Trying an Interior

Some artists like to paint the insides of homes or buildings, also known as interiors. Vincent Van Gogh famously painted his bedroom, and the first place winner at Watercolor West last year depicted a hallway with a view out a screen door. I have never painted an interior. 

As I was hanging out in my daughter's apartment last week while dog sitting, I noticed that the shapes of receding walls with different types of light on them would make an interesting painting, so I decided to make my own attempt at an interior. The resulting painting is also an homage to Richard Diebenkorn. Not sure I like it, but maybe it has potential for a do-over.

Secrets 4

Finished a Painting Today

One graduation, one wedding, and one week of dog-sitting (so married couple could go on their honeymoon) are now done! (One more wedding to go.) Time to paint! Today I completed a painting I began at ISS, and here it is:

Secrets 3

I used the new paint application method I developed at ISS, and I lost a few more edges than usual. It feels good to apply what I learned and to like the results.

"New" Painting Methods

Here's a painting I did using the new (for me) paint application method I developed at the Intensive Studies Seminar along with an increase in lost edges as was recommended there. I actually really like it, and as art teachers have said, it's important to be able to say positive things about one's own paintings. I call it "Secrets."

Intensive Studies Seminar, Taos, New Mexico

Am surprised to realize that I haven't yet posted about the fabulous time I had at the Intensive Studies Seminar at the end of April this year. Four instructors (Katherine Chang Liu, Fran Larsen, William Lawrence, Christopher Schink) and eight days of painting in a great studio space in a gorgeous part of the country. It was artist heaven! While there, I focused on the figure, and I painted 16 paintings of which 3 or 4 have potential. I feel I made progress in losing edges and developing a textural style of applying paint, sort of the way oil paint is applied. Here are some of the works I did there:

With four different instructors working with small groups of us on different days, we were warned that we would get contradictory advice at times. One person said the baby's foot above was key to that painting's success, while another said it had to go. One person thought the dancer with the green shoe below was my least effective painting, while another thought it was the most effective. In a way, this sort of contradictory feedback forced us to commit to our own ideas -- I love the baby's foot and I don't think that dancer picture is very good.

Then, just to try something different, I did a nonobjective painting, below. One instructor liked it and another exclaimed, "That's not you!" I enjoyed painting it, but it's not me.

Then, just for fun, I decided to do a couple of whimsical bird portraits, after seeing a slide show of people portraits by Rufino Tamayo. There were nesting magpies near the hotel, and mockingbirds and many other birds to watch.

Tamayo Magpie

Tamayo Mockingbird

I brought home a couple of unfinished paintings, and they will get me started painting again after all the upcoming life events (birthdays, graduations, weddings) that will keep me from it for a while. I feel extremely fortunate and grateful that I got to go to ISS this year.

A Most Enjoyable Workshop

Just returned from a wonderful three-day painting workshop on expressive color with my favorite art teacher, Christopher Schink, at Sylvia Megerdichian's lovely Art Box Studio in Upland.  After helpful reviews of our work and between informative and inspiring slide shows and entertaining demonstrations, we worked on our own paintings in different color schemes. We were urged to try colors outside of our comfort zone.

As an exercise, we divided our paper into fourths or sixths and painted the same subject with all different color combinations. Here is my exercise:

Next I chose to do a painting based on hue contrasts, in the Post-Impressionist 2 color scheme: all pure hues, with a little black. Showing the class this painting, Toph said, "This is how grandfathers feel about grandchildren."

Then I did a painting based on contrasts in intensity, in a "Turner" or "Milton Avery" color scheme: tints, tones, and grays. Showing the class this painting, Toph said, "And this is how grandmothers feel about grandchildren."

This workshop was so much fun and I learned so much that the only problem is that now I am sad that it is over. But there is the Intensive Studies Seminar in Taos to look forward to in April!

Painting Again!

After not having painted for over three months -- had a show and taught a workshop, got that respiratory thing going around, adult kids moved back in, a new grandchild was born -- I decided today to get myself warmed up and back into the swing of painting by just playing and doing a nonobjective painting. That was fun and got me going, so I tried a Linda Kemp negatively painted landscape and then a negatively  painted nature study. Just completing three paintings today makes me feel much more like a human being, though none of them are that great.

"The Mountain Gave Birth to Peace and Harmony"

"Pond Trees"

"Grape Vines"

I Haven't Painted for TWO Months!

