Current Direction

What have I been up to, creatively?  I’ve taken two classes at Wet Paint that were both quite good and interesting in their own way.  One was about haptic drawing.  I can’t say that I “get it”, but I want to both explore my mark making when drawing and also the mindfulness component of it.  The mark making comes from the realization that I mostly do not like the lines that I draw, so I want to explore mark making and expand my mark making vocabulary.  After this class, I thought I’d start a practice of doing several of these per week and thought it would be an easy way to keep up a creative habit during a time of being busy, but that’s not how it went.  

I also took a two session class with Monica Fogg about color.  I got some good food for thought from this class.  In applying that, we did some studies of a simple scene where the point was not the scene, to make anything pretty, or to finish anything at all.  The point was to explore the impact of color in a somewhat structured way.  The exercise is somewhat mechanical, but Monica said (and it makes a lot of sense to me) that continuing to explore this scene in different ways with the things she taught will help with making better, or perhaps more deliberate, choices down the road.  

Here’s one of the studies using complementary colors and with a muted/low chroma and a scarcity of some high chroma.  In class, everyone else was using watercolors, but I don’t have the experience with those, so I used Neocolor II crayons.

Throughout the month and after the 2nd class last week, I just got too busy and was too tired to do much creatively.  That’s mostly due to the demands of work and that should start to let up a bit in a couple of weeks.  This has also impacted my gardening, since I’ve got seeds to start where it should have been better to start them several weeks ago and I really do want to get lettuce planted outside. 

On Thursday night, I was so fried that I didn’t even feel like myself, which is a horrible way to feel.  I went down to my art corner in the basement and just played.  I did that again last night.  I started to play around with watercolor, which normally would have been a terrible idea since I really don’t know what I’m doing but instead I had fun and it did help to cleanse my brain. 

This morning, I went down to explore roundish things with watercolor.  The orange was first.  Next up was the apple.  The pear was last.  I should have quit before I started the pear, since I was getting tired and I think that shows.  It’s a challenging medium, but I had fun exploring.  

I need to use less water and I also need to use more patience!

For the next several weeks, I think I want to work on some more color schemes and also to play with watercolor.  Maybe, I’ll also try to do several haptic drawings. 

What I Have Been Up To Lately

Saturday was the first of 4 weeks of taking Suhita Shirodkar’s class called People Alive. The class is on Zoom and she is a well organized and good instructor. The first week is about capturing silhouettes and adding details with an emphasis on less being more. You would use these types of people in the back of a urban sketch. It’s a continuation on my overall project to work on figuring drawing. 

I only play with watercolor occasionally and it's been at least 12 months since I've picked them up, which has added some additional challenges. In Saturday's class, there were 3 building blocks to the overall concept we were learning, which means I can focus on one new building block for 2 days before moving on. This is the best example I have so far of a simple silhouette with some details added. Tomorrow's new concept is to work in more than one color.

Yes, it's an elderly couple leaning towards each other and walking together. 

The other thing I've been up to is tearing down paper for pamphlets and finishing several pamphlets.  Both of these are approximately 8” x 6” with one in "portrait mode” and one in “landscape mode”. Both contain Arches Text Wove paper. The covers were made from a full sheet of linen card stock paper. The texture mostly comes from several layers using bubble wrap. 

I don't think I've ever met a bright color combination that I don't like.

I Just Don't Get It

I just don't get watercolor as a medium. That's okay, since it also gives me the freedom to just play. This morning I decided to make a "thank you" to my yoga studio for doing classes online through Zoom meeting.

Gratitude - 9" x 12" - watercolor - paper

The classroom space has been set up with a camera, mic, and so on, so they can show the instructor live for classes. It's been so helpful to continue to be involved with this community. The studio is close to my house, so I am going to tape this on their window, where they can see it when they look outside the classroom window. On the bottom of the painting, I attached a small strip of paper and wrote "Thanks for going on-line". There are a lot of members who are within walking distance of the studio and I like the idea that the studio won't know which one of us did this.  

