Category: Blitherings

How Busy Can It Get?

No, I don’t mean life. I mean trees and piles of leaves and undergrowth – all the stuff that makes up a good fall scene! Some trees have dropped a bazillion tons of leaves and others are hanging on to them. Years of detritus build up on the ground, creating a fertile place for new growth, plant, fungal, insect, which in turn supports other life in the wilder world outside the super market.

Anyone who has taken a walk in the woods or tried to photograph or paint this jumble knows exactly what I mean – it is really a busy-ness of color and texture and shape.

This is my sketch, done with a fountain pen and some Carbon Ink by Platinum. The paper is a bit rough so it could be what caused some difficulties with the pen nib – or the pen itself is not the best – or both. I tried to convey light and dark and texture with different pen marks. Straight lines to show trees and texture and the shadows of the trees across the pathway. Contrast is suggested rather than emphasized as I wanted to use paint to give the sense of shadows and so on. With that in mind, I pulled a palette of my out-of-the-tube paints rather than pan paints, cleaned them up and went to work.

As you can see, light and dark are more emphasized with the use of color, as are the colors of the leaves and the complex shapes of trees on the left and undergrowth on the right. The leaves that have fallen have some variegation, depending on when they fell and how long they have been there. Green grasses and weeds peek through. There are a few rocks, too, and leaves on the pathway. Tree shadows fall across the trail and up onto the tree on the right. There is a brightness to the day despite the murk of the undergrowth.

After adding color, I waited for the picture to dry. I made some color adjustments. And then, back to the waterproof ink pens. This time I used Micron pens and my Uniball waterproof pens. Micron pens come in different nib widths (here 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5) and the Uniball is labelled as “fine” but in reality makes a darker, thicker mark than the Micron pens.

Overall, I am more pleased with today’s ink and wash sketch than the one I did yesterday of the plumeria. As usual, I did not do a preliminary pencil drawing but just worked from the end of the path and then moved back and forth to establish areas. I really like my tangled tree in the lower left and the shadows on the big tree on the right. The brightness of an autumn day is expressed. Now all I have to do is get to scuffling through those leaves and it will make my day.

Pen, ink, watercolor wash, on Strathmore Vision 140# CP paper, 9 x 12.

Plumeria

A package I am eagerly awaiting is supposed to be delivered today. I want to be home for it even though it is not required – I just don’t like leaving things on my doorstep even though I live in a good neighborhood where porch pirates don’t happen as far as I know. I mean, people leave their garage doors open all hours! Me, I batten my hatches and lock my doors because I prefer to, even though a part of me so wishes I could be that trusting.

And so, what to do whilst I wait? One thing is always to go outdoors and sketch. My plumeria plant has been beckoning me for some time, as a sketch and as a painting. Today, ink and watercolor wash on some Vision watercolor paper.

First, the scanned pen sketch. Waterproof ink always works when using a wash over ink. The pen itself is not especially fine, but with a lighter or heavier touch, line variations can happen. I did this without a preliminary sketch with pencil.

Then, nap and coffee and now, ready for the watercolors, I chose just a few colors – a magenta, green, yellow, blue. Mixing magenta and green produced the greys of the stems, greens and yellows the greens, and the blue and greens the background wash. The idea was to keep the colors minimalist as well as create a consistency throughout the washes.

The scan is not a good one but it does give the idea of what it looks like on paper. I am inclined to think that the background wash is not ideal and the next time I do a sketch like this I will just leave the paper white. Too many times I have been disappointed by such scans, and even with the original paintings.

Time to go knit in the sun with a good audiobook!

Watercolor, pen and ink, Strathmore Vision paper, 9 x 12 inches.

Doing, Doing, Done

I have been busy. Some things I want to do, others things are in process, being forced to listen to really bad jokes (i.e. What do you call a dinosaur with really good teeth? A flossoraptor.), and just sort of shuffling along. Artwork has been rather time consuming as I have been painting in oils and those take time to dry, so no artwork is easily posted. And I have been working on my ukulele practice, which obviously cannot be posted unless I record myself. And who would want to hear that? I am no musical genius and notoriously tone deaf.

Today my next term of oil painting begins. This is the painting – in progress – I will bring to class this afternoon to work on. It’s been drying a bit so I scanned it rather than photographed it, which never really works out well as far as I am concerned.

It’s somewhere in the southwest. I am trying to make things very soft and blended and it is a challenge. We will see what happens this afternoon. Oil on panel, 16×20 inches. I also have a few small, blank canvases to play on should I get stuck or need to stop in class before the class time is up.

