Painting with a Three year old

Recently I have discovered how the free spirit of a three year old can stretch your own art mind to relax and make adventure. It is hard to express how deeply one can be inspired working with someone so uninhibited. She (our most amazing three year old) paints the water glass, the bottom of her foot, the table, the sticker or tape she put on her paper, everything is game and it really is about the freedom.

I also want to add the renewed experience of finishing a work in one sitting and how freeing that is. Drop the judgement and pre-planning, instead here is your moment and it may never come again so get to it. The down side is I eventually get so into my own painting progress I may miss when her painting has suddenly turned to the wall or carpet, etc. It is a gift and I thank her often.

The Klopfenstein easel

I don’t know why I am bothering to post about this, I guess I hope others don’t make the same mistake I made of waiting so long to get a strong easel (like a Klopfenstein H-frame or something as strong and mobile as it), even if you are working small. And I don’t get why when you look for stronger easels, every store is selling primarily expensive flimsy wooden easels, maybe I will find out why one day, still whenever I go up to a typical wooden H-frame and just tap them lightly they shake. I should say I have seen one that looks a bit like a tree, immobile and like it weighs a thousand pounds, I just don’t want that behemouth in my house so I haven’t tapped it. Otherwise, are we supposed to just wait between paint strokes for the wobbling to stop? I don’t think so.

I had the pleasure of working with both the H-frame and A-frame Klopfenstein easels at a large University that provided them for classroom use. These easels are so strong the strength seems to seep right into the work. You feel you could swing from these not just lean on them like a strong shoulder you might lean on for comfort. Just recently I finally decided to order one (H frame), I can’t think what took me so long to come around to that after working for so many years on the flimsiest of A-frames. The Klopfenstein is a mountain and I am sure it will actually expand what I am able to do.

I am having such a time painting some alligators I photo-ed in the zoo, I will have to get some photos of it up soon. It is clamped down to a 6 pound wooden board (also a mistake I need a lighter gatorboard or incredible board as DickBlick calls it that weighs about 1 pound). I like to be free to quickly yank the board up and move the paint around by tilting the board. Also I wanted to say drafting board types of easels that tilt back don’t work for me because I can’t adjust them fast enough and don’t want them tilted back when I work, with me leaning over them cranking my back into knots, how relaxing can that be? I just want to stand up straight or sit up straight and see the whole thing flat in front of me along with my taped up paint study and light/dark sketch I have created for the painting and the photo if I have to work from a photo.

finished the challenging birds watercolor

Finally finished the big birds painting; my last working working from a professional photo – this one from Dorling Kindersley’s new huge Birds book (now that I am wise on copyright issues). I just framed it, so big! It was a little scary working framing something so big, I measured and cut the mat myself with the bare minimum tools (a simple ruler, cutting mat and x-acto knife). It is kind of expensive to work big, big mat, big frame, big paint brush, big drawing board.

It turns out I was so happy with the end product – I was floating. I still am a bit when I think about it. It is so big and clean and white and the contrast and lights and the angle of the waters edge and getting it to look like water and the conversation among the birds, the detailed birds and the simple, loose almost asian-painted birds, it turned out so much more than I expected, I am kind of in a happy shock. I really had no idea working that big and the final work would have this impression. So much about the painting itself was challenging and felt overwhelming at times. Many times I felt so lost and like I was painting in the dark. It was bigger than I am used to and I really got the chance to get free and loose while still having some detail, it was like combining my style of 10 years ago: all-imagined subjects-”just go for what you see on the blank page” with the more recent style: imitate a photo with significant detail and lots of color study and planning and layering (with analyzed/researched technique). In this painting the two styles finally got the chance to flow together after all these years. It is more difficult to be impulsive and bright and loud and high contrast with watercolor. With an oil crayon you know what you are getting and you can just let go and start marking up the page. With watercolor, practice and experimenting help you get that loose and still get the effect of bold and free and almost reckless moments in time on the page. Another challenge was the 6 month respite in between when I left this painting and re-startred it. I was naturally in a different mental place when I started and that came out on the page and yet I am seeing the “two” styles compliment and flow on the page. Sorry I don’t have the measurements handy. Here is the image in parts:

A new page in my painting life

At the moment I am so busy I haven’t painted in about 6 months. Wow, and I am starting to feel that familiar wish to do something again. I left in the middle of the largest painting I have done in eight years and it has lots of details and glazing and is based around a conversation some birds are having around a murky pond. We see them on their eye level and they are small storks.

