Fussy Fru Fra = Blaaaaa when painting leaves

 Step 8

Well, I'm back to the parrot painting.  Remember that, a while back?  Sharpies on canvas are a whole lot more fun, I think.  Anyway, here we are again.  Now the painting at the top is the last step.  Do you think I actually wanted the fussy fru fra to be the main picture at the top of my blog?  No indeed.

Step 5

Anyway, so last night I made a very half hearted attempt to paint some leaves in the background of the painting.  Remember it's a good idea to do the background first.  That way you don't have to be careful around the main subject matter.  Leaves take a special knack and, as you can see, from step one below that it is boring beyond words.  And why is it boring?  Because there's no movement.  It's static.  Well, as my teacher, Robert Rumel, told me, "Sometimes you have to ruin a painting to fix it"-I proceeded to do just that.

 Step6

To begin this process I pulled some natural sponges out of the drawer and began step two (ruination without a care in the world-good plan of attack).  When using a sponge it's real hard to get tight in your painting and I wanted things to loosen up.  As you can see I went to town on this and what do you see now?  Step three-movement!  Voila!  Now, I know this isn't the greatest but it's a better base than what I had before.  Now I can build on it.  Paintings are like sculptures in that you have to build up and build up.  That's what the Masters did.

Step7

Now I have something better to work with.  Oh, I put a green wash on the birds last night-being careful to allow warm and cool.  While I work every area I'm constantly keeping in mind how I can make each element become a "star".  I want subtle contrasts that will pop things out and create life and interest.

Side Note:  I want you to notice the effect of the under painting on the birds.  Now I'm going to layer, layer, layer and leave a small glow of the orange underneath.  It will make the painting breath life by not appearing flat.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

When you don't like the calendars-I say, "Make your own" with Sharpies!

So, the title tells it all in a nutshell.  I just couldn't find what I wanted at the stores and nothing on line that I wanted to pay any money for.  The more I looked the pickier I became.  Nothing held a candle to my "The Art of Ornament" from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston calendar that I have been able to buy for 2 years straight.  None to be had at the stores this year.  So I decided I was going to let the artist, Eugene Grasset- that did the art work in them -be my inspiration.  As you can see I flourished.  It just sprouted out of me and in such a lovely way.  Some of you might remember my sandals that I used Sharpies on a while back.  I decided to do the same, in a sense.  I bought untreated canvas material and bought a big set of Sharpies.  Then went to town.

I want to tell you that pencil eraser doesn't erase well at all on canvas.  So I learned from that and did some sketches in my trusty work book-I mean sketch book (remember remember?).  I also figured out my color scheme.  Being a big believer in using your own photos when necessary I went through a bunch of my flower pics that I had taken.  Then used some unusual flowers that had meaning to me.  So, folks, these are all my own original designs (please keep that in mind, right?).  After I made my plan I carefully drew it out.  Then the fun part began.  Because of the nature of the untreated canvas lovely textures developed that I wouldn't have even known.  I had no idea how much you could use these markers like regular paints.  The bleeding characteristic of these pens lent itself to a more watercolor type look.  I loved it!  Plus you can blend the colors (you're welcome, Sharpie company).

As I was working on the color I was careful to keep continuity in my colors.  Notice how I tried to use the same colors more than once (almost all) throughout my composition.  This gives movement to the design and keeps the eyes wondering around to discover, hopefully, new delights constantly.

At the end I scrutinized it and realized that part of the success in the sandals was the thin ballpoint outline I used that make things stand out.  I hope you'll notice that I only used it sparingly as I wanted some edges to be soft and recede more.  This made some of the designs, the stars of each picture, pop out.

You know, I feel quite happy about this.  Oh, the calendar part.  Well, I left some extra white material that I didn't draw on that I'm going to just put a new month on when they change.  I just can't keep up with this every month.  That seemed a little obsessive to me.

Art History Moment:  Yes, finally here's one.   Eugene Grasset, it turns out, is one of my favorite decorative artists that was reintroduced in the 1960's.  He was part of the Art Nouveau (spelling please?) in France during the late 1800's and early 1900's.  I forgot that I love this style! Actually Grasset was born in Switzerland and moved to Paris.  He was heavily influenced by Japanese prints, Near Eastern art and medieval stained glass.  At first he worked in textile designs and graphic ornament.  Then branched out to bigger projects.  He taught at the Ecole Normale d'Enseignement du Design school.  A big believer in using forms from the natural world-he wrote and illustrated the book "Plants and their Application to Ornament".