Before everything shut down, I went to Wet Paint and purchased some supplies, including masking fluid. I used artist tape to make the squares, but used the masking fluid to keep some unpainted areas in the rest of it.

Not Much To Share

My art-making has not been occurring daily, but I have been drawing and/or painting here and there. I  don't have much to share. Currently, I am working on an 11" x 14" painting on paper. It's one of those that I feel more like I'm fighting with than creating. I've painted over sections. While I am determined to finish it, it won't get posted here. As negative as this may sound, it's been good to paint large for a change.

Last night, I did pull out my watercolors and just did an imaginary pear, as an excuse to play.There are a lot of layers in this. I played around with essentially making hatch marks with the tip of a round brush when the painting was still damp and liked the effect.

That led to going back to an earlier pear and layering over that one and playing off to the side.

I still don't get this medium, but will have a chance to play with it when I'm out of town for a week starting on Thursday. It's easier to bring watercolors on a plane.

Cross hatching in the drawing side of the world has not been enjoyable. I think I am stretching too far outside my abilities, so it's time to take several steps back, since I am determined to learn.

At lunch time, I watched one of Alphonso Dunn's videos. He has a lot of them. I have watched a few in the past and they are good. I just don't always have the patience to sit and watch. Anyway, I think I'm going to trying drawing objects as their most basic shapes and experiment with cross hatching in the basic shapes to get better at the mechanics of cross hatching and seeing how to follow the shape / form of an object. There's no pressure to draw the object, just the shapes within the object and there's certainly no pressure to finish a drawing.

For painting, I could use some sort of focus, but I think that will have to wait until after I'm back from next week's trip and the MONDO juggling and unicycle festival is done.  

I Did It!

I kept up with my pledge to paint a watercolor pear each day for most of November. I am back to carving out time each day to make art, which is the best takeaway. The next best one is that it got me playing with watercolor.

On those days, I could get out of my own head and do rather than think, I had better results. This, literally, was hard to do. It was a bit of a fraught month with family issues, but it also was a problem inherent to me with this medium. Having to wait for things to dry gives me too much time to start thinking and I would find myself picking up the brush when it would have been better to sit, wait, and let things be for awhile.

Over the course of the last month, I've frequently walked away thinking that less really is more. Most of the time, I found (and continue to find) myself doing more, more, and more. Eventually, I hope to find my way to less. For example, my favorite pear is here. I tried to emulate this one again, but never could. This one just happened in the moment.

Since I haven't posted for awhile, here are several pears from the week of Thanksgiving. I did not have an actual pear. I was working from "memory". From these, I can see a bad habit of making things too symmetrical. This also happens to me when I work from life of a picture. That said in the top one and in some of the other ones farther below, I got better at capturing the top of the pear, so that it was in a different plane than the body.

I was gone over Thanksgiving. Once I got back, I had access to actual pears again. These are from last night. I've been in a bit of a rut. Last night, in the last few minutes of painting, I made a conscious effort to let go and just explore in the bottom one.

This morning, I made another conscious effort to try and stay loose and ended with this one. It's a good ending to a fruitful (tee hee) month.

I like that it suggests pear rather than screams it.

Where does that leave me? Ready to paint something besides pears, although I am going to do 1 - 2 in acrylic paint to see what happens. I am going to start watching this on line class. Having played with watercolor on my own, I think I'm ready for it. I purchased it several years ago and while it is for all abilities, I think I will get more out of it now. Otherwise, I don't know, but I am committed to keeping up the daily habit.

FIve Mintues

That’s all the time I had this morning.

The rest of this week will be one for working fast. I think I’ll try to use less water the next time.

Backgrounds

While there's nothing exciting with these backgrounds, I did one where I started with the background.

I did one where I ended with the background. I like the brighter, clearer colors of this one. Plus, the reds are sharper both on purpose and from working with another color. You can get nice reds by mixing Pyrrole Orange and Quinacridone Magenta.

A Pair of Red Pears

It’s still watercolor pears and will be through the upcoming holiday.

