LEMON STILL LIFE

hi there!

i finished! i'll start from the beginning, way back in september . . .

this was originally for the rookie painter challenge due last month - here's the photo prompt they posted there:

i have to admit, when i first saw it, i kinda shrugged it off. i didn't see anything exciting there; despite my admiration for artists who can portray that wonderful translucence in the citrus fruits, i just didn't feel this one was for me.

but then i looked at it again - and saw these wonderful blocks of color, especially in the shadows - and it clicked! i would do it exactly as i saw it - in distinct color blocks. i also saw more, warmer reds in the yellows of the lemon, & realized it'd make a nice contrast if the background & foreground were cooler. i also decided it had to be big to really show up the color blocks. looking at what i had on hand, i chose a 12x16 art board (only the second time i've painted that big!). ok - challenge on!

i put the photo on the digital picture frame, then went to sketch it in. easy-peasy, thought i - just a few curves and . . . err . . . that main part of the lemon kept coming out flat & wobbly - and i couldn't get the receding aspect on the slice at all! so, i gridded up the board, place my lucite grid in front of the frame, and sketched it in - & that worked fine!

for the shadows, i kept the sketch simple, but i made sure to get the lemon details fairly exact to get the right relationships between inside rind, outside rind, & pulp.

i wanted the background to stay cool so i chose prussian blue, anthraquinone blue, and ultramarine violet along with the titanium white. these colors were looking really 50s to me, & i liked 'em!

then i brought out the olive green & hansa yellow to get the color for the table. for the darkest shadow spots, i used alizarin crimson with what i already had out. the lighter shadows were combinations of the blues, green, and dark along with white. i loved the shadow areas, especially on the slice - there's light coming from all directions (well, maybe just two or three!) in the photo, and that made the shadows there complicated & interesting.

one thing i did that i think was important & helped keep the colors clear was that i was careful to not overlay the colors - the blocks of each color are the only thing there, with no (or as little as i could get myself to do!) blending.

i was pretty happy with it - it was hard to not blend the blocks of color in the shadow under the larger portion of lemon, but i felt it still represented what i wanted to do.

and there it sat. starting the next day, i had to go for numerous medical tests (don't worry - everything's fine for now!), and it took me much longer than i thought it would to recoup my former levels of energy & interest. but finally!

after catching up on all your blogs & wonderful paintings, i felt ready! without thinking about it, i put out naples yellow, indian yellow, transparent red iron oxide, and viridian along with white. these gave me light, warm, and red-tinged values to play with - & play i did! what fun, just laying down the colors!

earlier yesterday, nancie johnson had commented, "I think you'll enjoy the new vision you'll gain on painting shapes & colors (I did!)" & boy was she right! it was like stepping into an infinte, newly remade wide-open world of color & light!

in fact, i was having so much fun, everything just flowing from the end of the brush onto the canvas - that i realized when i was done (which was a sudden & surprising moment) i'd not taken any photos of the process! but in general, the naples yellow (with or without white) was for the lightest areas, then the indian yellow in combo for the midtones, and trans red added for the shadow areas. the lemon pips are straight trans red - couldn't resist! the nobbule on the end of the lemon is viridian mixed with white & naples yellow, and lighter versions of that, with lots more naples & white, are in the green tones in the pulp of the lemon slice.

and here it is:

it's rekindled, after being away from painting for so long, my joy in seeing-like-an-artist ("ooo - greens in the pulp! reds in the skin!") & painting. i feel this painting has a lot more 'me' in it than some i've done recently & i'm really happy with it!

oh - i'm trying something new - i got a bottle of m. graham's walnut alkyd medium, to see if i could use it, given my chemical sensitivities. it seems that as long as i don't stick my nose in the bottle & inhale (my usual test - you should see me trying to find a glue i can use!!), it's ok. i'm hoping it'll help the paint dry a bit faster, especially with winter coming up. the thing is, the paint went on thinner & more transparent (i used just one or two drops for my little blobs of paint, and 4 drops in the 1" long strip of white), so i'll have to keep experimenting with it.

well, that's it for now - off to do some blog reading & commenting - then deciding what to paint next. there's a number of new challenge projects (i've added more links in the box to the right) that are intriguing. the aspens of the wilderness art challenge would give me practice in doing landscapes, which i really want to learn. but the daily painters international - black & white plus one color - sounds yummy! or, i may just put together a still life at home!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

A Quick Note . . .

