 8" x 8" - paper

Warning - You Are Entering An Awkward Learning Phase

This is a warning to myself.

I decided to paint the comorant on a log. I tried to paint this last week in class and got myself to a frustrating place. For this new attempt, here is the value sketch.

Here is the painting.

#221 - Comorant On Log - 6" x 6" - hardboard 

My values are still off on this one, but it's better than the first attempt. The values are off the most in the water around the bird. My brain just goes into overdrive with trying to sort out values and colors at the same time, plus trying to figure out paint strokes to evoke shape and pattern. This is not a bad thing. While I wish I was farther along in what I know and what I can do, this is where I am at, currently.

One interesting thing I noticed this week is that I can't solely rely up on the IPad application, Notanizer, to help with values. This app has a function where it will show a picture with only 4 values. When I paint from pictures, I've been relying upon it, heavily. It's really helped when I am painting one subject (usually a cat) with a fairly simple background. For a more scene with more than two elements to it, 4 values is not enough. For example, the darkest water and the dark parts of the bird show up as the darkest dark in the app. In reality, the darkest parts of the bird are much darker. Duh, of course. The app still does help me "see" the lightest lights.

Speaking of values and perception, yesterday, it was interesting to see how my eyes captured a scene out a window versus what the camera saw or what my eyes saw through the camera.

I think all of this leaves me in an awkward learning phase. While I'd rather end up with paintings where I like more things about them than I don't, that's not the direction I am currently headed. I have mixed feelings about that. Of course, I would like to end up with something that I mostly like, but what I really find most compelling about painting is figuring out the process and the various problems which come up along the way. Plus, I feel like you have to be willing to paint (and also post, since I want to document the full journey) a lot of awkward paintings in order to paint better ones later.

For example, and as a reminder to myself, this was the cabin sunset in September 2016.

This was the cabin sunset in March 2018.

I believe if I keep trying, thinking and evaluating my work, and getting feedback from time to time I can continue to improve.

Painting #220

Paint #220 did not come into existence easily. First, it was started 3 different times and each time I tried a completely different painting. Abandoned attempt #1 was a vase with a flower and abandoned attempt #2 was a pepper cut in half. Neither of these will see the light of day. This is not a good trend or habit.

For my third attempt, I decided to try the homework exercise of painting something outside your window. This exercise brings up all sorts of insecurities. Plus, there are too many options and I really struggle with composition. Given all of this, I decided that I was going to find joy in this assignment, dammit.

I went around almost all of the windows of the house to see and think about what would be good to paint. I took a lot of pictures. Many of them were at weird angles. When I tried to crop them into a square, most of them did not work. Still it was a good exercise and I mostly enjoyed it. I also played with looking out the windows, looking out the window using a viewfinder, and looking out the window through the camera lens. It was interesting to see how that changed things. The picture which cropped the best had a cat in it. Many of my pictures had a cat in them, since each time I opened a new window one of the orange cats would appear. 

When it came time to paint, I decided that I would complete and present the finished painting no matter what. I also started with a thumbnail sketch. It would be better if I took a little more time and represented the values better, but at least doing/thinking about the sketch has me slowing down to try and see.

There was so much detail to figure out. I wish I was better at just focusing on the important items. Hopefully that will come with practice. At this point, I took an extended break.

Later in the day, I finished it.

#220 - Cat in Window - 6" x 6" - hardboard

While there are things I like about it, I am a tad annoyed that the window looks twisted. My drawing wasn't, but somehow in the execution I twisted things up a bit. There were a lot of decisions to make. The most confusing one was how to represent the side of the house peaking out between the lilacs. I don't like what I tried, but trying to fix it would have made it worse.

Conclusion - - This was a good exercise that stretched me in good ways.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I've had several productive and good weeks with painting. On Thursday and Friday, it felt as though I took two steps backwards and I was not happy about that. On Saturday, I lowered my expectations and just drew out something to paint the next day. My biggest problem has been that I've been tired...really, really tired. When I reach a certain point, my ability to evaluate shapes and values, mix colors, or make paint strokes goes down the tubes.

In addition to the normal day-to-day stuff of life, it's gardening season. On top of that, my household has been getting ready for a garage sale. My neighborhood had Garage Sale Days on Friday and Saturday this past weekend. It's an annual neighborhood tradition.  On Saturday, we had a what we called a reuse sale, since we were only charging 25 cents per item.  It was a lot of work getting ready and setting up for the sale, but it was a good way to put things back out in the world with people who will hopefully use them.

On Friday, my sweetie and I took the day off as usual. We have a tradition of wandering the 'hood and check out random sales. We have lunch while we are out and about. After lunch, I'm usually done. This year, that meant it was time to do more to get ready for our sale. This year I picked up an oak rocker for $2, which needs work, plus some artwork.

I knew that Michael Sweere lived in the neighborhood, but I didn't know where. Well, we stumbled upon his household's garage sale. He was selling some old oil paintings, mostly from the '90's for a ridiculously inexpensive amount and I purchased three of them. The bottom one makes me especially happy.

Plus, I got to meet him. He was working in his studio which is built onto his garage.

Now it's time to show my work.

#218 - Ella - 6" x 6" - hardboard

I got too fussy again. After this one, I decided that I need to start doing small thumbnail studies in order to think about composition and values. Even though my next subject was fairly simple, doing the thumbnail sketch first helped. Ever since I took the online drawing class last year, I've known that I should start doing thumbnails and I've been completely resistant to doing them. I've finally reached the point where I just need to add this to my process. I drew this out on Saturday and painted it yesterday.

#219 - Block Island Swan - 6" x 6" - hardboard

I forgot about my new resolve to do thumbnail sketches prior to painting and just painted today. The end result was not good and is going to be re-gessoed before it is ever shown. Must remember my new commitment to do a preliminary sketch first.

The Most Prolific Flower In My Yard

If you have 'em, you might as well use 'em.

#217 - Mug With Dandelion - 6" x 6" - hardboard

The background and mug were done with one stroke per color, which means there are a lot of strokes where the color did not change much or where the stroke was very   l    o    n    g. The flower was just painted (and painted over and over and over), plus I had to touch up the shadows with gesso. I'm not sure what's the best way to do a ragged-edged shadow of a flower.

This morning, this mug was sitting on my kitchen counter. As I walked by, I stopped to take a look. The values, shadows, and highlights were so much nicer than when I actively try to set up something to paint. Plus, there was a lovely reflection and the inner lip had a green tone to it. I suppose I could have set up a still life and painted it in place. Although, I'm not inclined to do that with cats in the house. Also, currently, I want to paint from life rather than from photos.

Stretch Goal

The lilacs are fleeting each year, especially when they are just starting to flower so that each clump contains both flowers and buds.

I did this painting in one sitting. It took 1 hour and 10 minutes and, yes, I did take several short breaks.

#216 - Lilacs in vase - 6" x 6" - hardboard

This painting was a stretch. While I don't mean to sound whiny, there were so many decisions to make, especially about how much detail to include. When I was done, the leaves were too close in value to the background, so I adjusted them. Now that it's finished, I can see things that I would do differently. Instead I am focusing on my growth, since 6 months ago it would have been much harder to tackle than it was today. Also, I painted this with the mindset that I was going to enjoy the process and just practice (take that internal critic).

Lastly, there is something magical about trying to paint a new subject for the first time. You are out there without any prior experience or preconceived notions, so you just have to start and go for it.