They look so different from the time they are mostly dry to really dry. I keep getting surprised by that and, frequently, add more paint. Sometimes I like it better afterwards.  Sometimes, I don’t. It’s a different situation than the one in my last post.

Since I’ve been doing so many pears, I haven’t been posting all of them, but I’m also trying not to cherry pick (or pear pick) the best ones. I want to show the good, the bad, and the so-so on this blog.

Stop, Stop, Stop, Just Stop!

Sometimes, or a lot of the time, I need someone to say "stop, stop, stop, just stop".

This morning I worked on both a quick painting and a household task. In alternating between the two, I was able to let the painting partly dry, so I wasn't working in too wet of an environment. I worked quick, sweet, and simple with a background where I removed paint and added back layers, so I had 3 distinct values. 

All was well, until................I decided that I needed to make one change. This caused something I didn't like, which led to another change, and another, and another. It end up okay, but I think it was better before I fell down this rabbit hole.

Take Away, Put Back

I did a background, mostly let it dry, took away a vague pear shape, and rewetted the background (to try to fix something). Since everything was still wet at this point, I added color to the pear to see what would happen.

Playing around with watercolor this way makes me feel a little like a kid playing with fingerprints.  Although, I would also say that working with watercolor is an experiential reminder that we have less control than we think we do in watercolor, in life, in everything.

Emerging From The Shadows

I think I've tapped into something with these backgrounds and mostly removing, rather than adding. It's like something previously hidden is stepping out into the light.

Gentle, Gentle

I am not known for being gentle, gentle. This phrase comes from an annual occurrence at Christmas time. No matter how carefully the lights for the tree are packed up in the prior year, they are always a tangled mess when it’s time to put them on this year’s tree. Inevitably when I am trying to untangle them, my spouse will give me that kind, but cautionary, look and say “gentle, gentle”. It makes me smile at the time and throughout the year when it pops into my thoughts when I realize that a situation needs a little gentle, gentle. By the way, he usually gets to be the one to finish untangling the lights.

I am continuing the new watercolor background experiments. I played with a second sheet that I set up like the first one, but the background color was harsh. It got in my way and I don’t like what I did with it or how it turned out.

This one was done in the hand bound book I made from Roz’s online class. I stared with a light outline of a pear in pencil. It’s not a watercolor paper, so I couldn’t lift any color in the dried background. While the color changed in the area where I rewetted, none of the color came up. For a change, I stayed gentle, gentle with adding color, didn’t overwork, and let the water do its thing. I liked the finished product in person much better than the picture.  I like the outline. It’s a combo of the pencil lines and how the watercolor settled. The fact the pear is floating is making me a little crazy, but I think it’s better to leave it, as is.

A Grand Experiment

There's a saying that goes something like "if you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you've always got". While I've been working on watercolor pears everyday, I've been in a rut and needed a different direction to explore.

When I went to Monica's class, she had one example that was more an impression of a pear, rather than a pear. If you looked at the painting, it's like the pear emerged from a fog or something while you were looking at it. I wish I would have slowed down, looked at it more carefully and either tried to figure out what she did or just asked her. In any event, thinking about that pear inspired me to try something new.

What I did was paint some backgrounds of different colors. On some of them, I took away color in the vague form of a pear shape before the background was fully dry. On some of them, I let them fully dry.

For today's completed experiment, I look one background where I removed paint in two places and played further. On the left side, my intention was to just leave it, except for adding a shadow and a stem. I couldn't help myself and I did some light washes of color. On the other side, I played with adding more background.

I'm saving the other backgrounds for the next several days.

With this first experiment, I ended up with a darker edge of color. While I like the effect and  how it outlines the pear without being obnoxious about it, it makes me very curious about what Monica did with her painting.

Fussy Versus Simple

Today, I started a pear painting in the morning by putting down a layer. Much later in the afternoon, I went down and finished it. This is the fussy pear.

While I was working on it this afternoon, I played around on a bigger piece of paper doing just the outline or a simple version. Here’s a partial view. The shape of the one in the upper left-hand corner worked, so it got a simple stem and shadow.

