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.

Daisytown Peeper Quartet ~ WIP 1

Apologies to all my visitors for the gap in updates. I've had some health problems this month and haven't felt like picking up a brush. I finally decided I needed to get off my duff and get to work so I started with this project.

I first protected the subjects with frisket film, then poured the background paint which consisted of DS Pyrrol red, DR Quin. gold and WN Quin. red. This painting is a full sheet so the pouring was done in my bathtub over a period of two days. Note: It was kind of disconcerting to see dried splashes and smears of red in the tub. I'm sure if someone had been visiting and saw that they would've feared the worst. LOL

I removed the frisket from the stems and the leaf, then started with a glaze of DS green gold followed by DS Perylene green. The current plan is to complete the frogs next, then the centers of the blooms and finally the petals. I have some cleanup work to do on those petals as I had some leaking under the frisket film during the pours. I will most likely use some white gouache to correct that.

Donny ~ Complete

SOLD

Better photo, colors/values more true to life. Donny has also been slightly revised. Marcia told me the dark area on the left side of his face by his whiskers was more than likely a tear stain, common in Persians because of their tear duct issues and particularly apparent on the white haired of the breed.

I just completed Donny. I added a little soft pastel to his body fur and white gouache to his tail to give it that feathery fur look. I used primarily DS Moonglow, DS Indigo and warm sepia throughout the painting. The only exceptions were a bit of cerulean blue and FUB for his eyes and permanent rose for his tongue and one ear. I'm very pleased I went with the pedestal. Donny has a habit of perching on top of hampers, trash bins, etc. The Greek pedestal will bring him up in the world in other ways.


I created a panorama of Marcia's three furbabies so I could see what they will look like hanging together. Umm...not bad. Donny does stand out, though!

Donny ~ WIP 1

Quick update. Apologies for the weird angle. I took the shot while the painting was still on the easel. I really love the Greek pedestal. Donny is lookin' pretty darn regal sitting there. Maybe Marcia will have to change his name from Donny to Adonis? Sorry..I couldn't resist.

Donny ~ Sketch

Donny is one of three cats belonging to Marcia Van Osten who is another crazy cat lover like myself. He's a beautiful all white Persian with incredible blue eyes but like many white haired, blue-eyed cats Donny is deaf. It's an unfortunate but not uncommon genetic issue that many of these cats share. He lost his litter mate and best buddy, Marie to illness a few years ago and has since become Marcia's constant ankle hugger, bedmate, etc.

Marcia has been kind enough to let me use one of her many photos of Donny as reference. I chose a great shot of him perched atop his cat condo. He looks for all the world like he's sitting on a pedestal so I thought I would give Donny a proper pedestal. The detail work is patterned after the Greek Ionic style and I think it suits him purrfectly.

Daisytown Peeper Quartet ~ sketch

I kinda like this palette so far. It's a smidgeon of Pyrrol red(poured) with Quin. red, Quin. gold and streaks of a green I mixed up applied with a brush. I glazed over the green with Quin. red to tone it down. I drew a little daisy with soft pastel on my trial sample to see how well the palette worked with my subject.

This is my current working title until something better comes to mind. I finally completed the sketch after adjusting the tall daisy on the right three times. At first it looked too imposing so I reduced the size of the flower. Too small.:( Then I enlarged it slightly and still too small. Wrong, wrong, wrong.}:( Spent all afternoon tweaking this flower until I felt it meshed with the rest of the composition only to find I had returned it to the original size! Apparently it just needed some refining. Oh well...I don't ordinarily work this large (full sheet) plus this is a compilation of five+ photos so I'm discovering all kinds of challenges I've never faced before.

At the moment the plan is to use Arches HP w/c paper for this project. I'll be saving the white daisies and frogs with frisket film and will probably be doing some pouring of paint unless I can find a really big brush. Hotpress can be so tricky to work with but frisket film works best on this surface. Even though the setting is in a garden I want to avoid using a lot of green this time so I've been experimenting with various reds. With the green frogs I want to be careful not to let it become Christmas-y looking, though.

Subconscious Painting

Last night I felt compelled to work on something creative but nothing I had in the works interested me. I picked up a piece of scrap w/c paper, a cheap brush and some ink and simply began doodling. I added color with leftover watercolor paint on my palette. I vaguely remember thinking the results looked like some of Myrna Wacknov's work. It was then left to dry and forgotten about. A few hours later I looked again at my doodle and realized I had painted a self portrait of sorts. The pose I rendered was the exact position I was in while doodling...head cocked at an angle, side of chin propped on back of bent hand, expression the same. Oddly, I've always felt that my ears stick out but not to the degree that I had painted them...thank God. Wish I had those voluptuous lips, though.

