Missing In Action
If anyone really cares, it probably seems like I have been ‘missing in action’ over the past two months. NO, just thinking about my work, wanting to paint, but getting bogged down with trivialities and distractions. No ……well, some are not trivialities, they are family and family takes time. Then when you get back, nothing is working for you. Where did all the ideas go? Where is my color sense? What happened to my gesture and painting skills? Everything I am turning out looks about like something you could step in out in the pasture.
Is this you? I don’t want to just be all alone in this feeling. I know others have the same problem. We all know about it first hand. We also know that we finally just cannot take it any longer and we go and just make that mess we have to make before we can get the groove going again. Even if it’s a little groove and not a long one.
Another thing is that I didn’t have any deadlines or obligations. I think I work better under a certain amount of time constraints if it’s not too stressful.
Last post * I was working on eight little 16 x 16 inch canvases that I was painting over. I do have a number of paintings I could paint over… and I eventually do. I prefer starting fresh though most of the time. This was pushed on me by having so much work in the studio it was good to get some out and it could then be replaced without adding to the inventory. I thought I was going to turn these little babies out in no time. So much for that notion. I think I take longer working on small pieces than I do with large ones. I started by just painting over the whole canvas with a mother color somewhat like variations of yellow ochre. Heck, everything goes with yellow ochre doesn’t it? Then I drew with a long Egbert brush with Payne’s gray… then I drew with Ebony pencils and charcoal…………then I started with black and white paint. Before I knew it I had a couple of them I thought I liked. Man, I was going to be more graphic and more minimalist.
I was wrong… the next day they looked like that stuff I mentioned before in the pasture….and dead as a doornail. SO, I went on to others and started working. I tried sitting down… not a good idea. I have to paint standing up. Finally got back up and worked on two I think I liked. Those are the two I posted last time.
SO…. I kept reading books and making food for holidays, shopping and in the back of my mind were those canvases just up in the studio waiting. I couldn’t do anything else until they were done…….I am built that way. I can waste an awful lot of time with this kind of thing but it has to be or I would have hundreds of unfinished projects.
Today I think I have two more of these eight done. I took pictures anyway to post two more. When all eight are done, then the decision will have to be made as to in what order they are hung.
I look forward to hearing from anyone who can tell me a great way to get through this self-imposed slump……….
*correction………… there was no ‘post’ about the other two canvases… it seems I posted them on FB. SO look there for the first two.
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Taking control
This morning I was going through my email while the coffee was dripping. One of the emails was from Lisa Call. Lisa is SUCH a wonderful writer with so many great ideas for taking control of your future… in art or anything else. I am always inspired after reading her blog. She has two that I subscribe to… one for her art and one for helping out all the rest of us out here needing some inspiration for our own careers as artists.
The link I am going to show today is Lisa’s site called, MAKE BIG ART. If we could all take even a portion of Lisa’s advice, we would make more progress in the coming year. If you just cannot get this organized (and many of us cannot)… then just prioritize and take a few of the tips you will find on this blog and make them your ‘to do’ list for 2012.
If I don’t get back to you before the first of 2012, know that I wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous, happy 2012.
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New Creative Collage Techniques by Nita Leland
I got this new book by Nita Leland in the mail over the week-end. I finally had a chance to look through it this week. A quote from the book………. ” As a collage artist, seek to be: artistically aware, environmentally aware, spiritually aware…open-minded, playful, fun-loving, child-like, hard-working, creative, spontaneous, intuitive, original, flexible, open to change, non judgmental, patient, adventuresome, impulsive, energetic, risk-taking, daring”…………READY for ANYTHING!
This is really something to strive for. Nita has some really great information along with projects outlined if you have never done collage. There are as many ways to collage as there are to paint. You’ll have a lot of fun with this book………available from Amazon with a number of pages to preview. I’m prejudiced of course…….my work is featured on two pages and a part of the montage of painting images on the cover.
This is also a beautiful book, made to be used. The book has spiral binding inside so it will lay flat while you are using it and referencing demos.
The Rain Came
- Celebration of Red
New Creative Collage Techniques by Nita Leland
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Downtown Coffee Lounge, Tyler, TX
Yaaaay…. the work for the Downtown Coffee Lounge exhibit is now up. A million thanks to Gregory Zeorlin for asking me to hang work here in a lovely place dedicated to showing art. I have seven large paintings and four small ones on display through December 9, 2011. The artist reception will be tomorrow….200 W. Erwin, Tyler, TX……….. Thursday, October 27, 2011, 5-7pm. Please do come see the work and say hello.
Gregory… a special thanks to you for climbing up and down to measure and hang the work.