However, I like the following one the best. It was done on the same piece of paper, which is why there’s a stroke from a different, abandon pear going through the stem. It was quick and easy with 3 values and I think it reads as well as the ones I work on for a long time. There’s a place for both kinds and I am having fun exploring!

Overworked

Frequently, I dismiss something I’m not pleased with as overworked. It’s been a blanket term as in “oh, that’s overworked”. I haven’t thought about the distinct problems inherent in overworking. Things like losing freshness and/or edges and ending up with muddy colors. So instead of the general dismissal, It would be better to accept the invitation to go deeper and do a little evaluation.

So after this preamble, you might think my next piece was a disaster, but it wasn’t. I am happy with the end result, as well as what I learned while painting it. However, it got me thinking about overworking, because I came close to that tipping point, but didn’t fall off the cliff.

I easily could have stopped working on it sooner and probably should have, but I don’t think it’s overworked because of there are edges. Also, the background was done with a light hand versus really, really, really working on, layering in, and taking out color in the pear, so there’s some variety. Lastly, the colors didn’t end up all muddy. This is thanks to my friend who was over yesterday afternoon painting with me and to my hubby who was cleaning the gutters out. I took frequent painting breaks to visit, make tea, or help the hubby move the ladder, so I let things dry.

I Was Patient, But I Got Tired Of Waiting

One of my favorite quotes from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, comes from the character of Anya. It goes along the lines of title of this blog post. This quote sums up my relationship to watercolor and to many, many other aspects of how I approach life.

I have been starting each day with a watercolor pear. It's been a blast, but I think I use too much water. After that, there's the problem of patience. There's a point where it's best to let things dry. I try to wait, but I get inpatient. I'm not showing the "best" examples of too much water + not enough patience.

Instead, here is one is on meh paper. In the paper hierarchy, there's crappy paper, meh paper, and good paper. Meh paper is better than crappy paper, but is not as good as good paper. It's amusing to me how much I enjoy using less than ideal watercolor paper to try and learn watercolor.

I'm using using my hand-bound book, which has good paper. Here's one from that. 

The best part is that it feels great to be back to making art on a daily basis. 

Day 2 Disaster!

This is not the internal critic speaking. This is a curious soul who is wondering why initial progress in learning is so frequently followed by disaster. In a recent post, I mentioned that after a successful run of a new or difficult juggling pattern, the next several runs are fall apart immediately. I've noticed the same thing with art. From Saturday's class and the start of "a pear a day", I could see something that I wanted to explore or build upon. When I went to paint a pear yesterday morning, let's just say that it did not go well.

11/04/19 - Pear

I think this shows that I had left the place of the beginners mind, where you can stay open and curious, to letting the everyday mind (or at least my everyday mind) start down the path "aha, I think I can do this" or focusing on the result or something like that. I can feel it better than I can explain it, but it's way more autopilot versus being fully present and curious. Of course, disaster ensues. The mind is such a tricky thing. I didn't start out intentional or deliberate. The next time, I am going to try, try, try to set the intention before I begin that I am exploring a process and new medium.

In the meantime since I was working from home, I took a break mid-morning and played on crappy paper with more openness and curiosity.

A Pear A Day For Most Of November

One and a half years ago, I took Roz's bookmaking class for simple round spine books. So far, I have made one and only one book, despite intentions to the contrary. Worse yet, I've used about 5 pages in that book.

After Saturday's class, I've decided to do 20-30 days of pears in watercolor in this book. Pears come in such lovely colors and they have appealing shapes.

I want to start more of my days with art-making. I want to play with watercolor. I want to be exploratory not exact. I want to paint pears. I want to use my book. I want to see what happens.

11/03/19 - pear

For now, I'm probably using too much water and not letting things dry. My guess is that people with more experience with this medium would be horrified. I don't care. I think the blotches are kind of pretty and I'm having creating and exploring with them.

Beginners Mind

Yesterday, I spent the day in class at Wet Paint. The class was Gestural Watercolor with Monica Fogg. She was an affirming, generous instructor and has a background in teaching art. It was a lovely day.