In reviewing this event today it made me think of free association. Free association is a psychiatric tool that is attributed to Sigmund Freud and is commonly used by therapists to help their patients figure out what's happening on a subconscious level. The basic premise as put forth by Ludwig Börne, who(according to Wiki) influenced Freud's conclusions...'write down, without any falsification or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head'. I've used this technique with my journaling to figure out what's bugging me when the cause was not obvious and have had great success with it. The premise as Freud worded it(according to Wiki)...'where there is a creative mind, Reason - so it seems to me - relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell'. My next thought... so why not use it as a tool for artistic creativity? A way to break artist's block or to become a more personally expressive artist?

A further search turned up this site:

Theory of Subconscious Painting by Louise von Wrangell

"At a subconscious level we already know everything. Knowledge from the subconscious comes through the medium into the painting. The subconscious image interacts with the subconscious of the observer which enables each viewer to see his/her own painting in your painting." (an interesting theory to say the least)


In classical painting:

The act of creation begins with the object.
The observed object is transposed into the painting.
The artist is bound to reality by line and color.


In subconscious painting:

The act of creation begins randomly. The artist is free of reality.
The work is observed by the creator, and from that observation comes forth the subject of the painting.
The act of creation ends with the object.

***

Conclusion: Whether I agree with Ms. Von Wrangell's theories or not, I believe the use of free association can be an extremely useful tool to artists and their creative process.

Wildflowers ~ Complete

I just completed this painting and I'm pretty happy with the results. I held myself in check for fear I would add too much or try to go for unneeded detail. After removing the drawing gum it was exciting to see the white Queen Anne's Lace come to life.

Thanks to one of the members on my garden forum I now know this plant is called Bladder campion. It's a very common wildflower in my area and I remember enjoying popping the bladders when I was a kid. They make a satisfying little *snap* when pinched, rather like bubble wrap.

Weeds or Wildflowers?

My main subjects are the three Queen Anne's Lace blooms which I masked prior to painting with Pebeo drawing gum. I've yet to ID the little flowers also masked in the lower right corner. The two objects that look like large Q-tips are some field grasses I added to the bouquet for a vertical element. I want to keep the background loose and juicy to contrast with the tighter style of the main subjects.

It's the August blooming lull in my gardens so I went 'weed' picking. The weeds are blooming just fine through all the dry days and overly hot temps we've been experiencing this year while their more gentrified and hybridized cousins (that have received special treatment all summer long, I might add) are done for the season. What I came home with was a lovely bouquet more than suitable for a painting.

Even though everything I picked was very familiar to me by sight I did not know the proper names of most so I did an online search..'native weeds of Michigan', then 'native wildflowers of Michigan'. The same plants came up in both searches which begs the question...what distinguishes a weed from a wildflower?

I recall a quote I read somewhere in the past that stated, "A weed is a plant out of place." I discovered this quote didn't come from a gardener but from the lead character in a book by Jim Thompson titled, 'The Killer Inside Me'. The lead character is Lou Ford, a laid back, rather slow small town sheriff in Texas who is also a psychotic killer in his off hours. Haven't read the book but I did see the movie and it was chilling...but I digress.

On a happier note I also discovered a book written by Aliki, (author of 50 children's books) titled, 'A Weed is a Flower, The Life of George Washington Carver'.

Conclusion: Whether a plant is a weed or a flower lies in it's nature and in the eyes and mind of the beholder.

Sizing Up A Comp ~ Part 3

The past few days I've been slooowly adding things to this composition. I compare prepping a comp for a full sheet painting to giving birth. Committing to a full sheet is a huge deal to me as all my supplies are precious. Wish that wasn't the case but it is. I want to take the utmost care in planning with the hope that the outcome will be a success and I will be rewarded with something of which I can be proud.

Taking my time and looking at each addition to see if it works in the overall scheme of things is crucial. The tall daisy on the right needed some tweaking. That long straight stem was too harsh and looked like the mast on a sailboat listing in the wind...with a flower on top. I softened the angle by curving it slightly. I also added another large daisy bloom in the lower left corner in hopes that would create depth. Surprisingly both large daisies look about the same size in the image even though one is over three inches wider than the other. Camera distortion maybe?