. . . to let you know, i'm back! that is - all recovered 'n' rarin' to go! right now, i'm catching up on commenting on all your wonderful blogs, then - i'll finish that poor lonely lemon from last month's rookie painter challenge! i'm really excited about checking in with all of you & seeing what you've been up to!

i'll be posting again as soon as this yields to my brush! here's where it's been this past month:


this is the original prompt:

i'm going for something new-to-me - just placing in the blocks of color & playing with the juxtaposition of the cool background/ground colors vs. the warm yellows, oranges, & reds that'll be showing up on the lemon.

when i do finish it, i'll also be posting it on daily painters international - i've decided it's time to get more serious about selling my work! i'll be adding a new label - "available paintings" - to those paintings i feel are ready to go out in the world! if you're interested in any of them, please email me (dustypinesart@gmail.com) - i haven't yet figured out ebay &/or paypal, but hopefully i will soon!

see you on your blogs & back here real soon!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Virtual Paintout Challenge: Prince Edward Island

hi there!

this time i finished the virtual paintout before it ended! and it really was a challenge! except for the sailboat painting, i've never done ocean, & few landscapes . . . plus i decided it was time to loosen up!

first, this is the view on prince edward island that i chose:

i liked the simplicity, the opportunity for abstraction, and the play of rosy pinks against purpley blues. here things are, ready to go:

i used a 5x7 canvas board (untoned), put the photo up on the frame, and laid out my palette, using ultramarine, cerulean, sap green, trans yellow oxide, cad yellow light, cad red light, & alizarin:

i tried a new way to organize the paints - i put the white in the upper left corner as usual, but i put the reds & yellows going off to the right on the top & the blues & greens going down the left. i really liked it - seemed a natural way to arrange them for me, & it kept the colors well separated, too! i'll keep trying it this way for a while.

i started to mix the sky color first, using cerulean & white, with a tidbit of alizarin. but before i got the colors really mixed, i thought about using painting knives instead of brushes. i've done only one painting before this with knives only, & loved it! so, just to make this even more of a challenge (mere hours before it was due!) - i decided to do it! here's the sky mix (which i kept marbled instead of mixing it to a consistent color - same with the water mix later on) & the knife (brown handle) i used to put it on:

then i mixed the water color (ultramarine & white) & put that in with the same knife. here is the initial block-in - i've left the canvas blank where the dune was going:

then i mixed up the sand bar color, using alizarin, white, & a smidge of trans yellow. i used this little guy to lay it in - this knife felt like a filbert to me & i thought the shape would work well for putting in that long strip of color - & it did!

then i mixed the dunes mix, using some of the sand bar mix with more white & a touch of cad red light to brighten & warm it up. i used this little triangular knife to lay in all the rest of the painting, including all the details of plants & shadowing, etc that came later:

here're all the blues & pinks in. i didn't put any paint where i was going to put in the largest mass of green for the dune plants: i hadn't done any measurements, & at this point i realized the sand bar was way too wide. so i just used the knife to lift it off & lay in more ocean. then i mixed up four different greens (using my lightest pink for the base of the light greens), some lighter or darker, some purer or greyer. & i realized the sap green wasn't going to cut it for the darkest greens. ooops! got out the olive green & that worked! i also decided the sand colors needed a hint more depth, & added hints of burnt sienna to the bar & the darker dunes. the water behind the sand bar i darkened using anthraquinone blue (if it's ok with you, i may just start calling this 'ant blue' - i'm lazy, & it's fast becoming my favorite blue!)

i then had to put in the clouds. i realized that the horizontal clouds of the photo just wouldn't work - too many horizontals (that sand bar's a whopper, even though it looks better in person than in the photos!). so i decided to go for a fluffy cloud approach. first i mixed up a black to get in the darks. i used the ant blue with alizarin, & a teeny hint of trans yellow oxide - very nice, deeply purple black, just right for the clouds! (this is an awful photo, but it gives you an idea, i hope!). i mixed a small amount of it with white, & worked it in where i wanted clouds.

