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Sun Shower out again (04 that is)

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Nov. 15th above the largest thumbnail of the painting are 6 details of Sun Shower 04, 45H x 84W x 3D inches masking medium, acrylics, and matte glaze on canvas, wrapped sides painted. Last few days worth of layering glazes, work in progress. Started May 3rd.

November 10th – Left and right details, continuing to define leaves, not too much though and layering colors of rain and light. Low-light situation today, so the colors shown here are not as vibrant as they actually are.

November 7th – Mask medium has all been peeled off and now layers of matte glazing medium/acrylics color washes gradually bring things to life and into focus.

November 5th – Sun Shower 04 after 2nd application of masking medium, but before peeling it off, and a days worth of painting over top of that, changing the species to Oak..

November 3rd – Since Shadows Of Summer (recent, started after this one) is of a Maple tree, and similar ideas of looking up at the canopy will be much more suitable for paintings of the Giant Redwoods and Sequoia, and there will be no duplicates of tree species portrayed for The Majesty of Trees collection, the subject is being changed from Maple to Oak. Above left, Sun Shower #4 before 2nd application of masking medium (usually used for watercolors on paper). This painting started off as a full canvas of Maple Leaves, then changed to looking up at the canopy, and is now being changed again to the original inspiration, the Red Oak in our front yard during a sun shower. Paintings change until they’re done. What will not change here is the principle idea: rain and leaves in rays of light.

Masking medium is being reapplied with a toothpick on top of the first version of this painting..has already had a layer of masking medium removed from earlier stages. When most of the contrasts are taken care of the medium will be removed, revealing raindrops of all the colors underneath.

Work on Sun Shower 04 posted earlier this year: * first entitled Maple Leaves May 3rd * May 8th * May 9th * May 17th * May 23rd is when the name changed and I decided to experiment with the masking medium. * June 17th

Pumpkin leaves and blossom

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

The first of the pumpkin blossoms are opening; they open early in the morning and close fairly quickly. This morning a bee was struggling inside a flower that had collapsed before it finished gathering pollen. When the flower wilts, the sticky soft petals bond together, and the bee would never have escaped had I not investigated where the frantic-sounding buzzing was coming from. I didn’t think a tender flower could be so strong!

Sun Shower 04 update

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Sun Shower 04 work in progress, June 19th after a layer of white wash; white diluted with matte medium, then am giving the whole surface a layer of streaks of masking medium to bring all that texture out again that was there at the start. Tomorrow will start another painting and study this one before going back into it. My husband said this morning “Uh-oh Nik, you’re losing control of it”. He’s not an artist and rarely comments on paintings, but he sees things that I don’t. He saw exactly what I was starting to feel about the work. More accurately, I was starting to take too much control.

June 19th June 17th

Sun Shower 04

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

May 30th: Today I’m starting to remove miles of rubberized masking medium. It’s so exciting to unravel the results; they look a little like Batik, where wax or resist is applied then removed.

Sunshower 04, 49 x 85 x 3 inches acrylics on canvas. 29th: Starting to build thin layers of acrylics, gel medium and water. As previously posted, when painting is all finished I plan to remove all of the masking medium and reveal the original colors underneath. Paint catching on the textured surface gives the look of 3D raindrops…very interesting, and in retrospect I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious that this would occur.

I was mostly thinking ahead about the atmosphere and negative spaces. There are so many things that you can’t anticipate or put into a plan, that you only discover by doing, even the obvious. As the painting changes you have to keep changing your plan along with it. Preconceived ideas are a must, but you have to be willing to let go of some and stay open to others. This is what I love so much about painting..how one thing leads to another; planning and surprises working together. Now this will have multidimensional surface of every grade from watercolor-like washes to thick applications of paint.

May 28th: Anxious to finish placing the raindrop patterns and get to painting the light rays. The next layers of paint will resist those raindrop areas. I’m usually content to go with the flow, following how the painting gradually comes together. With this painting I have to think ahead, visualize, and plan the completed piece more than usual. As the canvas fills in more with the resist, mark-making is more strategic. I can’t wait to see how it will look when the resist is removed.

May 26th: …am on the third bottle of masking medium. Soon the surface will be ready to start painting light and dark sun rays, layering color washes of acrylics and gel medium.

May 23rd: As I fill in with streaks of masking medium to block off areas of rain, progress is slow because of the painting’s size, but I work a little on it every day. Toothpicks keep breaking, and my hand gets cramped and numb after a few hours, so I bought some of the smallest paper pencils usually used for smudging graphite, and those are working out much better. I devised a sort of brush with a few toothpicks taped to a brush handle, but this is awkward to use, and there is not much control over mark placement. One streak at a time.

Plans for Sun Shower 04

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

I inadvertently leaned the large painting of Maple Leaves near the framed photo of Sun Shower 03 that hasn’t made its way to storage yet after a show.

Ever since I took that photo, left, last summer I have wanted to use the idea of dramatic light rays in a painting, but not until this morning did I think to use it in Maple Leaves. One idea leads to another; I’m also going to use some tricks I learned during the painting of Sun Shower 01 (2007) where Watercolor masking medium was dotted on the canvas with a toothpick in areas where I wanted water droplets to remain white or lighter in color.

The thumbnails here are details of that work. It worked great but I removed it too soon before finishing and the results weren’t as obvious as I had hoped, so this is another chance to try again. This time it will be creating small streaks, left it on much longer so the vibrancy of all the colors will show through when the medium is pulled off.

The painting could be left as ‘Maple Leaves’ which is how it started out, but it has that bright glare acrylics are notorious for and I see a lot of potential in trying something fantastic with this painting. It’s one of those huge decisions made at key moments in the life of a painting – to risk or not? The 84 x 45 x 3 inch Maple Leaves title is now changed to Sun Shower 04.

