1ST. DEMO FOR OKLAHOMA PORTRAIT WORKSHOP!

Here in the Tulsa, Oklahoma suburb of Broken Arrow, the weather is running hot and cold, wet and dry but the workshop is HOT HOT HOT!  Everyone is really into the work and progressing nicely.  Tomorrow I should be able to create a slide show of the first paintings.  This is the first demo.  I always like to start with a forward facing older face.  I put a textured gesso surface on the paper and used Dr. Martin's Hydrus watercolors.  

DEMO PAINTING FROM OREGON WORKSHOP!

I had a few days at home and then I was off to Portland, Oregon last Monday to do a three day workshop for OSA.  I was able to spend Monday and Tuesday with my long time friend before the class began.  She took me to Powell's Bookstore...I think I could live there!  If you are ever in Portland, Powell's is a MUST!  I controlled myself and only purchased 3 books. (mostly because I had to carry them all afternoon)  They have the used books and the new books all on the same shelves.  Rows and Rows and Rows of books on art.  Rooms and rooms and rooms of books on every subject in the world.   We walked around the Pearl District looking for galleries.  Many had closed but we saw lots of interesting art.   Portland was looking especially lush this week with all the flowering trees in bloom.  Lots of forested areas in and around the city.

The workshop was wonderful.  Everyone worked hard and there was a wide range of experience in the group.  I will post a slide show tomorrow after I get all the photos labeled and adjusted.  In the meantime you can pop over to Carrie Holst' blog and get her perspective on the class.  This is my demo piece.  Good old Morris is painted one more time.  I just love his face, hat and beard.  I showed texturing gesso with stamps.  You can see the effect in the detail photo.  This painting came together very, very quickly. Sometimes the gods are with us!

  

CHEAP JOE'S NEW WATERCOLOR STICKS TRY OUT!

My order for the compete set of Watercolor Sticks from Cheap Joe's has been on backorder for about 6 months!  They finally arrived today along with an order from Daniel Smith for these plastic cases to store them in.  They get sticky and messy when wet.  These cases are a great solution and solve the problem nicely.    I have about 8 colors from Daniel Smith's watercolor sticks.  I was excited to try them out today and compare the two lines.  Daniel Smith's sticks are very pricey....$12 each!  Cheap Joe's were about $4 each, at least when you bought them as a set.  This particular painting had my gesso transfer over an old painting.  This is a very rough surface to paint on but produces great texture.  DON'T USE GOOD BRUSHES as they will wear away quickly.  I drew with ink using a new stick I found at Michael's.  I bought an entire package (should last awhile!) and they look sort of like fat, flat, large toothpicks.  After the ink dried, I wet the watercolor stick by dipping it into water and started using it like a crayon, then took a wet brush and blended out the color.  I need to try the Cheap Joe's sticks on a more traditional watercolor surface before coming to any permanent conclusion, but the new sticks seem to have a serious wax coating on them and do not have the richness of color I find in the Daniel Smith brand.  This may be a case of "you get what you pay for"  

FINAL TWO STEPS

Here are the last two stages to complete this painting. I added white acrylic to the bleached painting, then started glazing and painting on top. It is a good idea to photograph the steps of your paintings for future reference. If you find you don't need them, it is easy to erase them. If you decide after the fact, that you wanted to document the steps, you can't go back!

Very little of the original bleached effect is left. Most likely it impacted the look of the finished painting, but it is pretty subtle. I'm going to keep on with this idea until I hit on the balance I am looking for. Can't quite say what it is, but I will know it when it shows up. The thrill of the hunt!

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN!

This was a piece of watercolor paper that I had put a band of textured gesso on as a demo. I decided to cover it with the ink. The ink is very blue in appearance on the gesso section. The ink will lift off of the gesso with water but the bleach changes the color to orange which gives both a warm/cool contrast and a blue/orange compliment contrast at the same time. I put two full strength coats of ink on the paper. Today I started playing around with the bleach. I was able to get the layering of values I wanted on the paper but it is too orange. It wouldn't lighten enough. I think I will go back to just one layer. I like how it looks on the gesso area. That area is totally liftable, so I sprayed it with acrylic fixative. Tomorrow I will go back in with some acrylic and see what happens. I put up some detail photos so you can see things more clearly. I was using a stick, a dip pen and all kinds of brushes. I went to Michaels and bought a bag of cheap brushes to use with the bleach. I was also experimenting with all of these ideas on YUPO. It moved around too much on the slippery surface, so I think I will move on. I guess Tyvek is next!

RESURRECTION!

Today I decided to photograph my gesso transfer process for the new book. While I was covering up old, ugly paintings with white gesso, I decided to try an idea I had from the Brommer workshop. I covered another painting with red gesso with the intention to proceed with a collage on top. I think I need to re-photograph the transfer process because the photos are at awkward angles. I guess I need to put things on the floor and shoot down or stand on a ladder and shoot down.

There is something so liberating about resurrecting a piece of good paper with a bad painting on it from the scrap heap and turning it into a painting I like. By the time I finished, I'm not sure the red base influenced anything, but I had a great time working on it. I kept remembering Jerry Brommer's words of keep layering until you like what happens. There are a number of layers in play here. I also finally played around with a new product that was given to me as a gift by Kathy McChesney when I was teaching in Solano Beach. These water soluble oil pastels are called Portfolio (found in Michael's) and made by the people who bring us Crayola. It is a student grade product but WHAT FUN! Kathy does the most amazing paintings with them. I never figured out how to combine them with what I was doing until today.

I went to the website at www.portfolioseries.com and found some wonderful student work, and interesting projects by art teachers. One project, (under acrylic), was wooden chairs painted in the style of a famous artist. The kids did amazing work. Makes me want to create an entire set for myself. If you are looking for a dynamite way to create something exciting on a budget, check it out. Oh well, must stay on task Kudos to the talented kids and their dedicated, inspirational art teachers.

FASTEST DEMO IN THE WEST!

This is the demonstration I did for our second view of the head in the workshop: The Profile. I think this may be the fastest painting of this size (18 x 24) I can remember doing. I would have worked on it longer but it seemed complete to me. It's soooo hard to quit while you are ahead (no pun intended there). The tendency is to fuss and fuss with it. I am finding less is more. More and more of the time. I drew this very quickly with my oiler-boiler filled with diluted thalo blue the night before and painted it in 20 minutes on Thursday morning to start out the class day. It is on gessoed paper using traditional watercolors. I just love the texture that shows up when the paper has gesso on it.

Here is the student profile slide show. ENJOY!

FRENCHMAN: LINE AS TEXTURE #2

I'm not sure this really qualifies as "line" but it certainly is TEXTURE! The stamp I used was web-like lines, so I started out to do physical texture using line. I took an unsuccessful painting I started in a workshop (140lb watercolor paper) and covered it with my new Utrech Gesso. It was like icing a cake! The consistency is like buttercream frosting. It can be thinned down to whatever consistency you want, so it is very economical. I stamped into the wet gesso and then let it dry. Actually, that is as far as I got yesterday. Today I took my time and drew the image with my #4 Lizard's Lick Cheap Joe brush using diluted Cobalt Blue Hydrus liquid watercolor. I kept the board upright so I wouldn't get a distortion. The gesso surface makes lifting and correcting very easy. I then used Hansa Yellow Deep (yellow orange), Permanent Red and the Cobalt. Mixing Cobalt with the Red creates a very dark color close to black! I also drew into the image with my oiler boilers using diluted Magenta and Thalo Blue.

This feel more like me. I like the looseness and texture, lots of color but less abstract.

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.