ZEE FRENCHMAN IS ZENTANGLED UP!!

Along with the graphite drawings yesterday, I discovered a website called Zentangle. You can click on the blog heading and it will take you there. Basically, it is an organized way to create intricate patterns. It works like meditation on your mental state and is very fun. The couple that developed this idea have taken it to the ultimate marketing heights! I kept looking for directions but it seems you have to order a kit for $50 to get the lowdown. I wasn't going to do that, so, after looking at everything, I discovered that their archived newsletters had different patterns explained and showed variations. Aha!! Now I was in business. I sat in front of the computer and drew all the patterns I could find. Now that I have the hang of it, I could look at some of the examples and figure out some of the different ideas. I did 3 3.5 square Zentangles in my sketchbook.

Today, I wanted to get back to my Frenchman with some ideas that were in my head before they disappeared into the black hole that sometimes masqeurades as my mind. I traced each of the 3 stylized Frenchman on separate pieces of paper. Using my sliding glass door as a lightbox, I taped two up and played around with overlaping images. This idea works best with a very simplified drawing. When you use the same design but draw it freehand each time you get interesting effects. You can choose which lines to keep and which to ignore. There are endless possibilites with this idea.

For this image, I reversed one of the drawings and positioned it so the the middle eye will work for either face. It's strange but intriguing to me. I was curious how the Zentangle patterns would look on it. I told myself 5 times "It is only a piece of paper" before I started playing with the patterns. With these kinds of ideas, there is no way to know how it will look without doing it. Each pattern changes the entire look. I was sorry that I colored in the red squares. They are too strong. Maybe I can think of a way to lighten them. I plan to add watercolor to it tomorrow. There are a few places where I messed up. No way to fix it and too laborious to redo. It's so busy, it is hard to find the errors, anyway. This is an example of pattern as texture. I decided I wanted lines more subtle than black ink so I used a fine red pen on white paper. The photograph has been adjusted as best I can. Not quite right but you can get the idea.

3 MORE GRAPHITE SKETCHES

I spent the afternoon curled up in a chair keeping warm and sketching. Here are the results. One of the 4 heads in the composite drawing is Lionel Barrymore. I only remember him in the movies as an old man. This was from a photo taken in 1918. He was very handsome! His brother, John, was the big heart throb back in the day, but I think I am falling for Lionel. What a surprise!

I'M BACK AND RARING TO GO!

Finally, I was able to get back to producing some art today. I think this is the longest I have gone without posting. I still am without my laptop but am limping along with my old computer. I didn't appreciate the upgrades in all my programs until now. I miss a lot of the features I have been taking for granted. I have been spoiled!

We (I use the term loosly as my husband did nothing to help me) had 20 people for a holiday dinner last night. I spent two days before Christmas shopping, all day Christmas cooking for the party ( Making latkes for that many people takes forever but I only do it once a year) and all day yesterday setting everything up. My sons are fabulous and they did help me get ready and cleaned up most of the aftermath. I spent most of the day, today, putting everything back!

I sat down for a few hours today and did some graphite drawings. Mostly it is for practice and pleasure. I don't think I will do anything with them. I do like the strange lighting on some of the faces and the face in the lower right has real possibilities for stylization. In fact, when I first drew it, it was less realistic but I wanted to have the face work better with the whole page. I think I will go back and work with this image again.

I have a lot of framing and matting to get done, so I think I will mostly draw to finish out the year.

I managed to read a good book "Outliers" this last week. It is a small book and an easy read. Lots of very thought provoking material. The one fact I wanted to share is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get to excellence....name any area of expertise and the masters have spent 10,000 hours. Basically, that is 10 years with hours of DAILY practice. That is what separates the good from the great! Now, I have to figure out how many hours I have already put in and how many more to go!

"DOUBT" ACCEPTED INTO CWA NATIONAL SHOW!

This is the portrait I did of Preston Metcalf, the assistant curator at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara, California. He was gracious enough to give me permission to do anything I wanted with the photos I took of him. It may be a case of "be careful what you wish for". Many times I take pictures of strangers and keep on going. This time I made sure I had permission before I did anything other than for my own amusement. This image is so tightly cropped that I think I will attempt to float it instead of putting it under a mat. This painting is watercolor and acrylic on YUPO.

