Day 30, Painting 30

Well, here I am at the end of my challenge.  You know what's cool?  I didn't feel like I had to close the month with an amazing piece of art that will blow your mind.  In fact, this isn't even anything that's out of my own head, it's my second exercise out of Stephanie Pui-Mun Law's Dreamscapes.  I went to Michael's last night and picked up a hodgepodge of goodies... watecolor paper, a new palette knife, Liquin medium to make my oils dry more quickly, and iridescent medium for my watercolors. 

Out of all that stuff, of course, I wanted to play with the sparkles.  You probably can't see the medium in my photo here, but her wings and hair have a bit of silvery shimmer that you can see in person.  I'm not sure the green scribbles in the background work for me, but it doesn't really matter.  It does give me some information on what I want to do with backgrounds in the future.

So this is why it's cool that I feel no need to blow your mind today.  Because, I will be here tomorrow, and I will try another experiment, and it might come out great, and it might not, and I may not even paint, I may sketch.  I may have a work in progress to show you instead of something finished . But I'll be here. 

My friend from Cleveland left yesterday afternoon (it was an awesome visit and over too soon!), and I didn't get into the studio at all while she was here, but I'd painted just enough to cover that time period so that I only had to produce one painting today to meet my 30.  But I couldn't WAIT to get into the studio this morning.  Art has become part of my life.

In reality I started this challenge some time around the second week in December.  I decided I wasn't going to pressure myself to finish anything because of my painting style in December, but then, not only did I not finish a painting a day in December... I didn't finish anything in December.  So I thought this January challenge would be a good kick in the butt to stop being timid and wrap things up.  It was, it was great.  Some of the experiments I tried, I would not consider a huge success and I wouldn't even dream of showing them to anyone, at one time.  But I did.  Everything's there on my January 30/30 Challenge page, all in one place so you can see it all, my successes and ... let's call them learning experiences.  Because that's what they are.  When you show up at the canvas every day, there's no pressure to make THIS painting perfect, because even if it disappoints you, tomorrow's painting might exceed all expectations, and every one of them will teach you something about who you are, what you enjoy, what speaks to your artist's soul, and what you want to try next.

So here you have it, not a painting to knock your socks off, but just one more day, one more painting, one more step on my path that I hope does not have a destination.  I'm certainly not focused on a destination right now, although I hope that by the end of this year I can call myself a professional artist.

I keep a page of fancy scrapbooking paper around near my desk.  Sometimes words and phrases will come into my own head that I scribble down on this paper, and sometimes I run across some quote or inspiration that I want to remember.  When I do, I scribble it into one of hte spaces on this page.  I have a few of these tucked away and I recently ran across an old one with this quote on it:

Writing is like driving at night.  You cannot see beyond the headlights... but you can make the whole trip like that.     -- E.L. Doctorow

It occurred to me when I ran across that little snippet that I scribbled down years ago that art is that way too... not that you shouldn't have goals, just that you should remember to savor every bit of the journey.  The great thing about art, and writing, and blogs, is that it'll be here, years from now, and you can go back and see where you've been and how far you've come.

So if you did this challenge this month, whether you did 30 paintings or not, congratulations!  And thanks for following this journey and inspiring me.  And I hope that, like me, you'll be in the studio tomorrow, sorting out where the next turn in your path might take you.  More about that tomorrow. 

If you DIDN'T do this challenge this month, but you either are an artist or you'd love to be an artist (even if you are telling yourself you don't have the talent), I hope that today holds a few minutes of art for you, even if it's a doodle on a scrap sheet of paper while you're talking on the phone. 

Safe travels :)

P.S. If you stop by this blog and take the time to read it, do me a huge favor and drop by that 30/30 page and let me know which of my efforts you like the best... I'd love to hear a little feedback !

Mehndi Inspired

I started doing henna body art in 2010.  Let me explain a little about what it is. 

A paste is made from the plant Lawsonia inermis (henna plant) and an acidic liquid -- I use lemon juice.  The paste is then put into some sort of device for application (mylar cones, in my case), then applied in fine strands to the skin.  Left on the skin for a few hours or overnight, henna will produce a deep chestnut stain, which lasts up to several weeks.

Henna art has a distinctive look; often floral, lots of spirals and swirls, often intricately detailed.  I have wanted to play with henna inspired designs in oils for a while now but I need to order more mylar cones; so I thought I would experiment with watercolor today.  I really like the way the first one turned out.

If you'd like to see some of my henna art on people, you can check out the Henna page on this site. 

I recently discovered that my henna supplier has a new product; a glue that can be applied with a henna cone and then dusted with gilding powder or fine glitter for gorgeous shimmering body art designs that last for 3-10 days.  I have an event coming up the first of March where I will be doing henna so I'm really excited to order some and try it out :)

Smaug's Eye

Original ACEO watercolor/pen and ink. Click to purchase.

This one's inspired by that tantalizing shot of Smaug's eye at the end of the Hobbit.  I expected it, didn't you?  they weren't going to blow the surprise and show you the beast in the first of three movies, but there was that foreboding shadow as he attacked the village in the history part, and of course at the end he wakes amid his piles of gold...