Poster artists during the 1960's reinterpreted his style to modernize it.  I can remember many a rock concert poster that had the same feel to them.  They were just what a fairy tale lover (me) from that era would love to own.  And I did.  I wish I had them now.  Drat.

Oh cool! Sharpies sharpies sharpies!

Well, I always have said for years that if I listen to my kids I will find out about great new ideas.  Case in point:  When my son, Cliff, was about 12ish I finally listened to him about leather Keds/sports shoes.  He kept telling me that they are better than canvas for several years.  I wouldn't listen to him.  I thought leather would be the worst for kid's shoes.  At last I gave in and found out that the leather is the best and canvas shoes are a dud.  Tonight I looked at my daughter, Gracie's, blogs that she has joined and noticed http://www.sharpieuncapped.com/default.aspx.  Wow oh wow.  It is too much fun.  Now I want to buy all the sharpies they have.  Have all of you looked at the variety of Sharpies these days?  I had no idea that they have oil based ones.  On the Sharpieuncapped blog I saw a CAR that someone had drawn designs all over the place with a black, you guessed it, Sharpie.  Too cool for words.  Now I should know that Gracie would be a genius about this as she works for an online office supply company called shoplet.com.  She knows her company's products and then some.  I say "then some" because she spends all day looking at blogs to try to find out original ways to use the products that her company sells.  I think you'd find her office blog, http://blog.shoplet.com/, very interesting and it isn't just because my daughter writes it.

  You should check it out.  One of the things I really like about it is that she presents services and great ideas that people do-like the guy that wraps gifts in a very creative way.  I always like it when someone goes out of their way to support others.  I mean, we can all use a helping hand every once in a while, right?

Whew!  I finished the baby quilt and pillow and now can get back to some art work-although I have a final next week in my class and if it's like the last test it will be a humdinger-must get studying.....blaaaaaaaa.

New Monday Art day entry plus something green that I use

"The air was fine and I needed to go to the store-so I decided to fly!"

The word for the week on Monday Art Day is "flight".  I am not kidding but last week I had a flying dream.  I haven't had one of those for years.  It was ME sailing above the trees and when I woke up I felt so good about it.  Then I noticed that we needed to illustrate "flight".  Okay, there was my image.  Yesterday I plopped down while I was listening to Conference and just let it flow (flow as in didn't care about perfection, right?).  Then I thought I would post it today but I was worried about the whole "me thing" with flying and all that.  I didn't want the world to think I was a weirdo a la Freud.  But I Googled flying dreams a lot last night and read how they are interpreted as a great self esteem booster.  In other words you feel free and have overcome difficult odds.  Well, I felt like my subconscious knew me better than my conscious side.  I really did have some difficulties last year and had, I hoped, risen above it all-therefore the flying me.  Okay, there's my feelings about the whole image.  Take it or leave it.

Now I'm just going to talk about the benefits of using a Styrofoam meat tray for rinsing and keeping your brushes wet..  First of all you know you're doing your duty by recycling-green-, right?  I was tired of ruining my paint brush by using a cup.  The tips were always mashed and misshapen no matter how hard I tried to not let that happen.  The trays work great because you just lay the brushes in there and the tips never get bent.  Plus they're free-love that part.

 "The Christmas Eve" watercolor by Carl Larsson

Art History Moment:  I haven't done this for a few days and it's important to be consistent about the learning end of it.  Today I'm going to talk about another illustrator (tell me if this gets monotonous but I love great illustrators) and one most of you probably haven't heard of.  One of my old friends introduced me to Carl Larsson.  He was a Swedish artist that is famous for the lovely and picturesque paintings/drawings of his family.  He also did commissioned works for his country but I, and many others, I'm sure, think of his home life first when we hear his name.  Anyway, the images of his children are so candid.  You almost feel like you are living in his world whenever you see them by the way he painted from life.  I love the quaint surroundings of where he lived.  You also get to see his wife in her day to day surroundings.  I am told that you can visit his actual house in Sweden and it's been kept in tack with all the gorgeous woodwork that was his original design.  He is just wonderful and you will feel peace and joy whenever you see his work.

