Ink, Yarn & Beer

New Palette, New Colors

My all time favorite palette is the Quiller palette, available in porcelain or plastic. Plastic does stain, especially with phthalo colors it seems, so after a few years – 3 or 4? – it was time to buy a new one, and to fill it with colors. I like the plastic – or acrylic – palettes over porcelain because, if they are dropped, they don’t break into a bazillion pieces. It’s always a job to fill up a palette unless you are replenishing old favorites and standbys, but I decided to change a lot of my colors as I’ve bought colors over the past several months and want to put them to use. So, here we go – my new palette and the watercolors therein.

The outer corners of the Quiller palette are put to good use – 8 large wells. Beginning in the upper left corner and moving clockwise, I labeled them, for my purposes, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. Color name and manufacturer are listed. Abbreviations: S = Schmincke Horadam, DS = Daniel Smith, H = Holbein, WN = Winsor Newton, MG = M. Graham, S = Sennelier.

A. Cadmium Yellow Lemon – SH
B. Lemon Yellow – DS
C. Permanent Yellow Deep – DS
D. Pyrrol Orange – DS
E. Italian Burnt Sienna – DS
F. Burnt Sienna – DS
G. Cobalt Teal – mixture of MG and DS to use up MG
H. French Ultramarine – DS

Next, if you look up into the upper left corner, you will see a spot marked on the palette with a rather long, pointy thingy. It is a yellow next to a rather periwinkle color on its left. That yellow is #1 in the following list, and clockwise around, ending in #24.

1. Hansa Yellow – MG
2. Hansa Yellow Deep – DS
3. Gamboge – MG
4. Naples Yellow – MG
5. Quinacridone Gold – MG
6. Translucent Orange – SH
7. Cadmium Red Light – H
8. Cadmium Red – WN
9. Permanent Alizarin Crimson – DS
10. Pyrrol Red – DS
11. Quinacridone Coral – DS
12. Raw Sienna – DS
13. Raw Umber – DS
14. Burnt Umber – DS
15. Cerulean Blue – MG
16. Cobalt Blue – DS
17. Prussian Blue – S
18. Manganese Blue Hue – DS
19. Phthalo Green, Yellow Shade – DS
20. May Green – SH
21. Hooker’s Green – WN – the only one for me!
22. Cobalt Violet – MG
23. Carbazole Violet – DS
24. Lavender – H

Sometime over the next few days I am going to paint out a sample of the palette and colors, copy it, and paste it to the lid of the palette. This way I have a copy on hand, and if the one on the palette gets messed up, I can print out another. I also like to read up and do a bit of research about the colors, and often refer to the Dick Blick site to get pigment information and Jane Blundell’s site to read up on her comments.

It’s nice to know a bit about colors, and with so many new formulations on the market this becomes a good thing to do. What I think a color is may be very different than what a color is – such as granulating or not, fugitive or not (I try not to buy those, but I do have some normal alizarin crimson and rose madder genuine), warm or cool. Besides this, it is good to know in which direction a color “leans” – that is, does the red I am looking at lean to the blue or yellow side of the palette. Such things affect color mixing. As there are lot of new-to-me colors, it is good to become acquainted with my new friends.

And there we are.

Work to Do

This is really a result of the road trip – more of that in other postings! – a lot of slides being scanned by yours truly in two different systems, with two different results. These slides are from ca. 1951-1960 and were taken in Illinois, in Chicago and the rural area where I grew up. For some reason after that the only family pictures we have are school pictures, and they are not really exciting to look at.

The slides were taken with both Kodachrome and Ansochrome. Both have deteriorated, lost color, collected dust and threads. Cleaning them up is not easy, but software – the right software – helps in that regard. Above is a slide I cleaned up and cropped using the Epson V600 flatbed scanner, Lightroom, Photoshop, and On1 Photo Raw. Dust removal with the Epson software was not really great so I spent a lot of time erasing the debris on the slide. You can see the original slide below.

Dirty slide . . . dust and schmutz everywhere!

I have no idea what kind of camera my parents used in those days, but I am sure it is a 35mm camera as this is a Kodachrome. This next image is from an Ansochrome slide of yours truly and our dog Siwy (pronounced shee-veh, or as we said, shee-vee). I used SilverFast 8.8 and my PrimeFilm XA Super Edition to scan the slide.

Silverfast has a really good dust and dirt removal in its SE software – you can get this for free with a lot of new scanners. A lot of people think it is hard to use – maybe if you don’t want to play a bit – but I have been really pleased with it. There were still areas after the dust / dirt removal I needed to clean up, such as areas where the slide had deteriorated. Sharpness, too, was difficult to work with. Below is the original scan of the slide so you can see the difference.

The combo of SilverFast and PrimeFilm scanner create a relatively clean scan – I wanted you to see all the dirt! Finally, I did the color upgrade / modification in On1 Photo Raw using a preset I made.

Our family doesn’t have a lot of photos and little knowledge of family history. My mother’s family were immigrants and their family vanished after WW2. We never had much contact with my father’s family for all sorts of reasons. When we go, our branch of the family tree disappears. Editing and recording these slides is for my pleasure and that of my sibs – if they think it is of any interest.

Am I living in the past and not looking to the present and future? Am I getting mawkish and sentimental? It’s hard to tell. History has always fascinated me, so perhaps our little bit of history and that of the world is impetus enough. Of course, editing photos is a bit of fun, too, so why not?

Rest Stop

Rest stops are things to be much appreciated! Driving 8 hours days to get somewhere, or back from somewhere, they can provide a place to get out, walk around, and of course use the facilities.

Back when our family moved around the country multiple times, there weren’t any that I recall. It was the gas station bathroom or the woods or a bush. Some rest stops are well maintained by organizations or the state, others are sadly neglected and really disgusting. Really, really disgusting. The good ones have scenery, a place to sit and have a picnic, a place to walk the dogs. Some have vending machines, others give out weather info from NOAA, and some give a bit of history of the area.

This is a rest stop in Nebraska. It was clean and had a lot of room to wander. There was a bit of a woodland, a stream, late summer flowers, and a beautiful view of farmland and prairie. The sky was filled with fluffy clouds. Granted, it was in the 90s F, and very humid, but it did our souls and butts good to get out and wander. I had my camera and got a few good shots. This is a painting of one of them.

Watercolor, 9×12 CP Arches.

Out the Window

Driving day in, day out, it gets a bit old and boring unless you make it a point to look – and shoot fast exposures, too – out of the car window. I have a lot of shots! Nonetheless, the point of all these photos was simply subject matter for paintings. I don’t live in the midwest any more, but in a drying west coast state. Trees and poofy clouds are not my daily fare – so it is honestly a lot of fun to see what I get / got on the camera. It feels good to put a brush in my hand again after weeks of driving in a car!

Some Kind of Nightmare

This morning while sipping coffee in Glenwood Springs, CO, and browsing the images from the camera I downloaded the other day, I came across this one – a play image or a mistake – badly under exposed and grainy. It really caught me as something rather odd, surreal, not something I would want to encounter if these things were alive. Images of nooses and creatures waiting to gobble you up or wrap themselves around you. Technological nightmare? I don’t know. But here you are – a bit of play in a gothic way.

I prefer flowers, myself.