Snowy Owl

I don't really know what kind of owl this is but I dubbed him a snowy owl because I put him into a blustery winter scene. This was an experiment done on Fabriano 90# w/c paper. Do you sometimes wonder "what would happen if I did this?" while working on a piece? With watercolor that can be an especially fatal endeavor, fatal at least to your painting. A few months ago I purchased a tablet of 90# paper just so I could play 'what if ' and not feel I had wasted my more pricey paper if things failed.

I don't normally finish a painting in one sitting but as I was planning to try something untried I didn't spend much time with detail. The majority of the owl is watercolor, the highlights on the feathers and the gathering snow on the branch, etc. added with white Liquitex heavy body acrylic. After everything was dry I swept a large brush across the scene with white gouache and splattered on some white acrylic snow using an old toothbrush. I had the fore thought to snap a photo before adding my 'snow' so I could show the before and after. Also I cropped the second image differently to alter the format. I think the final needs more snow splatter, IMO. Or... OMG, you ruined a perfectly nice painting of an owl. Thoughts anyone?

Note: Reference photo for the owl courtesy of Steve Haas

Note 2: Steve has informed me that this owl is also a screech owl in what is called the gray phase. Apparently some screech owls are red, some gray but all the same species.

Red Screech Owl ~ complete

I just completed the finishing touches on my owl painting. I didn't do much more with the owl but did tweak the birch trunk a bit. I added another knot and some white gouache to simulate the look of birch bark. Also I was able to get a more accurate photo. My thanks to Steve Haas for the wonderful reference photo as well.

Red Screech Owl ~ WIP 2

Please disregard the odd shadow in the upper righthand corner of the image. I just noticed it. It won't be there when I post the final.

I think this is close to complete. There is still work to be done on the birch trunk but overall I'm fairly satisfied with my first attempt at an owl. I did run into a problem with the background. In a spot near the owl's head my w/c paper grabbed the paint and created a dark 'blob' that I could not blend nor remove so I decided to go much darker in that area to cover it. I feel I was able to balance this by adding an equally dark area to the birch trunk in the opposite corner of the comp.

My palette consists of Quin. gold deep and light red for the bulk of the feathers, burnt umber mixed with indigo for the other markings on the bird. My background is straight DaVinci Payne's grey and the birch bark is made of up of various mixtures of all this palette's colors.

Red Screech Owl ~ WIP 1

I don't normally paint wildlife but a few months ago I saw some amazing photos of various owls taken by photographer Steve Haas of Michigan and obtained his permission to use some of these same photos as references. This is the beginning of my first attempt at a red screech owl and I hope I can do this bird justice in watercolor.

I've chosen to keep the owl fairly realistic, at least for this version. I want the colors to be as close to accurate as I can make them. I may get more creative with the background, though.

Feeeed Us, Seymour!

I had loads of fun painting this one. It's a type of floral I don't recall seeing any other artist render in any medium before although I'm sure some have.

I love Venus fly traps. These little carnivorus beauties are near and dear to my heart. I always had one or two when I was growing up. I loved to feed them tiny bits of raw hamburger and the occasional fly and watch their 'jaws' close around the prey. It was fun to stick my finger in those jaws, too.

For my palette I used vivid green, perylene green, perylene maroon, dioxazine purple, Quin. red, pyrrol red and aureolin yellow. I tinted some white gouache to add a few highlights. I also used salt, a piece of plastic wrap and some splattering to add background interest.

Stalled Out

This past month has not been productive for me at all. I have ideas but seem to lack the motivation to carry them out. This is different than artist's block. It's something else. What, I don't know. Sometimes I never know what is getting in my way until after it passes. Then I look back and wonder why I didn't see the problem before.

Yesterday I did finally pick up a brush and do a quick floral in hopes it would get my artistic juices flowing again. Maybe I should consider doing a painting a day. Just something simple to jump start myself. Maybe I will continue to paint foxgloves until I feel I have mastered them or until I get tired of painting foxgloves.

Idea for a Series ~ Fish Outta Water

I mentioned a few years back I'd like to try painting fish but never followed through. I couldn't find the right fish, I guess. Recently the idea for a series titled, 'Fish Outta Water' has been rolling around in my head and this is a rough sketch of the first possible installment. I doubt it needs explaining but just in case, it's a large school of fish acting as the leaves of a tree. I scribbled(and I do mean scribbled) the cat in last minute. The comp seemed to need another element and cats do love their fish. My current plan is to have fish show up in various out of water and hopefully unexpected places though not literally, of course. :D

HAPPY 2012!

