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.

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.