I had frustration when I learned via the WetCanvas forum that I can no longer rely on my favorite method of the past 5 (?) years of working from professional photos without concerns of potential copyright issues. It is just taking some adjusting in my head and ultimately I think I will be thrilled to be painting photos I took that hold memory for me of a time and place in my life.

So I will be turning a new page. From the past few months of in frequent photographing I already have some great photos that I took at the zoo to start working with. Because of that success I have some hope, I still have to get the images printed and see how I feel about their detail. Still I want to finish the large painting I started. I feel some real frustration about not having painted for so long, life is just so busy now and that is just the way it is. Still I am hoping to squeeze in a little time to get a re-start somewhere before the summer is over. Sometimes that means getting up at 4 am and taking flight in my studio. It is such a passion and there is so much yet for me to learn. My goal is to continue focusing on learning techniques and color studies to create final projects before I explore with pure creativity straight out of my head images and/or still life and really have fun. I think that work for me would aim toward Shirley Trevena’s. Peggy Macnamara is still my role model for my staying focused on technique and color study and I love the products too so that is fine. Right now the sky in the bird painting I have been working on is full of looseness and whimsy, splash and dash, bleeding of colors in streaks and light bouncing from everywhere. Just need a little guts to get set up again…

The Angry Birds

Love! these birds. I was in quite a mood when I drew them. It was a relief to be able to see the same sentiment reflected in nature.

test upload Airplane image

Just a test. Please stow any luggage in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of you.

Forums

Wet Canvas Site

Here is a little info on the Wet Canvas site, copied from their site. This really gives a sense of how large this particular population of users is.

“A History of Exponential Growth:

* Founded in 1998
* We have enjoyed an average growth rate of over 100% for each of the last 7 years.
* There are over 119,000 registered, active members.
* Over 2,000 members are added every month.
* Another 250,000 visitors find us each month through search engines, art publications, and newsletters.
* In 2007, we received traffic from more than 2 million unique IP addresses.
* WetCanvas! was recognized by a large community tracking and advocacy group as one of the top 100 largest bulletin boards on the Internet, and the single largest with a focus on the visual artist.”

Flickr.com is a photo library which I just discovered also has for example a watercolor painters group and forum.

Preparing the paper

Photo By **ANNE via flickr.com

For the longest time (years!) I managed to avoid the messy quandary of how best to hold down your paper onto a board while you slosh your paint and water all over it to create your masterpiece watercolor. How little I knew of how much trouble I had avoided all those years. I even for a fleeting moment wish I could crawl back into the watercolor block box and never come out again. However right now I am experiencing the incredible breadth of a huge white piece of paper before me and a nice long project I can sink my teeth into for a while. And I think I am in love. One obvious big benefit is I get to do odd shapes which I have been longing to do.

So if you outgrow watercolor blocks (300lb don’t commonly get very big, and they get unwieldy…hmm…then so do boards) or are just sick enough to just want to start out by strapping on watercolor paper onto boards (and I am not even going into soaking the paper since I hear if you work with 300lb you can avoid that mess) than two main questions arise:

What technique will I use (paste, gum tape, bulldog clamps or staples)? If only bull dog clamps solved everything. Since you may not always be working on a drawing board that is the size of the paper you want to use. Even though I haven’t yet (and I will) tried bulldog clamps, it is obvious more exploring has to happen. For another option I found an article in handprint.com’s description. He uses 1/2 inch staples through Popsicle sticks into a Daniel Smith applewood board. I just found out gum tape creates a horrible mess! I am going to go for the popsicle sticks and staples method now. I am a little concerned about the board and how heavy and bulky it will be. I would like to try DickBlick’s incredible board, what should I do? Ok I decided on trying the dickblick wood board I already own and then if necessary resorting to Daniel Smith’s and to save the hassle of the windy un-informational website, it is item #285490002 and ph. (800) 426-7923.

Will I cut the mat board for and frame my own? Pre-cut mats don’t commonly get very big. I spoke to mat cutter company Alto and decided the Alto 4501 is the best way to go.

A later update 7/21/8:
Now I think I have decided buying a staple gun and using popsicle sticks and staple holes and a heavy drawing board all might be too much. I like to yank up the board and turn it too often. Maybe I will use clamps and gum paper in whatever combo works and all on a lighter weight board.

Glazing

Here are some sites with some nice glazing tips, that because of a software glitch I am not able to just add to resources as links so I am adding it via post for now,

http://www.fountainstudio.com/watercolor%20tips/tip-glazing_watercolor.html
http://belindadelpesco.blogspot.com/2006/01/watercolor-glazing.html
http://www.watercolorpainting.com/watercolorpainting/glazedwash.htm
http://www.johnlovett.com/techniq.htm
http://beckwithfamily.com/watercolor7.html

Peggy Macnamara uses lots of layers in her glazing and comes up with a lot of depth and charachter in her colors, she has a book out (see a link to her site on this blog).

Thanks to Peggy, I am a big fan of glazing and am collecting a few resources for creating a glazing swatch database. So far it doesn’t seem like anyone has done it yet…I suppose I should do a thorough combing through of handprint.com

Watercolor Palette

watercolor by Jeanne Dobie, author of the most excellent watercolor instruction book “Making Color Sing”

Surface

White porcelain or white metal are my favorite surfaces to mix on because they don’t stain and the whiteness helps you see what color is there. Plastic watercolor palettes will stain with certain pigments.

Size and Shape

How big is your working space?
How big are your paintings?
How many colors do you work with?
How much do you mix them?

For me my workspace is not large and neither are my paintings (9 x 11 and smaller). I like to have about 10-20 colors handy on the same palette.

Recently I have enjoyed using half pans in a metal white enameled paint box. It is very portable and takes up little space.

Also a huge favorite when I am working at a desk is a large porcelain palette that can slide under an easel partly. It is hard to find a nice wooden watercolor easel that has a lift (2″-4″) just enough that you can work like that. That is surprising since no matter what your media it seems obvious you would frequently like some room to move stuff under the easel and out of the way for a moment.

Third I have had lots of fun working with individual flat bottomed square dishes found at Crate and Barrel Square Dish. 2.5 oz.; 3″ sq.
SKU 174998. The author of Handprint likes to store his paints in them. They are stackable.

Paint Choice

What colors do you want there? That question can get pretty interesting and you can spend lots of time making that decision, exploring color and pigment capabilities. Time for color studies pays off later. The more I wanted some answers the more complexity I discovered and thanks to handprint.com I got answers and have been very pleased with my resulting decisions of using any of the quinacridone Daniel Smith colors and any of their paints by the way are most of all the best quality for long lasting and brilliant pigments and combinations. M.Graham also has among the best quality and is significantly cheaper and that is what I primarily use.

New Studio and Media

by Joseph Chiang

So excited that for the first time in my life there is a room devoted to place various art supplies, easels, papers, and a couple good sized work tables. We just moved to this house so it is all yet to be seen what really works. Once set up my hope is to get some of my work onto this blog.

For now I will just mention some of the media I will have all at once at my fingertips. Some of my best work is multimedia. For example putting pastel over a watercolor. I have found watercolor pencils to be a real drag. I thought oh I will do a sketch of subject with a watercolor pencil before painting then discovered the color from the pencil line exploded onto the page creating an unwanted additional color and chaos. I really had to start over. Do you use watercolor pencils? For what?

For years I used to do a lot with oil craypas, had a lot of fun with it until I found quality watercolors can be very brilliant colors too. I got sick of mashing my fingers into the oil on the page to get what I wanted. The flow of watercolor, its gentleness is very attractive to me.

So I first switched from craypas to a watercolor crayon which I had less fun with so far since it tends to create a rough look to a piece. I really like working on hot pressed paper to get the smoothest paper. With hot pressed you get to pick every spot you want the color to go or not go. With rougher cold pressed the rough texture leaves “holes” of white that I may or may not have chosen and it is hard to fill them in, I just don’t see how people work with that and really cold pressed seems to sell faster since that is what most stores have in abundance.