Another year has come and gone and my(!) how fast it flew by. It seems the older I get, the quicker time goes. We now have another brand new year to make of it what we will. This past year has been a mixed bag for me as I'm sure it has for everyone. Good times, bad times. That's life, I guess. In terms of my art life it has been the best year yet with more sales at the gallery than I've ever had and I've enjoyed trying new painting techniques and products. I'm also thrilled to see I have more followers on my blog. It's you, my followers, my visitors and those that take the time to comment that help keep me going. Thank you for a wonderful 2011 and I wish you all the very best for 2012.

Christmas Doodles

I am in such a funk this holiday season it's ridiculous. I realized I'd produced nothing of creative value in weeks so I got out a drawing pad and an array of pencils and have kept them next to me on the sofa. When I get in these moods I tend to spend way too much time in front of the TV so I figured why not keep some art supplies handy and doodle while staring at the idiot box. It worked. Santa cat and his sleigh pulled by a team of house mice was the result. I'm not sure I will develop this any further. I don't plan to create Xmas cards again this year and it's really too late anyway. Maybe next year. Something that I've noticed...people will buy Xmas cards at the gallery during the summer months so I may put paint to this idea and offer cards later in the year.

Scanner Art

In this image I applied the red eye filter, adjusting the level until I liked the results.

For this effect I moved the poppy while the scanner was running. I think it looks like little red tetras swimming in the black water of a Peruvian lake.

Here I've applied the 'twirl' filter to the image below.

The same silk flower/bud with decorative paper as a backdrop.

My silk flower simply scanned on the scanning bed w/o editing.

While watching a DIY show today I saw the host create some very cool scanner art as decorative wall art. Scanner art aka scanography isn't anything new but the creative possibilities are practically limitless. I will assume most people that own a computer also have a flatbed scanner so why not experiment with it? For the record, I used my Epson Artisan 725.

I used a silk poppy with an attached bud and some art paper I had on hand to see if I could come up with anything worth posting. I did several scans of the poppy and bud sandwiched between the top of the scanner and the bed, with the art paper as a backdrop and even did a few scans while moving my poppy across the scanner as it was running. For some of my scans I played with the resulting images in my photo editor to get further effects. I did not bother to use a black cloth to cut off all incoming room light but that is a common method used by many scanographers.

Some interesting links regarding scanography:

Tim Fleming~What is scanner art?

Tim Fleming blog

Scanography

Ladies on a Park Bench #I

SOLD

I hope everyone of my visitors that celebrate Thanksgiving had a great holiday. Mine was kind of weird this year and Christmas looks like it's stacking up to be the same. I did finally get one version of my 'Ladies on a Park Bench' finished, though.

After tranferring my drawing onto 90# Fabriano CP w/c paper and saving the areas I wanted left white with Pebeo drawing gum (love that stuff) I applied a thin wash of walnut ink over all. I then added more ink at the ladies' feet, base of the bench and dog to ground the whole scene a bit. I used subsequent washes of ink on the bench and was very happy to see the darker tones and richness of color my homemade walnut ink produced. I had some real fun painting the hair, jewelry, etc. with my Jacquard Lumiere metallic acrylics. When all the painting was completed I went over all my lines with an 05 Micron pen. The ladies needed some blush on their cheeks and lips so I mixed up a concoction of red and orange soft pastel and applied that with a Q-tip. Voila!

Playing with Lines ~ Ladies on a Park Bench

The line portion of my Ladies on a Park Bench(my working title) is complete. I drew and re-drew these ladies so many times I hope I haven't lost that wonderful sense of spontaneity the original ball point pen sketches possessed. I went over the entire drawing with a 05 Micron pen and the finished drawing is approx. 14" x 9". There's a few glitches in some of the perspective( one of my weaker points)but overall I'm happy with the results. I now have my master drawing which I can enlarge, reduce, add background (or not) and tweak however I wish. I plan to try a few variations with different mediums, styles, etc. using my drawing to see what works and what doesn't.

Playing with Lines ~ continued

After umpteen tries I think I've hit the mark with my center subject. I created a little panorama to see how well they relate to each other. It works for me!

When rendering human facial expressions I'm certainly in unfamiliar waters. In fact anything gestural human-wise is new to me when translating it to paper. Fortunately being a human myself I have a handy model that works for cheap...me. For some reason I have had a devil of a time producing a satisfactory lady for the center of this comp. I think I've finally found her, though. I've also set a challenge for myself. I will not look at any reference photos while I put this one together. I want to see if I can complete this strictly from my own imagination, common sense and whatever else I can muster.

