Grandchildren Give Good Art Advice

A few days ago, as an art exercise with my three older grandchildren (11, 9, 7), I pulled out three old paintings, laid them on the floor, and then gave each child small pieces of colored paper. I told them to take turns and place the pieces of colored paper on my paintings to make them look better. I was surprised at how much their changes improved the paintings, so I painted on those three again. The old paintings were photographed differently from the recent revisions, but you'll get the idea. Here are those three before and after.

Nightfall Canyon Trail after

Nightfall Canyon Trail

Let's Dance

Let's Dance After

Moody Day after

Moody Day

Middle 2019 Artwork: Abstracts and Vessels

Recently, I have been using Arches huile paper, which is made for oil paints. One can get some spectacular texture putting watercolors on this paper. I have also been experimenting with a more spontaneous, intuitive way of painting. I put granulating colors all over the paper and spread them around with a credit card, making textural marks into the paper and occasionally squirting with water and tilting the paper to create runs and more textures. This is a great deal of fun. Then I have the puzzle of trying to make something interesting, emotional, and/or beautiful out of it. 

In this process, two types of paintings have evolved. In one type I use ink to make lines and shapes that become "abstracts." In the other I use negative painting techniques and somehow vessels (vases, pitchers, pots) keep showing up.

Here are some abstract paintings, in the order painted:

Pale Male

Purple Mountain Majesty

Seaside

And here are three "vessel" paintings, in the order painted:

Story Storage

Spirits

My Vessels

I hope the texture of the granulating paints and that which results from credit card scraping show up well in these reproductions of my work. Now I am wondering if hot press Arches paper would work just as well with this process as the huile paper. I guess we'll have to try it and see!

Early 2019 Artwork

My eighth grandchild, a lovely girl named Alana Grace, was born in February, and I have been feeling extra creative. In the first part of 2019 I made over 20 artworks, and here are some of them. All are watercolor, except the last one, which is collage.

Digital Artwork by Participants in My iPad Workshop

I wanted all the workshop participants to send me JPGs of their iPad artwork, and a few have done so. I'm very impressed with their first tries. It was such an enjoyable workshop for me, and I really loved how the whole class collaborated, supported each other, and shared their knowledge.

Ruth Merkle experimented with some techniques I didn't cover, and she came up with some beauties, starting with this this lovely, ethereal, nonobjective creation:

Then she digitally painted over a newspaper article, which resulted in partially obscured words, which is very "in" now in contemporary art, and created this original piece:

Finally she sent a moody, surreal digital collage plus digital painting: 

She said she was "just playing," but I say "Well done, Ruth!"

Eileen Clary created this gorgeous digital collage, from a photo and parts of her watercolor paintings:

Jan McKinnon made this beautiful, surreal, moody scene, a digital collage from photos and parts of her watercolor paintings, I believe:

Kathleen Prebble tried something quite different for her, and she digitally painted this vivid, expressive nonobjective artwork:

Mimi Spencer digitally collaged in parts of her analog paintings and then digitally painted too, to create a lovely, evocative, somewhat abstract portrayal of birds:

Nancy Minear digitally combined parts of previous analog paintings and also digitally painted various elements, and made this charming, touching, beautiful work:

Stan Wolf created this evocative painting with his finger, blending colors for an ethereal feel:

Stan had a painting that he had done with too large figures in the distance, shown on the left below. He removed them and put smaller ones in the distance, shown on the right below. He did a great job of "fixing" an old painting. 

Finally, Carrol Wolf created the following four exuberant, gestural collages and drawings, using only her fingers:

Well done, everyone! I am grateful for the opportunity to work with so many talented artists, as we try to move into the future and create art with the technological "advances" now available to us. I was truly inspired to keep trying new things, to keep playing, to enjoy all these gifts.

Thought I Was Getting Good at iPad Art

February 16, 2019, I taught a workshop on creating art on the iPad with the app Procreate to 22 people, who paid actual money to attend. I had thought I was getting good enough with Procreate to teach about iPad art, but today I learned about Nancy Baker Cahill and was just amazed. Look at what SHE does!!   She gives you a free app, then you go to specific places, hold up your phone to view the place, and animated art appears in the scene. It's hard to explain, so go see for yourself and     Click here

While I wish I had thought of that, I remind myself that we are each on our own artistic journey, and wherever we are on that path is fine. We're lucky to be able to pursue the journey. So I will post some recent work.

At the end of February I attended Christopher Schink's workshop in Upland on exploring different ways to use color. One Procreate drawing I did there, called "The Game," will make a good painting I think, with a few changes:

Sometimes for fun I make bird heads, based on the work of one of my favorite artists, Rufino Tamayo. In addition to using strange color combinations, I tried to create a lot of texture in my bird portraits, which I then combined into "Bird Identification."

My 3-year-old granddaughter made something on her iPad, and she said it was a "Rainbow Hedgehog," posted here just because it's so creative and cute:

The End of a Series and the Start of a New One

I have painted about 20 impressionistic pictures of my aunts from a photo taken at a picnic in 1945, and I think my most recent one may be the last of that series. It captures everything pretty much to my satisfaction.

Many thoughts of nonobjective paintings have occupied my brain lately, so I started with these two. The first was painted with Mijello Mission Watercolors, and the colors are very intense, mostly transparent and staining. The second was painted with Daniel Smith paints, including several granulating colors. Both are based on grids.



















These two were much fun to paint, and I could have kept doodling on them for hours. I had to force myself to choose a stopping point. While I love the effect of the granulation in the second, I think I prefer the luminosity of those transparents in the first. 

It was also fun to get samples of new types of watercolors at Watercolor West, and in addition to the Mission and Daniel Smith paints, we tried Golden's new QoR watercolors, too, and they were beautiful. Although Christopher Schink always tells us that materials aren't that important, that our artistic intent is what's important, I love new paints and brushes!

More Desks

I got a little carried away combining my Arctic Sea series with my Desk series. But here they are:

Then I did a Woods Desk and then two Apocalyptic Desks. All this was fun, but not yet sure whether I like these works or not.

Desk Series

The New Palette magazine (Issue #66) arrived yesterday, and there was an article on an artist who was doing a series of paintings of chairs. I was inspired to take up my desk series again. I thought it would be helpful and focusing to make an artist's statement about the desk series, and here it is:

An entire life spent as an academic working at desks -- preparing lectures, planning research and class projects, writing books, proposals, reports, and research papers -- is symbolized by the desk.  It represents the values embodied in this work: rationality, logic, evidence, and truth. Today these values are under attack as never before in our country. The symbolic desk serves as a fragile defense against prejudice, fears, and disinformation. It may also represent hope for our future. 

Now to find time to paint!


Here are the prior desk paintings: