Still Making Art

Life Gets Better as I Get Older

Monthly Archives: November 2016


by Leave a comment

Day 9 – All in A Day’s Progress

I’m posting today so you can see how much (or little) I can do in a day.

progress-2

I can see where I need to fix the values.

I painted most of the day, and this is all I have to show for it. I honestly don’t know what others do, but since many do a painting a day, I think I must be a very slow painter.

One of the useful things about photographing as you go, is it is sometimes easier to see on the computer where you’ve got the tone or values wrong. I can see here that the value at the bottom of the lower pepper is way off. I’ll fix that in my next session. This is easy to do since the paint I use is slow drying.

I did do some touching up on the basket, but I’m still not totally satisfied with it.

Here’s the piece of lamination I’m using for this painting.

lamination-for-color-matching

Laminating plastic with my color splotches.

This is a remnant from a laminating machine. You can easily get pieces of this from a place that laminates. I happen to work at a place that does this, but any laminating shop will give you the pieces that get cut off after putting something through the machine. This is a nice stiff clear piece of plastic, and I find it easier to color match this way than to laminate my whole photo (expensive), and dab paint on it. That method requires wiping off which is a waste of time.

Advertisement


by Leave a comment

Day 8 – Hiatus and Paints

I’m back painting again after a forced hiatus due to food poisoning. A week or so ago I was just finishing off a tub of humus when I came upon a posting about a humus recall. “What!!” I said, as I scooped the last bit from the tub with my finger. Turns out the humus I’d just finished was on the recall list due to a possible listeria contamination.

I was consoled when I read the symptoms and found that the dizziness I’d been experiencing was a symptom of listeriosis and probably not a heart attack or a stoke, but I was dismayed that much of the next week that I had off from work was spent in bed – not really sick, but tired and unmotivated to do anything.

Today I emerged from my hazy condition and began painting again.

Here’s progress so far.

at-work-again

Back painting. See my disorganized palette?

Notes on Paints

If you look to the far right, on the shelf beside my palette, you can see several tubes of Geneva brand oil paints. As mentioned, I am a devotee of drawmixpaint. Several years ago they came out with a brand of oil paints which are not mixed with toxic chemicals. You can read all about them on their website. After having a cold for months which I could not seem to shake, I began to wonder if it was brought on by my painting during the winter in my tiny unventilated studio.

I invested in the Geneva paints, and have never gone back to my old paints, except for the rare occasions when I need a turquoise or a color that just can’t be mixed from the Geneva limited palette. I have not had any health issues attributable to painting since, and in winter I have no ventilation except for the open door to the rest of the house.

I also find that the paints suit the way I paint. I don’t add anything to them – just use them as they come out of the jar (earliest packaging) or tube.

You might think I have a vested interest in talking up the paints, but I don’t. I just want to share my experience in the off chance it will be useful to someone else.

Notice how messy my palette is? I didn’t learn that from drawmixpaint. It’s my self taught method. Hey – if it works, don’t fix it!

progress

Here’s a close up of progress so far. There’s still work to do on that basket – not quite right yet. This is a still life of one day’s harvest from my garden this summer.


by Leave a comment

Day 7 – How I Paint

my-work-station

My work station and tools of the trade.

I thought it might be purposeful to describe a bit how I paint.

Right up front I want to give a lot of credit to a particular website (drawmixpaint.com) which is crammed full of free videos (and some you can purchase) covering every subject imaginable on how to paint in oils, from start to finish. Everything you need to know is free, and the artist teaching you is very skilled in teaching.  One of the things I was most grateful for in Mark Carder’s videos is the fact that it is all in real-time speed. There’s none of this sped up painting that leaves you thinking that you should be able to throw the paint on the canvas and get a good result. You get to see how it’s really done.

I watched every video, and built most of the tools and equipment suggested. His style suits me, but even if your style of painting differs, the information on the site is invaluable to a self taught painter like myself. (Perhaps I can’t really call myself self-taught).

Some of the important things you see in the photo above are:

  1. A black cloth covering the window to block the glare in my face
  2. A special daylight bulb overhead which allows true sight of the colors you are painting (that light behind the easel is not used for painting purposes)
  3. A high quality photo of my still-life sized to match the size of my panting
  4. Paint pallet of glass over brown paper (for ease in mixing correct colors)
  5. Color checkers – a hand built black one (drawmixpaint) and a small piece of lamination plastic on which I put dabs of paint to hold up against the photo for color matching
  6. Tilted brush holder
  7. Easel that allows perpendicular positioning of canvas (my stretcher bar has an eyelet through which I run string to tie if to the easel bar – keeps the painting from falling forward
  8. Other things I use are q-tips (the hard rounded type, not soft cotton) for removing small areas that need correcting)
  9. Small jar of Geneva Fine Art Brush Dip [you can also make this yourself – see drawmixpaint]

I don’t do everything according to the Carder method. For instance, I use very small brushes – primarily #2, #0, and occasionally a #6 or #8. I just don’t seem able to use the larger brushes well. Just my style, I guess. This does mean that I paint very slowly. Therefore, I am not able to complete an entire painting before the paint has already started to dry in places. This means that I paint from upper left to bottom right so that I am always painting wet into wet. This also means that I must be continually diligent to get the tones and values correct as I go. I don’t use any mediums that increase the drying time of the paint.

You can see in the photo above that I have laid in the background which is a quick process. Then I start at the upper left with the subject matter. I’ll do all the items on the table first, including the cloth up to the edge of the table. Then I’ll paint the rest of the cloth. I do this so that even if the table cloth has started to dry when I come back to finish it, the transition will be a natural one (in this case, light area to darker area).

I use my mahl stick almost the whole time. I don’t stand back and then reach forward and make a mark on the canvas. Sounds fun, but I need more control.

I do continually get up and stand back to see view the painting fro a distance. I find this absolutely crucial to getting it right. It’s also great fun, because it is when you step back that the magic appears.

I hope this is useful, or at least interesting.

I will talk about paints in the next entry.

 

 


by Leave a comment

Day 6 – Painting Gets A New Life

It is hard to believe I started (and stopped) this blog over four years ago. The good news is, I didn’t stop painting. Life did get very busy, however. I got real job (starving artist and all that). Working six days a week made it very difficult to get into the creative mood. But with a change in schedule a year ago that allowed me three full days off a week, I found I could settle into painting on a regular schedule. Since then I have done little else in my free time, but paint. Oil painting. I made a resolution for 2016 that I would concentrate on and master (to my liking), oil painting.

My first painting for 2016 won third prize out of 196 entries in May 2015 on renoartio.com. This gave me a good boost to keep going. Since then I’ve finished seven other paintings and am on number eight.

I’m working on a website which I hope to have soon.

Life is GOOD!

This is the award winner.

img_6888-copy-for-website

Lily on Pond – Oil on Linen, 40×18

This was painted from a photograph I took of the pond nearby. I had been dreaming about painting this for a number of years. I’m so happy I finally tackled this one.