another favourite of mine

This one is another of my favourites! I bought Stephen Blackburn's dvd on pouring paint and painted this one. It's on hot pressed Arches paper, 140 lb.

Okay, now I don't feel so bad. lol.

Yes I can, yes I can, yes I can.

As I look back over the past few postings here in this blog, I started getting the impression that it looks like I cannot paint. Sooooooo, to boost my spirits a bit, I'm posting my all-time favourite painting. It's won a few awards. I love it. I think it's one of the best things I"ve painted. So far.

Yuck

I don't think I like fluid acrylics.

Or maybe I'm just too set in my ways with watercolour.

Whichever, I've messed this one up. But while listening to a video on pouring this morning, I heard the instructor say it doesn't matter if we like it or not in the beginning, it's what we do with it. So, okay. Instead of just ripping this off the board and tossing it out, I'll just keep going with it. Maybe by the end, I"ll learn to like these fluid acrylics a little bit more than I do at this moment.

I think I used too much paint. I wanted the water dark with tones of green and black in there. It's dark alright! Then, after realizing this was not really what I wanted, I tried spraying it. That was good because it showed me exactly what Nicholas Simmons was teaching in his dvd, which I enjoyed. It gave a different look but I figured what the heck - I've ruined it now, I might as well make this a learning experience.

I like the look of the sprayed / lifted paint in the lower left. But right above, I waited too long to spray it. Something else I don't like is how the lilypads now look like they've had a bluish pour on them. Ah well. Another learning experience. Keep it really wet if your spraying - that way, the paint will just run off.















In the following shot, I kind of liked the look of the colours and then a few drops of water added. That's when I sprayed the other section (shown above). Big mistake. And they say that watercolours are unforgiving???














But, as the book Art & Fear says, it's just a piece of paper. I'll finish using this one as a learning tool, then draw out another and start over. Maybe I'll do the next one in watercolour though.

The Hijinx of a Nasty Cat

Anyone that knows me knows that I have a mangey old cat called Moose. Moose is a very vindictive cat who likes to get his own way. If he doesn't, he has his ways of making you wish you'd given him what he originally wanted.

Two days ago, while sitting at my computer (which is opposite from my painting table), Moosie (rhymes with Lucy) wanted to sit on my lap. I wouldn't let him. He's a fur factory and ends up coating you in cat fur. So, Moosie stopped pestering me, letting me think I'd just gotten off pretty easy with him. A few minutes later, I turned around and looked to see what the noise was that was coming from my painting table and ...... sure enough, there was Moose - sitting on top of my drawing. "Get off my drawing", I said with a lot of emphasis. Moose complied, leaping off in a giant leap and in the process, TEARING my drawing with his back claws! I chased him out of the room, with perhaps a slight bit of yelling. (Okay, maybe a lot of yelling.) I didn't catch him but he spent last night in solitary confinement. (Aka shut in the laundry room with his litter box.) I have to admit that I took a slight bit of pleasure in hearing his scratchings on the door during the night.

So, above you can see the damage. At least the line drawing underneath wasn't damaged too much. I can salvage it with a bit of tape. But the value drawing is ruined. I'll keep it to use as is though but it's no use finishing it. I think later, I'll crop the lily and perhaps keep that section.

All this means that instead of waiting until I'm done the drawing, I think I'll now start on transferring the line drawing to w/c paper, the gesso'ed paper, etc.

That mangey spoiled monster. If Mattie didn't love him so much, he would have been tossed out the front door for sure. Did I mention ALL the cords of mine that he's chewed? Computer wires, computer cords, digital camera cords, electric cords, video game cords, electric guitar wires. You name it. Years ago, before I had him "fixed", he used to "spray" everything. Having him neutered and de-clawed fixed a lot of problems but Moosie has been making me pay for that ever since.

Do you think that vets would de-teeth cats?

Yup. Yup. Yup. I just love this cat to bits. Yeah. Right.

New Paint

... but it's not watercolour. It's Golden Fluid Acrylics. I've decided to not buy any more tubes of watercolour paint until I 've used up a lot of what I have. I started doing colour swatches for each tube I have and am still working on them. I'm embarrassed at the number of tubes I have!!!


Here's the new paint! Sixteen containers and a few I've collected from the Golden seminar samples. That's Clear Tar Gel in the background and you can also see a reference shot of the waterlilies I'm working on. (I prefer to put my reference shots into black and white and plan my own colours.) I also received two Raphael brushes and some glazing medium with the paints. Can't wait to try this stuff in an actual painting!!!!!

Waterlilies

I've received my new Golden Fluid Acrylics! Yummmm! With great effort, I restrained myself from opening each bottle and trying them out. Instead, I worked on the drawing of the waterlily and pads. It's almost done and I thought I'd post it here now.

I plan on doing at least three of these. One in traditional watercolour. One in watercolour over gesso'ed w/c paper. And one in fluid acrylics done in watercolour style.

I planned out and drew the line drawing, then placed a piece of tracing paper over top and started a value plan. This is where I work out a lot of little problems. If I didn't do this now, I'd come head to head with these problems while laying in the watercolour and that could easily end up in a disaster. With much frustration.

I keep the line drawing simple and clean so that I can transfer it easily to each of the three supports. It's also much less stress knowing that I have it there if I screw up while painting. The entire idea doesn't get tossed out this way.

Here's the drawing. It's not quite finished yet but I plan on working on that while watching those awards tonight. Oscars, Grammies, whichever. I just want to see Hugh Jackman.

Click on that pic and you'll see it bigger. I took a lot of shots of these at the Montreal Botanical Gardens a few years ago. I've taken two of them to create this. In the upper right area, I wanted the waterlily pads to be all pushed up and crowded. In the lower left area, there will be one flower and I want it to glow white. In that area, there will be flat pads in a much less crowded environment. Not shown here will be a few stems from the pads fading into the water.

In the value sketch, there's a lot of shading on the waterlily but that's just for my value info. I first drew it out with three flowers but decided to take the other two out and use one large glowing one.

On the way to Ottawa tonight, I decided to put a dragonfly in here. Have any ideas which pad to put him on? Not the flower because I don't want him there competing for attention. And besides, he'd get burned from the glow.

It's 11 x 14". Here's a very contrasty closeup of the lily.

Watercolour over gesso

I thought I'd post this one to show the effect of watercolour over gesso. The leaves of this one were done over gesso. Why? Because I'd left the masking fluid on there too darned long and couldn't get it off. It just kind of sunk into the paper. Soooooo, since the rest had been finished and I had liked it, I painted over the damaged masking fluid with gesso, let it dry and then painted with watercolour paints. I've always loved these leaves and have wanted to do an entire painting this way since I finished this one.

I thought it was a good save.