Out of the Box! (Week 2)

"Blue Barn"

9x12 oil on paper

$60 unframed

 Oil painting class, week 2! 

This is harder than I remember.  I mean, I never thought oil was that easy anyway, but I don't remember it being this hard.  Of course, that's my fault.  I'm impatient.  I want what I want when I want it, kinda like a cat.  I want it now and I want it exactly like I want it. 

Oil painting does not work that way. 

The most difficult part of anything for me is practice.  I don't want to practice.  I just want to do it.  I expect to be able to do anything perfectly the first time I try and if that doesn't happen, I run away and find something else to do.  I suppose I'm somewhat of an egotist, if I think I can always do it right the first time.  But that contradicts my own philosophy of arts and crafts, my mantra, my personal catch-phrase: Not Too Crooked!  As Vinnie Barbarino would say, "I'm so confused!" 

What I need to do is to rethink my thinks.

If I want it to be perfect, how can I accept it if it's Not Too Crooked?  Well, I can't.  Is it possible I have my own Not Too Crooked definition of "perfect?'  That must be it.  What may be perfect by my standards is Not Too Crooked by the rest of the world's. But, wait!  If the rest of the world thinks it's even A Little Bit Crooked, am I going to be happy to present it as my own?  Oh, Lord! I'm more confused than ever!

Anyway, oil painting class

  One thing I need to learn is not to put colors out on my palette that I'm probably not going to use.  When I first started oils, I was taught to lay out my palette with warm and cool versions of red, yellow and blue, plus yellow ochre, raw and burnt sienna, raw and burnt umber, black, white, and the ubiquitous Viridian. ("Ubiquitous' is a great word that perfectly describes the character of Viridian. It means "existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time."  Once Viridian comes into your life, you will pay hell to get it out, like ants in the kitchen.  But that's a conversation for another day.)  Getting back to my palette, I would lay out 14 colors, sometimes more, before I even started to paint, adding maybe an orange, another yellow, violet, couple shades of green, and never use half of them. Now, I have seen people scrape up little bits of pigment and actually get it back into the tube, but, really?!  I've known one who would lay a piece of plastic wrap over the surface and put her whole palette in the freezer right next to the pot pies and the popsicles.  Doesn't sound very appetizing to me!  I just try to use up as much pigment as I can within a couple of days.  I hate to waste it.  Paint is expensive. If I was selling paintings for a ton of money, I probably wouldn't worry about it, but I'm not, so I do. Seemingly, this would encourage me to paint every day, but sometimes life and laundry get in the way. 

This last class, good old Viridian stayed in the tube and I made all my greens

. I had Cobalt and Ultramarine, Cad Yellow and Cad Yellow Light, and was able to make some passable winter greens.  A touch of Cad Red or Burnt Sienna to gray them down if needed, and of course, white. I use a lot of white in oil painting.  And more yellow than blue. The next morning, I touched up a few bits on my little barn, and realized the only colors left that were still malleable were Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, and a little smear of Cobalt.  The result of that combination, slathered on a 5x7 canvas board, is below, a dark blue pear on a pink background. Interesting. Different. Fun to do. But that's what painting should be. Interesting, different and fun to do. And Not Too Crooked.  Don't forget Not Too Crooked!   

Carole 

"Midnight Snack"

5x7 oil

$20 unframed

ps. If by chance you'd like to own one of my paintings, my contact info is in my bio and I don't expect anyone to purchase anything before seeing it "in person." Photos are never the same as the real life version. If you like my work, that's wonderful, but if you don't, no problem.  We'll still be friends. Promise. One can't be an artist and be thin-skinned.  C. 

Out of the Box!

"Sunflowers Bouquet"

9x12 oil on paper

$60 unframed

"Faded Glory"

5x7 oil on board

$20 unframed

My friend and I decided climb out of our respective boxes and  take an oil painting class. 

It being the dead of winter and inspiration, seemingly, at an all time low, we figured it would get us our of our rut and expand our horizons.

                                          Now, I have painted oils in the past.  I took several plein aire workshops with Heiner Hertling at Germanton Gallery in Germanton, NC a few years ago and produced a fair number of mediocre to half-way decent paintings.  I enjoyed the process and the way the paint moved and it really helped me get over my fear of white paper.  While I like the medium, I don't like the mess.  Some days I only have a small amount of time to spend painting and with oil, the clean-up takes longer than that.

                                         When we arrived at class, there were 2 different areas already set up for painting.  One was a still life of a yellow pitcher with sunflowers and the other was a landscape projected onto a screen.  Two-thirds of the class was already in place to paint the landscape.  Those were the folks who looked like they knew what they were doing. 