Then there was the ink exploration. I really love the way an ink line, especially a thin to thick painted line, sits beside bright white space on the page. There is so much clarity and confidence and certainty about it, it is almost like math. Here is the answer, no ifs ands or buts. It takes a little bit of courage or on-ness, where you just know you are on to work in it. To grab up a pen and just take off on a blank sheet and do it well is empowering. The result feels chiseled in with some sense of age and history. And when you shine the light on the page, the beauty of the contrast of the lines hold up to scrutiny. However there is much less play, it is a one shot deal, your in and your out. With watercolor you can pick up pigment, do many layers, come back again and again for hours and the painting just keeps getting better. With an ink drawing either you got it right or you didn’t and it is done.

Working with charcoal and water I have had a little fun and feel like I could explore more.

The changing, limitless color possibilities and the blooming and flowing of watercolor is still my favorite media.

Donald Holden

Donald Holden is reviewed in the latest American Artist Watercolor magazine (summer 07). While his art is…maybe I am just not ready for it yet, it is fine, I am just not all there, I like what he says. He is a “Master” watercolorist whatever the hell that means, however it does feel like it means something…Anyway his layering landscapes do draw you in and he intends as he says for you to, “slow down, take your time, step into the painting, stroll around inside, and let the painting reveal itself to you. I hope my watercolors will put you into a meditative mood, calling up memories, hidden emotions, profound thoughts, dreams.” (p.35) He says the smallness (7″x10″) draws you in and that J.M.W. Turner worked small scale. “I was impressed by the small scale of most of his great watercolors. He was able to creat the illusion of immense space, brilliant and complex light, and rich color on scraps of paper that were about a foot wide. Eventually, I realized that this richness and complexity – this glowing, intense color – was possible because of the small scale. The paintings were so pungent because they were small, focused, and concentrated. It brought to mind what the great sculptor Bourdelled said to his students: ‘Make it smaller, more personal, more intense.’”(p.30)

One more nice quote from the article,

“Become a tree. Then you can express the tree, not just your own ego. A famed Chinese painter of animals said, “When you paint a tiger, your brush should snarl like the tiger.”(p.36)

So he is talking about letting go of ego, this is very interesting, watercolor can be a subconscious avenue for growth in many directions. I can see how there will be a difference between the tree you paint which is your tree, by you, painted and seen by you and the tree that is really sitting over there. So many layers…

Lineless

Watercolorists can get it so they are creating a photographic image, well whatever you want to do it is great and it seems it changes, what I want to mention here is how line-less watercolor lends itself to being.

A living fluid motion from one thing to another.

No lines, no start or end, no limits, everything is a part of everything else, the change is fluid and the being just moves from one thing to another.

Watercolor seems to have a life on the page and that life is beyond your limitations of it. You can work in wet and let go of control, so much need to control…and become free. Then you realize sometimes the color and water and you (moving the drawing board around maybe to direct the flow with gravity and movement) all had good input. It was not just a top down management, hierarchical style, you found getting input from the many was more fruitful. And the paint landed where it did and you may fret and you may be glad and you may rework, it is all there.

First Post

Hurray! I am here. A place to post discoveries, favorites and talk about the experience that goes beyond the material and what brings me here in the first place to this most difficult (really) media.

And here is where I am going so look out. This blog is all about watercolor. The pleasure, the joy of it and the trouble of it, this hobby I have finally claimed after all these years of trying and deciding it was just too much and backing away and then as though watercolor were knocking on my door, knock knock knock – I once again open the door, at last I surrendered and said look for better or worse this habit is not going away I may as well jump in a get wet. About a year ago handprint.com jettisoned me forward and past the intimidation of color and paint choices. Peggy taught me the brilliance of multi-layering patiently…well lets just say it has been a very long journey full of many great teachers (I mean authors, actually I never knew any watercolorists at all-too bad for me!) starting in High school, where one of my best friends (from Paris) moved back many of the barriers we set for ourselves.

If this exploration sounds like fun to you, great join the ride, feel free to subscribe, then you will get an email with my post whenever I make one (no spam) and easy to unsubscribe.