Encaustics Show in Santa Cruz

An online acquaintance of mine, Sandy Sudbrink, of Santa Cruz, kindly went to the Pajaro Valley Arts Council to see a show in which I have three pieces.  AND SHE TOOK A PHOTO OF MY WORK!!!  How cool is that!  Take a look at Sandy's website of beautiful watercolors.  I particularly like the architectural piece - they have a stillness to them that I find really intriguing.

Here are my pieces in the show, called "WAX: Contemporary Encaustic Works":

If anyone wants to know anything more about encaustics, go here.  If you want to take an encaustics workshop with me, I'm teaching one at Art Unraveled, on Monday, August 6; and again at Art and Soul on Tuesday, October 2.  I'm offering a workshop called Paper and Wax at the Guilford Art Center in Guilford, CT the weekend of October 13 - 14. 

Thanks for visiting!

Sketchbook Practice Workshop

Here is a little video I made to show off my new Sketchbook Practice Workshop, which starts on April 4, online.

Starting April 4, 2012

Just for fun, here is a recent picture of me in my studio with Buffy:

Studio "Orgainization"

I agreed to have my studio included in this summer's issue of Studios Magazine, thinking that it would be a good excuse to tidy up and give my lack of organizational skills some serious thought.  Writing the article and having my studio photographed achieved both goals.  Taking a hard look at my relationship to organization and tidiness revealed the following insights:

•  First of all, it didn't take a monumental effort to tidy up, because I have made monumental efforts to create homes for everything in my studio.  Monumental because organizing does not come easily to me. Having a home for everything, even if I don't put things away, is immensely soothing.  Clutter doesn't bother me so much if I know I can put things away when necessary.  My efforts in recent years have really paid off.

•  I really can come up with organizational systems, like the wall I build on the back edge of my worktable you see above, if I put my mind to it and analyze the problem.  In this case, the problem was: everything gets buried on top of the worktable, and I can see it.  I need everything in front of me where I can find it and put it away.  Solution: put everything in front of me.

•  I have made some organizational units modular, so I can take advantage of awkward spaces and move them around easily.  My bookshelves consist of cubes built of pine.  I have them stacked at the end of my east worktable, but they also fit under the gable roof in a tight space behind the new wall (see the first post on Working Large).

 

I elaborate on all of this in the article in Studios Magazine, so I'll keep this short.  My point here is that I discovered I'm not as bad as I'd thought I was.  I'm sure an organized person could come up with more efficient solutions to my studio space, but I have come up with workable solutions.

Here are a few more shots of my "Working Large" space:

 The front gable wall:

 

 The New Wall, where I hang works-in-progress:

My makeshift rolling paint cart:

 

My latest work-in-progress:

Loose Sketchbook Pages

In the process of making the large pieces (see previous posts on working large) I used a lot of paint-lifting technique: apply paint -> place a sheet of paper over the paint -> brayer or rub the back of the paper -> remove paper.  To see this technique take a look at the video in Working Large, and scroll up to about 9:30.  This results in many sheets of 9"x12" cheap drawing paper with gorgeous print-making like paint impressions.  I re-use the sheets several times, so they can get kind of interesting.  I thought about binding these sheets into a sketchbook, but decided instead to use them for experimentation, only in individual sheets. 

Here I experimented with India Ink, graphite crayon, and white China marker over the paint lifting sheet, which has only acrylic paint.

 

I started building on the grid established in the paint-lifting sheet, and added some scribbling in graphite crayon.

 

I got into a DOT study here, using acrylic paint, a brush, and the eraser end of a new wood pencil. 

 

Just more acrylic paint on this one.  A beginning.

  

More dots:

 

Here I'm just playing with brush stroke sizes to create the sense of depth:

 

An ink doodle, and then more paint:

  

 This byproduct of my new large paintings is a great excuse for playing with line, form, pattern, etc., and for experimenting with new materials (in this case graphite crayons - I used 9B, and white China marker, as well as India ink).   None of these can be "finished" drawings, because the paper is too flimsy.  This is quite liberating, as it frees me to keep milking them for new discoveries. 

As you may know, I will be teaching a Sketchbook Practice Workshop online beginning April 4.  We will be cultivating this sense of play and experimentation in order to broaden your                           abilities and sensibilities.  I've decided to include a section on working on large loose drawing paper, and also working tiny, just to stretch your sense of scale.  Fun fun!

Working Large Update

I've been working on 22"x30" printmaking paper, encouraged by my 18"x24" cheap paper experiments and all your encouraging words about the video post.  Here are a few pieces:

This one is finished, for now.  It will really be finished when I come up with a title.

Ditto for this one:

 

Here is an earlier stage of the above:

  

 Another one finished, for now:

 

And its earlier stage (one of many):

  

For this next one I took the composition idea from cropping (in Photoshop) an encaustic piece on paper.  Read about it on The Sketchbook Challenge post.  Here is the crop I used for inspiration:

 

Here is the first stage.  This is before I knew I'd use this piece to interpret the above composition.  This is India ink, exterior latex house paint, and acrylic.

And this is where it is now.  Still in progress.

 

Thanks again for all your comments and encouragement.  Love to hear it when one of you gets inspired to try something new or experiment with processes I demonstrate.  I did get Steven Aimone's book, "Expressive Drawing", and it is helpful.  Thanks for the recommendation!

Interview

I was contacted recently by Autumn Kindlespire, who did some work on my book "Adventures in Mixed Media".  She is now working for a Ottlight, a company that makes really good indoor task lighting, perfect for artists.  She asked to interview me for their blog.  So here it is!  I'm not going to recommend Ottlight lightning until I've had a chance to try it.  Just wanted to give you the opportunity to see the interview if you are interested.

Working Large

Thanks so much to all of you who posted comments and e-mailed me about my Art and Yoga post.  You certainly gave me food for thought, and we will definitely continue this discussion.

I wanted to update you on my project of working large.  I posted last month about this and showed you the small changes I made in my studio to accommodate working large.  Well, the studio update was not enough.  No surprise.  To make large work I actually have to: Make. Large. Work.  And this is uncomfortable for me.  My usual methods don't scale up particularly well with my usual tools and techniques.  So here is what I did: I gave myself the assignment of working on 18"x24" cheap drawing paper with a limited palette of relatively inexpensive paint and a large (well, larger) brush.
Here are the pieces I did in the video:

 This third one I painted over quite a bit after the video, as I felt I'd overworked it and it needed a bit of simplification.  Here are a couple I did before and after the video, using the same techniques.

I think the next step is to work on real paper or on canvas at this size.  Or maybe do a whole bunch more playing on cheap drawing paper.  It is like working in a sketchbook, but just a lot bigger.  Fun!!!  I would like to hear about what challenges you face in your art making, and if you have found solutions or made inroads.  Thanks for visiting!