Playing with Lines

Don't you love the friend that enjoys talking in your ear while you are engrossed in a good book? I know...me too!

Here one gal is reading her paperback book and is in the habit of rolling half of the book while reading the pages on the other half. I'm not sure who I've seen do this but as I was drawing it popped into my head so I went with it.

I confess...I don't do much sketching. I don't even own a sketch book. However I realized how much I enjoyed doing the nude in my previous post. All done very impromptu and without a reference I somehow managed to keep her in proportion and her position make sense. I kinda surprised myself actually. I began doodling today with a ballpoint pen all the while trying to recall three older ladies I saw sharing a park bench this past summer. They looked like they could've been sisters and at the time I so wished I'd had my camera with me. I did try to recreate them in a line drawing but the middle sister turned out looking a bit like Marilyn Manson so I cut her out of the picture. Can't win em all, I guess and two outta three ain't bad. Seriously, I do plan to pursue this type of line drawing with my walnut ink and see where it leads me.

Black Walnut Nude

I've never done figure work, especially a nude but tonight I was in the mood to break out and see what I could create. This is my result and I like it! Done from imagination, the majority of the painting is walnut ink, the black outline is Inktense pencil and the color is SMi soft pastel.

Homemade Black Walnut Ink ~ Completed

To give an idea of the color I've used my ink on a scrap of 140# watercolor paper to achieve an aged effect by toning the paper and applying a heavier wash around the deckle edge. I'm very happy with the results and find this ink very easy to work with. I did a small still life of an acorn and oak leaf last night but it was too rushed so I plan to re-do it before posting.

The finished ink waiting for a drop or two of clove oil to help preserve it. I will also have to cover the jars to block out any light or replace with tinted glass containers. Walnut ink should be protected from direct light.

I decided to go with coffee filters to strain my ink. I felt the filters would do the best job removing any unwanted sediment. Once the liquid was strained from the husks it still contained a lot of 'sludge' so I left it to drain all night to get every bit of useable ink possible.

Mold forming on the top of the ink. It didn't show up until 3 weeks into the steeping process and was easily removed.
***

My ink is finally ready for it's debut. I let it steep for a little over a month, scraping mold from only one jar twice. The second jar of ink did not produce any mold at all. I noticed no foul smell during the process from either jar. The ink has maintained it's original earthy aroma which is ok by me and the resulting ink is a beautiful warm shade of sepia.

After separating the husks from the liquid I wound up with barely two cups of finished ink. My steeping jars held slightly less than a quart each and the husks took up half the space in each jar to give a rough idea of what amount of ink can be expected. In hindsight I wish I had put the removed husks in cheesecloth and wrung out more liquid. Instead I arranged them on newspaper and paper towel to drain, then double bagged them in ziploc baggies and put them in the freezer for storage. I hope to thaw them at a later date and see if I can make more ink using these same husks.

Homemade Black Walnut Ink (continued)

The waiting begins. My ink may be ready to strain by Halloween, possibly the week after.

Boiled husks with liquid.

Rusty old screws and washers to produce that iron tannate in the ink.

Clean jars waiting to be filled, rubber gloves handy.

A boiling pot of walnut husks. The aroma is a not unpleasant earthly scent. I'm sure my house will smell of hot walnut husks for days to come.

The task of boiling the walnut husks and pouring the resultant 'soup' into my jars wasn't nearly as messy as I had feared. I did have a small boil over so I cut the heat back and let the husks simmer for 30 minutes..an extra 10 mins. for good measure. I sacrificed an old teflon pot for the cause, also a wooden spoon which came in handy to prevent another boil over. I then used a small coffee cup as a ladle to get my soup from pot to jar. Paper towels are another thing I'd recommend having handy for splashes and spills.