The other thing I have done is restrung a ukulele – my very first time changing strings. There are a lot of videos out there which discuss strings (i.e. nylon vs fluorocarbon, low G vs high G and which one is best). Different bridges have different tie-offs. Tools, too, can be used – or not. Me, I have a tuning peg winder, a wire cutter, a pair of pliers, and a Snark ukulele tuner. It took me an hour to replace 4 strings, but I am rather pleased with the results. I watched this video and learned a lot.

The ukulele I had was not an expensive one with nylon strings. I figured it would be a good idea to use fluorocarbon strings as they are easier on my fingers. I used D’Addario strings and pretty much followed along with Cynthia’s suggestions. It worked out quite well. Now I am playing and tuning the uke, and playing and tuning the uke, and playing and tuning the uke as the strings stretch and settle in. Amazing how often this has to be done.

So, there we are. Not an exciting post, but it feels good to write a bit!

Sand Dunes in Death Valley

Death Valley is up and off Hwy 395 along the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California. It’s a strange and eerily beautiful place with a lot of surprises and history. It is preserved as Death Valley National Park. The website is filled with great information and it is one of the best places to visit – in the right season, and in the right weather. People die in the desert because they do not understand it, so if you go, be careful!

Sand dunes always amaze me. I am still stuck in my child’s view of the world that sand dunes exist only in the Sahara, and can only be found by riding a camel. Silly, yes!

There are sand dunes everywhere – beaches and deserts mostly, but sometimes in places you least expect. Their shifting shape in the wind and blowing away foot prints or burying ancient cities all lead to a fascination as they make everything seem so temporal.

Anyway . . . . this is an oil painting using a limited palette. Some of the goals in doing this painting included smooth, smooth brushwork for the dunes. I tried to catch the gradual gradations and color changes I saw. In the distance is the flat valley before the towering mountains. For each I used directional brushwork and a deliberate vagueness to create a surreal effect. The mountains, when I look at them afresh, can also be visualized as swirling clouds. Interpretation I will leave to your eye.

Oil on canvas panel; 16 x 20 inches.

Persimmon-O-Lution

A lot of people I follow in the contemporary oil painting world are of the school of “paint it and forget it”. That is easily done if you have a lot of experience perhaps. For me, since I don’t plot out compositions too much nor do preliminary studies, this doesn’t work too well. I am of the wing-and-a-prayer school, using what I do know, and proceeding to let things evolve. Somehow I find that more satisfying.

Below is the final (for now) rendition of some persimmons. These are fresh fuyu persimmons which appear in the grocery stores for a few weeks and then vanish. They can be dried and are quite delicious. Hachi persimmons make great bread – a fruit and nut bread. There are even persimmons native to North America and may be found in the southeastern areas of the United States.

It seems pretty well settled as a painting except for the background to the upper right of the persimmons. It is a bit too yellow for my taste, but as I am considering whether or not to leave the overall back and foregrounds on the lightish side, this is something to be addressed once that decision is made.

Prior to this painting, I made an underpainting to set up colors and values and composition. This one I was pondering about – the lower left hand corner needed something, so I put in a persimmon leaf. Then, the painting was banished for about a week, to dry as well as to be able to look at it with fresh eyes.

I didn’t like the leaf. In general, though, I did like the painting. I decided to remove the leaf using the generative background PhotoShop element to remove it. You can see the results below.

Much better!! And so I painted the leaf out with fairly thick paint and made the adjustments you see in the first painting of this post.

Like I said, painting is an evolutionary process in many ways. With watercolors you are sort of stuck with what you put down, so plotting and planning – to a point – is necessary. Being able to anticipate is a big part of watercolor. All other media can be fixed and corrected. Mistakes can be hidden and reworked. I prefer oil to acrylic and gouache as that the paint is very malleable – you can moosh it around, wipe it off, and so on. Acrylics dry too fast for this, even with retardants. Gouache paint can lift (with artist gouache, not acrylic gouache) up and reveal the layers beneath if applied too thickly. Alkyds added to oil paints speed up the drying process and odorless mineral spirits help make oil painting a less stinky medium.

I will continue to paint in oils for the most part. Acrylic paint may provide an underpainting at times. Evolution can be a bit of fun, and these persimmons have been a real delight so far.

Oil paint, 10×10 cotton canvas on board.

Below, click through the paintings to see the progress of with leaf, without leaf, and semi-finalized painting.