7 Days - got to plan ahead

Well, it's been a busy day, this is late, actually 12:30 a.m. and it's technically Tuesday, but I'm counting this as Monday since that is my Monday painting, I think I will have to plan on making 2 on the day before I plan on cutting matts, I had to cut matts today since I ran out, well, I was a very enthusiastic matt cutter, I cut for 4 hours, my back is giving me a fit from bending over the cutter, but, I won't have to cut matts for 2 weeks now.  I would have been ok but we had our Blue Moon meeting today, we get together every 2 weeks and with the impending storm, we decided to meet early (we usually meet on Wednesdays), so, I didn't get at the painting until 8:30, I really think I will do something that is easier next time, it won't be as complicated, I worked it and worked it, probably overworked it, but, it stands.

I decided to try something different, I have enjoyed those opaques so much, I decided to attempt the opaques on a mid-tone gray background, I have gray gesso so I coated the paper with that and let it dry, I decided to do a picture of a couple Great Great Aunts, of course I didn't get them looking quite as old as they looked in the photo, but who is going to know that but me, right?  It's not meant to be a portrait anyway, just a painting of two ladies in a park.  So, I didn't do wet in wet, I know, I usually do but with the gray I had to just jump in with the paint, it took me much longer than I meant it to so I'm not going to go into a long spiel of what I did, I just painted, and painted, I mushed and mushed, and painted and painted, started to get really tired so quit, maybe I'll get this perfected another time (or at least painted much faster), I won't make it if I have to take 3-1/2 hours to paint every one of these (all the others were done in about 2 hours).  I really intend to do the little one and then when I'm done with that one, work on a big one, the idea is to get me into the studio and painting, not to be the "be ALL and end ALL" of my painting each day.  So, I will find something a bit simpler or do it more simply, there you go, the key work SIMPLY.  Ok, now that I've done my talking, you probably want to see what kind of painting I did this time, so here it is, I'm not sure if I like this one or not, I will have to let it sit and look at it a little longer. 

5 days and 6 paintings later

Ok, now you are probably wondering why I have 6, isn't 5 enough in 5 days, well, yes it is but, tomorrow is Sunday and I do need to spend some time with my husband, he works long hours and we don't get much time together so I decided I would probably be painting 2 on Saturday, one for Sunday too.  I am going to try to do something other than landscapes, maybe I'll start that on Monday, we'll see.  But, for now I have 2 very cute little landscapes, one I've done before a little larger (and not square either), I started working with these opaques and I have enjoyed them, I usually use transparent watercolors, but I was introduced to the opaques in a workshop with Donna Zagotta, she works very opaque, very fun. 

Now, the first painting, the marsh, this is a little painting of a marsh at the Pierce Cedar Creek Preserve near Dowling (probably didn't spell that corectly, sorry), my friend and I went there to retrieve our paintings from a show that the South West Michigan Watercolor Society had there last year, then we went out and took lots of photo's around the place and this one was when we were on our way out.  I started it out wet in wet, as per, then went in and worked my way down the page, first the distant trees and then the water, I put the greens in the foreground in and after it was dry went back in and painted some opaque light blue over the water dry in the distance and wet in the foreground, I layered the darks over the mid-tone greens and then went back in with some opaque white for the highlight on the lily pads in the foreground, the last to go in was the little tree in the foreground and the weeds.

Now, the next painting, this one is very opaque, more so than the other 2, like the others, I started out wet in wet and then proceeded to kinda paint opaquely behind the tree shapes and once I got the tree shapes where I wanted them, then I put some mid value washes for the tree trunks, with opaques the paint dries darker, with the transparent it dries lighter.  I had to really layer and layer with this one, then in order to warm it up I put a thin transparent yellow wash over the grass in the sunlight, the tree trunks had to get darker too and so did the shadows of the foliage, I worked these back and forth not staying in one area long, I paint like that quite frequently, making dark and light adjustments as I work.  The foreground grass in the shade and the branches laying in the foreground were put in last, using some darks and then some opaques over that and finally some grass shapes, looks good to me.  Hope you enjoy them both.

On a roll now, day 4

Well, as per and, if you know me, you'd realize that my intentions are good but I'm a procrastinator, meant to get over to the studio this morning and crank out that little ole' painting, well, huh!  Guess what, took me the better part of the day but I did get there.

