Aunts at the Beach

A semi-impressionistic oil painting, almost finished today:

I have done several watercolors based on a photograph of my five aunts at a picnic in Indiana in 1945, and in this water mixable oil painting, I experimented with outlining and brush and color techniques, while focusing on three aunts and putting them at the beach. 

Managing to Make Three Artworks in Three Months

Three artworks were created since the last post, two oils and an iPad work, and I learned some valuable lessons. 

It is fun and fast to make an iPad "painting" (P. A. Woman below), and the inspiration can be something like a photo of my Chinese dipping sauce. I learned that with my iPad art, the result is not necessarily what I had imagined, and it seems like they are all starting to look alike.

It is fun and fast to do a small impressionistic oil painting (Out of Darkness). This painting was inspired by my choreographer daughter's brave struggles, and it looks like what I feel when I think about those. I think other people don't like this painting much.

It is NOT fun and it is NOT fast to do a semi-realistic 18 x 24 oil painting! The main thing I learned from painting Joy is to never do anything like it again. It began to feel like WORK, and I dreaded working on it. At this stage in my learning about oil painting, going smaller and more impressionistic is better.

My friend Jessica's niece was christened, and she took a beautiful photo in the church. I saw her photo and said to myself, "That would make a great painting," and it would -- just not by me. I think the problem is what my friend Carrol said gave her difficulties -- I knew the people I was painting. Instead of going impressionistic, I ended up fussing about whether it looked like them. And with details and defining edges, my essential tremor just fouled me up! I learned valuable lessons, so this painting was a worthwhile experience. Now my problem is what to do with the darn thing -- it's really big and I don't think anyone wants it.

Joy

Out of Darkness

P. A. Woman

New iPad Pro

For my 72nd birthday in April,  I finally bought myself the new, large, FAST iPad Pro, with the latest Procreate program, and Dan bought me the iPencil, all fabulously fun and inventive art tools. Besides making a couple of story books for the grandkids, I tried a couple of collages from old watercolors, since there are parts of those old works that now look very beautiful to me. This one has potential:

Leaving Eden

I liked this one enough to risk posting it to the Procreate FB page today.
We'll see.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Also in honor of my sister, I decided to try something completely new -- mono-printing!
I took photographs of my sister's pottery and used them to make stencils. With the Gelli printing plate Carrol Wolf gave me, I used a Speedball 2 inch rubber brayer to roll red, yellow, and blue Speedball water soluble printing ink onto the plate with the stencils present in some layers. The stencils worked in some layers and not in others. I did six prints and here they are in order:

The last one is my favorite. I'm thinking I could use some of the textures in my iPad art. And I think I'll give all these printing supplies back to Carrol Wolf for her to try. 

Taking Another Stab at Water Mixable Oils

As often happens, life got away from me, and I have not done any artwork since the last post. Yesterday I told myself I had to paint SOMETHING, to counter my sadness at the second anniversary of my sister's unexpected death. So I decided to copy a work by one of my favorite artists, Wolf Kahn, to try to figure out how he does it. I got out my WN Artisan and Holbein Duo paints, an old cheap canvas board, and made myself paint. It finally got to be fun.

What did I learn? First, it's harder than it looks. Second, I can copy pretty well, but can I take the things I learned and create something of my own? 

Here are the paintings:

My copy

New Hybrid Works

Just got back from a wonderful 5-day studio workshop with Katherine Chang Liu and learned that what I have been doing on the iPad can be called "hybrid works." And there ARE artists who are doing something slightly similar, which I found exciting. Before I went to the workshop, I created the work on the left, and during the workshop I did the one on the right. And I actually like both of them. I thought about both for many days before I made them, and it took a while to collect, photograph, and edit all the elements. Great fun!

P A Belle

Ashes/Blue Planet