Hot Press Paper

Layered Pears.  Watercolor and Crayon.

If you've been reading this blog, you've probably noticed that I've taken a shine to 300 lb Fabriano Rough Watercolor paper.  It is fantastic stuff.  You've probably also noticed that I often use an overlay of Caran D'Ache crayon. Also fantastic stuff.  The two don't necessarily go together, though. Crayon over rough paper produces a texture that is not always what I want in my painting, and even after adding water (the crayon is water soluble, and will spread like an opaque watercolor), you can frequently still see the texture.  See for example, this dusk painting, where the texture is highly visible in the painting.

Great Lakes Adventure

My family just returned from a two week tour through Michigan and Wisconsin.  We went up through Michigan stopping at Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and Mackinac, and got as far north as Isle Royale.  Isle Royale is a 3 h ferry ride from Copper Harbor, MI on the Keeweenaw Peninsula.  We had flat, flat water on the ride out and then 2-4 foot waves on the ride back.  2-4 feet doesn't sound like much until you're on a ferry--whew baby.

If you haven't clicked through, please do--there are three more paintings.

Japanese Maple

 

The Japanese Maple in the yard across the street just leafed out, and I painted it really quickly this morning, and came back around  this afternoon and put in some darks for the trunk and branches this afternoon.  It's a lovely tree.

(If you're wondering what really quickly is--about 30 minutes this morning, and 10 minutes this afternoon.  It's a fast painting.)

The painting is about 8x10 inches.  I painted it on Killimanjaro 300 lb cold press paper from Cheap Joes (the back side--I have a truly awful painting on the front side), and used:  Indian Yellow, Napthamide Maroon, Quinacridone Red (underlayer for the tree), and ultramarine blue.  All from Daniel Smith, which I notice has a detailed color analysis here.

I'm happy to have leaves on the trees again!

Exploring Gray Through A Messy Palette

Confession:  I keep a messy palette.  I use two John Pike Palettes, deep well, and I usually have colors flowing everywhere.  Once a week (or month), I like to clean my palatte, and it is very satisfying--similar to dusting after a long break.  Sometimes, the mess on my palette produces interesting grays, and I like to try and incorporate them into new paintings, and here are two paintings that lean towards muted grays done from what's happening in the mixing area of my palette..

The first painting (left) is called Move Into The Light, and shifts from the grays to tonal reds, blues, and yellows.  It is 4 inches by 11.   The second painting (right), Horizon Line, and is 11 x 6 inches.  It's a balance between two grays, and has a minimalist wintry feel.

In both cases, I was just playing with some colors that mixed on my palette, but I was especially pleased with how the paintings came out.

A Hosted Site Experiment

I tried getting fancy.  I though I'd consolidate my work and blog into a Wordpress.org web site.  I went right along to bluehost.com and bought a domain and installed wordpress.  I spent 48 h trying different themes and messing around with things, but I never could get something that I either understood or even liked.  To the left is a screen shot of where I left it when I gave up.  (I should mention that despite my frustration, Bluehost was very agreeable and easy to work with):
 
Right now, I'm using the following sites:

Blogger:  For blogging (which works well and looks great with minimal effort, I have to say).  It was easy to import my posts into wordpress, but I was going to need to go back through and update the media files and links.  I didn't get that far since I never got the wordpress theme to display to my satisfaction.

Flavors.me:  For consolidated easy access to portfolio display.  I like that I can send people to flavors.me/albryce and then they can get directly here or to Etsy.  However, you need a site to integrate with your portfolio (i.e., photos) and for that I use....

Flickr:  Maybe it should have been instagram, but for right now, flickr works fine.  Here's my flickr photostream.

Mailchimp:  For a newsletter.  Although, I have to confess I've never sent one.  I have very few subscribers, and I don't want to hassle them.  Feel free to sign up--there's a link at the top of the page, or you can sign up here.

Etsy:  For selling.  I have to confess the online selling is hypothetical, but it's always nice to dream.  If you're interested you can look at my shop here.

Finally, I just started using my Facbook Page, which you can visit here.  And sometimes I post to google+, but just to my own personal profile.  

Why all these sites?  Consider that to start a hosted wordpress site, was a couple of hundred dollars up front (although it covered 3 years), and I was still spending a ton of time getting things looking right. These site are all FREE.  Love that.  And, they look reasonably professional with minimal effort on my part.  Love that, too.

I'm sure there are better ways.  It's actually hard for me to keep up.  If there's something that you use to get your work up online, tell me what you think, and why you're using it.  I'd love to hear!

Finding the painting inside the painting.....

 I started painting in 2001.  Over the years, even though I haven't always painted consistently, I have accumulated quite a number of paintings.  They are stacked in a drawer and on a shelf in the basement.  For the Northminster Fine Arts Show, I decided to see if I could clear some of my shelf space and salvage some of my older paintings.  A lot of them are what I would call watercolor sizes.  A full sheet of watercolor is 22 x 30 inches, and watercolor artists frequently paint on a half or quarter sized sheet.  None of these sizes fit neatly with a standard gallery sized frame.  Custom frames are expensive, so I began to consider how I could crop my paintings.  I started to look for the bast painting within a painting.

I bought two sets of standard sized mats (8 x 10 inches with a 5 x 7 inch opening and 16 x 20 inches with a 10 x 14 inch opening) from clearbags.com and here are two results.

The original painting was about 15 x 22 inches (half sheet), and the cropped painting is 10 x 14 inches.  Painted c. 2006.  Sunflower Bouquet. Sold.

In the original, the background and "busy" space are evenly divided across a diagonal, which weakens the composition of the painting.  In the cropped painting, most of the background, surrounds emphasized the sunflower, which made it more the focal point of the painting. 

This original painting was done around 2004 and was about 11 x 14.  It was never finished.  The cropped painting is 5 x 7 inches. I think the center section makes a nice loose interpretation all by itself.  Glass Vases.

Tape Glider

I mentioned in a previous post that many artist watercolor artists are having a love affair with paint. Many of us are also having a love affair with our supplies.  I just bought a tape glider, and I'm more than a little excited about it.

What does a tape glider have to with painting?  Well, not much.  It does have a lot to do with framing, which eats up a lot time, energy, and money.  I was using double sided tape to build mats, add paper backings to frames, and well, it was a pain.  A tape glider is an applicator for applying double sided tape--it looks like this:

It really is pink.  Spiffy, yes?  It makes taping go so much faster and neater.  I'm almost looking forward to all the framing I need to do in the next week.  Almost.  I also have to cut mats.  Cutting mats is.....I'd say best left to professionals, or people with mat cutting machines, but it's so expensive.  Hopefully, my next big tool will be a mat cutter.