2 must haves for oils

I had another great art teacher for a workshop that I took.  His name is Frank Covino.  Frank had scrutinized all the masterpiece paintings in person that he could and tried to figure out what the old masters used for colors, technique and supports. What he came up with is you have to have Chromium Oxide Green by Grumbacher for all skin (I can't remember if he said darker skin also but I think it would be a good idea).  Wherever there's a shadow or you want to make the skin recede you need to add a little of the C. O. Green.  It's good for an under painting also.  All skin, according to Frank (I'm assuming he meant even darker values) has Windsor Orange by Winsor & Newton.  THAT is the orange you would want to use to mix with the other skin colors.  He also said that wherever you can sense a pulse/blood you need to add a little blood color to that area.  You will enliven the nostrils too if you add some of that blood there also.

2 great colors/2 great tips from Frank Covino.  If you're interested in his workshops I bet he's probably still teaching them.  If you use his method your painting will last at least 500 years or more, many more, because he has a special medium that he has concocted and when applied to a wood panel-well, it's going to last almost forever.  I have one painting I did in the workshop.  It's not a masterpiece at all and will probably last a 1,000 years.  Drat.  Not the one I would choose to go down through the ages.


Art History Moment:  Speaking of a retched example to be famous for: Okay.  Who hasn't heard of the portrait "Whistler's Mother"?  Boring (to me), boring, boring.  So when we began studying James Whistler I thought it would be a big drag.  But, unfortunately, that image is what he is well known for.  Whistler was an exceptionally innovative artist in that he was really the first to make use of the influence of Japanese prints.  A fascinating American character that lived in France and London.  In looking at "The Girl in White" you'll notice that he has several "whites" in this painting.  He had the challenge, as I had in "America's Favorite City", of making them look different and stand out.  This girl in the painting is hardly a girl at all but was his mistress,  Jo Heffernan.  What is it with these artist guys?  Does every dedicated male artist have to have a mistress?  I certainly hope not but the mistress/models are the ones that become famous.  After talking so much about Maxfield Parrish, for the life of me, I can't remember his wife's name but I knew his mistress, Susan Lewan.

Fav equipment

I thought I'd just continue a little from yesterday as I got myself to go downstairs and take a picture of the Silicoil brush cleaning jar.  I mentioned it in yesterday's blog.

Okay, this is an artist's lament and I KNOW almost every artist can agree that we never never never have enough or the right light unless we make an extra effort to set it up.  Well, I'm showing you what my husband, the scrounger brought home to me.  Sometimes I just hate his junk but this is a real jewel.  He's an electrician and works almost exclusively at hospitals.  The stuff he gets is top notch.  So, therefore, let me introduce you to MY operating light.  Ta da!  It's soooo great for painting on something dark.  You know as we get older it gets harder and harder to see to paint detail in dark areas.  Well, this light is THE best.  I'm not kidding.  Try to find one if you can.  But I don't use it all the time.  Just when I need it.

Then I thought you'd enjoy seeing a funky setup that he put together when I complained about my lighting years ago.  Don't you just love the light on my easel?  I don't use that one now but it really worked great when I needed it.

Art History Moment:  We're still talking about Maxfield Parrish.  His very large painting called "Daybreak" is considered the all time top selling poster (as of the writing of the book I read).  Maybe Farrah surpassed him but, I guess, comparatively to nowadays population levels and the levels during the earlier 1900's the percentage was way up there.  "Daybreak" is considered to be a composition masterpiece and do you know that people can sense when something is going quite right as they put this on their walls all over the U. S. A. during the 1920's.  More about it tomorrow and what makes it so successful.

I think I'm going to just ask you to Google questionable copyrighted images.  I looked it up and couldn't get a clear answer.  This is an educational use but I'm just not sure about it.  Does anyone know?

These are some of my fav things!

Today I'm going to show you some of my favorite art supplies plus a vendor that I like.  I am very very fussy about having the right things to work with and keeping them in as good of shape as possible.  When I was teaching art for 11 years I would send my new students home with a supply list and pray that they would follow it.  Now some of them were as young as 8.  So, I can understand why their parents wouldn't want to buy them the best but my philosophy of teaching was use the best and get the best.  Hey!  I think I should use that as my new motto for the supply department of my blog.

Okay:  USE THE BEST AND GET THE BEST

When the students would come to class with the chintzy brushes that all come in a packet from a foreign country I would cringe!  In fact after a while of helping them I would tell the parents that they just had to break down and spend more money on quality (you get what...., etc.).  So here are my top favs:

1.  Liquitex acrylics-I love them because they have more of a matte finish to them.  So I can layer oils on top without fear of the oils not adhering.  The lids fit decently and are easy to handle even for adults.  Also, a little trick here-you can put unused paint back into the tube quite easily by holding the paint tube upright and tapping down, gently, on the tube.  Just ladle with your little palette knife and tap after each addition.  Back in it goes.  NOW you can't ladle in paint that has started to set up because it won't change once it gets in there.  But I've done that before and not had too much of a problem.  If that happens it will just squirt out at the beginning the next time you use it.