then i dipped the knife into pure white, strolled it very lightly through the ant blue (leaving a trail behind it!)
and worked in the lighter parts of the clouds. by the way, you can see in the above photo the trail left in the olive green when i slid the knife lightly through it to get just a thin line of paint to make some dark highlights. i love how versatile the knives are, going from smearing on huge masses to fine detail (well, it'd've been finer if my hands didn't shake!).

here's what my palette looked like when i was done. i didn't end up using the cad yellow light at all. i really am finding that the more i paint, the more i experiment with my colors & find out which ones work better for me.
and here it is all finished! (it's hard to get a good photo on this one, since the masses of paint keep picking up &/or shadowing the light!)

i had a lot of fun with this one! it's got that looser, more abstract, interpreted style i feel i want to express in my work, & the painting knives made it easier & even more fun! i really like the clouds - they have volume but are also fluffy - they float as they should! (i have been terrified of trying clouds in the past!) the dunes worked well, along with the plants. the water i'm so-so on - and the sand bar . . . well, i knew it would be hard to get that strong horizontal to work. i think it needed some more variation in color to really pull it off - and a steadier hand to get in the light & dark tones right in the front of it (i tried, but it was too shaky to look very good so i modified it a bit). all in all tho - i like it!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Toning Canvases - My New Approach!

hi there!

last month, i posted about toning canvases, how & why i do it. i've started doing something a bit different, so i thought i'd show you.

i hate to waste paint - it's expensive, it's too pretty to throw out, & it just goes against my new england upbringing to waste anything! so when i clean off my palette, it feels really wrong to just wash all that paint away.

when i was cleaning up after one of the last paintings i did, i noticed the color of the smudged together paints was pretty nice - in fact, with a little more cad yellow & raw sienna, it'd be a decent, if dark, gold. and there was a lot of it. i decided to use it to tone some canvases - & this is how it turned out:

i'm pretty pleased with it, though i am concerned it's a bit dark. so the next time i painted, i used just the lighter colors & came up with this:


with the most recent painting - the sailboat - i left out the greens and blues, using only the reds, yellows, & oranges i'd mixed up or put out on the palette. it made this lovely color my son said should be called "sun-dried tomato"!

i'm really liking doing this! first, it lets me use up a good portion the leftover paint so i'm throwing much less out. this lets me feel a bit freer about how much paint i put out on the palette when i'm starting a painting, knowing it won't go to waste. it's also a really easy way to keep at least one canvas ahead of myself so i never run out of toned canvases when i'm ready to start a new painting! and any way i can outthink my tendency to procrastinate is ok with me!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Reflections

hi there!

sorry i've been away from here so long - been a bit under the weather, but also very busy! i got a writing job that turned out bigger than expected & that's been keeping my limited energy-time tied up. but it's almost done - & i did get another painting finished! been working on it slowly - so slowly, i totally missed the deadline!

this was for the august Daily Painter International Art challenge, which was "reflections." i decided to finish it even after the due date passed because . . . well, one, i'm stubborn - &, two, i'm a bit compulsive! also - i guess this is three! - i felt i'd learn a lot from it - &, boy, have i! i'll go through my process painting it, then sum it up - more reflections than the original photo has!

first - here's the photo:

i took that over the july 4th weekend at woodley island. i figured i could simplify it pretty easily so i could concentrate on all the things i've never done in it - things like boats, water, reflections . . . ! i put it on the digital picture frame, placed the grid over it


then sketched it in in charcoal on an 8x10 canvas, pretoned in gold:
this was the point at which i had my first qualms. the perspective seemed off, even after following the grid. the boat didn't seem as angled away from the viewer as in the photo, yet the perspective of the stuff on the boat seemed correct! i tried to fix it a couple of times, but decided to go ahead with it.

first note to self: fix it in the sketch, not after it has umpteen layers of paint!

i decided which colors to use: ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, raw sienna, trans yellow oxide, cad yellow light, alizarin, cad red light, & titanium white. i felt these would do the sky & water (the blues), the sail cover (the reds), & the trees (the yellows w/ the rest of 'em).

