Oil And Water : A First Attempt

Underpainting: Burnt Sienna, Paynes Gray, Titanium White

Add a Little Color

So I have finally picked up the water soluable oils that I bought right before Christmas. Here is my first painting. As excited as I was to have them, I have to admit that I procrastinated a bit picking them up and testing them out. Intimidation perhaps. Maybe I was afraid it wouldn't turn out to be all I hoped for.

I decided to paint this old teapot that's been in my kitchen. It has developed this beautiful turquoise patina over time. Orginally, it is copper. Here is the first underpainting and then a second shot once I decided to add some more color. I am about halfway through. The next step is to add the detail of the patina and the hardware of the box that the tea kettle is sitting on.

Christmas Collage

Memories in November

Peaches in 1929

These are two of the collages that my father and I made during our "Art Party" over the Christmas Holiday.

Journals, Journals, Journals

Journals, Journals and More Journals

"Spritual Inquiry"

"Red Bowl"

"Live Your Best Life"




"Bengali's Dream"

I've been on a crazy journal kick lately. Here are four that I did this past week. I hope in the next week to switch over to doing some oil paintings. I bought a bunch of water soluable oil paints on Friday. I know, I know...oil and water don't mix. My father says the concept sounds like to much of an oxymoron. I understand, but I love the way oil paints look and give such a rich, vibrant, realistic feel on canvas but I just can't get down with all that turpentine. The vapors and threat of respiratory illness later in life from using all that stuff really does kill the joy of painting for me, plus getting that stuff off your hands is murder. Anyway, I am going to try these out and see what happens. Of course, I'll give you an update.

Travel Memories

Journal Entry

It's been a minute. I just got back from New Orleans. Here is a journal entry I did about a week ago before I left. I used a picture I took while I was in China back in 2001. I will be posting some of the interesting pictures I took while I was down in Lousisiana. I have plans to make a mixed media painting inspired by my travels. More on that later.

Another Fun-day Sunday

"Just another Manic Monday...wish it were Sunday, 'cause that's my fun day...an I don't have to run day." Here is my Sunday journal collage fest.

Gratitude

My favorite things

When I was a little girl, I used to love to paint. I would scribble, draw, doodle, fingerpaint...you name it. I remember when I was in the first grade, my teacher Ms. Hill gave my drawing of a girl's face not one but two gold stars. I admired those stars the whole week as my painting hung up on the blackboard. But quickly things changed and the desire to "fit in and be normal" kicks in. It wasn't long before I wanted to trade in my Pink Converse with the crazy striped socks for Nikes, because that's what the "cool" kids wore. Artists were eccentric, crazy and "weird" and all I wanted to do was fit in.

Time marched on and I did my best to do the mainstream thing. But it just never felt right. Why? Because I was eccentric...slightly crazy... and most times "weird". Who was I fooling, I am an artist at heart.

On this Thanksgiving day, I am thankful that the Universe had the good sense to deliver me to a father who shares my passion for creating. I remember once when I was about 8 years old, he had me pose in front a giant sheet of paper taped to his studio wall admist hot lights so that he could trace the contours of my profile. He was eccentric...slightly crazy and sometimes weird. Thank God. So when the time came for me to break out my Gesso, acrylics and raggedy paint brushes again, I received full support. I was born to him for a reason, it is clear. Where this road I am going down leads is anybody's guess. But I love what I am doing right now...that is for sure.

Before I go have some turkey (gobble, gobble), I would like to share this YouTube video of the beginning of a documentary about the 1000 Journals Project. I haven't seent the film yet, but you know I'll give a review when I do! I think this opening is particularly cool. Check it out over there on the right hand side of this screen.

Happy Thanksgiving!

NO ANGELS

I don't know what I am doing with this painting. There are so many paintings that I have started and stopped and put in a closet some where. In the top one I decided to put an angel and then decided I didn't like it so I covered it over with some molding paste. I'll keep you updated on this one. UPDATE: This painting has been scrapped and runs the risk of being painted right over.

