Painting #294 - Nov 14 - An interesting day

I've been collecting acrylic paints for quite some time, so, today I decided to attempt to work with them in a watercolor and gouache way. I have been painting with the gouache this past year (I still will be painting those and the transparent colors too), but my friend Susan has been very intrigued with these for a long while, so I'm trying them, I wanted to work with them over the weekend but that didn't work out, so, today seemed like a good day to try, over the weekend I did get the palette set up, so it was ready and waiting, I decided to work with these on watercolor paper, in keeping with my watercolor passion, plus the fact that most watercolor art competitions will allow acrylics as long as they are painted on paper. I had always thought that acrylics were really a replacement for oils, but I don't think so anymore, I did have a bit of trouble getting it to flow off the liner brush, even adding water didn't work really well, but maybe that is because of the 300 lb paper I was working on, this painting is a bit larger than my usual and it did take me a couple hours longer, but that's not all bad, I did enjoy working with them in this watermedia way.

I started this out wet in wet, I drew the basic shapes of the trees and the water and then wet the top half and worked on that, then wet the river area and painted that and then the foreground left side, I let that dry, then I started with the background trees and went in with thicker paint and just built it up, to about 1/2 the finished value. The water was a fairly flat area and I didn't get too carried away with changing the value except on the lower right side, I did go in and put the warm reflection areas in at this time too. then I filled in the left side, I really brought up the left side first, not my usual way, but that's how it worked, that was almost done before I jumped into the background, and put a bit more information there, then I switched to the water and finished that, it was darker to light in this instance, that's pretty much how I do the gouache too. I like this little painting and will probably do more, so I'm hoping that you like it too.

Painting #293 - Nov 13 - Got another late start, it is Sunday, after all.

Well, I never manage to get these paintings done early, I'm thinking it's because I'm really a night\ owl, I can stay up late, and I have a hard time getting up early in the morning, I really think it takes all kinds to make this world go around, so it's ok. This painting is of a flower, again, and it's small, so I could get it done in time, I do need to get some sleep, I have a busy day tomorrow, and I'm thinking it's going to be a busy week, my cousin from Milwaukee is coming next week-end and I have to clean house, but I'm not going to be home much, so one day, I will have to really get after the cleaning, I have a tendency to let the housework go, not the greatest housekeeper, never have been and probably never will be, I get by, when it jumps out at me, I clean it.

I really would have liked to get over to the studio today, but that didn't work out, so I made do with the dining room table, I bought a special daylight to set up so I get the correct lighting, I have a couple of those at the studio too. My house has lots of windows, but, for some reason (I think it's because I'm getting old and things look darker), I don't see as well as I used to, so the light does help.

These flowers are very unusual, I made up this composition from a photo, the photo only had the one bunch of flowers but I felt that the pink needed to move around the painting a bit, I really stylized these, I've been leaning toward some abstraction, at least a bit, I'm not sure that I can go totally abstract, but I'd like to do some more, I know, I've done some, but I don't feel comfortable with that yet, I'm feeling that I need to work toward something here and I'm not sure what, but the abstraction is intriguing, I've been buying several books on that subject and some do actually give you a way to start, by abstracting the reality that I'm used to, so this may be another step in my painting evolution, let's hope so, I don't want to do the exact same stuff all the time, and I don't want to copy someone else, but using someone else's ideas and pushing it my way does appeal to me, we'll see, but for today, I'm just getting a little abstract, not much, but something. I like this little painting and I hope you do too.

Painting #292 - Nov 12 - got a late start but happy with the results

The day started out pretty good, I got over to the studio about 12:20 or so, and, because it was a mess, I moved stuff around and organized the main room (my class room), put stuff away, moved the frames and framing stuff into the back room so it wasn't taking up so much space, then I decided to do some color swatches of my pastels, I just ordered some new ones (I've had lots of pastels, I used to just paint pastels and only painted the watercolor when I went to workshops), but my main pastels were Rembrandt, I've drooled over the schminke pastels, but couldn't afford them, and the Senellier pastels, so I ordered some half stick sets and decided that I just had to do the color swatches, so I did all of them every one I had, when I was done with that, I started a painting, of course it was then time to cook supper, so I didn't get to work on it again tonight, so, I got the one out that I had half done (that's what I thought, except that I re-did the whole thing), so it took me a bit longer than I intended, but it's done and now I don't have to look at the blobs anymore.

I've been looking at this painting for 3 weeks, I started it at the paint out with PAAWM at Rawson's King Mill in Leonidas. This was the first one I started, but the cows weren't cooperative, so I gave up on it and painted across the lake, I really wasn't happy with much of it, I have re-painted the whole thing, I changed the sky, it was too busy, I re-vamped the house, I re-did the pasture, I re-did the cows, and I re-did the pond and trees. I really got in to doing the pasture, when I started to negatively paint the light instead of painting the dark shadow, before I did that I really changed the sky and house, I added a field in the far distance then put in the trees at the house level, after I got the pasture like I wanted, I worked on the cows, they were just blobs before, now they look like cows, then I worked the pond, the water was so still that it looked stilted, so, I rippled it a bit and made the reflections wave a bit, then to cover up the reflection of the tree in the foreground I added some close up weeds, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.

