BACK TO BASICS!

I totally messed up the Tyvek painting. I plan to keep working on it with acrylic so I can cover up and correct the poor drawing which has created problems. I think I will make it more abstracted. I won't be able to get to it for a few days as I am hard at work cleaning out the library....going through bookshelves, drawers, cabinets, etc. in an effort to create a new space in which to work on my art during the colder months. My studio is in an unheated garage. Even in California, it is uncomfortable in the winter. I am slowly making progress.

I decided to get some drawing in this evening as I am watching the Olympics. I did about three sheets in my sketchbook tonight.
I love this man's face. He has a fantastic nose and a wonderfully haughty expression. Some of the drawings border on a Picasso quality but I like the distortion. This gave me an idea to start a painting this way, drawing multiple studies of the same face over the sheet and then add paint.

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.

OVERKILL!

I texturized the dickens out of this piece of paper then kept piling on the paint. I used some of my new stamps in dots and
checks for the pattern. After I looked at it for a few days, I decided today to add the face and words. I drew the head with a Vis-a-Vis marker, created a little contouring with a wet brush and tried to lift the paint for highlights. Surprise! The paint wouldn't lift. It should have because I am working on a gesso surface. I will have to think on why no lifting. Perhaps one has to lift the paint while it is fairly fresh. This has been sitting since the weekend. I decided to use the white watercolor from the Dr. Martin's set for highlights. I wrote the words with my quill in full strength Payne's Gray , let it dry, and then squirted it with water to let the color run. I like the overall idea of texture but I think I may have gone overboard with the background and the white looks too pasty. I may try to put a glaze over the face or maybe over the entire painting to pull it all together. It's not a "keeper" but I think I am moving in on something.

SELF PORTRAIT 1981

I spent hours today taking high resolution photos of my drawing to send to Strokes of Genius 2 for publication. They are so cleaver to have the artist do all the work. I had to set up a lighting system and find a black background, get a gray card, yada yada. I can't believe how difficult it seemed to be to get the lighting even on the image. My son, Kevin, is doing the adjustment and formatting, thank goodness. Otherwise it would have been pretty expensive for me to get this done. Anyway, I finally decided to wait until dark so there wouldn't be any extraneous light coming into the room. We finally have it properly formatted and ready to send in.

While I had everything set up, I decided to photograph a painting I did in school. I don't remember what class this was for. It is done on masonite with guache. It is a self portrait. I was very interested in fiber art during this period...everything but weaving. That was too slow and tedious for me. The jacket I am wearing I designed and pieced. The quilt in the background is fictional but references my interest in quilt imagery. The pose reminds me of the original Superman with Steve Reeves.

Nava wanted to see what I looked like back in the day so here I is!

NOSTALGIA!

I was cleaning out a cabinet and found some photo albums. I actually used to put photos in them! Now, everything gets thrown into a box. I scanned these directly into the computer quite easily. I think I will do more of this and then put them on a CD for more efficient storage. One of the albums was from my college graduation from San Francisco State in 1981. What a trip down memory lane I had this afternoon. I had one year of college after high school. Financially, I couldn't afford to continue so I went to work, got married, had children and moved to San Francisco. I was able to return to college after being here (Ca.) a year to get my residency requirement. It was practically free, too good a deal to pass up. I loved every minute of it. So I managed to graduate at the age of 39 right before my boys started college.

I celebrated with a wonderful party. My folks came with KC barbecue provided by my Dad who smoked all the meat and carted it all the way from Kansas City. We had a hayride and square dancing, to boot! I decided to award door prizes of some of my paintings from classes I had taken. These are photos of the winners. Joyce, a fellow artist, is the first winner and has stayed a true friend all these years. I shall have to check her wall of paintings to see if this one is still up! Shelley is the second winner and also a best friend for over 30 years. I am at her house constantly. I wonder which closet this painting is in. Noreen is the third winner. She was our next door neighbor then and the loveliest person. She and her husband retired and moved to central California. Claire is the fourth winner. She was a great buddy in college and we graduated together but I have lost track of her since she moved away. Lastly is Ben. He looks ecstatic with his slightly obscene posed painting! I'm pretty sure that one didn't make it up on a wall. Ben succumbed to liver cancer a few years later. He was a great guy and missed by all who knew him.

I saved a few of my paintings from college classes so I can see if what kind of progress I am making with my art. I really didn't put paint to paper or canvas after graduating until 2000. Now the paintings are piling up again. Maybe I'll have another party.

GREAT VIDEO ON THE "LEARNING CURVE"!

This is such a truthful video and perfectly expressed! The old adage, practice, practice, practice comes to mind. I sometimes think there is always going to be some gap between desire and execution. Personally, my expectations for myself continually go up so I never am where I want to be. I find that motivating. I get bored if I can do something easily. I want to be challenged. How exciting to think there is always room for improvement, always new things to accomplish, that life continues to be interesting to the very end. I think it was Monet who said at the time of his death that he was just starting to get the hang of things. Amen!

NEW PAINTING...NEW TITLE

The Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society has a theme for their annual show. This year the theme is "On the Edge". I was thinking maybe I would enter this painting into the show. My new working title is "The Edge of Perception". I am open to other suggestions, so don't be shy!

I like this angle of the head much better. It is more pleasant and a hell of a lot easier to draw! I covered an old painting start with Gesso and let it dry. Then I drew the head on with Sanguine Pitt permanent pen. Next, using my new alphabet stamp set I "iced"each letter as I needed it with heavy gloss gel (used a plastic knife to spread the gel over the letter) and stamped it onto the paper. This was the most time consuming part of the painting. When the gel was dry, i coated the paper again with gesso. I used a rubber brayer to even out the gesso and I like the subtle texture and even surface this provided. You have to put gesso over the gel if you hope to have any watercolor stick to it.

When the last coat of gesso dried, you could see a faint ink line of the image. Perfect! I started out with yellow ochre for the background and then proceeded from there. I layered a number of color on the background and was disappointed that I couldn't see them. It just looked like texture. Then I decided to try the tissue technique used by George James on Yupo. I wet the surface and lifted paint off and VOILA! you could see the letters. It's not really legible but you can tell that it is wording of some sort. You can click on the detail to see the effect better. I am pleased with the background and how it integrates with the foreground. Overall, I am pleased with the results. I see one minor touch up (a light spot under the chin) that needs correcting. I'm having fun and learning a lot.