An experiment

I recently had an opportunity to buy some velour paper from a different manufacturer. There were a variety of colors including a bright orange. I bought a number of sheets of the tan, blue, and gray that would most typically be used with pastels and I also got some dark brown and some orange. The orange intrigued me because I wondered if you could get the same sort of luminous results with pastel on orange paper that Robert Warren achieves with his orange canvases. I played with the orange paper a little. These eggs are certainly not finished, but I did enough to figure out that for some subjects, the orange paper just might work. More playing is required, though. The eggs are actually more colorful than they appear in the photo. My scanner picked up a lot of the orange undertone and ignored the blues to a large extent. Watch for more.

Friday

The daily painting yesterday was a dud, so I didn't choose to post it. When you are doing a little something like this every day, you are bound to end up with a few stinkers along the way. Today, I went back to one of my favorite subjects--vessels. This is a little white pitcher that was in my cupboard. It is done on velour paper in pastel. The size is about 7x9. The pitcher was sitting on my kitchen table and there are two windows in the room. This is why you see light falling on both sides of the pitcher.

Same Design, Same Surface, Different Palette

This rose is one of my favorite designs and it is very adaptable. I have done it in watercolor, oil, and colored pencil. Here is an example of how you can take the same design, change the palette and still get a beautiful end result. Both of these roses are painted using colored pencil on suede mat board. In each case, the color of the mat board dictated the colored pencil palette that was used to paint the piece. Both were developed using the underpainting technique with Prismacolor Premier pencils. The pink rose was underpainted with Indigo Blue. The yellow rose was underpainted with Violet which is the complimentary color to yellow.

A White Poinsettia

At our last watercolor class for the season, we painted a red poinsettia Christmas Card. While I was giving the preliminary instructions, one of my students asked what you should do if you wanted to paint a white poinsettia. While they were working along on their red flowers, I decided to paint my sample with a white flower.

You might remember from previous discussions that white is not white. In order to give a white object form and dimension, you must use color. Also, the original design for this card had no background. It did not need one. However, a white poinsettia on white paper will disappear, so I added a background.

You can see that the colors I used on this piece were Ultramarine Blue, Violet, and Gamboge. The leaves were developed with Sap Green and tints of the other colors were added. There is no doubt that this poinsettia is white. But just look at how colorful it is!

Today's work

I had an entire day to spend in my studio today. I worked on two new paintings. This one is a portrait of my dog. She is a Lakeland Terrier named Windy. The painting is on 5x7 gesso board. So far, I have completed the underpainting. I am using Robert Warren's technique for the underpainting which is to basecoat the surface (canvas or board) in orange acrylic and then complete the value scale painting in black acrylic. Tomorrow I will begin work on the color.

A Study Method

I have reached a new place in my painting life with regard to study. For a lot of years I have religiously taken workshops with a variety of teachers. This has involved traveling to the workshop locations, hotels, meals, the cost of the workshop, supplies, etc. I have benefited from all of these experiences, but there is a cost associated with all that learning. A couple of weeks ago an artist friend told me that I should just work through some of the books in my extensive library and use those books as my teacher. Once I have learned the techniques and approaches that one "teacher" is using, move on to another book. You can also make use of some of the videos that are out in the world (and in my library as well). She recommended starting with the Helen van Wyk books that I already own.

Interestingly enough, the Robert Glen Twice Weekly Newsletter was written on the subject of having a personal coach. His recommendation was almost exactly the same as the advice my friend gave me. Use books and videos and paint for a couple of hours every day.

I don't necessarily need to be hit over the head with a bat to recognize that when you get the same advice from multiple unrelated sources in a short period of time, the advice is probably valid. So, I am working through my Helen van Wyk books. I may not do everything in the books, but I will pick and choose the things that most appeal to me. The objective is to learn how she did what she did and be able to apply the principles to my own work. At the same time I will be working on projects that are purely my own.

Here is a painting done in water mixable oils with an underpainting in Burnt Sienna acrylic. It is a study of silver. It is based on a painting from Helen van Wyk's Welcome to my Studio. Helen did not always use an underpainting and when she did, it was a grey scale rather than Burnt Sienna. Practicing using an underpainting makes you think about value placement without having to worry about the color. Once the underpainting is done, then applying the color on top is relatively quick and easy.

New Technique--to me

How time flies! I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted anything. September has been a busy month.

Last week the Town and Country Decorative Painters hosted a 3-day seminar with Connie Parkinson. She came in a couple of days early and spent some time with me playing in my studio. It was a joy to have someone to paint with. We painted from 9am until 1:30am the next day and only stopped long enough to eat our lunch and dinner.

