The Dancer's Hand

I FINALLY got this one done.   I'm not sure what the big deal was but her right hand has been unfinished for months.

I'll be taking this one to the fair this weekend for the Cultural Arts exhibition.  

This is 24x20" on canvas, mostly knife painted in oils.

Then, I wanted to see if I could work on something more long-term and still get a little watercolor ACEO done for my 30 paintings in 30 days.  Short answer:  yes.  I have tried to paint a white horse in watercolor before pretty unsuccessfully and frustratingly; I'm a little happier with this one.

Almost There

FINALLY I had a day to spend a few hours painting.  It was wonderful.  The house is quiet, I put on some mood music, got out knives and paint and my Kindle for a reference photo (love that), and just played. 

Knife painting doesn't feel that much unlike finger painting to me.  It's very tactile, very much about the patterns IN the paint as well as the patterns the paint makes.  I adore this aspect of it.  I thought feathers would be a lot of fun to paint with a knife, and I was right. 

I have a few little tweaks I want to make with this, a few areas that need a little more blending or color adjustment, and I want his beak and eye to be very realistic, but he is pretty close to finished.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around species and subspecies of Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus).  I think that's what this guy is, but I see some with the black barring in their red breast feathers and some without.  A lot of the birds that were once classified as subspecies of T. haematodus are now getting their own classifications too.

At any rate, they are funny, active little birds whose diet consists mainly of nectar.  It's getting popular at many zoos in the US to have a large walk-in aviary with lories and lorikeets flying loose, and you can buy a cup of nectar to feed them.  I get a huge kick out of this, and both the Nashville and Cleveland Metroparks zoos have such exhibits.  If you get a chance to try it, take the kids. :)

Here are a few pics from our adventures at Nashville zoo with my niece and nephew, and the rainbow birds.

Scritches

Say hello to my muse.  This is Clio, my Senegal parrot.  She lives in my studio (well away from paint and fumes).  It's spring, which means she has itchy pinfeathers on her head.  When a new feather comes in, it's encased in keratin which the bird preens off with its beak.  Only thing is, they can't reach their own heads, so they generally use the buddy system and preen them for each other. 

Problem is, Clio's a single girl, so my much less efficient fingernails have to suffice for her.  She tells me she needs her head scratched by putting her foot up to her head and making scritching motions.  She's not much of a talker, her only word is "Up," (what I tell her when I want her to get on my hand), but she does a masterful imitation of the microwave, and me laughing, and smoochy noises.

Not much time to paint today but I squeezed an hour in, which felt good because I've hardly gotten any time to paint at all this week.  So I worked on knife-painting (impasto) my Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus).  I think his eye is a little too far back so I may have to fix that.

That said, it was a ton of fun painting all those little headfeathers that Clio likes me to scratch for her so much!  Knife painting is all about the texture and birdy heads have plenty of it.  The only thing I'm concerned about is I don't think I have an appropriately shaped knife for the feathers lower down.... I need something kind of shaped like a fan brush.  Not sure such a thing exists... hmmm.

More about lorikeets next time!

Minus the Rainbow

It's amazing how much better I'm in the Flow when I paint every day.

This past week has been horrendous.  My son Brandon's car blew a head gasket a week and a half ago, so I've been driving him to college and to work.  Then, my husband's car broke down last week... so I've basically been playing bus driver and getting everyone where they need to go, and squeezing in my day job, which has been leaving me NO time to paint. 

They're both off today, which means I have been really excited that I'd get some studio time, but I woke up without the slightest clue what I wanted to do, other than I wanted to paint a bird . I wasn't sure if I wanted to use a brush or knife, and I wasn't sure what kind of bird I wanted to paint.  Then I thought I'd work on my landscape, changed my mind about that, and finally settled on a really big knife painting of a rainbow lorikeet, since I've been working a lot in dark colors and I thought it might be fun to do something bright and feather-textured.

So, I worked on the background and more detail-necessary parts of this little guy.  I dunno, he's sort of looking more like an Indian Ringneck parakeet than a Lori to me, at least for the moment, but I'm sure that'll change when he gets his coat of many colors.

I love parrots.  I had budgies when I was a kid, and a mischievous lovebird named Gizmo who enjoyed escaping her cage while I was at school and flinging everything off my dresser and then running to hte edge to watch where it fell.  She also would fly up to the ceiling fan (which was always off unless she was securely locked in) and land on it, and the momentum of her landing would push the blades a little bit and she'd go for a ride.  Since then, I've had a Noble macaw, a couple of parrotlets, cockatiels and lovebirds, and currently a Senegal parrot who is just a sweetheart and really enjoys it when I spend time in the studio (where she lives... well away from access to paint, and fumes).  Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and Nashville zoo have lorikeet exhibits where you can go into their habitat and feed them nectar... they are such colorful little clowns.

Anyway, here's stage one on this guy... and it's a big canvas, 18 x 24, same size as my flamenco dancer.  I'm not sure I'm going to knife in the background at all, I kind of like the way it is.

Hopefully I'll get some time to finish him tomorrow, or at least make a dent!