                                        My friend and I chose the still life because we didn't know what we were doing. Or at least, I didn't feel like I did, since it had been years ago I had painted this way.  I discovered that, even though I remembered most of the mechanics of oil painting, I had lost my touch in handling the paint.  I used too much thinner.  I couldn't get the hang of laying wet paint over wet paint.  In my efforts to get the shape right, the subject kept getting bigger and bigger until I ran out of ground.  I wiped it off and started over.  I wiped it off and started again.  I whined (to my self in my head.  I learned a long, long time ago that people don't like it when old women whine aloud.)  I wanted to quit and go home.  In spite of all that septuagenarian angst, I was finally able to produce the little piece above at the top.  Not too bad for a first attempt after a long hiatus. 

             The next morning, I still had paint on my palette,

and being the self-proclaimed Queen of Left-overs, I had to do something with it.  A small palette knife and a piece of 5x7 Masonite that had been previously toned with burnt sienna came to the rescue and in a few minutes, the small painting on the right appeared.  I ran out of yellow before I ran out of flowers, but, like any left-over queen, I improvised. 

               Each could have been better, each could have been worse. But they're not too crooked.

Yep, they will do. 

It's good to get out of your box.  We never know what we can do until we try, 'til we dare to take that leap, no matter how small. 

Carole

"Sunflowers and Pears"

Watercolor

16 x 20 matted unframed $175

Midwinter Blues (and Greens) Part 2

 It seems whenever I have a few minutes to paint,

I tend to paint evergreens.  These pages from my sketchbook are just that, moments when I only had 15 minutes to paint and decided to try something different. and what better subject to practice on than trees. Besides, evergreens teach us a good lesson: Never give up!  No matter how old, or tired or broken, tattered or torn, they always look towards heaven.  They are always pointing upward, as though they are trying to reach for the stars.

I had several blank pages at the end of a well-used watercolor journal. One of them, I spattered with a toothbrush full of masking fluid. The other two, I stamped with white acrylic snowflakes. 

The one to the left, with the splattered masking fluid is the more spontaneous of the three.  Trees painted quickly, passionately, then, wetting the background around the still-wet trees and dropping in all the colors used to make the greens and cleaning my brush in the foreground snow.  I love this little painting.  It's as exuberant as I felt when I painted it! 



This second one, had a bit more acrylic snowflake than I had wanted but I still like it.  I sprinkled it with a mix of kosher and fine sea salt to get the blooms in the sky.  I like the way I don't know what I've got until I get it.  It's great fun to see what will happen.  White acrylic or mask doesn't show up very well on white paper, so it's always a surprise when color is applied.  And the same with salt.  Kosher salt leaves big blossoms and sea salt makes tiny white sparkles, depending upon how wet the paint is when it's sprinkled.  It's all a crap-shoot!  What you see is not always what you get! 

This third one, a little more studied than the others, has hardly any snowflakes at all, and no salt.  I was just sort of cleaning the stamp on this page, so not much paint transferred, but there's still a little, just a whisper of a large snowflake in the upper right sky. It's simple, it came together quickly and easily. No effort. It has it's faults, but the little trees reach toward heaven like all evergreens.

When I am looking through magazines and books for inspiration I'm always drawn to the scenes with grand expanses of white snow, clear blue skies and deep, dark pines.  To me they embody the clean, purity of winter more-so than anything else. 

Winter is a time of wonder, time for the Earth and all her creatures to rest, to hibernate, to snuggle down, dream, ponder, renew.  There is nothing more cleansing to the soul than breathing the clean, frost-laden air of a winter's day. 

I hear folks say they don't like winter.  I used to be one of them. No more.  I cherish these days to contemplate, to imagine, to plan, to revive, to watch, to appreciate the difference. Spring, Summer and Fall run together seamlessly. I hardly notice when one changes to the other, but Winter, oh, Winter charges in and settles in and waits, and then, one day, just as suddenly, leaves. And we are refurbished. And we begin again. But the evergreens, the pines, the firs and cedars, the hemlocks and hollies, they remain, unchanged, eternal, the Sentinels of the Forest, quietly, with great dignity, bringing their message.

Carole

                                                                                                                                                                              

A Creative Mess is Better than Tidy Idleness!

Someone asked me why I changed the name of my blog. 
It's from a wooden plaque my mother kept hanging in her workroom.  It was her justification, I suppose, for being more involved with her artwork than her housework.  At one time or another, she did everything except paint pictures. 

As a young mother,
she always had some project in the works and it was commonplace to find her elbow-deep in wood shavings, fabric or clay. In later years, she began making and selling porcelain reproductions of antique dolls: Bye-los, Dream Babies, Armand Marseille little girl dolls, and many others, completely by hand. She poured porcelain slip, fired, painted, assembled, stuffed bodies, sewed clothes and even tatted lace for them. The only parts she didn't make were the wigs, the shoes and the eyes.
She did a little catering as well. My brothers and I helped make thousands of canapés and watched wedding cakes and hand-dipped chocolates grow out of the chaos that was our kitchen.  She was always busy creating something. 