It has become obvious to me this will be a WIP for awhile so I'll probably start working on some other, smaller projects just to keep my brushes wet.

Sizing Up a Comp ~ part 2

I've added another frog to the picture and put a blossom on the end of that big stem on the right. I took numerous photos of my own shasta daisies and will continue to refer to them when adding additional daisies. The way it's going this will turn out to be a full sheet when completed.

Conclusion: This project was taking too long, using up too much tracing paper and looks like a crazy quilt. I finally broke down and called our local print shop. Kwikie Print has become Village Graphics(not sure when that happened..I need to pay more attention when I'm in town) and they now offer more services including enlargement of drawings. My tracing paper quilting days are over!

Sizing Up A Composition

I've got a new piece brewing already. One of the members of my Michigan garden forum posted photos of tiny tree frogs sitting on her shasta daisies and generously agreed to share them with me for a painting. I'd like to make this at least a half sheet, maybe larger. I'm trying to determine how large I want each frog in relationship to the others within the composition I have in mind. This is a compilation of two separate images so I will need to do some adjusting.

I used edge detection in Irfanview and traced my line drawing onto tracing paper. BTW, I use my PC monitor as my lightbox. I then taped the tracing paper to a scrap piece of foamcore and am posting a photo so I can size things up(pun intended). Pretty rough at this point. PSP is outside my budget and I've about given up on my Elements 6. I think it's been corrupted. Whatever it's malfunction, it's just too darn frustrating to try and put together a comp with it. I'll have to use some ingenuity or just do it the old fashioned way and make umpteen drawings until I'm satisfied. I'll also need to take some photos of my own daisies to complete the scene.

Garlic Braid ~ Complete

I just finished this a moment ago and wanted to post it so I could check for problem areas and make tweaks if necessary.

The braid and the loose stem tops were painted with DS Undersea green, burnt umber, raw umber, a little violet I mixed up with Crimson lake and mauve and various greys I made from palette muck. I removed the drawing gum and finished off the roots with a mix of mauve and burnt umber. The twine is also palette muck grey. I'm not going to do a background. I like this as just a simple vignette. I even left the Fabriano mfg. mark clearly visible which I've never done before. It seemed to work with this painting as part of the composition.

P.S. This is my first painting done entirely from life. Working from life has it's challenges but I enjoyed it much more than anticipated.

Garlic Braid ~ WIP 2

Quick update: I'm happy with the garlic bulbs at this point and am getting ready to start on the braided stems. I used a mixture of blues as my under painting, then glazed over that with a mix of mauve and burnt umber. I want to bring in some DS Undersea green where ever it will work. This needs some green, IMO.

I don't usually paint still life and rarely from life. I normally work from photos. This is certainly a new experience for me. I'm anxious to see if painting from life really makes that much difference in the final result.

Garlic Braid ~ WIP

Just starting to add color. So far my palette consists of cerulean blue, phthalo blue, raw umber, mauve & a tiny bit of crimson lake. I used a little Pebeo drawing gum to mask the roots of the garlic beforehand.

My sketch

Braided softneck garlic hanging on my studio door knob over my painting smock

mid-July 2011~almost ready to harvest

I've been the moderator of a garden forum devoted entirely to Michigan gardeners for the past several years. In recent years the forum has seen more and more experienced vegetable gardeners join and I've learned so much from them. Being primarily a flower gardener I didn't know much about veggie gardening but these members got me fired up.

One member is a connoisseur of garlic and an expert at growing his own. He graciously offered to share a few bulbs from his private stock with me for planting. Since I had already planned to convert one of my flower beds into an edible garden I started with his garlic. It's easy to grow...peel and break apart the bulb, plant the largest cloves in the Fall and by the following July you have a lovely crop of the pungent bulbs. There's a bit more involved but not much.

After the bulbs were harvested and cured I made my first garlic braid and decided it was a worthy subject for a painting.

Photos From the Moon Garden ~ 2011

Last year I began refurbishing my Moon garden as it has been in need of some extra TLC for a few years. For those who have never heard of a Moon garden it's a type of theme garden devoted primarily to white flowering and/or night blooming plants, vines, etc. The aglaya daisies are especially beautiful this year and I've added a new variety of Asiatic lily called Eyeliner. Today I snapped a few photos I'd like to share with my followers and visitors.