I wanted to understand the part rust plays in the ink making process so I began another online search. Rusted iron combines with the tannins in the husks to produce iron tannate which is black. As walnut ink is a sepia color I understood this to mean it will create more depth of color. I also found more recipes for walnut ink, some producing faster results than the instructions I've posted but requiring more cook time. Some recipes called for an all day(or longer) boil. Some called for skipping the shelling process and boiling the whole nut, husk and all. I'll post links to a few walnut ink making instructions I found interesting:

Walnut Ink Instructions 2

Walnut Ink Instructions 3

Homemade Black Walnut Ink ~ Instructions

When one of the members of my garden forum posted a photo of his black walnut harvest in progress I thought it would be fun to try making my own walnut ink and instructions online are not difficult to find. At my request this member kindly sent me a gallon size ziploc full of black walnut husks. He had already completed the really hard and messy job of removing the nuts from their husks(walnut husks are terribly staining). When the husks arrived some were still green so I set them out on my deck in the sun on newspaper to thoroughly dry and finish turning black. If you're interested in trying this squirrels can do the husking for you! As I understand it, squirrels will husk the nuts and store only the nutmeats in their shells leaving those precious husks under the tree, free for the taking.

Ingredients:

1.) Black walnut husks

2.) Gloves!

3.) Two glass jars

4.) Some rusty nails or other rusty material that will fit in your jars.

5.) Fine mesh cheesecloth or muslin.

6.) A cookpot to boil the husks.

7.) Clove oil (can be purchased from a pharmacy).

__________________________________________

Instructions:

Step 1) Procure your husks. You need only the outer husks, not the shells or the nuts themselves. If you are doing your own shelling wear gloves...please!

Step 2) You will need a few rusty nails or other rusty material that will fit in your jar. This will help cause a chemical reaction in the ink making process.

Step 3) Crunch the husks as best as you can. I plan to do this step by putting the husks in a clean ziploc and tapping the bag gently with a hammer or meat mallet. Put them in a pan with an equal amount of water (a good guess here is fine) and boil them for about 20 minutes, just long enough for them to start to break down. Let them cool a bit.

Step 4) Put your 'yummy stuff' in a glass jar with a couple of rusty pieces of iron and seal it up. Glass is inert and wont add anything to your mix, unlike some plastics and other metals. Now the waiting begins. This lovely stuff needs to ferment. Open it in a week (oh, you should do that outside. It’s stinky.) and scrape off the mold. Close it back up again and let it sit. Do this for another 4 weeks.

Step 5) Now you strain it. A piece of fine meshed cheese cloth(or several layers of regular cheesecloth), or muslin works great for this. Cut a piece off and with a rubber band put it over the top of another jar (recycled mayonnaise or pickle jars work great for this. I'll be using spaghetti sauce jars.) Push it in a bit with your finger to make a little depression or bowl. Slowly pour in your mix, scraping off the husks and depositing them in another bowl. You can use them twice, so go ahead and keep them!

Step 6) The best storage for your ink is something that doesn’t let in light. Ceramic or naturally tinted glass is great. UV light will break down the plant material in your ink. As a preservative, add some clove oil, just a couple of drops, and your ink will last for over a year. It should be a shade of brown. Let it sit out in the air to evaporate the water to get a darker shade, or add water to get a lighter shade. It makes a fairly permanent stain on paper, and is great for drawing or calligraphy. The same stuff can be used to dye fabric.

I just got my supplies together today so my results won't be ready for another 1 1/2 -2 months. I will be posting updates on my progress.

Source: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/237375_how-to-make-walnut-ink

Daisytown Peepers ~ WIP 2

Since last post I completed the fourth frog and the centers of the flowers. When I started painting the petals I ran into a snag. Arches hotpress paper ain't what it used to be and I knew this when I began the painting. Foolishly I thought I could work around it and I still can but it will take longer than expected. The surface of this paper roughs up very easily when removing frisket film or masking fluid and no matter how careful I am I'm left with trouble. All the other elements of the painting were easily handled but the petals must be as smooth and pristine as possible and that's not going to happen with any water based or 'juicy' medium. I'll have to resort to heavy body acrylic and probably more than one coat to get the job done right. I will be working on this one here and there as my patience dictates but for now I'm moving on to something that hopefully will go much faster. I will post the final painting when it's complete.

Daisytown Peepers

I thought I'd post a quick update to keep things moving and to plug a product. Today I took a couple of closeups of my Daisytown frogs. I'm using a new(new to me)product, Lumiere by Jacquard. Lumiere is a light body acrylic paint similar to fluid acrylics although this paint offers more application options. Here I've used it as watercolor, applying it undiluted over a damp glaze of DS green gold and DR Vivid green. The color I chose was Halo Blue Gold, a mixture of pearlescent blue, green and metallic gold. I love metallics but I know how easy it is to over-do them. In this case they worked perfectly to make these frogs stand out. The gold shimmer makes these peepers look wet and sun kissed.