Spring has sprung…
It’s a beautiful 80-degree day out there. In Syracuse, this is a very big deal for early April, so I don’t expect to get much painting done – but I do hope to get in some photography. Early spring usually looks like a nuclear wasteland no matter how warm and sunny it is, but sometimes a good painting subject can be found if you just pay attention.
I started back on an acrylic project this week (um, a floral) and for the first time I’m using the new W&N Artist colors that I got for Christmas. Man, they weren’t kidding about the lack of color shift. I’m finding that my whole sense of color mixing is slightly off – because I must have learned to unconsciously compensate for the wet-dry shift after seven years of painting with Liquitex Basics. Artist-grade colors also dry out faster. I’m starting to wonder if I should just dance with the one what brung me – do the bulk of painting with the student paints I know well, and use the artist grade paints to correct any issues. (Sounds crazy, though, so maybe I won’t.)
Above is a detail from a recent watercolor done on the Arches hot press block.
Getting more and more detoured by watercolor, I shelled out for a rather expensive Arches hot press block the other day. Unfortunately (especially for my wallet), I think I’m in love. Dedicated watercolorists sometimes seem to dislike hot press paper, but as an acrylic painter (acrylist?) I don’t like to slap on the water so much and therefore hot press isn’t intimidating to me. Pictured: the result of my initial experiments, which turned into a sort of impromptu tribute to Seraphine de Senlis.
I sold another (large) painting over the weekend – another inventory clear-out. Still can’t get over the popularity of that animal/floral subject matter which I no longer really do. I guess I’m going to have to make a little more time for it.
Spring is here, the sun shines more each day, and I feel like I’ll be back on track creating more acrylic work soon.
Acrylic on paper: I don’t get it.
That is to say, I don’t understand why you would ever want to create an acrylic work on paper. Unless you are doing some kind of rough study for a canvas work. I guess this is because of my feeling that every piece you work on is a potential sale. Obviously, every piece does not turn out to be a sale, or even worthy of being offered for sale. But for the amount of time and expense of paint that you spend creating a decent composition, I don’t know why you’d pour all that money and effort onto a piece of paper. A piece of paper which could likely never sell for as much money as a similarly executed canvas or board.
In fact, one of the main attractions of my diversion into watercolors is the idea that you can (indeed, must) paint on paper — which seems less expensive in terms of prep/working time, supplies (mainly because acrylic paint is harder to mix and easier to waste than watercolor), shipping costs, etc. Less “overhead,” I guess you could say. I’ve heard the watercolor market is very (pardon the expression) saturated and nobody’s making a lot of money at it these days — but then again, you don’t exactly have to spend a lot to make a profit, if you have a finished work that appeals to someone.
Just the way I think… your mileage may vary.
In the midwinter doldrums, both weatherwise and artwise… I’ve been physically under the weather in one way or another since mid-January and haven’t had much energy to do much besides filling up a Canson watercolor pad with scribblings of past camping trips. (I’ve discovered Sakura Pigma pens.)
These took 30 minutes or less to do. I’m not used to being so “spontaneous” but I admit it was very satisfying to have created at least some little thing every evening after work.
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This month I got off track with the Watercolor Fridays, for a couple reasons. I was sick as a dog one weekend and was unable to do much of anything, much less a postcard project. I also devoted some time to a “real” watercolor project – a WC rendition of a previous acrylic painting called Ride on Round Lake. Originally with the acrylic, I didn’t have a large enough canvas to accomodate the full size of the landscape I wanted, so I only painted the right side. This time with the watercolor, I had a pad in the aspect ratio I wanted (6″x9″), so I did the whole scene. I suspect that the right-side-only version is the best choice in terms of composition, but now I’ve satisfied my curiosity about the whole scene.
I did manage to do two postcards though. One of my kitty, and the other of a theater in my neighborhood that was cruelly torn down about a decade ago. (Ugh, loads of perspective problems in that; I was just being quick and sloppy about it.) Onward…
This NPR story discusses, in all seriousness, the mindboggling “choice bloat” in Crayola colors since their inception at the turn of the 20th century. A handy diagram (pictured) shows how the number of available crayon colors has ballooned from a mere eight to 120. But it is indeed a serious matter to the artist.