Magazine Collage

It's So Easy Being Green...

With all this talk of going green, I've been thinking about ways to recycle, reuse, repurpose. Lately, I have been using old magazines to help practice with my composition. Before you throw out your magazines, go through all of the pages and pull out images that are intereresting to you. Then make a collage out of them. I try not to think about it too much and just grab pictures that grab me and then go to work quickly.

Texturizer

TEXTURE

The Ugly: Hot Mess on a Platter

Strike that Pose!

"Dont blame it on the pose Bitch. Your ass can't draw!"

I warned you. Some days would be ugly. Today was beyond ugly. It was "oogly" to the bone. First of all, Frank was MIA from antaomy class. Second, so too was the mojo I had harnessed from last class. I was a mess. A hot mess. On a golden platter. One thing remained the same though. The model was in the same pose shifting and shuffling a million times a minute as usual. Scratching here and there. Of course I would like to pass the buck and blame today's ineptitude on a bad model...but I have absolutely no excuse. We had a substitute teacher. And he was exactly that...substitute.

I began by trying to find that dang "pelvic box". I found it alright and then proceeded to draw it incorrectly...and with confidence no less. As a result my figure began to take on a form that was a cross between a human...and an alien. My attitude was bad. My enery was low. I needed a drink. Maybe next time I'll toss back a few before I come into class. Am I too stiff? Is that why many artistics were also notorious alcoholics?

Damn. It just wasn't working out today. Me. The Model. The pose. The charcoal. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I wondered if the model is the only one who's posing. Am I posing as artist when I really was artistically inept.

I stopped at the Wine store around the corner on the way home and bought a bottle of sparkling Shiraz. Is there a law against drunk drawing? Not in my house there isn't. Not in my house.

Everything But the Kitchen Sink...

Junk Yard Orchid

Sunday's are proving to be my experimental days I am finding out. I used just about every technique in the book to make this painting. It's on watercolor paper using acrylic, molding paste, gouache, patina (antiquing solution), gel pens, good leaf bits of paper...what else? I really love orchids, so don't be surprised if you see a few other paintings with these flowers in them. I call this "Junkyard Orchid" because I feel like I used every random bit and scrap of old paper I had in my files. I found that dragonfly on a piece of paper under my bed (along with the dust bunnies) and gel-transferred it onto the paper. I took this picture at night using a flash which causes the detail to be lost and for the image to look stark. I find that paintings are best photographed in daylight, so I am going to retake this picture and repost at some point.

Another Experimental Sunday

Landscape

This is acrylic, molding paste, tissue paper and pencil on watercolor paper. I spent about two hours doing this. I am trying to warm up and become more comfortable with the materials. My challenge is that I want every stroke to be perfect, every color to mix exactly, every technique implemented to come out exactly as I envisioned. But I am learning that there are no exacts. I think that this painting is quite overworked. I lost some of the detail in the lower portion of the painting by covering it up with more paint. There comes a time when more is just more and you risk turning the paint into mud. Below is the painting before I started adding more paint. In both painting you will notice a slight rippling. This is because I took the photo while the paper was still damp. I usually like to work on canvas, illustration board or a more sturdy canvas, but since these are experiments, i thought watercolor paper would do just fine.

A stage or two before I added more paint to the paper.

Here is another one I did later on in the day....

Close up and cropped

The World of Figure Drawing

Porcu's Anatomy

When I first started taking Frank Porcu's anatomy class about two and a half months ago, I was a mess. Lost, confused, in the habit of drawing flat two-dimensional figures and unable to keep up with his fast paced medical jargon..."Here you'll find the anterior superior spine, the metacarpus, the tibula, fibula, blah, blah, blah..." At one point I thought that he had suddenly started speaking Vietnamese. He taught us that in order to compose an "anatomically correct" figure drawing we should start by locating "the pelvic box" on the model and then build a three-dimensional "world" from there. Pelvic Box??? That must be located somewhere near the Holy Grail.