My son finally diagnosed my computer problem! I am lucky to have my techno saavy kids around to help me out. First he thought I didn't have enough space on the hard drive, so I spent hours sorting and moving hundreds and hundreds of photos to an auxillary hard drive to free up space. I get very nervous when I delete photos but I did it anyway. Then he had to update all the programs. I couldn't do that before because I didn't have enough space. Well, after all that, I still had the problem of losing my internet connection. My son is a scientist, so he has the patience of Job to do research and he found a website where this very problem was being experienced by other Mac users and they all had broken antennas!!! Since it is built in to the computer, I have to take it somewhere and get it fixed. Bill thinks it is a design flaw in the computer and Apple should pay for the fix. Yeah! Like that's going to happen. Anyway, I am working on my old computer which I kept because it has OS9 as well as OSX and my accounting program only runs on OS9. I refused to pay $300 to get a new accounting program for the new computer that would work for OS X. I only use it once a year for my tax records. I think I can plug in my auxillary hard drive to this computer and access my photos. Otherwise, I think I can transfer them to one of those portable stick thingies and transfer it that way. I don't know all the words, but I am getting pretty knowledgeable with the tools. Keeping up with technology is a full time job!

I hope to have the internet thing fixed today. In the meantime, I am working against time again to get this posted. I sat at the gallery yesterday so had a lovely quiet time painting. Here is my realistic version of the Frenchman on a textured background using a limited palette of Quin Gold, Burnt Sienna, Brown Madder, Payne's Gray and Neutral Tint. I'm not sure about the bubble wrap on the nose! Otherwise I like the textures with the traditional...makes it a little more interesting. I need to be more careful about where I put what textures in the future. I want to do one more stylized version of this guy. I had an interesting idea for presentation using four of them in one frame. Maybe I'll make him more "green". Green is in these days.

ONE MORE FRENCHMAN WITH TEXTURE: WARM VERSION

I am having the worst time with my computer. It won't hold the internet connection so I have a minute here, and a few minutes there. So far, my experts haven't figured out the solution but we keep working. I feel like I am in a race against time to get this posted before the connection is lost.

Here is another Frenchman with the same set of colors: Hansa Yellow, Raw Sienna, Quin Gold, Green Gold, Brown Madder, Burnt Sienna, Indanthrone Blue, Indigo, Neutral Tint and a smidgeon of Caput Mortum for good measure. I kept the warm/cool ratio heavily balanced on the warm side. The other variation I did was to texturize each shape individually rather than creating texture patterns randomly on the sheet. It took a lot more time because I had to wait for areas to dry before I could do the next one. I don't think it makes a big difference. I think I want to do one more with the texture and this color wheel and paint the Frenchman in a realistic manner rather than this stylized version. Then, moving on to another color palette.

FRENCHMAN WITH SHAPE, COLOR AND TEXTURE AGAIN!

I am having difficulties with technology today. My internet connection comes and goes and it is my computer that is the problem. My "experts" can't figure it out. I am also having trouble adjusting my digital image to reflect the proper color and value. This is as close as I can get. Not quite right, but you get the idea. I tried some different stamps and texturizing ideas, then painted using the same palette as yesterday but I didn't use the yellows and Burnt Sienna. The only red was Brown Madder and the "yellow" was an olive yellow green. It actually is Seniellier 's (spelling is wrong but I am too lazy to get up and look at the paint tube) Quin Gold. It is very different from any other brand and is very greenish. Works perfectly for this palette. I used Neutral Tint, Payne's Gray, Indigo and Indanthrone Blue as my other colors. I wanted a dominance of cool colors. The value pattern was my attempt to follow the Rembrandt scheme as described by Robert Burridge in his last two newsletters. I'm not sure I achieved it but the results are satisfying. That really is the point, anyway. It doesn't matter if you "get the right answer". It isn't math. By having an idea to work from it gives you a starting point and then the painting takes on a life of it's own and you work to resolve whatever challenges show up. If the best solution doesn't match the original concept, who cares?

Tomorrow is the 80/20 warm dominant painting with this drawing. Then I am going to see how a more realistic rendering looks over all this texture.