As someone who has typically felt more comfortable selecting colors than drawing perspective lines, I personally find color guides to be kind of irrelevant. To me, it’s done by intuitive seeing. It seems easy to choose colors, to understand color harmonies and temperatures without being told, to know when a color is or isn’t right (though I hardly claim perfection, since when I’m done I always feel I could have done better). I’m the one who needs “How to Draw” books, which probably seem just as irrelevant to people who like drawing.
I used to chalk up this need for color mixing guides and color charts, simply to innate differences in perception and so-called “talent for seeing.” You are better at this or that, and need help in other areas, etc. But lately I’ve been wondering if the average person is simply overwhelmed with choices. I got a nice set of Derwent watercolor pencils for Christmas, 24 count, and some of the colors seem only marginally different from each other… and that’s just a small set of 24. Does anybody really need 96 different watercolors or 100 different tubes of acrylic?
Anyone who settles into painting eventually gravitates to a certain limited palette, changing colors now and then. There are certain popular colors I have absolutely no use for, such as cerulean blue; whereas I still live and die by ultramarine. But people who are a little less confident with color might be vulnerable to the dizzying array of choices.
Drawing seems… different. Yes, you have to pick between charcoal and pastel pencils and graphite and varying thicknesses of technical pens, but I think people starting out in drawing are less vulnerable to overwhelm with the different products. It’s because we live with writing instruments in our daily lives (ballpoints or pencils) and they aren’t exotic mysterious things like paints and color can be.
Someone has invented a pen which scans objects and then is able to reproduce the color of the object for your drawing pleasure:
Color Picker is an innovative design of a concept pen that can scan colors from anything around and instantly use the color for drawing. After placing the pen against an object, the user just presses the scan button. The color is being detected by the color sensor and the RGB cartridge of the pen mixes the required inks to create the target color. This superb device will help people to observe the changing colors of nature. With color picker, all range of artists will be able to create a more sensorial and visual insight of their surrounding nature’s colors.
Can you imagine how freaking expensive that thing would be, though?
I’m about to head into a pretty stressful work week, after a quiet three-day weekend that didn’t feel much like a vacation. Over the last few days I’ve felt as if I’m using artwork as a means to wrest control over various minor uncertainties in life. The whole watercolor thing seems to be about that: brute-forcing myself into the discipline of producing a postcard every week (and sometimes more).
Now I’m trying to do some drawing every day, too. My drawing skills have never been the greatest. And when I feel uncomfortable about something coming up at work, I’ve been throwing myself into drawing. Today I’ve felt like I don’t want to put it down. I have almost completed a “serious” watercolor project (more on that later), and I ran out to Michael’s today and bought a proper watercolor sketch pad and some Sakura pens so I could scribble and force myself to “be loose.” I’m done for the day, but don’t feel done. It’s all starting to feel a tad neurotic.
Hopefully when I get back into the work week, I’ll be more myself…
I must say I had an awesome Christmas. I was overwhelmed at the great gifts people got me, for starters, which is going to keep me rolling in supplies all year long I’m sure. I didn’t attempt to put on any special efforts for Christmas entertainment, so that kept an 11-day-long (!) vacation good and relaxed.
Bizarrely, I sold a painting over the holiday break, which was a pleasant surprise. It was something that was lying around unfinished for a couple years and I got so tired of it staring at me that I took an afternoon to finish it and then get it listed just for the heck of it. It’s a genre of floral painting that I don’t do any more, but which always seemed to sell well back in the day – and apparently still does, even in the throes of a deep recession?! Maybe I should just continue raiding my dusty back corners huh?
Above is a detail of the current acrylic project I’m slowly working on (Middle Falls, Letchworth). Nothing particularly interesting to report on this one. No surprises. It’s just going to take a while.
Or, “Chinese White is for losers.”
The project continues… although I’m not really making great use of washes or anything (not a whole lot of room on a 4×6 card for that), and these look like illustrations at best (or disasters at worst, as in the case of the middle pic – hey, it was New Year’s Day, I was not feeling well.)
The last one is a portrait of my sister’s dog Romey, which I’ll give to her as a thank-you for helping keep me well supplied with blank postcards for the year. (Can you spot the perspective problem with the end of his nose? There’s a way to improve this somewhat, but it doesn’t involve retouching the nose.)