So I petered along for about a month or so, drawing stick figures and three-dimensional shapes trying desperately to grasp these concepts. Wait a minute, wasn't I trying to learn how to draw beautiful portraits? Why did I feel like I had wound up in medical school? Just when I was about to quit, Frank Porcu comes over and starts giving me a one-on-one. "You see what you're doing wrong...You see all that (as he wags his charcoal stick like a disapproving finger at my stickish figure), you're trying to draw all that as if it's two-dimensional." He then sits down and begins to sketch on my pad. For the next 15 minutes or so I see all my mistakes. I see the places in which the body can be drawn as a 3-dimensional figure. My eyes go beneath the skin and finally understand that there are bones and muscles at work that operate in exactly the same way in 99.9% of human beings. If I learn how they move and where they are positioned according to the skeleton, I will always be able to draw human figures in almost any position. I got it. I finally got it. Frank excused himself and happily whisked off to help the next student in need of rescue. I'm staying at least another month...no doubt.

NOTE: Porcu picture taken from The Guildhall at SMU website (guildhall.smu.edu)

Drawing before my Porcu Lesson

You see that crazy looking back leg...The victim of two-dimension drawing.

The next class after my Porcu lesson. It's incomplete, but I'm getting there.

Does Real Life Really Matter?

(Does this look like a pepper? )

So, for a long time I was very much into doing collages. Why? Because the art work could look nothing like anything that existed in real life and still be deemed legitimate art. I could call myself an artist and not really have to stretch myself to far. Of course, that's not what I told myself at the time. Oh no, I told myself that I was being interpretive and "capturing the essence". Eventually I realized that I might just be... well, lazy. I figured that I might as well at least "try" to develop some techniques in drawing and painting still and real life. If I chose that outlet long term, then so be it, it'd be an added bonus...but at the very least it would help my artistic development and help me in my collages, since otherwise I'd be limited to pre-existing images. So I sought out to do a few still life paintings and see what happened. The top painting is simply a red pepper from the supermarket across the street from my house (in case you couldn't tell)...later that night it went into a stir-fry dinner. The second is an apple (this one is more obvious I think.) And below is a friend of mine who came over to model for me and then promptly fell asleep. Thank goodness he did actually, he was motionless for at least 30 minutes.

(Sleeping Beauty conked out on his Handsome Boy Modelling Session)

I'll later post other drawings that I've done. I am currently taking Frank Porcu's Anatomy Drawing Class at the Art Student's League in NYC which proves to be quite a challenge for me. More on that in an upcoming post.

Art Journaling

My Sketchbook...

I have a sketchbook that I keep and collage in regularly. I play around in it and use it to test out new materials, paints, glues, markers, pens. This are three pages using images that I collect from everywhere...the newspaper, magazines, bottle labels, art stores, books and stamps. There is nothing which I'm ashamed to swipe and use in this journal. It is also helping me to learn composition and see what works and what doesn't. I recommend that everyone interested in becoming a visual artist get and keep an art journal of some sort.

Testing Techniques: Tissue Paper, Paint and Gesso

An Experimental Afternoon

I used to think that making art came purely from the soul, an expression of the inner voice . That was before I really started taking the time to make art of my own. Yes, you can use your fingers to slap a few coats of Cerulean Blue on your canvas and call it "Ocean's Massage"...but that will only take you so far or allow you to express but so much. I am quickly realizing that just like an author must learn language, grammar and vocabulary in order to convey their ideas, opinons and stories, if I wanted to truly express myself visually I must roll up my sleeves and get down to the nitty gritty business of learning some technique. In other words learning the "visual language."

This here is an experiment using tissue paper and bits of paper and images I've collected over the months. It looks nothing like the image I had in my head when I first started this piece, but then again, it never does. I am always surprised when I finish a painting by the way it turns out. Oftentimes these pieces have minds and attitudes of their own.