Author: -N-

Gladioli

In seems to me that a “style” is not something I have. You can recognize many painters by how their work looks, but I am all over the place. This is not really by design, but more by learning by trying to figure out how they might do something. I started out here by trying to do an abstraction of a vase of gladioli, inspired by varied modern painters, but in the end I ended up doing most if it by shaping the flowers, background, and vase with vertical and horizontal strokes.

Using fluid acrylics, I painted with wet paint, and as time went by, used the brush to blend the drying paint. Some glazes were used, too. When I finished the vase, background, and bouquet, the background was pretty empty. So, simple geometric shapes – a bowl, a glass, a pitcher. I wanted them pale to blend into the background but still distinctive. The results seem to work.

11×14, cotton canvas on board, fluid acrylics.

Composition & Direction

I have my acrylic pear painting sitting on my easel. It is tilted to the right. I rather like it!

This is how the painting was painted and presented here the other day. Now let’s look at different directions and see how a 90 degree shift impacts the painting for better or worse.

Rotating the painting and adding a signature in the lower right of each image lets you know where the bottom of the image is supposed to be.

The image on the top of these four is the way it is tilted on my easel and what started this idea. I think of the 4, it may be my favorite. The original is conventional, the 2nd is my next; the bottom two are a bit odd for my eye.

This is my preferred variant.

Art for thought! Or, artsy food for thought?

Abstraction & Simplification

Different media create different relationships. Some are pure love – how they handle, results – and others can be total dislike to a love-hate. Things can change, of course, but that comes with time and experience.

Acrylic paint and I have a long love-hate relationship. I love its quick drying time. I hate its plastic feel and difficulty in getting smooth blends, as with oils. I also hate having to fight with thick paint to dilute it and then having to work quickly so that I don’t waste it. Add various mediums to affect its transparency and viscosity and drying time, and, for me, it becomes a war zone of frustration and annoyance. Why bother?

Enter fluid acrylics. These are still plasticky, dry quickly, but they have the consistency of cream. As a result, they are easily used straight up or diluted or blended. The good qualities of acrylic are here – quick drying and easy clean up. I like these a lot but still find they are not suited for the blending and softness of edges I like in oils. Thus, what can I do with them?

Autumn and pears – so, a D’Anjou as a subject, to see how blending can work with a flat brush. Then, just because, I added abstractions of flowers and mandarins. This was to just play with the paint and my own thoughts of simplification and abstraction of a real object. Blending isn’t smooth on the pear, but that was not my intention. Instead, it was to get a feel for the brush and the paint, using the strokes to create shape and depth, but not a photographic copy. I did this about a week ago.

A few days later I decided to do a phalaenopis, or moth orchid, to focus on leaf shapes, flower shapes, and more abstraction and simplification. Additionally, I wanted to play with the background colors to see what and how they can affect the painting. At this point I am not sure where I am at with this painting, but am looking at it to make the decision. If you paint, you know staring at a painting for a bit can determine if it is done or needs more work – and what that work might be.

Finally, this one, a product of yesterday afternoon. With the preceding two paintings, I worked on just becoming familiar with the paint and specific brush as well as some ideas blubbing around in the back of my mind. This, though, was more deliberate in what I chose to do.

The first thing was to create shapes and colors. Pears, of course – they are so versatile and fun! Planes of color and blending of color variants within the planes. For instance, each pear is a given color, and then there are shifts. The top pear has more blended colors, but the remainder are a combination of brushwork for suggestion of dimension, shadow, and highlights. The red pear was hardest as it is less easy to create a believable red pear (IMHO) than with green or yellow ones. I used green and purple blended into cadmium red for the shadow, and a bit of grey to make the highlight in it. As with the pears, the leaves, plate, and background have the same elements of exploration.

Once I had the shapes and painting as I liked, I added lines. I have some acrylic markers in black, grey, and white, and used those to create the lines as well as touch up stems and highlights. This mark making was fun, and helped define areas with a strong line. What I found, though, is that the lines themselves could be a bit much. Thinning paint into a glaze or transparent wash helped tone down some of the intensity of all the marker marks. Glazes also helped to pull together some of the colors more easily.

The leaves were especially a challenge. I like the veins in the leaves but didn’t want to delineate them too much – just suggest them. The same with the leaf shapes and how they fold and catch the light. In the end, simplification, suggestion of light, and then using the markers to create the veins. These were dulled down by washes.

Overall, I am having a lot of fun with this. The pears on the blue plate are my favorite as far as a sense of achieving what I want, but all of them bring something to the table. The acrylic markers give a strong line, and while good, can also be disastrous. Each painting taught something as well as give a sense of satisfaction while opening the doors to further exploration.

Art is always evolutionary!

Fluid acrylic, acrylic markers, paper and canvas on board.

Summer’s Harvest

I might do more drawings of my container garden as the next few days pass, but it’s hard to tell. The heat is up here with it in the mid-90s F, so sitting outside to sketch is an early morning thing rather than a mid-day thing.

My vegetable garden this year had some oldies which I know work well, and some new ones, some of which worked and some of which aren’t worth the effort. Above, orange habanero chilis. We usually do pretty well with these.

This drawing is of my heirloom Strawberry Crown Squash, a hard winter squash. I planted a bunch of seeds in a 20 gallon pot, and pulled all but 4 out. I have never planted winter squash, much less in a flower pot, but they seem to have done quite well. The vines grew and flourished and produced a lot of flowers. The vines were about 20 feet long each and moved across the dirt of the back yard with the sun.

But, I only have 2 winter squash for all that! I haven’t harvested them yet, but expect I will in a few days. I wonder if I need to learn about the art of winter squash gardening – but why?! Pumpkins are so prolific!

I don’t have room for a garden as I don’t have any place that isn’t lawn or just dirt. The back yard is a disaster as I still need to remove 11 or so trees whose roots jut out at all angles in the back yard. Until the trees and roots are gone, to the tune of a small fortune, container gardening it is.

These were sketched in a fan-fold Chinese sketch book. The paper is a creamy yellowish color, a bit tan, and very absorbent. It sucks color up so I had to do a bit of scrubbing to even lay in a wash of any size. Scanning, too, was difficult and that can be seen in the drawing of the winter squash. The differentiation between the dirt and squash leaves is not as muddied as it is here.

Watercolor and ink on paper.