I'm very enthusiastic right now for these little landscapes, sure hope that I can move on to something else, but the facts are that I have lots of landscape photo's and not many of anything else, so for the time being (at least until I can come up with some other idea), I'm doing landscapes, I do want to do some more flowers but the landscapes just have me, I've really enjoyed working on these small paintings,  I started in October.  I gave a demo for the Hillsdale Art Guild and they wanted to work on some Christmas cards, so I worked up some small paintings to put on cards, I've been pretty happy with them and for time's sake, I'm working on them for this painting obligation I talked myself into (I am enjoying it though). 

The painting for today is a scene right on Hillsdale Road, not far from my Mother-in-laws home, I took it a couple years ago, the purple flowers against the golden fields was so pretty I couldn't resist it, this is the first time I painted it, I may do it again a little larger, don't know just yet.  Anyway, I decided to do some opaques this time, well, they don't say opaques but some of the American Journey paints are very opaque and I used some of those with some of my transparent ones, I think it worked out well.  As in my previous paintings, I started out wet in wet, I painted the sky with an opaque blue and dropped in some white to indicate some clouds, it isn't totally opaque since it was done wet in wet, but I thought it looked good, and I used a Mameri Bleu color Juan Brilliant, reddish shade for the golden fields I dropped in some yellow green mixed with an opaque gray about medium value to indicate the distant trees and as I moved forward I changed it to sap green with the same gray added.  In the foreground I used Mauve and added a bit of Quinacradone Red with some opaque white to make the purplish pink, as I moved to the foreground, I darkened the leaves of the trees with sap green and added mauve to darken it, this is almost straight with barely any water, to get the depth, then, with a rigger, I put in some branches and made some weed strokes at the very bottom edge, all in all, I think it was successful.  I hope you enjoy it too.

Day 3- Hanging in there, 1/27/11

I just finished the third painting, but you realize that so far I have had to produce a painting on all the days I teach, I'm tired just now, hopefully I get rested up tonight so I can concentrate on getting the 4th painting done early in the a.m.  I've been staying up too late, probably why I'm exhausted, so, it's not yet midnight, so must be good. 

I've done a painting today of one I did for the post card thing for Ella Sharp (the one I did the first day was one too), the reason is, I figure these are for me, I enjoyed the process with the post cards and I liked the subject matter so I just enlarged them a bit and painted them again, of course they aren't exact replica's since I can't do that (I'd get bored), any way, here goes, hope I can get it straight how I did it, not being funny, lol. 

I started out wet in wet, the violet color for the tree area and a mixture of yellow ochre with some violet in it (just a bit to gray it down) and I kind of painted the colors around the birds a bit, some of it bled in but not much.  After that dried, I got the shape of the birds better and then painted layers of the violet area to make it look like trees, I did do some charging in with some orange and yellow to indicate leaves, later I put some gouache mixed with the yellow and yellow ochre and some violet to attempt to make it look a little backlit, not sure if it pulled off or not but that's the way it is.  I tried to keep the foreground grasses simple since I want the focus on the birds, I just finished it up by looking at my reference photo, and fine tuned the Sandhill Cranes using cobalt blue with burnt sienna and some violet mixed in here and there, hard to tell you exactly since I just do it, sorry, they have a rusty red topknot and that was a little bit of cadmium red light (kind of red-orange), since the picture is pretty small it isn't extremely detailed but I think it comes across well, I like it.