Zen, Day and Night

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Zen Garden 08 Day interest and night drama! 24H x 24W x 1D inches acrylics on woven canvas strips over a layer of wrapped canvas. Sold.

Hangs diagonally about one inch from the wall surface. The wrapped sides are painted, frame unnecessary. View the piece from start to finish April 27th, May 12th and May 13th. The tiny openings between woven strips are brightly colored orange and reds, and to ensure they’d be noticeable. A string of small clear lights is woven into more canvas strips behind the frame. It’s quite attractive in the dark and also hung diagonally, optionally hung as a square.

Techniques

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Artini, 24 x 24 inches acrylics on canvas. Rubbing white with a damp cloth over the textured surface, I can apply this technique to the next painting. This is serious play! The painting Artini and another recent one, Myrtle At The Zoo illustrate that: whether seasoned or just beginning, artists need to stay open all the time to media-exploration and self-discovery. Even if it’s been tried many times before, there are a lot of little tricks that are easier to try out on less serious paintings, enabling more confidence when trying them out on work with higher cost of materials and time-investment. Experimenting and exploration result in knowledge and experience of the properties of various media; learning about yours and the media’s potential and limitations.

Myrtle At The Zoo, March 10 – April 2

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Myrtle at the Zoo, Crepe Myrtle branches and seed-pods, 20H x 34W x 2D inches acrylics on canvas study, sides painted. Posts here go back to the start of work, sharing the process.

I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed playing with different ideas. It’s been interesting teetering back and forth between frustration and fun, but sometimes that’s what painting is all about. There’s been such a tension over this one as with no other painting, where the urge to throw it away is pitted against the determination to see what could happen. I still like a lot of things in it, such as the technique of dripping paint down the front that I’ve tried in previous paintings. Dripping re-energized the painting and me, and took the work in unexpected directions.

April 1st: 1. dripped violet across the top and deep yellow from the bottom. This move brings about a new set of problems that may lead the way to what I’m searching for; could be that recovery is impossible 2. Later notes after one days of work, Apr.1st: I like where the drips made me go…sometimes you’ve gotta take a leap.

March 27th – 30th The zebra is too prominent no matter what I try to blur it into the background, so more branches have been added to the foreground.

March 20th – 26th: After another few days of remapping, I like the direction it’s taking with the larger Myrtle seed-pods in the foreground…hardly touched the zebra, except before starting today, scrubbed and washed off a lot of the surface and concentrated mainly on re-working the whole composition.

Art in general, no matter what the media, has us confront varying emotions while we work, pleasant and unpleasant. If the piece is taking longer than anticipated, any self-expectations that mount don’t help the progress at all. There are also echos of things other Artists say, like “if it’s taking too long, trash it and start over”. That one always puzzles me – why tell someone to quit? How about searching for all that the work might possibly become? Fear of ruining work that’s already accomplished can hold us back from throwing our whole selves into it, bringing it to a new level.

It seems that so much fuss is made about paintings that are whipped off in a day. While the method of finishing work quickly is great, this is not the ideal for every painter. Most paintings do have a lot of life and zing after only one day of work and sometimes it’s best to leave them that way. Some Art is best left as “pure”, responsive, raw… and some work begs to be analyzed and dissected, perhaps to the death of the piece and having nothing to show for the labor.

Each artist knows if each painting at the end of the day has potential to become something more, and the decision to stay or to search is different with each and every piece. I say don’t give up if a painting takes too long to come to fruition.

March 15th – Freestyle brushstrokes have livened work up a little since the last post. Intentions are for the painting to be more about the Myrtle than the zebra, but the zebra is key to determining the rhythm of the whole composition. The biggest challenge is that the zebra is such a striking subject alone, and competes for importance with the branches. Color is a huge issue also, because the ground is dry and bright during winter, but so is the zebra. This is why I have yellow tones in the ground, and gradually am adding darker values, playing with colors throughout the painting process.

Every aspect is gradually worked through as painting progresses; no definite decisions made until the final day. If/when work finally succeeds, all the stages of color transitions show through in bits and pieces across the canvas, contributing to the final color and depth impressions. It’s really the process of change in a painting that’s most enjoyable and educational. Every stage is photographed or scanned, and the process can be evaluated after it’s finished.

– am finding it hard to maintain a balance of weight on the right and left sides beside such strong tones in that fur…I may add is a couple of unusually large detailed seed-pods in the foreground to take the eyes’ attention away from the zebra at first glance. I keep playing with colors, patterns, brushstrokes, scratching/removal of paint and anything I can think, still aware that the painting needs more depth.

March 10th – striving for an accurate portrayal of Crepe Myrtle branches in winter, and except for a few detailed seed-pods in the foreground, an overall abstract representation more than realism. The zebra is purposely off-center in an attempt to allow more space for the main subject. Establishing the composition is always priority over accurate colors at first, which of course are to be considered but like other details are left until the final day of completion.

Windswept Cypress, NC – phase 2

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Windswept Cypress, Kitty Hawk, Outer Banks, NC – partial image of 24 x 18 inches graphite, oil pastel, watercolor pencils, mixed media experimental, work in progress. Low light conditions today, so the photo below left, is a little dark. Plans now are to erase some of the color, then see what happens when painting lightly over some of the watercolor-penciled areas; there will be some resist because of the oil pastel base.

Windswept Cypress, NC started

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

Windswept Cypress, Outer Banks, NC, USA, 24H x 18W inches on paper, work in progress: Sculptural, windswept cypress are common ornamentals in yards along the Outer Banks, North Carolina. This started as a graphite drawing, then added some energy with the use of oil pastels, which were mostly scraped away before continuing with watercolor pencils. Hoping to see the effects created by mixing oil and water mediums.