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Return from Mississippi, continued
After a couple of days of painting and doing nothing but art related activities at Colony this time, I got ready to mix it up a little. This is usual for me. I go from large paintings on canvas, to smaller collages on paper… to hot wax encaustic painting. I try to keep my work looking like MY work but with a different medium and emphasis.
This time I was not looking to do away with the horizon line as I did when I was working on the “Meander” series of paintings………but what I got is still a version and continuation of that meandering. This time my take off point was to do some gestural, automatic drawing, both with drawing implements like charcoal, pencils and art crayons as well as a large well-loaded brush of dark paint. I prepped my canvas in the usual manner with lightweight modeling paste and chose a transparent yellow, Transparent yellow iron oxide. I didn’t have any black with me so I chose Payne’s gray for my dark paint. I just started with a 30 x 30 inch canvas on the first one. It’s hard to say what else I did as I was using some of the suggestions in a book I have and have not really used before………. Steven Aimone’s, Live & Learn: Expressive Drawing: A Practical Guide to Freeing the Artist Within.
This is the result of that first painting. I liked it.
Meander 12
So, on to do another. I only had two 48 x 24 inch canvases left. Since they would not go on my easel side by side, I used them as a diptych vertically…………same size overall anyway, 48 x 48 inches.
I used much the same automatic drawing and painting but with a larger surface and different marks and gestures. This one might be my favorite……..at least for now.
Meander 13
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Back from an inspiring retreat in Mississippi
I’m back from Mississippi Art colony……all my gear is unloaded and in the studio although i haven’t yet unpacked all the paints. It was wonderful to see all my artist friends that I rarely see but twice a year.
Generally, all I ever take is totally blank canvas. Knowing I was coming back to an ‘in progress’ diptych from me starting to paint over an old one, I decided to take them with me as well as the blank canvas.
So, the first morning I set to painting and finishing this diptych… that only has a working title of Johnson Creek, Blue, green, violet. It is acrylic on two canvases, 36 x 60 inches total.
After I set that one aside to work on a new painting…. this is what I am ending up with so far………acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches……..Little Pieces of Land, with Magenta is the working title for now.
The next one I worked on during the week was a piece I am still considering doing more to….line some drawing lines over the paint. Of course that will call for more paint back into the lines and so on and so on…. but here it is as it is right now. VERY colorful, for sure. I already posted it on FB during the week. acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 inches….working title of Red-orange.
I’ll post the next ones on the next blog post………. I was determined not to stay in a rut and got into some drawing exercises and had a lot of fun with them..
Until then, thanks for tuning in.
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HOT…
I’ve been working on a number of small pieces lately…both oil and cold wax medium and hot wax and oil sticks. It has been fun, but I really LOVE working large. SO I got out one of the two inch depth canvases I ordered recently…….a 50 x 40 inch one. I could really slap the paint around on this size…and with the acrylic paint in various consistencies.
I think it’s finished as I already took the pictures. So far, I can only think of HOT HOT HOT… so that is the working title until something else might occur to me to sound better. It was a lot of fun………….and this is the result.
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New direction
OMG……….. just looked and didn’t realize how long it had been since I posted the beginnings of my latest encaustic work. I started these with the sheet music scores…….. then when I got home from Santa Fe, they were complete strangers to me. That kind of thing happens if it is too long between studio visits.
I loved that sheet music,too……… Oh well……….if the path turns, it turns. You should not look back as it is all for the best usually. I won’t discuss the times is not.
I looked at those beginnings and kept avoiding them by working on other paintings. Finally, the time came to just “DO IT”… add the encaustic paint and get going. After all….it is just paint and panels.
I added and added…scraped and scraped. Fell in love with the oil painting sticks I had from the encaustic conference and R & F paints. OMG, they are so creamy and they manipulate so wonderfully………then add some encaustic medium and fuse. Oh my.
Layer after layer…some with more, some with less………….until I think they are done. I hope so as I have a new canvas already on the painting wall waiting and calling to me.
The series of 5 is called………… “Johnson Creek, Summer’…. surprise, surprise!
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Lynette Haggard blog interview
I am so excited…….. Lynette Haggard has fabulous interviews with other artists. A short time back she wrote me to ask if I would like to be her next interview on the blog.
One of my favorite reads online are the art blogs…. and especially the interviews with other artists. It’s fun to have a little insight into the lives and studio practices of various artists I know….. or who I would like to know more about. Lynette’s is one of my favorites. She is so articulate, and also a wonderful artist in her own right.
Thank you, Lynette.
I know most of my closer friends will know all the information but for you who don’t, I hope you will enjoy the interview. Here is the link to my specific interview.
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Encaustic and collage
Strange I know, but after returning from the Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA………..I have not had a spare minute to work with encaustic. First I got sick, then I had an out of town workshop to go to for a week. Then I got home with all the myriad of things to catch up on when you have not being doing much of them for a month.