i started with the sky. i wanted to show some yellow at the horizon to reflect the warm sunniness of the day, so i put straight cerulean blue in the top of the sky area & cad yellow light mixed with white in the lower half, then mixed them up, going up & down with a fairly large brush to blend them roughly. the light yellow mixture & a light blue mixture i made up on the palette served as my atmosphere colors in light & shadow, and went into any color mixes that needed to be lightened.

i then put in the water, using ultramarine & white, & the sail cover, using the alizarin for the shadow areas & the cad red light for the bright sunlit parts. i mixed up various greens and put in the first sketchy bits of trees. at this point i still put in the buildings in the background & the other boat to the right behind the main one. i decided that boat wasn't working, but still left the buildings.


only that was too much stuff back there for me to do well along with everything else. so i wiped the buildings out, mixed up some more greens, and put in more trees! if you ever go to eureka & see trees growing where the carson mansion used to be, now you know why!

second note to self: settle on the composition before you start painting!

right.

next was the side of the boat & the reflection. i knew the boat couldn't be pure white, so i did a first layer of the light blue mix over it all, then put darker tones at the two ends and the yellow mix blended in in the middle to show the curving shape of the side. i mixed up a color for the main reflection and put that in, along with faint indications of the other things that were reflected.

at this point, i asked my son to look at it. he studied it & realized i had the color of the reflection completely wrong - it was green based rather than blue. oh dear. he sure was right. i scraped the color out & reworked it with a slightly darkened form of the light blue mix, & it looked a lot better!

third note to self: don't mix colors based on what you think they 'should' be - hold up the brush or palette knife next to the original & check!

i then finished off the insides of the boat, discovering leftover bits of the original sketch i'd decided not to do, which i had to paint out. (is that note one or two - or both?!)

i didn't like the sky, so i took my big soft fan brush & started squiggling it around, getting a sorta van gogh-ish effect in the sky, which i liked. at this point i also added some ultramarine to the sky & some cerulean to the water to create more life in them both. i adjusted the darkest parts of the shadows under the boat, the shape of the reflection, and added more cad red light highlights on the sail cover.

the last thing was the mast. i am incapable of drawing a straight line, so i placed a ruler at the top of the canvas, slanted away from the paint but in the direction i needed the mast to go. then i loaded up my finest brush & placed the tip on the starting point of the mast on the boat. using the ruler as a guide, i was able to put it in fairly straight & was really relieved! i didn't use it for the two cross bars but they were pretty short. and that was it!

after all that, this is what my table & palette looked like - not literally every brush i own but every one i use regularly!
oh - plus some new ones! i discovered some taklon long handled guys that i really like - inexpensive too, as they were student grade - perfect for me!

i can't say i really like the painting, though i do catch myself recognizing the reflections as reflections when i walk past it on the drying rack. so in that i succeeded. i do really like the sky, and it does have a certain naive charm about it. (i did notice that i have ripples in the sky, but not the water!) and i sure learned a lot about painting doing it - which is the fun part of the challenges!

i guess the thing is, it just has no 'me' in it . . . somehow it's missing that spark that directs my hand & helps me choose what to present & how. not sure why . . .

if you ever have ideas about how i go about things, or what i could do to improve what i'm doing, please let me know via the comments or through email - i'd really appreciate it!

thanks for stopping by - take care until next time!

dusty!

My Homemade Brush Holder & 2 Paintings, Framed

When i first started to paint, i had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do with brushes that were loaded with paint, but that i didn't want to clean until i was done with them. i tried the classic hold-them-in-your-hand with your palette, but kept crashing into the walls (yup - my other studio spaces were that small!), getting the paint from one brush onto the next, &/or dropping them on the floor. a friend gave me an art supplies catalog, & in it i saw the answer to my problem - a brushholder! trouble was - it was too expensive, especially with shipping. so i kept schmeering paint on the walls & picking cat hair off the bristles as i painted.