Painting #291 - Nov 11 - A bit of an organizational day

Not that I'm organized, far from it, but, my art books were is such a sad state, I had them stacked every which way, and if I tried to find one particular book, well, forget that, I am terrible about art books, I really have a hard time when it comes to books, especially art books, I think I have over 600, I'm pretty sure of it, well, I have a book shelf at the studio (so I can access them while I'm working), well, I'm good at getting them out but putting them back, well, they get shoved and stacked instead of inserted, know what I mean? So, I got that a bit organized, and got my pastels out, want to do something with those for a while tomorrow, so much I want to do and I seem always to run out of time, well, I'm going to try, maybe have a pastel tomorrow, who knows.

Today, I decided to do the floral again, love this peony, I have some of the old fashioned ones (not the double ones), but they are pink, these are a creamy yellow, the sun was shining so brightly that the edges looked white, love it, I did paint this in about an hour, it's on 4" x 4" aquabord, it mixed the yellow with white to get the shape of the flower, I really started with placing the center of the flower then started laying in the petals, the middle tone green was floated around the flower, then I negatively found the leaves by painting some darker green around the flower, the petals were enhanced by some yellow mixed with some pink and gray green, then I went in with white and lifted the petal edges, then pulled the white in ripples pulling it toward the center, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.

Painting #290 - Nov 10 - almost cut off more than I could chew

I was really into painting this portrait, but, I always want it to look like the model, this time it's my Aunt Margaret, I worked on it most of the afternoon, and then about 3-1/2 hours after I got home, it's late and I'm going to make this short, this is done on a 12" x 12" watercolor canvas, with the opaques, so I struggled to get the lights light enough, I think I may try this one one more time, but, not tonight, I'm exhausted, got to get to bed, busy day tomorrow and looks like all next week, so I like this little painting, and I hope you do too.

Painting #289 - Nov 9 - Another demo painting

This time I was demonstrating for the Sturgis group, they liked the last leaves I did and thought they would like to try that, the original painting I started this afternoon was too big, and too complicated to finish, I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow, it's another portrait, this time my Aunt. I have admired the pose for several months, with no intention of painting it, but, the Tibbits Gallery hung the newest themed show, "Eat Drink and be Merry", and I decided to paint it for that, but, alas, I didn't get enough time to finish painting it, mostly because I had to prepare for class tonight, which meant that I had photo's to get around and copies to make, the only trouble is that my word processing program seemed to loose the connection that allows it to insert photo's, I struggled for over an hour trying to shut the computer down, re-starting it, I tried to go to the website and download the update, that didn't work several times, then I finally decided try to re-load it, but that didn't work either, so I had to remove it and re-load it to finally get it to work, I don't know if it's this computer or I'm just unlucky, but, I finally got it done, but then I only had an hour to paint, so the demo painting is my blog painting tonight, I finished it in about an hour and a half after I got home.

This is painted on 1/4 sheet of 300 lb. watercolor paper, and, for the most part, is painted transparently, I did use a bit of the opaques, mostly on the turnbacks (where the leaves roll over), turnbacks is a china painting term. So, this is basically a wet-in-wet painting, even though we just painted the wet-in-wet one leaf at a time, the detail was put in wet on dry at the end, the background was done one corner at a time, of course, wet-in-wet, and the shadows were put in wet on dry and then the edges wiped with a damp brush to blend, I like this painting (which are the same leaves as last time but a different grouping), and I hope you do too.

Painting #288 - Nov 8 - lots of fun today

After watching the demonstration last night at SWMWS (watercolor club), my friend Carol thought that it would be a great idea if I would demo what we learned last night during our local watercolor class, well, mine doesn't look exactly like Don's, but it was really fun to do, he says that he usually starts out by making a value study, well, I skipped that part, I probably would have done better if I had done a value study, I do like to do them, but, the class was all primed for me to paint, so, I found a photo in my bag that had some colors and a house, enough to get me going, of course, I changed the shape of the house and I didn't see a barn, but it really kind of needed the barn, so I improvised a barn, well, this was so much fun, I just got carried away, Don, you do yours, your way, and I'll do mine, my way, I really enjoyed the little added things that made it for me, like the orange branches at the top of the trees and some of the little other things I did to pull it together for me, like the drive way, this was a lot of fun, all bright colors, straight from the tube, basically, the paint was really thick and straight onto dry paper, thinking of the color, you have to make sure you don't put orange and blue straight together, they would make brown, but buffer it with some green and then yellow then to the orange, really works, the part that really got me was when I figured out how to make it mine, like the branches, he used just a flat brush, but I did change that out and use a liner, I like the feel of the liner and so I used one. the windows in the house and some stuff that was leaning on the house, the drive, and then the boards on the barn and the standing seam roof, like I said, I really loved painting this and I hope you like it too.