Having just read Patti Smith’s touching memoir, “Just Kids,” about her early years with Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1960s and 1970s, I was interested to see that even artists as committed as they were (enduring poverty and hunger to make art) sometimes doubt the point and value of what they are doing. They also struggled with the tension between painting for yourself and for the joy of creating versus painting for your viewers. And apparently viewers are essential. If no one sees it, is it art? Is enjoying doing it sufficient justification for all the time and money one spends on it? Is enjoying doing it sufficient justification for the loss of other experiences one passes up? Or something more worthwhile one could be doing?

And I guess all artists hope to create something original and breathtaking, something that makes a positive difference in the world. Is that too grandiose? Is cheering up one person enough of a positive difference? Maybe cheering up oneself by painting is enough. I do know that when I am prevented from painting for a month or two by life events, I get quite crabby.

People versus Landscapes

After a review of all the paintings I have sold, I noticed that the majority were landscapes, florals, or animals. Paintings with people in them did not sell very well. Recently I signed up for a photography site and put up 3 landscape photos and 2 people ones. The 3 landscapes immediately got several likes, while the people ones got none. I am not sure what this means.

Do people in general prefer landscapes to humans? Or is it me -- my paintings and photos of landscapes are better than those of people? In either case, why?

2012 in Review

Life has overwhelmed art for me recently, so I will pause to note what I accomplished in 2012. My friend Carrol Wolf and I had a two person show, "Two Broads with Brushes," at the Corner Gallery for the month of September, and I sold 17 paintings over the year. Two paintings were accepted into National Watercolor Society shows, and I won two honorable mentions, a first place, and a best of show in art league shows. The workshop on negative painting that I taught for Watercolor West and the City of Brea Art Gallery seems to have been a great success. So, a pretty good year!

"Fecundity" juried into
NWS 2012 Donor Exhibition.

"At Last" juried into
NWS 2012 Member Exhibition.

"Aunts at a Picnic"
First Place in Mixed Media
HBAL March 2012 Meeting, Ron Journeay, judge.

My photographer husband, Dan Kee, also did a review of his excellent year, and it can be seen by clicking here.

Here's to more creativity in 2013!

Holiday Painting in the Negative

Since the holidays are upon us and I am due to teach a workshop on negative painting on Saturday, December 8, at the City of Brea Art Gallery (call them for details or to sign up), I decided to try to paint poinsettias with all negative painting. Besides, they are my favorite color, red! My goal was to see if it were possible for me to do the entire painting in the negative.

(I do wish there were a different term for negative painting -- it just sounds so, um, negative. Especially for a holiday painting. Gerald Brommer's term, painting the unoccupied space, is a bit unwieldy.)

Anyway, I started my underpainting by wetting the paper and putting three yellow dots in the upper left. Then I slathered on all my different reds wet-into-wet in sort of poinsettia leaf shapes, so I suppose there was some degree of positive painting in the underpainting. I added bits of green to make the red pop and bits of yellow so that those three dots were not alone. I also lifted out some leaf veins with a small, almost dry brush. After letting the underpainting dry, I began negatively painting with reds darkened with green and greens darkened with red to bring out the flower shape. And here it is:

Holiday Flower

Right now I am thinking of changing my lesson plan for Saturday a bit so that I can include teaching what I did to make this holiday painting. We'll see how that works out .......

Another Try with the New Material

On the washed off Terra Skin from the last post, I started putting thick paint on and letting it run. As it dried I gradually brought some flower shapes out and I lifted some out, too. When I was done, it seemed that the left side of the painting was too different from the right, so I cut it into two paintings -- what a deal! These floral fantasies really take advantage of the properties of this "stone paper" -- I hope you can see the amazing textures. However, it seemed in my first painting that the painting became paler and paler day after day as it dried, so I fear I may lose some of the vivid colors in these. We'll see.

Terra Floral 1

Terra Floral 2

Trying a New Material

My friend Carrol Wolf gave me a large (28 x 40) piece of Terra Skin, a new "paper" made out of stone (ground up calcium carbonate plus binders) that is supposed to save trees and be biodegradable. Today I tried watercolor painting on it.

I never got the hang of Yupo, and this surface is a little like it, though it seems like the paint sticks to it a little better than to Yupo. I found I could easily glaze over other colors that had been allowed to dry completely, without disturbing the underlying color. It is easy to make fascinating textures on Terra Skin and to get hypnotized watching the colors mingle. It is extremely easy to lift color, even staining Prussian blue, down to the white. 

Masking tape stuck too well to the Terra Skin, and it was very difficult to remove, so if, like me, you like to tape your paper to a board, this may be a problem.