Full Gallop

My son Brandon, who as of this fall will be a fine art major, had a painting date today. It's so nice to have another artist to look at what you're doing when it stops making sense to you.

Anyway I had painted the background for this black stallion a few days ago and thought I'd finish him today.

I'm amazed at how different the light is in the first one, from a few days ago, and today.  I really need to get some good consistent lighting in my studio.

While I was working on this Bran did a nifty one-point perspective drawing.

This boy is for sale.  He's done in a textured knife-painting impasto technique on 11 x 14 gessoboard (Masonite type) panel.

I went and visited my own horses yesterday, now that I'm feeling a bit better from the cough that has plagued me for the last three months.  My girl Storm (Arabian) put on a show for me.  She went down to get a drink of water and then raced back up tossing her head, and ran directly to me, skidding to a stop.  I even got a picture, which I may need to paint -- it's not often I manage to get a decent picture of either of my girls running.  Abbey the chunky monkey doesn't run unless absolutely necessary, but Storm enjoys it. :)

The Jewel in the Lotus

Om mani padme hum.

I had the urge this morning to Zentangle.  This is what I came up with.

From there I went to my new henna impasto technique on some of the mini canvases I base coated yesterday.  I have my paint mixture a little too thick, so that needs some tweaking, but they came out pretty cool. 

I think it's kind of nifty the way the design goes off the edge of the canvas.

I had this green one since a couple of weeks ago - the base coat on it is also impasto (textured).

Finally, I painted the lotus that is the first painting in this post.  Beneath it in Sanskrit it says "Om mani padme hum," which is a mantra meaning "jewel in the lotus."    It is meant to help the meditator focus on compassion, wisdom, and indivisibility (we are all One), and it is associated with Quan Yin, a bodhisattva/goddess of compassion. 

I'll have these posted on the For Sale pages on my website, and also possibly on my Daily Paintworks gallery and/or Etsy (need to get my Etsy shop fully operational this week!)

Bailamos!

Her right hand is driving me nuts and it's late (I'm usually a morning painter and it's 10 pm) so I decided to step away and lay fresh eyes on it tomorrow. That said, aside from a few things I want to tweak I'm pretty happy with it. It suggests movement to me, which was essentially what I was after, that and the dramatic lighting.

Some drawing/anatomy practice would surely save me a good deal of frustration. Need to get on that.

Flamenco, Background

I did the impasto background for my flamenco dancer. When it dries I'll work on her. Also changed some anatomy a little.

Squire's Castle's Tree

Squire's Castle, 11 x 14 oil impasto on stretched canvas.

This one's done too :) I like finishing things if they feel finished when I'm done. Every painter faces the question: How do you know when to stop?  Yesterday, with the Weimaraner, when I stopped I wasn't sure I was done (I had to ask everyone in my household what they thought).  Today, I knew when to stop.

This photo isn't the best... my impasto medium makes the finished painting shinier than it would be without it, which really brings out the texture nicely, but it also makes the finished painting more difficult to photograph.  I'll have to take this one outside on an overcast day and see if I can get a better image.

I'm really proud of this one.  I roughed the image in with a brush, but the coat over it (well, two if you count the foreground tree layer) is done 100% with a palette knife.

If you didn't read the previous posts about what this castle is and why I felt the need to paint it, you can check them out here and here. 

Painting With a Cone

This past weekend I went to ConNooga, which is a "multi-fandom" convention for gamers, trekkers, Star Wars fans, steampunk, anime, etc.  I did henna while I was there and I was very pleased to discover that all the art I've been doing has really increased my confidence with henna, and I had the chance to do some really nice designs.  I thought I'd share a few.   A brief explanation of what mehndi, the art of henna, is.  It is an ancient, mainly women's art, done traditionally in the middle east, India and Africa.  The henna plant (Lawsonia inermis) is dried, ground to a very fine powder, sifted so that it is still more fine, made into a paste with an acidic something (I use lemon juice), then applied in various methods.  I, and a lot of henna artists, roll a cone out of mylar/cellophane, pipe the henna into the cone, and apply it in delicate, fine lines.   When the paste dries, it flakes off, leaving the design stained into the skin.  They last for several weeks.   About a month or so ago I had the idea to mix oil paint with Liquin impasto medium to thicken it, and then put it in a henna cone and pipe it onto a prepainted canvas.  Here is the result of my first go at this:   I played with a few more today.  The one below is prepainted with a typical brush technique and then the impasto "henna" piped onto it, the same as the one above that I did last week.  On the last one I used impasto medium in the base coat as well, giving the canvas a texture.  I think I like the smoothly painted style better.         These are little 3 x 3 mini canvases, and basically experiments, although I kind of like the way they turned out.  It occurs to me that this might work better with a still thicker medium, and acrylic paint rather than oils (plus, I won't worry quite as much if I get paint on my hands while doing it).  Since that would involve an investment in yet another set of paints, I probably won't try it in acrylic for a while.  I also need to see if the paint can be kept if I put the cone in a plastic baggie and freeze it.... that way I could do a cone-palette that I keep in the freezer rather than having to fill cones with all the colors - and color blends, can't wait to try that! - that I want to use.

Calla

I go through phases with my jewelry making... I want to do chainmaille for a while, then I want to play with wire, and sometimes I want to make things out of tiny seed beads.  I am certain that it'll be the same with painting, and I'm currently in a knife painting (impasto) phase.  In some ways it's great because it keeps me from getting too obsessed with details, which is pretty easy for me to do.

I wanted to do a flower with a knife, and decided that the smooth lines of a calla lilly would be fun to paint.  I was right.  You probably can't see the texture from these pictures but there are subtle leaf shapes in the background paint on this, which is why impasto is so much fun for me.  I did this in two phases; I did the background one day and finished it the next.  Have to love quick-drying paint (but not TOO quick...).

I had so much fun doing this... I want to try impasto on Gessoboard to see how this works without the texture of the canvas peeking through. 

Squire's Castle

This is the first painting I laid out from a sketch, roughed in, and then painted entirely with a palette knife.  It isn't 100% finished; there are a few little touches I want to add when it's dry, and straighten up a few lines and add a few highlights here and there.  But all in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out :)

In case you missed yesterday's post, this is a structure called Squire's Castle that was built in the 1890s by an oil tycoon named Squire.  It was meant to be just the gatehouse for his estate (can you imagine what he had in mind for the main house?).  He abandoned the project, though, and Cleveland Metroparks acquired the property in the 1920s.  Today it's there for anyone to use.  It's just a shell of a building but there are picnic tables and fireplaces inside that you can use, and of course the imagination of a child runs wild in such a place.  It's also surrounded by wonderful hiking trails.

I moved to Tennessee in 2005 and I have to say that the thing I miss the most about Cleveland (besides family) is the "emerald necklace" of parks that surrounds it.  For me, this is the jewel of the lot, and worth a visit if you're in the area.

On Being a Princess

This is my castle.  Well it's not MY castle.  It belongs to me and the imagination of every other child who has grown up in Cleveland's eastern suburbs. 

I thought that I would do some knife painting today, and I thought perhaps buildings would be nice to paint with a knife (I may be proved wrong on that).  First I thought, streetscape.  Then, I thought castle.  Then it hit me.. my castle.

Squire's Castle is in Cleveland Metroparks' North Chagrin Reservation.  It was built in the 1890s by a guy named Squire and (mind bogglingly... it's huge) was meant to be the gatehouse for his estate.  If I remember the story correctly, his wife died and he gave up on the project, and sold it.  Metroparks later acquired it.  Legend has it that she still haunts the place.

So the rooms are unfinished, rough brick and local sandstone, with huge brick fireplaces that you can build fires in and roast marshmallows.  The front of the building is a huge field that's great for playing frisbee or softball or running with your faithful dog, and behind it are miles and miles of hiking trails for long adventures. 

It's the perfect place to imagine yourself on a grand quest, whether you're 10 or 30.  It's pretty high up there on the list of my favorite places in the world.

So, I sketched it and roughed in a canvas (11x14).  Once the rough dries, I'll try knife painting the shapes here.  Don't be surprised to see a little girl in the foreground, either :)

Abstract

More fun with impasto gel and palette knives, this time a little bigger (and I really think, this is probably the smallest that is going to work for this technique, for me).  The lighting in these photos isn't the best.

I love the texture . The first one is SUPER thick.  The other, not so much.  I learned a few things about how I want to go about applying paint to the canvas, though, which is cool.  The second one left a lot of the strokes of the thinned underpainting showing, which is what I wanted, and also the texture of the canvas showing in the impasto.

The coolest thing about all of this is, I am now 2 paintings ahead for daily paintings, which means I can work on in-progress stuff in my "normal" technique and not worry about having to finish something. 

Next month, my goal will probably be more like, paint every day, but not necessarily to finish something every day.  But having something to show for my labor every day is kind of nice too.

It's been a week and I've done at least SOME painting every day!  :D   And, about a whole month that I've been back at this.  Go me!

Meh

More experiments with knife and impasto. Pretty awful ones.  This is a little 3 x 3 (too small for the knife I'm working with), and while it's pretty terrible, based solely on texture I'm kinda digging it.  Doesn't it make you want to touch it?

I plan to work this one with some more. I think I need some different shaped knives and maybe some other random objects. I might try out my henna idea with it. Did I talk about that at all? Stay tuned. 

Testing, Testing, Check, Check

I know, I'm all over the place. I can't help but try a little of everything this month. So far oil (my "comfort zone" medium), watercolor, pastel/colored pencil, and today, painting with a palette knife. 

 

There's a side view so you can see the texture on this thing. Also the first time I've tried anything like still life.

As far as painting with a knife, it will definitely take some getting used to. I couldn't get my colors for the inside of the lamp the way I wanted them... I mixed and scrapped three colors that ended up looking muddy to me.  

 

How do you get brighter without paler? Is it even possible?  It feels like I should know this.  I'm such a noob.

Anyway, experiment #5 accomplished. I will definitely be playing with this some more, I think I like it... Probably some more organic subject next time. Lines are hard and in watching my knife idol Leonid Afremov at work, I think they're meant to be blurred anyway.

Maybe a bigger canvas, too... This felt pretty cramped.