Flood & Fire

And famine, too, with drought, fuel and fertilizer costs rising, and a lack of people to bring in the crops. Bankruptcy, permitting foreign countries to buy up fertile farmland and watersheds to feed their own is not right. We won’t discuss healthcare and skyrocketing insurance. Capitalism at its finest. I love being a commodity.

About 3 days ago a sprinkler head broke and sprayed a ton of water into an open window – the window into my studio. Paper loss, book loss, furniture loss. Hours spent cleaning up the water and discarding unsalvageable things. Fortunately, all can be replaced. I put my clothes into plastic bags, threw away art paper and books beyond redemption. We bought a new dresser at Ikea and the esposo put it together for me. The bright part, though, is I am being forced to clean up and sort out my stuff – junk – crap – whatever. High time.

And today, the wind is up, and there are fires here in my neck of the woods. Hopefully we will not experience the devastating losses of Malibu and Altadena and Camarillo and Ventura and other parts of California, the US, and the rest of the world. All this makes for a sense of life being precarious and unpredictable – which it is – but which I don’t find especially enjoyable.

Okay, enough about this and that. At least I am not mentioning locusts . . .

Back Road Near Sisters, OR

The other day I was browsing through a bunch of snapshots I took when I was up in Oregon for a week visiting a friend. We spent time on the coast and inland. This painting is from a picture I took as we were driving back to her house near Sisters, Oregon.

As you can see, in the distance are a number of snow-covered mountains. The are called the Three Sisters. I have a photograph I took from the car of this scene, and of the mountains. In the photo, the mountains blend into the blue of the sky, but when enlarged, you can easily see them. I kept the proportions of the photo but made the Three Sisters more visible. The photo is below, and clicking on it will take you to Flickr. Clicking on the Flickr picture until it is maxed out will make the distant mountains visible.

Outside Sisters, OR

It’s interesting how the atmosphere just blends the mountains into the sky. On the drive, they were visible, but very faint.

I did not strive for accuracy in representing the Three Sisters. I just wanted to make sure they were there. I also changed the landscape to my liking in my painting, and does it work? Hmm. My focal point is a bit vague to me, but the red buildings below the treeline are hopefully getting you where you need to be.

Watercolor, BaoHong 100% cotton CP paper, 9×12.

Somewhere

Yesterday I got to class to paint and realized I had left all my white and black artist gouache sitting on the table. Everything else had come with me.

I need white for gouache, so I got some acrylic titanium white paint to use from the supplies counter in the classroom and blended it in with the gouache. Because it is acrylic, I made sure my mixes of gouache and white paint occurred on a disposable palette as well as made sure I used cheap brushes which I rinsed all the time. Acrylic is plastic and I don’t need ruined brushes or metal palette. And the fast drying quality of acrylic made me work far too quickly.

Sigh.

I have no idea where this photo came from, just knowing it is somewhere in southern Europe, like in Spain or Italy or France, or elsewhere. The white plaster buildings are rather decrepit and worn. The streets are more like alleys than a 5-lane L.A. freeway.

The bright blue doors, rampant bougainvillea, and rusty red just make you want to paint it. So, I did, and my haste shows – nasty, quick-drying acrylic paint! – crooked lines rather than straight, poor perspective. My usual faults! In reality, the detail was a challenge to reproduce, even what little I did, and because I knew this would not be a masterpiece, I could play.

I have mixed artists gouache with watercolors, and been happy with the results. Mixing acrylic paint with water soluble paint is a bit of a different story as speed is part of the issue with acrylics. As an experiment, this worked as I could lighten my paints as necessary, but it is not something I want to repeat. My brushes mean a lot to me, can be hard to replace, and my palette is also something I value. Dried acrylic paint would not be a happy blend with enameled metal.

Acrylic paint with artists gouache, 9×12.

Quick Capture

Yesterday I went to my portrait class with a rather meh attitude. I don’t really like doing portraits or painting people. The fact is, portraits are intimidating and scare me! I get frustrated if I cannot make my picture look like my subject matter. As far as other subjects, buildings and ocean waves get me, too, but they don’t have to be as precise as a person. I think the stylized art of different cultures as humans are depicted is often quite adequate for the job. Still, as I have progressed through doing pictures of people on paper, I am getting a bit out of the perfectionist rut. To me, the spirit of something is more important than accuracy.

I went to Pixabay to find something to draw that had people in it. I found an especially nice one and used two of the people in the picture as my subject matter. I spent about 90 minutes doing this sketch seen below.

I used toned paper, a Blackwing pencil, a 6B, and whatever white pencils I had on hand – wax colored pencil, white charcoal (probably conte) and something else. Drawing freehand was what I did for the most part, but used my calipers for rough verification of proportions. It worked out fairly well.

Once the rough shapes were down and directional lines for the heads, the details of light and dark were added. Looking at the shapes of the light and dark are what give dimension to a picture of any subject as these give shape. Working through a drawing like this, I go from large areas of light / dark to smaller areas. This is when the subtleties work themselves into a picture.

In some ways I really limited myself – using a waxy white pencil and graphite is not a great combination as the white pencil could not be erased. So, a bit of pressure and a prayer – some areas worked out better than others.

Above is the final result. I am fairly pleased with it. It worked out because I wasn’t stressed out about perfection and was feeling rather smug that my eyeballing things was verified by the proportional calipers no matter how sloppily used.

Toned paper, Blackwing pencil, 6B pencil, white colored pencil and white charcoal pencil, about 9×12 paper.