Day 2 and all is well

Well, I managed to get the painting done, was a bit of a stretch, and now it's probably the next day, having a little difficulty with my computer (as per) and took me almost an hour to get here to (my computer wouldn't let me in), so anyway, I did get it done on Wednesday so it counts, my intention was to have it done before my class, but that didn't happen, I had to pick up my paintings from Ella Sharp (Blue Moon show), got back and the matt cutter was up so I decided to cut enough matts for the rest of this week, I want to keep on top of it, if I don't, it won't be pretty, trust me, I have a stack of stuff that needs matting and I haven't got to it again.  So, I had slightly more than an hour to work on my painting before I had to leave, obviously it didn't get done before class, so I came home and finished it after class, whew!  Glad I got it done, took about an hour, so I didn't get to take pictures of it in progress like I wanted to.  I will tell you how I approached this one though.  first I did the rocks in the foreground, the very first one is the one at the very bottom edge, then you paint it in (with light wash's), making sure to change colors constantly, the colors vary using cobalt blue to gray down burnt sienna and some yellow ochre and possibly some VanDyke Brown and maybe a bit of violet (any).  Remember, light wash changing on every rock, I overlaped the rocks one at a time.  Then I did the leaves in the middle top, with just a greenish wash, after I did that I didn't like how dark it was and went in and lifted some of the lighter areas and then floated yellow right on top.  Then the large rocks at the top with a blue/gray wash just for information to work up later, and I did fill in the water, with some sap green charged in with yellow ochre and floated some cerulean blue in spots, that was just a first wash, after I let that dry, I then went back in and painted darks in the background around the leaves negatively, and brought it down towards the water where it's dark and then floated cobalt blue in and let it fade out towards the water.  after that, it's put in some shading on the large background rocks to indicate leaf shadows with some cobalt blue and some purple (love that purple). and spattered and, kept at it until it made me happy, I know it may not be a show winner, but it is a painting and I was happy with the way it looked, hope you like it.

First Day - 364 to go

Here is my first day painting, I did paint this in class today, tomorrow will be a different story since my classes are in the evening and I am unable to paint for myself in that class (the reason for that is because most of the students are beginners and require more help).  I do intend to paint most of these in my studio, after all, that is the reason for this blog, to get me into the studio more than just those days of the week that I have to teach. 

I will explain this painting, I am really fond of painting wet in wet, I usually start most paintings wet in wet, although I did just paint the sky wet in wet for this one, this is the second time I painted this tree, the first time was last week painting those post cards for the Ella Sharp post card sale, I wasn't going to do it, I had made my mind up that it was a waste of time, then, all my friends decided to go to the Blue Moon over Michigan show at the Ella Sharp one last time on Saturday, well, they all had cards painted, so I couldn't be the only one that didn't so I painted like a mad fiend Thursday and Friday and came up with 10, I think I told you about that already.  Well, my friend and Blue Moon buddy, Susan Miller, decided to do a weekly blog I checked it out, now here I am blogging, it's a good thing, at least its about art and it will help me accomplish my goal of painting everyday.  Well, back to main subject, the painting, I wait for the paper to dry, very important in watercolor and that means bone dry, then it's wet on dry for the remainder, I like to gray down the greens with violet or purple, I never use green out of the tube, some watercolorists don't use the tube green but I find it convenient, then I mix it up with other colors, some dabs of orange here and there, some blue added to the greens for the background trees and I usually do the foreground grasses in dry brush, scraping sideways with the brush backwards (I know this looks strange, but it works).  I don't use masking very often, mostly I paint around the whites, I did do that a bit with the main tree trunks but then I did do some scrubbing out of portions, then, I am not adverse to using opaques, so I got into the gouache and painted layers of this with some of the transparent colors mixed in for the tree trunks and branches, I like it so I am happy with this one, I may or may not be happy with the others, maybe tomorrow I will try to try to do a couple step pics to give you more information on how I did it, oh yes, by the way, this painting is about 6" x 6".

Must get working

Getting to work

Well, I will get to work, my primary objective in this blog operation is to avail myself of positive work habits, I am hoping to accomplish a daily painting habit, I already paint 3 days a week but that isn't enough.  My primary objective is to paint a painting everyday, I know I can, I have it within me.  Thursday and Friday last week I set out to paint some postcards for the an event at the Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson (also where our Blue Moon over Michigan show happened to be from November 6th to January 22nd, sorry if you missed it), I started them Thursday and finished them Friday, 10 altogether, and I was very pleased with them, hope to sell them all.  So, I know I can, I will paint everyday and I will finish one everyday, starting January 25, 2011 until January 25, 2012, that should be at least 365 small, and hopefully, beautiful paintings, just now I'm loving the landscapes after doing the landscape show,  but I really am a flower painter, I have a lot of those flowers already in my head and don't absolutely have to look at them to paint them.  So, landscapes and flowers it is for one year at least, I might sneak in some figure work, we'll see.