The paintings we did used an underpainting technique. They were painted on gesso board. The design was first painted in Burnt Sienna acrylic paint using a bit of water to thin it when we needed to created lighter tones. The result was a sepia-like painting. This technique is like grisaille (pronounced gris-eye) in which an underpainting is done in shades of gray. Once the underpainting is completed, the painting is completed with oil paints. In this case, we used the water-mixable oils.

The advantage to using Burnt Sienna rather than shades of gray for the underpainting is that Burnt Sienna is a warm color and puts life into the painting. All oils are somewhat translucent so whatever color is underneath will influence the finished work.

Here is one of the pieces we painted. This bowl of grapes is painted from a photo that appeared in Gourmet magazine in 2002. I loved the photo and wrote tot he photographer, Romulo Vanes, to ask permission to use it as a reference. He called me and was most gracious about giving his permission. Please remember that all photos in magazines are copyright and you must ask permission to use them or you could find yourself in legal difficulties. Not every magazine or photographer will be flattered or cooperative about giving their permission.

Grape Compote in sepia tones

Grape Compote
finished painting

A book to recommend

Today I want to talk about a book I recently purchased. I have a very large personal library of books of all types on all sorts of subjects. Of course, a lot of them are art-related books. When I came back from our retreat where I took the pastel class, I wanted to learn more about pastels. I found a book titled: Collins Painting Workshop Pastels by Jackie Simmonds


This is an excellent book, not just for pastels, but as a general art book as well. Unlike many of the books we purchase that have a little bit of information and a lot of photos, this one is a whole art class in one not-very-big book. She has chapters on the supplies you need for using pastels of all types, techniques used in pastel painting, and other pastel-specific information. Then she includes chapters on color theory, perspective, choosing a subject, setting up a still life, painting still life, landscape, florals, people. Every chapter has exercises for the reader to do to explore the topic in the chapter. I have read most of it (not typical) and I'm getting ready to work my way through the chapters to do the exercises. I am so very glad I purchased this book.

Finishing Partially Completed Projects

My studio is very close to being able to actually work comfortably and schedule a few classes. As I have been sorting through things (old surfaces, partially completed projects, ancient products) many things have gone to the trash. You simply can't keep everything and there are very few decorative artists (or other artists, seamstresses, crafters for that matter) who don't have an abundance of old, outdated, and never to be used again items in their studios and work areas. But in among these miscellaneous items, there are potential treasures to be found-- practice pieces or studies that were started and set aside when something more important came along or the particular learning activity was completed. Some of these pieces could be very nice if finished, even if they are only displayed on the studio walls.

This is one of those pieces. It is a leaf study after a design by Ann Kingslan. It is painted on a wooden plate in Genesis Heat-Set Oils. The objective of the study is to work with cool and warm greens within the same piece--to realistically represent the shape of each leaf, turned edges, the position of the leaf in the cluster using both the value and the temperature of the color. It uses a monochromatic color scheme. I actually worked on this piece last summer while my kitchen was non-existent due to our renovation project. Unfortunately, when I attempted the first heat set, I found that the plate was just a hair too big to fit in my toaster oven. I had to set it with a heat gun (something I absolutely LOATHE). So, when the design was finished, I set it aside for another day when I had a full sized oven at my disposal.

This week I completed the piece. The background around the subject had to be completed. You will notice that it reflects the colors in the leaves. There is a lighter green in the upper right corner of the tray going part way down the right side. It is not as obvious in the photo, but the left side of the tray is darker than the main body of the tray. Finally, after varnishing, the rim of the tray was treated to a bit of Silver Rub 'N Buff, and yes, it is meant to have some of the basecoat showing through.

What color is white?

My studio hoe-out is coming along nicely. Most of the boxes have been gone through and I've given away and thrown away a lot of things I don't need anymore. I've been looking at some of my projects and came across a white rose painted in watercolor. I thought you might enjoy contemplating the matter of how to paint a white object. Here is my rose.


There is no question that the flower is white. But without the use of other colors to create shadows, depth, and highlight, the painting would be flat and uninteresting. The purples and blues in the background dictated that the detail colors in the rose needed to be purples and blues. You will notice a few places on the outer petals where the sunlight is glinting with a yellow cast.

Here is another white object painted in Genesis Heat-set oils. This is the County courthouse tower during a fireworks display. In this case, the shadows are a the grey-blue-black of the night sky. The tints are the reflections of the colors of the fireworks.

So, what color is white? Any color you want or need it to be. The one thing that is certain is that white is colorful.