I lucked out getting into the class. It had filled and I was put on the wait list. On Thursday, I found out I was in. That may have contributed to how I approached class. There wasn’t time to overthink things. So on Saturday morning, I decided to leave the internal critic at home, along with any anxiety or insecurities. This has been a year with a lot of change and growth and I decided this class was a gift for myself and I was going to have fun, learn what I could, and embrace whatever happened. All of this led to the perfect combination of approaching this class with beginners mind.

While there weren’t any extreme cases in the other participants, it made me a little sad to hear other people’s comments which made it clear that their internal critic, anxieties, or insecurities had accompanied them to class. Been there. Done that. Know what this can look like and sound like. I wish I could push flip a switch for myself and for other people just make this go away forever.What a gift that would be to myself and to others.

Anyway..........I had a lovely day. We did some different exercises, which included mixing up colors  you might find in a green pear or a red pear. I went a little crazy and filled about 1/3 of the sheet initially. At lunch, I filled the rest of the page. My color mixing was intuitive. When I had a splash of color, I’d mix some other color into it, just to see what would happen.

We did some other exercises and, after that, it was time to spend some quality time with pears. One great thing I learned is that you can play around with watercolor on less than great paper. My 3 stroke pears and the ones below were done on a crappy 85 gsm paper, which I have, but don't enjoy drawing on. I’m thrilled that I can use it up as warm up paper for playing with watercolor. For the 3 stroke pears, I was being very literal. Monica noticed that when she was checking in on participants and suggested using a brush with water to move the paint around. That didn't count as an additional stroke. In the 3 stroke pears, no one thought about or represented the negative space. When we were given up to 10 stroke pears, Monica mentioned negative space and people started to consider it.

At first, I was unhappy when the end of the stem bloomed into the top of the pear, when I let two wet parts touch. Later, I decided I liked it. Overall, this class and approach is a fun way to explore watercolor. Since you are more exploring the idea of something rather than a true representation, it's easier to let go and let the medium do a little (or a lot) of what it wants.

For one assignment, we practiced some simple thumbnails. If you were happy with one of the scenes you set up, the next assignment was to paint it or you could set up something different. There were apples, squash, gourds, or pears to choose from. For my thumbnails, I had a larger scene, but when I went to paint I focused on two pears which seemed to have a lovely relationship. They weren’t holding each other up, but they seemed to be there for each other.

I lost any gestural aspect and overworked it, which also meant that there’s not much value range. This may sound like the internal critic speaking, but it’s not. When I was working on this, I was in the moment, in the zone, and in a place of enjoyment and learning.

I tried a second set up, but didn’t get very far with it. The group was circling up for another round of comments and feedback. For the last assignment, we could do whatever we wanted to. I decided to try and be more gestural with a pear and to be clearer about light, medium, and dark values.

It was a really, really great day and I think this class got me out of my art-making-avoidance funk. Slowly, it’s been lifting, but as of yesterday it’s dissipated and is gone. Hurrah!

Drawing And Watercolor

If I don't document, I can't go back and compare where I was at various stages in the journey!

Currently, drawing has been less of a focus, although I still drawing everyday. Most times, it's right before bed and I'm just drawing something in the house which caught my eye. Most nights (unless I am really tired!), I pick something which allow me to work on capturing the relationship of multiple things to each other or the parts of a complicated thing to itself. Truthfully, I'm not doing much measuring or checking of angles and most of the time, I don't finish the drawing. Ever so slowly, I see improvement in my eyes and hand working together better.

On the watercolor front, I am being stretched. The class is really, really good. I am learning tons, but  I can't really do any of it, yet. Here is what I did for the most recent exercises. We were doing small, simple value studies. The top two pages were from pictures the instructor provided. The bottom one was from a picture I took of Split Rock Lighthouse. 

It is going to sound silly, but the idea of the idea of doing an entire scene in these exercises (even in a simplified form) filled me with angst. However once I was done, it unlocked something in my brain which caused me to be in the right frame of mind to see things differently on my ride to work early this week.