Dragons completely fascinate me, and i suspect they'll frequently be the subject of the challenge I've set myself for next month when the 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge ends... I plan do do a lot of sketching with an eye (pun intended) toward painting.  So you'll be seeing a lot more dragons from me, but for now, just like the movie, you get a tantalizing glimpse of an eye.  ;)

Crazy Frog

3 x 3 Mini Painting Original on Canvas. Click to purchase.

Another little 3 x 3 mini canvas today.  I've been doing these little ones because I want to get a jump on my daily paintings in case I don't get a chance to paint a few days next week.  I really liked this little tree frog so I decided to paint him today.  I liked his bright colors and sucker-pad toes.  :)

I think this is Litoria chloris but I'm no expert on tree frogs.  They're native to Australia.

I do think I'd enjoy keeping frogs one of these days, but for now I'm focused on my praying mantises, which I also would like to paint in oil at some point.

Mini Paintings

I got the awesome news yesterday that my friend from high school, Monica, is stopping by to visit on her way from an archaeological dig in Arkansas back home to Cleveland, and staying a few days.  I'm so excited to see her, it's been 20 years!

BUT... that means it's likely I won't get time to paint Tuesday or Wednesday next week, so I want to get a couple ahead.  As a result I worked on some small paintings in oil today.

I love minis and ACEOs because it's an affordable way for anyone to collect miniature original works of art.  If you'd like to purchase any of these, check out the ACEO/Mini Page.

Stop and Smell the Daisies, 3 x 3 mini canvas

I roughed Stop and Smell the Daisies in ages ago, and then misplaced it in all the confusion of my son moving out for college, back home, then away again, and then back home again.  I found it this past weekend and put some more details on it, but it's not done yet... close, but not quite.

Joy and Friendship, 3 x 3 mini canvas. Click picture to purchase.

This one, however, I started and finished today.  I left the charcoal outlines in it a bit because I decided I like them.  This is a 3 x 3 on a mini canvas.

What Cheer? 2.5 x 3.5 oil on ACEO card, for sale here 

And I roughed in this little oil ACEO at the beginning of the month and got around to finishing it today.  I was trying to remember what the birdwatcher people say the cardinal says (they have words to match the calls of a lot of birds, which is why Chickadees are named chickadee-dee-dee), and I looked it up.  What cheer, cheer, cheer?  And then as I started to type this paragraph I realized I was hearing a cardinal outside my window.

I love these little guys... they sure brighten up a dreary winter.  I was washing dishes this morning and Mrs. Cardinal paid a visit to my garden, which is right outside my kitchen window. 

I have a fascination with painting birds lately... and I just got a book on painting wildlife, so expect to see more of them :)

Transparent Color

I recently bought the book Radiant Oils:  Glazing Techniques for Paintings that Glow by Arleta Pech.  I've recently been annoyed because I can't get the color or value I want in my oil paintings without creating mud, so I thought that this book would be helpful.  And I think it will be, although her approach to painting is a little different than what I'm used to.  I add a lot of white to my colors to get the values I want, whereas she, with a watercolorist background, thins the paints to transparency and builds the values she wants in layers, as you would in watercolor.

Unfortunately, I don't have any of the mediums around that she recommends (walnut oil, primarily), but I wanted to try some of these techniques, so I thought I would play around with the concepts in watercolor -- it would take days to do the experiment in oils, anyway.

This was the result.  I learned a lot about shading and color gradients from solids to white in the process, too, as you can see, my lower objects are better shaded than the first ones I tried.   This was done with three primary paints (and I did three different brands and color versions, to compare).  The primaries are one row, and then below that I put a layer of a primary and then layered another primary over the dry paint to create secondary tones, rather than mixing my colors on the palette (the two spheres off to the side, I used the latter method, just to see the difference). 

The watercolor book I have that I have been working with, Step-by-Step Guide to Painting Realistic Watercolors, is pretty cool, but it holds your hand and walks you through creating a traced-image painting and then filling in and layering the colors like this.  Only problem is, if I don't want to reproduce someone else's paintings, I have to figure this value thing out on my own, and there are no experimental exercises like this one in it.  

I do think that I'm going to need better paint if I'm going to pursue this watercolor thing with any seriousness... the beginner sets of paints I have are obviously not as rich in pigment as the few tubes of better brands that I've bought.  But, one thing at a time (yeah right, like I ever listened to THAT advice...).

Brandon (my son, who has an artistic bent) brought up an interesting question when I showed it to him:  Why is it that we seem to default having the light coming from the upper right?  Hm. Never thought about it, but it seems to be true in my case.  Any lefties out there who tend to make it come from the left?

Knotted

This is a little knotwork bird inspired by an illustration in the Book of Kells, done in my watercolor sketchbook.  As usual for knotwork, I created the design on graph paper and transferred via graphite paper to the sketchbook.  This only fills about a quarter of the sketchbook page so I will probably give it some accompanying calligraphy when I decide what I want it to say.

I had a few issues with it.  First, I got so engrossed in making it look like a bird that I forgot how the knotwork should go, and so the neck part is a little more tangled than it should be.  Also, my graphite paper seems to have wax or something in it that resists watercolor, so my lines show a little white here and there where they shouldn't.  But, overall, I'm pretty happy with it.  I want to do a knotwork animal of my own design, eventually, and maybe incorporate it into a watercolor painting somehow.  Baby steps :)