As the years caught up with her and her thinking became

clouded, she turned back to the needlework she had learned as a girl, embroidery, knitting and crocheting. She crocheted quite a few lap robes, she called them, to cover one's legs while watching tv  and donated them to a nursing home.  After a while, she began losing her way and she would forget to increase, or neglect to make a corner, and the lap robes took on a very different shape. 
I came to see her one day and asked what she was making.  She held it up, looked at it and said "It started out to be a lap robe, but it looks more like a watermelon cover. Do you need a watermelon cover?" 

She was a witty, intelligent, creative woman who told me once

never to strive for perfection.  Of arts and crafts, she said
"It's a thing's imperfections that give it it's charm."  

She is why I consider myself a proud member of the "Not Too Crooked" School of Art. A creative mess is way more fun than floors you can eat from!

Lord, how I miss my mama!

Carole

ps. The painting above is a half sheet watercolor inspired by a photo I took of some fruit and wine on a shelf at a window.  It's not too crooked and not for sale.

Midwinter Blues (and Greens)

I always think of January as being 'way down in the winter' but in reality, we're only just a little way into winter since winter officially begins just before Christmas.  So we won't actually be  'way down in the winter until late February or early March. 

Around Christmas,

I always think about painting evergreens.  I think, like most of us, I tend to want to paint pines as triangles, like Christmas trees that have been carefully pruned and shaped to the perfect Christmas tree form.  It's stuck in our heads from Kindergarten, triangle trees with five-pointed stars, holly leaves with exactly 3 berries.  We have been trained.  And we remember our training.  And it is so, so difficult to make ourselves break out of that box.  This painting of evergreens and snow is one of my favorites.  I painted it several years ago after a week-long watercolor workshop with Sterling Edwards.  He made us think about how evergreens grow, how, if the top is broken off, the second branch will take over the top position and the tree will always maintain it's pointed shape.  Yes, they do exhibit a rather rough triangular shape, but ragged, uneven, with gaps between the branches, places where other trees have interfered with growth or deer have nibbled away the lower branches. Life has just happened.

This morning,

before life had a chance to intervene, I opened a little box of Williamsburg iridescent oil paints that were given to me at the Art Box.  Delicate shades of Iridescent Blue, Iridescent Gold and Iridescent Pearl and with a touch of Winsor viridian and cobalt blue and a bit of Indian red, this ragged little tree sort of grew.  It's just a little 3 x 4 canvas, and  I used too much medium and a tiny flat sable brush. But it was fun. And it is art.  And I have started my day on an encouraging note.  I think it's important to begin each day with something meaningful, be it a prayer, an almost perfect omelet, or a tiny painting of a snow-tipped evergreen.

Carole

Derailed!

A week at the beach is supposed to recharge and renew and sort of re- everything.  I usually spend days on the sand with a small block of watercolor paper and a tiny travel paint box and make "Beach Squiggles."  This year that just didn't happen.  So much for making art everyday.  About the most artistic thing I did this trip was to layer yogurt, blueberries, honey and bran buds into a compote and eat it for breakfast.  Talk about lazy!  Most times when we get home, I need 2 days to rest up from the vacation.  This year was different.  I needed to get home and get back to work.  Just too much of doing nothing. Not that I was bored. I just couldn't make myself paint. Oh, I tried. Just couldn't make it work.

We did go a museum and look at a lot of Asian art, and way more Baroque art than I ever thought I would see. We saw lots of different architecture, pastel colored tropical houses with tile roofs, a gazillion boats and  a squirrel chasing a man around a walking path.  Hubs and I went to Tampa where he lived as a very young man and were able to locate the place he lived so many years ago. Nostalgic. We shopped.(And returned)  We slept.(In the afternoon)  We played cards. (I think he let me win) We ate. (Too much) We decided after 5 days we didn't want anymore seafood and went out for pizza.  We laughed that they knew what a red-eye was but you couldn't find a Guinness. 

Sometimes, a time away makes you realize what is holding you back from something you want and how to fix it.  I realized that my new studio arrangement has no good light and that may be the reason I'm having such a hard time getting motivated to paint.  I think I've figured out a solution.  Now all I need to do is unpack, do laundry, make yogurt, change the sheets, reassure my cats that I'm not gonna abandon them again, and try to think of something for dinner.  My daily painting commitment has definitely been temporarily derailed. However, I'll get it back on track. Just as soon as I finish my nap.

Carole