Sometime later, my son tossed out an old lamp he had. It had a curved plastic shade - & looked just like the brushholder to me! i salvaged the shade & explained what i wanted to my son. he taught me how to use his dremel tool with the sander attachment, and i made little scoops in the shade to hold the brushes. (if you do this be careful - it can really get away from you fast!) i made one of the scoops larger for bigger brushes.

then he heated up his hot glue gun (i can't use glues myself because of the chemical sensitivities), and glued the shade to a piece of wood i'd found floating around the garage. (you can find virtually anything in my garage - in fact, i believe if you look hard enough you'll find the engine for a 1986 subaru somewhere - or is it an '84?)

the scoops were a little slippery for the ferrules of the brushes, so he lightly coated the inside of the cups with a bit of rubber cement.

this works incredibly well - you can see it in action below. you just rest the brushes bristle-end in - it keeps them secure, separated, and off any surfaces you don't want coated in paint! if you can find anything that would work, i'd suggest doing this.

in other news: the two paintings (blue & brown couches) i had at the local gallery haven't sold, so tomorrow i'm going to bring him these two, & see if he'll take 'em. maybe folks'll like these better!!



thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

RookiePainter Challenge - Pink Dahlia

Wherein i learn that running about flailing my arms & screaming, "i can't do it! i can't do it!!" does. not. help.

hi there!

I knew this one was going to be hard. I've never done flowers (well, one rather stilted tulip!) - and i really dislike the color pink. but in the process, i made some great discoveries & have a much better idea how to proceed in the future!

this is the photo posted over at rookiepainter:

i thought the background need a bit of something. i found this wallpaper online & photoshopped it in. (actually GIMPed it in; i use gimp - opensource, free, and i think funner to use than photoshop - partially because - it's free!)

i liked what that blue was doing, so off i started. first thing, i put the grid in front & studied where everything needed to go:

i put a grid on my canvas (5x7, btw) with charcoal, brushed off the excess, and put in a simple external outline:

then i sketched in the insides of the flower, and a hint of the wallpaper design:

now, this is where i started to have the first tremors of concern. that center section just wasn't coming up right. but i forged ahead!

first i decided on the colors for the background. i wanted that blue sorta purple, to set off the oranges in the pink petals, and also greyed down a bit. so i chose phthalo blue with a bit of alizarin crimson to get a purple-y blue, then added a hint of transparent orange iron oxide to grey it - and, with white, hit it right first time out! i was stoked!

(have i not heard the expression pride goeth before a fall? like, ever?!)

i happily painted in the blue, then added - with a q-tip! - a pure phthalo halo-like around the flower, figuring i'd decide how to finish it when i had the flower in. i also decided not to try doing any design in the background - too fussy.

and then i innocently created some initial pinks to start with, using the alizarin, cad red light (for its orange cast), and white. i also created a pale blue-white and pale purple (using ultramarine violet), for those blown out areas of the photo, which i really liked.

got about half-way through (the lighter side of the flower)

when i realized my pinks just were not cutting it. so i began dragging out most of my reds, mixing them with white, and trying them out. cad red, quinacridone red, and cad orange joined the fray - until i remembered quinacridone rose! ah! that was it!

this has made me more determined to do color charts. it is really frustrating not knowing what my colors can do. on the other hand (says she who likes to avoid anything that looks like work), as i paint more & more, i'll learn along the way!

i got the outside petals how i wanted them to look (going not for realism but for soft, fluffy, ice cream colors in pinks & oranges). i knew i wanted the paint to be layered, and thicker than i usually make it. i also wanted a softer stroke than the flat bristle brushes give, so i tried using - for the first time - my taklon filbert. ooohh! i liked it - soft & sensuous, it lays down a wonderful rich sinuous line of paint! it was also much easier to place layers of paint over earlier, wet layers, something i've been having trouble with using bristle brushes. the synthetics are lots cheaper than sable, but seem to be soft enough. since i don't use turpentine or any other chemicals when i paint, the brushes should last fairly well. (i say brushes plural, 'cause soon as i sell another painting, i'm gonna get more!)

once the main petals were done, i did the center. and wiped it out. five times. five. i either got it too light, too plain, overly structured, too dark . . . it just wouldn't work! that old familiar panic ("why am i doing this? i paint like a two year old!!") started taking over.

at some point after yet another wiping out (using q-tips galore), i re-drew the center back in with paint (alizarin), and started over.

i carefully laid in the shadowing, the shading & highlights on each little triangle, the pokey center - it looked like it belonged in a different dimension from the rest of the flower! i tried all sorts of brushes, and all sorts of shades for the tiny petals & shadows till my work table & palette were covered:
but it still didn't look right - what was i doing wrong?! (this is where the flailing of arms comes in!) i finally realized that i was over-thinking it - trying for more realism than the rest of the flower called for & forgetting (a) to lavish the paint on, as i had in the rest of the flower & (b) to have fun!!

i found a worn sable filbert among my inherited brushes, loaded it up - and swirled it onto the canvas! i just played with different pinks, and laid in the little dots in the very center with cad red light & cad orange. ah!!

it still looked too formal to me - so i roughed the tips of the petals, loosened the darker blue of the background - and then, taking my large soft fan brush, with just the very tips of the hairs dipped in paint, i swirled white over the surface, in places going counter to the flow of the pink paint. & i liked it!

whew! that was tough - and took much longer than previous 5x7's. but i do still like it (it looks better close-up, too - maybe because i used my reading glasses more than with other paintings!) - tho i still don't like pink!!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Computer Problems!

hi there!

well, something's up with my computer! for the last several days now, i haven't been able to tweet, load many parts of this page & other blogger pages, & other odds & ends . . . hoping this posts, at least, so you know i'm still around! my son the computer genius (why yes, i am proud of him!) is coming over today to install a new video card, do a software update, &, hopefully, figure out what's wrong!

if all goes well, i'll be able to post about what i've been doing painting-wise . . .

thanks for your patience - take care till next time!

dusty!

The Hudson River School, Conceptualism, & My Approach to Art

gosh, that sounds grandiose! but i got to thinking & trying to work out some concepts - but mostly to start to understand what art is for me.

Albert Bierstadt: Sierra Nevada

in her last couple of posts, jan blencowe has written in response to this essay about the sondheim prize competition by michael salcman. she was, in particular, responding to his statement, "The Hudson River School painters were among the last artists to believe that art should be good for you; according to Robert Hughes, they suffered from the fallacy of "moral uplift"."

her response, in part, is, "being a lover of the Hudson River School and a painter of poetic, spiritual landscapes meant to uplift viewers I took exception to this idea. Hughes makes quite a sweeping statement ... . I'm not sure how you could even prove that statement, particularly in the face of 5,000 years of ... people ... confirming ... that they have been uplifted, morally and otherwise, by art."

this brings up a really interesting point about art: does one create art from a place of intent - that is, an anticipated reaction on the part of the viewer? or from the inner urgings of self-exploration, spirituality, &/or simply creativity & imagination? or both?

i too love the hudson river school (i saw olana when i was young - it filled me with the desire to make art & left a lasting impression). it is not, to me, 'moral' in the sense of good/bad, right/wrong culturally-based judgment. it is uplifting in the sense of presenting a glimpse into that which moves the viewer on a deeper level than what we usually experience with our very limited human senses. to experience this, i think we have to open ourselves to experience wonder - just exactly what art can do - for both the viewer & the artist!

in discussing art since the hudson river school, salcman writes, "Gradually the conceptual ethos took over the art world . . .. Conceptualism was critical to ... the death of the masterpiece, and the end of beauty. ... The scattered room, the polymorphous object and the rotoscope are the tired tropes of our time with little meaning other than the enactment of a predetermined philosophical bias." oh dear! not the art i want to make.

so what do i want to make? what do i want people to experience when they view my art? well, i know i want them to have fun! to be glad they have seen it, to enjoy the glimpse into my perceptions of the world that my art may give them - maybe even give them an opening to see things a bit differently in unexpected ways. and, as i begin to explore doing landscapes, to open to that sense of spirituality that i find in the hills, fields, streams, mountains, oceans, trees, rocks, earth, & sky. it's that sense of seeing/exploring/revealing/developing my inner world, including my spiritual sensibility, that i want to convey in my art. even if that's just reveling in yummylicious baked goods or floating cherries!

Frederic Church: West Rock, New Haven