When I did get back into the studio I had work on canvas to finish up…and some new experiments with oil and cold wax medium. Not to be one to start three projects at once…………..I waited until this afternoon to start up the melting of the wax. Nothing like waiting until about the 25-30th straight day of over a 100 degrees to melt wax is there?
I had been just thinking a lot about using this new super Hake brush I saw and ordered at the conference…along with it’s own pan.
Whoa…. all 7″ wide. I didn’t really get to use the special pan today as it didn’t get heated up enough although my trusty electric skillet did a fine job of it. NICE to not have to make so many strokes across the board when priming my boards with medium.
Today I am working on five 10 x 10 x 2 inch wood panels…. I need four for a project but I had a full box of five…so why not?
I already had played around with my Paula Roland hotbox back some time ago just making collage papers or coating found papers with wax medium and allowing them to dry. SO, now I have papers all over the place and want to start. WHERE am I going to start? No clue really, but I finally decide to just begin with some sheet music papers I had. So I coated some more of them as I had only done a few previously. And I started looking through the papers for colors I might use for these pieces. I just have to go for it and see what happens.
I don’t know how much of these torn pieces of sheet music will show up in the final paintings. For now, I just tore them and laid them on the panels with two layers of medium on the boards. For now they are not down permanently. I am just moving stuff around and playing with arrangement. I may or may not put any color under the pages…for one thing, if I do, it will show through the sheet music. SO for now… I won’t. With all this black and white (gray)… I need some color so I am trying out bright color like yellow and yellow greens………I cut it to fit in between the torn areas and just where ever the color and shapes take me.
It’s getting hotter in here people. I have to make a few more pieces since of course, I don’t have the colors that came to mind. That hot box is going and I am making a cad green pale paper…cool (I wish).
More arranging and cutting and tearing. I also went with a bronzy color for one…….
I finally decided to call it a day..umm, afternoon and left these as they are, not fused down or anything….but maybe ready for a cooler morning than it is right now in late afternoon.
to be continued………
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Oil and Cold Wax painting
I decided I had worked long enough on those little 8 x 10 inch canvases trying out the oil and cold wax. I can’t get the gesture in little paintings. I am better off working with collage when I work with a more intimate size. I got out a large (and heavy) 32 x 32 x 2 inch wood panel and set to work. First, since this is oil I needed to gesso this panel I had made for hot wax that should not use acrylic gesso. I got out the gesso I had not opened in who knows how long. It was pretty thick since it was in a gallon pail and I had half of it in there. It was really thick but worked fine. I laid in two coats and ten decided …what the heck I would also put some lightweight texture paste since it was okay for oils as well as acrylic painting.
The next day I started mixing up the cold wax medium ( I only had a pint of Gamblin) with some variations of yellow, yellow orange and a tinge of red. I used a good bit of the medium and troweled and brayered it all around until it was covering the face of the panel. Oh yeah… I taped the edges of the panel except for the 1/4 inch face of the plywood that I planned to have paint on in the end. This is slower going that applying the ground with acrylic on canvas I can tell you.
I had some violet paint out on the palette so I just dipped into it and made marks with the diluted violet and a brush like I might usually do with my acrylic paintings. The only instructions I have for working with cold wax come compliments of Rebecca Crowell and her ning site, oilandwax.ning . Since Rebecca works so much differently than I do, I just have to wing it except for reading about the things I can or cannot do and there are not that many of them since you don’t have to think of some of the technicalities of oil painting alone. The cold wax medium helps all the paints to dry without thinking of fat over lean, etc.
I was going to post the picture but it is on my FB Contemporary Abstract Paintings page here. I have continued to work on this painting……..Ialso posted another layer on down the line on the FB page…………. This is what I have now. This painting may get a little more work. In fact, it almost for sure will. I don’t have plans at this juncture to make a big about face and change it totally.
It looks like my paintings pretty much except in person, it is different due to the nature of the oil and wax. I still have not gotten to the point of using a retouch varnish or final varnish yet so these paintings will have a little more luster. They are matte in nature with the wax medium and some people prefer that. I am used to the more satin finish of my other work.
I’m already thinking…. what to title this as it initially used colors I think of in spring….. Maybe it should be titled, “Wishing for the Heat to End”. It also makes me think of the pastures down toward the creek bottom here.
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Oh my gosh… I got so busy back in May that I forgot entirely MaryBeth Rothman’s blog on collage, assemblage and bricolage. Darn… I had work she so graciously exhibited in that edition of her fantastic blog.
She does such a fantastic job of talking about her art (and others)…….how could I have not posted this sooner. Never too late, I hope, as I saw today this post on the second part of this great post with other artist’s work.
So… go check out all this great work that MaryBeth has brought to us all through her blog.
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