MOVING AHEAD!

I sat at the gallery today and took lots of art to work on.  It was a very productive day.  We had a fair amount of visitors for a change, including my friend, Bonnie, accompanied by Beth.  Beth has a great sketch blog you can check out at http://bethbourland.wordpress.com/  What a wonderful surprise.  

I found some different tissue in my supply bin.  It is archival acrid free tissue by Lineco and it is stronger than what I normally use.  I think I bought it because it was on Anne Bagby's DVD but I never used it.  I was able to draw with a coffee stirrer stick on this tissue and I used red India Ink.  Some went through the tissue and caused the paper to stick to the gator board in spots but it didn't tear when I carefully pulled it away.  Here are the two drawings I did.  I can move them around and even turn them over if I want to change the direction of some of them.  I am excited about this way of trying out various compositions.

After I drew these images, I decided to paint on another page I had prepared a few days ago.  This one is  sharpie pen drawing on good quality tissue, collaged on top of an abstract collage design.  I purchased some Dr. Ph Martin's Spectralite Liquid Acrylics and wanted to try them out.  I like the paints very much.  I added some white ink where needed.    I'm not sure if I should cut this painting apart and mat each image separately.  I may use a little gloss medium as it looks quite matte and I can't decide if like the contrast that exists now.  Always so many little decisions.  

A EUREKA MOMENT!

I think this is done.  I was able to increase the saturation of color.  It just took some layering.  I am getting pretty tight with these paintings.  I will probably proceed along these lines for awhile and then get more gestural when I have the literal out of my system.  

So, what was the Eureka! moment?  I often lie in bed and imagine how different ideas will look and then fall asleep.  Often, the in the first waking moments, ideas pop into my head.  The subconscious works on the problems and comes up with solutions.  I have been trying to resolve a composition of multiple heads and hands, what size paper, what shape paper, etc.  I like to just start drawing because of the spontaneity of the line and image but it is hard to control the composition when I work this way.  It came to me that I could draw the images on tissue paper and then move them around until I found the most appealing composition and then collage them onto the paper.  I am very excited about this idea.  I want to use a color other than black, and using a stick with ink will probably be too rough on delicate tissue paper, so I think my Lizard's Lick #4 dipped in acrylic ink will do the trick.  I'm looking forward to trying this idea out this afternoon.  Stay tuned.........

EVELYN'S FRIENDS...first painting !

This is the first painting of the images I am playing with.  I am exploring different surfaces.  This one is gesso, tyvek, collage tissue and some "dirty glaze"  here and there.  I started with liquid watercolor because I could lift out paint easily.   But eventually I switched to acrylic ink because I didn't want anymore lifting.  I think I am on to something.  On to number two!

ALL IN A DAYS WORK...SAN DIEGO WATERCOLOR SOCIETY WORKSHOP

Today is the second day of the Variations Workshop.  I am working with an exciting group of artists.  Everyone is so helpful and friendly. It is a real joy to be here.  Yesterday we worked on creating shapes and changing shapes in the morning.  The afternoon was spent working on value patterns for the morning drawings.  Today we had something to start a painting with.  Everyone made at least two paintings today.  There was amazing creativity exhibited.  We had a little show and tell at the end of the day.  I took photos but I am too tired tonight to make the slide show, so stay tuned for tomorrow night.

Tuesday is the meeting night of the society and I was the program!!  The top painting is my demo for the evening.  It was drawn and painted in less than an hour.  It is a fairly straight forward portrait.  The bottom painting is my demo for the class this morning.  It is a very stylized version of the same gentleman.  I want to do another painting of this image with a few changes,  The second image is painted with acrylic inks.  This is the first time I tried these paints on this particular paper.  It dried very fast, which I liked but the lines feathered quite a bit.  Not sure  why this is happening.  I will have to explore a little more when there is more time.  

Between the end of class and the demo, we made a little trip to a Dick Blick store which was lots of fun. Across the street was a great Italian restaurant where we had an excellent dinner and time to visit a bit.

BACK TO WORK!

 I am still putting things away after my return from LaCrosse.  The studio is finally looking like I can work out there again.  After a little editing, I will show another slide show from the workshop.  In the meantime, I came across some drawings I had done on tissue paper and a sheet of watercolor paper that ad a layer of colorful collage covering a failed painting.  I decided to collage the drawings on top of the paper leaving a nice colorful border around each one.  I managed to get three of the six images completed.  It felt good to paint again.  I hope to complete the painting tomorrow.

FRENCHMAN: SHAPES IN ACRYLIC

I spent the morning painting. Sometimes, you just have to set priorities. As you can see, I started out drawing the SHAPES with my vis-a-vis pen onto a square canvas that I covered with hand painted collage paper and stained Indian Red (I was covering up a very ugly painting) I finished up with a painting I wouldn't describe as a dominant shape image. I will count it as shape since I started with shapes. I guess I really like broken color and lost edges. The other problem was the brushes I was using didn't create crisp edges. I probably would need to use good quality for that kind of precision. I avoid my best brushes with acrylic so as not to ruin then accidentally. Lame excuses, I know, but I have to put the blame somewhere!

Had fun, learned some things and had a productive morning. That's what it is all about.

Tomorrow I continue with my workshop. We will do day 3, 4 and 5 this week. Keep sending in your Frenchman Shape paintings. I have received some great ones and will create a slide show on Friday before I leave for Ocean Shores.

TYVEK TEXTURE TO THE MAX!

I'm working on a new painting. I decided to try collaging with torn Tyvek. I saw a beautiful painting on Thursday by Leslie that had some areas of torn tyvek and wanted to try it. I took a failed Tyvek painting and made a small cut on an edge and then started ripping. It's pretty tough stuff but can be torn up with a little effort. I used full strength acrylic matt medium and glued the pieces in a random way over a failed watercolor. Much of the Tyvek was the unpainted part but I used some of the pieces right side up and I left a little of the original painting showing through. I brushed some red liquid watercolor into the surface of the collage while it was still damp. Then I set it aside to dry. I drew the image on with a Vis-A-Vis pen and then used acrylic inks to start layering the color. I bought the inks because I wanted the feel of watercolor but the non-lifting properties of acrylic. The inks are so transparent that the undercolor really interacts with it in a very interesting way! I am very excited about this result. I have posted two details of the painting. You can see how the original red is popping through and the texture is really amazing. I should be able to finish the painting tomorrow and post the final result.