2. Grumbacher Bristlette paint brushes - You may have to order them if your art supply store doesn't carry them.  I just plain old like them for both acrylics and oils.  But you've got to take good care of them, folks.  Wash them out each time and try hard to get deep down into the bristle.  I just use mild dish soap and water-then work and work out the paint.  Then I dip them into the next lovely lovely supply and LEAVE that on the brush until next time as it will condition the bristles and they'll be soft.  It's water soluble and will wash off.

3. Weber Turpenoid Natural.  Love it love it.  It is safe to inhale and works great for use with oils instead of turpentine or other nasty nasty stuff.  You can ALMOST drink it-it's so safe.  I hope they still have this but I'm sure they do.  I bought several bottles probably about 5 or 6 years ago and I'm just on the second now.  I get one of those glass jars that has the wire coil at the bottom and put the Turpenoid up to the top of the coil.  When using oils I first wipe off most of the paint from the brush.  Then I clean it in the jar by scraping, gently, against the coil.  Then I wash them with the soap and water.

4.  Winsor & Newton Liquin.  Yea, it's great.  I use it for a medium with my oils and final finish (even with acrylics).  Now, I talked to the Winsor & Newton chemist and he said I shouldn't use it for the finish but I've been doing it for years and it's great.  I love it because you can paint on top of it if you choose to (remember obsessive painter-me).  He recommended I use this other final finish and I'm not kidding I was not happy about it because, of course, I wanted to change a few things.  I COULD NOT get any of that finish off.  It's like iron.  I tried sanding, chemicals, etc.  I recommend that after several years when you are certain that you're done and won't be touching anything up-then use the iron clad finish made by Winsor & Newton (name?).  But you won't believe how it makes the acrylic painting sings and comes alive the minute you put the Liquin on top of it.  Wow, oh, Wow.

5.  Whew.  Almost forgot.  I order often from Dick Blick as they usually have everything I want and have never ever had bad luck with them.  Plus once you get on their mailing list you get a whopper of a catalog every year.  I don't think they carry the Bristlette brushes, though.  Are you listening Dick Blick?  Please get them.

That's it but I'm sure I'll think of more on another day. 

Any questions?  Please ask. I'd love to hear from you.  Remember my caveat-I don't claim to know it all and can be corrected.

Art History Moment:  Well, I just can't resist talking about my favorite painter, Maxfield Parrish.  In fact I think I'll spend a little more time on him because he's a fascinating art character (and I MEAN character) and one of the all time best illustrators.

Maxfield Parrish is the guy that painted all those great calendar art paintings with girls sitting on rocks.  You may have seen one of his works on an album cover of the 1960's-or someone inspired by him.  "It's A Beautiful Day", the rock group, had an album that could be his or an M. P. inspired artist.  He is the artist for the all time top selling poster.  We'll talk about it tomorrow.  I think I'm going to have to direct you to Google him because I'm afraid of copyright infringement as he's from the previous century and still has living heirs.

You Get What You Pay for, you know-Buy Quality Materials!

Buy the best materials that you can afford. I can't stress this enough. You may not like the painting of the beach ball today but someday someone might and they'll be very sad if the paint was not artist quality and that it's painted on a canvas board that warped. Think forever or as close as you can get to that. Also, when you use good quality materials it makes you feel like you really have a purpose in this venture-what you're doing is important to you and the world. It makes you sit up straighter and feel confident in what you're doing.

Be careful to get paper that is acid free. The only time I give this some leeway is in doing doodles. You know doodles can happen anywhere. They could occur in the phone book, your school notebook, etc. You get what I mean about this.

During the '70's when the "black is beautiful" movement really picked up steam "Life Magazine" ran a fabulous article with the coolest photos ever of gorgeous African Americans. I was in high school and decided to paint one of a young woman. Well, even when I look at it now I think, "dang but that's a good painting...even if I do say so myself" BUT the tragedy of that painting is that: 1. I used a cheapy canvas board
2. I used a bad finish
I do get points for using Liquitex acrylics, my favorite and still is. Too bad it doesn't look all that great now.

As a side note I would never say that this is an original painting and take credit for the image of the woman. I would love to show this in my post but I don't want to get in trouble with copyright infringement. How about if we talk about that tomorrow, okay? It's study time around here.