Time to Loosen Up...again

My creative juices haven't been flowing in great abundance this year and I've noticed that I'm falling backwards in terms of painting style. I'm painting tighter and tighter and enjoying it less and less. I've never striven to achieve photorealism with watercolor because I simply don't have the patience it requires or the desire to try and tame this medium. I chose watercolor because of it's unpredictability but old habits die hard it seems.

Yesterday I cut a little bunch of Houttuynia cordata, 'Chameleon' (nicknamed 'Hot Tuna' by some gardeners) out of one of my flower beds and brought it in to pose for me. This plant is a great little ground cover if kept under control and serves to brighten up my flower beds when nothing is blooming. Apparently it's grown as an edible in China and Vietnam(according to Wiki) and has a slightly fishy taste so it's aka 'fish mint'. I just tasted a leaf and it reminds me of the white fish with citrus beurre blanc I had for lunch this past Saturday. (BTW, that's not a compliment to the taste of houttuynia)

Fraise Des Boise ~ Complete

SOLD

Done! I decided the red of the berries was enough to break up all the green. I was afraid adding burnt sienna would 'muddy up the waters'.

This is fairly small...10" x 7". To complete the berries I did an underpainting using indigo mixed with a little crimson lake to indicate the shadows and create volume, then finished with a few washes of crimson lake to get that strawberry red color. There's probably more I could do to this but it's time to set it aside. I'll get it back out in a few weeks or months and if I still like the way it looks it'll be 'officially done'.

Fraise Des Boise ~ WIP 2

Quick update: I just removed the frisket film and am wondering if there's way too much green going on here. I'm not sure the few red berries left to paint will pull this one out of a dive. I'm posting this as much for myself as for my visitors to better spot any problem areas before continuing. I may add some burnt sienna to some of the leaves just to break the green up further.

Fraise Des Boise ~ WIP 1

Still today I had no idea how I wanted to go about painting this or what palette I wanted to use so I started by covering the blossoms and berries with frisket film to protect them. Then I began with a light overall wash of D/R Vivid green. I've added various greens I mixed up using indigo, Indian yellow, and perm. yellow to define the leaves. I also started working on some areas of the background and dropped in some WN Quin. gold while the paper was still wet to add interest and break up all that green.

Note: I prefer Windsor Newton's Quin. gold to Da Vinci's because it's not so orange.

I scattered some salt in the viewer's upper left corner for effect but fear I may have over-done it. I plan to darken that corner later so I can tone it down then. Forgot to mention....I'm using #140 Fabriano Uno w/c paper.

Fraise Des Boise ~ Study

After adjustments to composition. I added an extra berry toward the center and got rid of unnecessary detail.

After applying edge detection

Original photo

I've grown fraise des boise aka wild French strawberries aka alpine strawberries in my flower beds for years. I grow both a red and a white variety. Originally I planted them simply for ornamental purposes but discovered the tiny berries these plants produce (no bigger than an average person's thumbnail) all summer long have the most amazingly intense strawberry flavor.

This Spring I took a few photos when they were starting to set flower and a few baby strawberries were beginning to appear. Yesterday I decided to use the fraise des boise as a subject for a painting. I selected one of those photos and to save time applied edge detection to it in my photo editor, converted the altered image to negative and printed out a copy. Then I used pencil to make adjustments to the composition. I'm not sure how detailed I want to go with this one yet but better to have too much information than not enough.

New Look For ArtByCrain Blog

My blog needed a facelift so I'm experimenting with Bloggers new templates, colors, etc. Warning: Be prepared to see some changes over the next few days.

Bearded Iris ~ Complete

This is one of those paintings that I could fiddle away at for days and days but I think it's time to call it done. It's already slightly overworked for my taste. Iris 'Chasing Rainbows' lived up to it's name. I think I used almost every color on my palette save for red.

Bearded Iris ~ Update

After adding the background which defines the outer shape of the flower.

Here I've gone as far as I could before adding a background.

I finally knuckled down and got back to work on this one. I seem to have no self discipline this summer and it's not like I'm crazy busy either.

I worked some more on the standards (upper petals) of the flower, painted the bud and then wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with the background. I settled on a mixture of Indathrene blue and Indigo with a dash of Indian yellow. I dropped in some extra Indian yellow and perm. yellow while the paint was still wet to break up all that dark green. I also spritzed the background with plain water to add a little more interest. Since the flower is so busy I wanted to avoid creating a busy background. More work to be done on the flower but I'm in the home stretch now.

Bearded Iris ~ WIP 1

The Iris Farm

5385 E. Traverse Hwy

Traverse City , MI 49684

After attempting to paint another landscape and failing miserably (several times) I lost my momentum. It happens. I hate when it happens but it happens. I always feel better when I have something on my easel and after just so long I was ready to paint anything just to get my brushes wet again. I found some photos from 2006 I had taken at the Iris Farm, six acres of prime farm land devoted entirely to just about any variety of bearded iris one can imagine. The farm belongs to William Alpers of Traverse City, Michigan and when the irises are blooming it's a sight to behold.

I chose a photo of bearded iris, 'Chasing Rainbows' as my subject. I love all the colors in the falls(side petals) and the deep ruffling. I hope I can do it justice.

Landscape #2 ~ Complete

Here I attempted to highlight the shapes I saw when looking at the reference photo. The obvious focal point in this painting is the area of paper left white in the small rectangle, center of image.

I just finished this one. It's loosey, juicy and kinda messy but I wasn't planning on offering it for sale so it doesn't matter. I think this has potential as a do-over. I like the composition and the colors. I switched to the quill of a feather for some of the fine branches, did the rest with the squirrel quill brush. Bit of a sloppy job but I'm not concerned in this case. Colors and color placement are so important to a landscape but composition even more so. Where the various values are placed is critical, too. At completion it's all got to make some sort of sense no matter how creative I wish to be. I operate primarily on instinct being self taught so if it looks 'right' I just go with it.

Landscape #2 ~ WIP 1

Marilyn Campbell posted this photo of a beautiful wooded scene with a stream flowing through on Paint My Photo and I thought it looked like a perfect reference for my next landscape. I liked the composition, the range of values and the colors grabbed my eye. I'm posting my first update so I have a record of my progress. I'm working on a quarter sheet of Arches #140 CP paper with various brands of transparent watercolor and only a #2 squirrel quill. The purpose of using just the quill is to prevent me from adding unnecessary details. I want to keep this as loose and spontaneous as possible.

Learning to Paint a Landscape (skyscape?)

Original image

Tweak #1 (I ramped up the contrast)

Tweak #2 (Looks like a dust storm)

Tweak# 3 (Tornado skies. I can almost hear the warning sirens when I look at this)

I have never produced a landscape painting to my satisfaction...ever. Why this subject seems so difficult for me is a mystery but I've made it my goal this summer to tackle the beast. My interest in the genre was recently rekindled when I received the latest issue of Watercolor Artist and was pleased to see one of Z. L. Feng's landscapes featured on the cover. I absolutely love his landscape paintings, especially how he handles foliage and his use of color. I have a link to his website on my link list if anyone is interested. I suggest you take the time to check out his work. You won't be sorry.

I also received an email notice for the June challenge on Paint My Photo website. This month the subject is skies. The rules...any medium may be used but the sky must take up 3/4 of the total painting. Landscapes that are mostly sky can be very dramatic and exciting so I threw together a little sketch and gave it a whirl. I did spend time online looking at cloud formations prior to starting which helped but I couldn't find a reference photo I liked so this attempt is from imagination. I worked wet into wet with a leftover mixture of indigo, Quin. violet and Payne's grey, then floated in some white gouache and a little raw umber to create a stormy sky. I'm fairly happy with my cloud work. It's the stuff on the ground where I seem to stumble. Overall though, not bad for a start. I did play in my photo editor with the original image to see what other effects I could produce.

Dragonflies on Canvas~Complete

I've sure had fun with this one. I finished up the dragonflies yesterday but today thought it needed a little something else. I've had a 'thing' for metallics lately so I got out my gold Zig Painty and went to town.

Dragonflies on Canvas~WIP

This project seems to defy photographing. Everywhere light strikes an area of high texture it shows up as a white spot and the colors are nowhere near as garish as they appear but I did my best.

Jerry's Artarama ran a sale not long ago on pre-stretched, pre-primed canvases so I bought six 9" x 12" canvases with the intention of mounting and varnishing some of my watercolor paintings on them. There they sat, in the box they came in because I have no supplies to complete the job. A few days ago I decided to try my hand at coating one of these canvases with gesso and painting something with fluid acrylics. I protected my main subjects (the dragonflies) with masking fluid and just started painting...mostly amorphous, vaguely leaf and grass-like shapes and applying color with no thought of realism or 'sense' to placement of color. I'm ready now to remove the masking and complete the 'flies.