Anyway, I didn't like the resulting painting, so I decided to wash all the paint off. Most of it came off under running water, and even staining colors came off with a soapy sponge and a little scrubbing. Even pencil marks washed off. I wondered whether washing with soap would affect the surface, but apparently not, since I did some tests with additional watercolors on it and it behaved the same as before. 

It would appear that one could paint for years without ever buying any more paper or Terra Skin at all!

Taos Before Spring

Same Sheet after Washing

Hill Town Collage

After hearing a talk by Gerald Brommer on Saturday and seeing his slide show of his paintings of hill towns done with a variety of techniques, I came home once again inspired to try collage. This time I tried diluted Elmer's glue, as Brommer suggested as an alternate to matte medium. I cut up little squares of watercolor paper (his idea, only he cuts up 3 x 5 cards), slathered a piece of watercolor paper with diluted glue, and started sticking squares on. After it dried for 24 hours, I painted it on a slant, letting the colors run. The glue made for an interesting texture. I think it turned out OK and it was fun to do.

Adventures with Adhesives

I decided I didn't like the painting in the last post. It looked too much like a Halloween witch and not enough like an anxious Grandma. So I took another painting I didn't care for ("Vessels of Memory 2") and made a watercolor collage out of them. I tore them into vague mountain shapes. I had a seascape in mind, and I had to paint some pieces I ended up needing. One of the really fun things about collage is that you can tear or cut out a shape you think you need and then lay it on the painting and see how it looks and move it somewhere else and see how it looks there and even change the shape.

One of the really awful things about collage (at least for me, the neatnik) is the stuff you have to use to stick the pieces together or onto the mount. My pal Jessie and I went to Staples and investigated all the possibilities for adhesion they had. I bought a bunch and tried them all, but rejected most for being too messy (got all over me and all over my stuff) or too smelly (rubber cement) or too expensive (it required $7 worth of permanent glue tape to affix just a few pieces, though it adhered really well).  I ended up sticking with good old glue stick. We will see if it really can permanently hold the big heavy pieces on.

Green Flash

Can  you see the old painting in there? (Hint -- look at the right side of the old painting and then at the top of the collage.)

Carrying the Baby Downstairs

This may not be a great painting, but it really captures how I feel when I carry the baby downstairs, clutching baby and bannister with all my strength.

Taking the Baby Downstairs

Tight and Loose

Today I saw a photo of a group of actors that caught my attention, and I decided to paint three of them. The painting turned out too tight, because I cared too much about my drawing. To loosen up, I used one of my granddaughter's creations as inspiration and just put paint to paper. If the goal of painting is to have fun, both did the trick.

The Stage Director

Painting Like a Four-Year-Old

Another Aunts Painting

The show is down, so I feel a little sad. I sold a dozen paintings, so I guess it was a success. The best pick-me-up is to paint, so I did another painting of my aunts at their 1945 picnic. I used masque pen to create some white lines, though I ended up covering most of them up. With this painting I learned that masque pen takes practice, especially to get different widths of line, and that the lines are more successful if they do not surround a shape, but emphasize it in some other way.

Aunts at a Picnic 2

The Judy and Carrol Show

For the last year, artist Carrol Wolf and I have been planning and preparing for our two woman show at the Corner Gallery in the Huntington Beach Central Library for the month of September 2012. Here are some photos, taken by Dan Kee, of the day we hung the show.

The Show Postcard

Loading the Car

Unloading

Beginning to Hang

Extra Paintings

Self Portraits of Self Portraits

The "Owie"

My two-year-old grandson fell and cut his head, and of course he had to have a bandaid. He looked so sad that I had to take a photo and then make a painting. I tried to capture how he looked so hurt, physically hurt but also psychologically hurt, even betrayed, from learning that painful things can happen to good little boys like him.

Grandchildren Art

Got to paint with my granddaughter and grandson (separately) in the last couple of weeks. It is clear that Ryan, age 27 months, has a concept when he paints. He makes a shape and tries to color it all in, and if I ask him if he is ready for a new color, he says, "Not yet." He also has definite color preferences and did not like yellow ochre ("I not like"). Here is one of his creations:

Maddie, who will be 5 in late November, paints more like a typical 4-year-old. The following painting shows her in front of her new school. She starts transitional kindergarten at a public school next week, and the dark cloud above her head suggests that she is a little anxious about it.

And here is a charming mixed media piece depicting her family by their house: