Tag: building

On the Road to Somewhere

….via plane and ship!

In between everything and all the organizing and deciding and packing and griping and whining and worrying and daily stuff, I did manage to start a painting. It’s on a bit of 14×18 inch Fredrix canvas, taped to coroplast, and on the easel. It has been through multiple iterations since its inception, and still has a way to go. I will finish when we return, and I am sure I will see it all with fresh eyes.

This is not a great picture – a photograph rather than a scan – but it does show where it now stands. I thought a painting of a road and building might be fun to do. I still need to put in windows and work a bit on the middle area where the two pinky curvy bits of architecture are, as well as some of the leafy trees on the left. The photo makes it a bit askew, but the roof lines are actually straighter in the painting.

I usually work in watercolor, and that is usually a more immediate event than returning to a painting daily for a few hours. In fact, it is an altogether new experience for this impatient person, and I am finding I rather like the time I have to come and go with a painting. Having it on an easel to look at all the time is also a new experience. It let’s me look at it and review it from where I sit in the studio, typing away about it or other things. I wonder how this newfound taste and appreciation for time and painting will play out on our trip.

Golden Fluid Acrylics, 14×18 Fredrix canvas.

Fishing Shack

Rockport, Massachusetts, and Cape Ann, has been a destination for artists and tourists for many years, but it is also a place rich in history. Very picturesque, it is fun to comb through old and new photos to see what has changed – and in some places very little. This building – a fishing shack – is an iconic building which be seen in photos past and present. It sits on a rock jetty that has ladders running down its sides so boats can be accessed when the tide is in or out.

The drawing is not really well done here, but I worked my way through it despite my frustration. The left slanting roof is very different than the right side. The stony foundation upon which the shack sits, though, is actually as depicted – it slopes inward and so looks as if it bulges out at the water level. I expect this is the way it was constructed originally. I also had a problem with contrast – as always – and values. I think I will paint it again, this time gridding it out and doing a value study as the subject matter is really interesting to me.

I kinda like my seagulls!!

Fabriano 100% cotton 140# CP; 9×12.

Up the Hill: A Plane of Color

One of the things that is often a point of contention for many who work in watercolor is when to stop – when not to paint any more – when is overworking the painting happening. Today’s study is of a lone building on Saturna Island in British Columbia. It sits on a hill, silhouetted against the sky.

The building itself is not well done – it is overworked. That, though, was not the point of the painting. The point of the painting is the hill up to the house – paint it, work the colors, create depth and dimension and a sense of the vegetation. I worked wet-in-wet; put a few glazes on; re-wet the paper and painted again when I needed to add some detail, such as the shape of grasses or vegetation. I also wanted to create a way to get the eye up the hill to the house, and the pathway itself does the trick.

Composition is also something I was considering. How am I leading the eye to that little building? Above is a an overlay with some of my eye-deas. I can think of more, too, but I could also go nuts analyzing things. The darks acted as a balance on either side of the hill, but the tree on the right is too big as far as I am concerned. It just kept growing – spring??

Finally, values. Lights, darks, mediums. Is my contrast working? If I look, I see the zig-zag of the darker path leading up the hill, but more subtle is the light zig-zag to its left. The darker values on the right of the hill repeat the zig-zag. Various areas of light and dark point your eye toward the building.

I am pleased with the hill in this painting, and that is what I wanted to focus on. It is an oddly shaped mass of color, but within it are variations of all sorts – warm and cool, dark and light – that give it shape and depth.

My current focus on watercolor is planes and dimension. I am trying to break down my ability to create structure, and for me the natural shapes of hills and trees are far easier to work on for now, although buildings will come in the future. Negative painting was a first study, but that surrounds as well as creates other planes and dimensions.

Let’s see what is next!

Strange Nocturne

This was going to be a nice beachy scene with a white house and rocky coastline . . . but things got out of hand. First, a part of me blames the paper – it is student grade and did not seem up to the task of a lot of large swaths of wet washes. Next, I got frustrated. And I was hungry. And getting quite annoyed. So, I just grabbed stuff and sort of scribbled on it – take that, you nasty painting! Anyway, this is the result, and while it is certainly no beauty, it makes me remember I do want to do some nocturnes – night paintings, night colors. How can that be done?!

The Next Toy

The “beer” side of this blog is building a car – and the progress is slow, but steady. He also has some 3D printers and has made a number of cool things and useful things. But, his heart of hearts (at the moment) has been craving a CNC machine. A CNC machine is a machine that allows complex machines to be tooled using a computer. To learn more, click here!

CNC machines cost money. Personal ones are easily a few thousand dollars, and good ones probably even more. So what is a boy to do?

Enter the 3D printed CNC machine, built from scrap and extruded plastic filament.

Enter a creative genius.

Enter a YouTube video

The 3D printer machines have been moved out to the garage, set up on a work bench, and are now busily beginning the process. The plans are available online here: https://ivanmiranda.com/products/3d-printed-desktop-cnc

And that is it for now.