First Card in the style of Sarah Bishop completed

I had a few free hours and worked on the Sarah Bishop-style swap, getting one ATC card completed:

Belt and Garter

One of the things that impressed me most about Ms. Bishop's originals was the sense of warmth each individual painting had, so I concentrated primarily on conveying the sultriness of the originals.  My apologies to Ms. Bishop for slaughtering her work :).

Some ATC Action

I am trying to stay active in the ATC community because I really like trading and collecting little masterpieces.  I am currently finishing up a swap entitled "Hand Drawn Dark & Twisted Carnival" which is a fun theme to play with.
The first piece is entitled "Pan-pan" and it features a baby-eating panda.  I intentionally elected not to go overboard with gore.  The piece can be viewed without an instant bad reaction, so it can be enjoyed - at first, anyhow - by anyone.

"Pan-pan"  The baby eating panda

I also did a little Internet research on circus freaks and kept running into images of Schlitzie who was a circus Pinhead for the first half of the 20th century.  I decided to try and do a fairly sensitive, accurate likeness of him/her.

"Schlitzie"

I actually learned quite a bit while doing this little piece (2.5" x 3.5" which is the size of all ATCs).  I started by laying down some pen and ink line work with microns of varying sizes.  Then I came back over quite a few of the lines with opaque watercolor (gouache) that was thin enough to soften or dull the lines.

Another trick I learned was easy enough... I painted the entire face in a single, medium tone.  I then came back with brush loaded with water and then used a towel to lift out color.  If it needed to be a bit brighter, I returned and lifted more color.  It worked out really well!  Removing paint allowed me to set the stage for the addition of white paint for the brightest highlights and a thin purple for shadows.  I also tossed in some greenish washes for medium shadows - it worked as a shadow color and it helped unify my colors a bits.

Now that I am almost done with this swap, I joined another entitled "Hand drawn, Sarah Bishop Style Bodies" which is based on a series of images by an artist named Sarah Bishop.  The bodies drawn will have some very exaggerated buttocks and should have a whimsical feel as well.

Friendly Flotsam: Work In Progress

I kept plugging away at my latest pastel painting all through the day.  The first thing to do was to finish the gouache underpainting, which took a while as I allowed each section to dry and I went back over a few spots.

Finished underpainting

Then I finally got to start working with pastels.  I like gouache well enough, but I really enjoy pastels - they just make me happy for some reasons.  They seem like magic, I guess.  As soon as I start using them, it just seems like I get an almost immediate sense of richness and fullness of color that takes a lot longer to realize with watercolor.

About 25% done with pastel application

As you can see, there is a bit of a difference.  I've still got a fair amount of uncovered gouache showing, but it will all get covered soon enough.  Right now I am a little worried that the water is a little too bright, but it will be easy enough to drop it a shade or two if I decide it is needed.

I am also still on the fence about the "logs" in the foreground.  They were both cut lumber and I may round them up and add a few limbs - basically make them look more like natural drift wood than discarded lumber.

Art and My Vacation

I went to Michigan and Wisconsin on a trip with my wife that took us completely around Lake Michigan and touched on 3 of the 5 great lakes.  I had planned on doing some art work along the way, but between the pace of the trip and the swarms of hungry, biting skeeters, I contented myself by taking reference photos.

First day back, I picked one of the reference photos that I really liked and started my usual preparations by cropping and griding the photo.  Here are the steps:

Raw photo - my dogs on the Michigan / Wisconsin border

Tightly cropped and moving from vertical to a horizontal orientation

Gridded 5x4 - translated to 4" grids with a roughly 22"x18" painting planned

My approach towards sketching and underpainting is to work in big masses while reserving finer details for later.  I gridded some Uart 600 sanded paper (it has a tan tone) and sketched in some rough outlines all with a pastel pencil.  Then I came back over it with opaque watercolors (also known as gouache), getting some base colors set that will act as a guide when I start to work with pastels.

Gouache underpainting in progress - about 65% done

One thing that I like about the underpainting is that it allows you to evaluate the composition very early and this one seems to be working even without many of the details being in place.  I should also mention that it is my intention to make this quite a bit lighter than the source image.  The darkest that I plan on going is around 7 or 8 on a 1-10 value scale.

I'll post more as this progresses toward completion or the landfill.

Vacation Time and A Quick Book Review

Before the sun is up tomorrow we'll be on the road and bound for Holland, Michigan.  My wife and I are spending a few weeks in Michigan and hope to enjoy the cooler climate and see the sites in and around the Great Lakes.

So the blog might be sparse for a few weeks while I am travelling.  But I am shooting a lot of photos, toting a back pack filled with watercolor color art supplies, and if I am lucky I will get a few plein air pieces done.

Last night I read the bulk of Betsy Dillard Stroud's Painting from the Inside Out.  When first I started reading it, I got a little worried that it was going to be something to make you channel your inner child, and while it touched on that theme for just a second, the book really proved to be an art project idea book.

Does "art project idea book" sound boring?  If so, I am sorry, because I found many of the projects to be really cool and exciting.  There is one project that relies on white gouache and another that used white tempera - I will be trying both of them out.  All in all, there were some really cool ideas in the book - I just gotta try the one that ends after you spray your painting with a water hose! 4 of 5 stars - this one has some really fun ideas to use, some of which you might incorporate and use often.

(Oh yeah, my cover says "19 projects..." as does the text on Amazon.)

Art Shows and Vacation

I discovered earlier in the week that right in the middle of my first vacation in years, that the art league that I joined this year is having the annual open show.  I really wanted to attend the opening and take part in the social event, so I am a bit bummed about the timing of things - but I am WAY happy to go on vacation.  I could have submitted art, but I am doing this mostly for the human networking.

I did find out about an upcoming Columbia Art League show called Hint Fiction which is basing the the theme on individual hyper-short stories from a book by the same name.  The stories are 25 words or less and all of them hint or suggest a much more complex story.

The cover of Hint Fiction by Robert Swartwood

The Columbia Art League has multiple copies of the book to check out and I've already read through it twice trying to find a piece to use as inspiration.  It is harder than it sounds - I keep gravitating towards stories that would carry a less-abstract illustration well, but a more abstract, emotive piece might be fun to do.

The exhibit has a due date of August 19th, so I have a little while to work on it.  I really do want to participate in a couple of shows this year and this seems like a fun way to get involved.  Anyhow, all of the foreshadowing has been set - hopefully some fun art will come out of this.

A View of the Huachuca Mountains

Last night I spent a few hours finishing up the pastel that I started the previous evening with a watercolor underpainting.

A View of the Huachuca Mountains, 11.5" x 8.25" in pastel on 140lb watercolor paper

The challenge was to capture the foreground plants in what feels like high contrast light while giving the mountains a sense of distance.  The blobby foreground plants did not entirely work, but they are not complete failures either.  I needed to leave a few more "holes" in them to allow the ground color to shine through.  I probably also needed a few distinquishable branches.

I had a good time creating it and, more importantly, my wife likes it.  If I were giving myself a grade, it would be a B.  I can do better, but I am pretty happy with just doing some art.

Pastel and Watercolor - Landscape in Progress

I like to spend time with my wife and last night I spent it chatting with her, watching the Nick Cannon hosted America's Got Talent, and trying to stay focused on a gouache painting of a desert landscape based on a monthly scumble photo hosted by Wet Canvas.

I laid down a grid, sketched in some rough lines, and then started slinging paint.  Sadly, I am not that good with watercolor.  I get by and can do smaller projects, but at 9x12, I am starting to get out of my element.  Watercolor some how dries too fast and too slow at the same time and, being the multi-tasking guy that I am, I have a hard time rolling with it.

Watercolor landscape until you hit the pastel sky

I broke the entire landscape down into 7 masses and painted them quickly with hints of shapes within the masses.  By the end of 90 minutes, I was a bit frustrated with how slow layering is, the need to allow time for drying, and generally working it like it was transparent watercolors.  But hey, I don't have to wait!

Rather than succumb to the tedium of layering washes of paint and drying paper with a hairdryer, I busted out a couple of Sennelier soft pastels and blasted colorful dust into the sky of the painting with the abandon of a desert breeze. So. MUCH. Better.  The gradient in the sky is deep, richer than Richy Rich, and creamy smooth.

Now I am working mixed media, and the sky is looking good.  This is a lot of fun!  I have missed using the awesome power of pastels.  The watercolors are super for loose, exciting sketching and I have good control with pastels, so I can dress-up the watercolors and hopefully end up with something almost nice to look at.

Artist Trading Card: Mountain Valley

I got home last night and played around with the gouache.  It seems like a good medium for working small, so I created a couple of ATCs:

Landscape: Mountain Valley

Underlit Study in Blue

I got my distant mountains a little darker than I should have, but I was fairly pleased with it otherwise.  It has been a long time since I have created an ATC and I posted this and another more ribald one on ATCsForALL - I am known as Topdecker over there.

The study in blue was supposed to end up as a gypsy fortune teller, but I scaled the head up way too large.  It was large enough to play around with underlighting and to render shadows that you rarely get to play with.  I finished it over the course of a Human Planet episode (great show, by the way).

One thing that I have discovered about gouache - I greatly prefer my paint to be soft - like straight out of the tube and juicy.  I realize that it is not realistic, but I believe that I will have to squeeze in softer paint a bit more often that I had intended.  It is just so much nicer to work with.

Oh, in case you don't know, ATCs are very small works of art, being 2.5" x 3.5" in size.  I rarely sell mine and prefer to trade them off or join a swap on ATCsForAll.  In fact, due to my recent activity, I have several trades pending and at least 3 more cards that I have to make.

Gouache Palettes and Paint Storage

My Dick Blick order arrived yesterday - on time and well packed.  The order was 15 tubes of gouache and a modest, sealable palette.

18 well palette opened - the lid serves as a large mixing area

Sealable palette with the lock (bottom) opened

Gouache paints stored in an inexpensive plastic box

And heck yeah, I played with them for a few hours because it is hard to say no to new toys.  I went back over some recent watercolor sketches and either corrected mistakes or made sizable changes.  The colors dry in a slightly unpredictable fashion (lights tend to go darker and darker colors tend to dry lighter), but otherwise I am very happy. I just need to figure out how to keep my thumb from sinking into paint wells and it would be close to perfection.

I will post some more thoughts about the paints over the coming days.  But just so you know, I did number the tubes to correspond to the wells on the palette.  I suppose that is anal retentive, but paints can get muddied and this will simply remove all doubt.