Mashing Up, or Carefully Juxtaposing

 As a counterpoint to my more-or-less orderly stripe paintings, I like to mash things together in my works on paper. These are 11"x14" on Bristol, and they include collage, drawing, and painting.

I also love to cut up gelli plate prints, made with Golden OPEN acrylics, and put those parts together in ways that surprise me:

You can win a set of Golden OPEN acrylics, an 8"x10" GelliArts Gel Plate, and a 6" Speedball soft rubber brayer in this month's raffle. CLICK HERE TO BUY RAFFLE TICKETS.

Pigment Sticks, Oil Pastels, and Other Drawing Materials

I've been experimenting with pigment sticks (like oil paint sticks), oil pastels, water soluble crayons, and colored pencils, on paper with several different grounds. I am using these with a couple of oil paint mediums: alkyd resin gel and odorless mineral spirits. This is not a tutorial, as I am pretty much a novice with the oil media, though I've experimented with it over the years.

I hope you enjoy this video of my explorations:


If you are interested in the materials I'm using, check out the links below. I have just ordered a few more mediums, and will also try cold wax with the pigment sticks and oil pastels. I am interested in finding new ways of painting, seeing what happens to the imagery when using different materials.

R&F  Pigment Sticks
Arches Oil Paper
Gamsol
Alkyd Resin
Prismacolor colored pencils
Caran d'Ache NeoPastel oil pastels
Holbein oil pastels
Sennelier oil pastels
Sandable Hard Gesso
Absorbent Ground
Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons

I also like to use 300# smooth (hot press) watercolor paper.

Making Marks

I usually need a break after my busy teaching season, which ended this year with a workshop in Pensacola, FL the first week of November. Then there is Thanksgiving, for which I take time out to see family and cook.  Getting back into the studio for any kind of regular painting practice always takes some time and effort. It's a shift from teaching-traveling mode to more inward-looking, solitary, exploratory mode. The key is to align my expectations with the reality that this is a transition. As enthusiastic as I am to get into my studio after a long season of teaching, it's never easy.

I've been laying pretty low this week with a bad cold, and just poking my head into the studio to push paint around for an hour or two each day.  Works In Progress are great for this: I can just do one or two things to a few pieces with no pressure to finish them, but just to move them along somewhere.

Yesterday I did a little Mark-Making exercise: on a stack of cut-offs from my paper cutter, which are all about 5"x8", I used limited tools to make lines and patterns, paying attention to creating variety and leaving some breathing room.  Here are some of the results:

You can see from these that there is some overlap in the kinds of marks I made. For example the arch or half-circle shape appears in four of them, with variations in a couple of the others. The awkward scribble makes an appearance in a few of them. There is a pattern of irregular dots and dashes in some of them... And yet each one is unique. Each one has something - a color or a mark - that it does not share with others.

I think this kind of working-in-a-group, WITHOUT trying to make anything specific, often reveals some of our default marks, suggests new combinations, and generally greases the wheels for visual exploration. To me it is important that these "studies" have no pressure on them to BE anything other than the result of a process. If they went directly into the wood stove now, it would be fine; their purpose has been served. I've made them, and I've looked at them.

Fabulous Idea from Carla Sonheim

Carla Sonheim, an artist / illustrator that I much admire, sent a really fun newsletter with three good reasons why one-liners matter.  One-liners are drawings you do with one line, never raising your drawing implement from the page.  I included Carla's idea of one-liners in my Sketchbook Practice online class.  Here are a few of my one-liners - of CHICKENS, of course!

In my one-liner exercise, they had to be completed in thirty seconds or less, which is why two of the chickens are missing their heads.

Here are Carla's two elephants:

Check out Carla's Special Newsletter here.  And try some one-liners, for fun, or for any of the reasons Carla gives you.

Crayons and Oil Pastels

Today I worked with lines and scribbles, inspired by a few of my students who were in the 100 Drawings class.  My goal was just to see what I can do with crayons, oil pastels, and other line-making tools, on their own, without point.  I did venture into paint, though, as you'll see in the video, but the focus is on drawing media.  These are not meant to be "pieces", or even studies.  They are just byproducts of my playing around.  Which is how I like to think of all my work.

Crayola, various oil pastels, water soluble crayon

Crayola, various oil pastels, water soluble crayon

Crayola, various oil pastels, water soluble crayon

This one started on a piece of "scrap" paper, one I'd used to lift paint.  So it has a ground of acrylic paint.  I scratched through the oil pastel with a razor into the dark green at bottom right.

This one is soft pastel (the really dusty kind), conte crayon (the black), a few oil pastels, and Crayola crayons.  Maybe some graphite in there too.

Graphite of various sorts, oil pastels, water soluble crayon

Graphie, ink, Crayola crayon, and water soluble crayon

Soft pastel, graphite crayon, Crayola crayon, ink, water soluble crayon

Various oil pastels and crayons, acrylic paint

Various crayons and oil pastels, graphite, ink, and acrylic paint

This one started on a piece of "scrap" paper on which I had off-loaded excess paint.  On top of the paint is graphite, oil pastel, and various crayons.

Also done on top of paint off-loads: mostly oil pastel, acrylic paint.

The crayons and oil pastels I reference in the video are:

• Crayola Crayons, which you can get anywhere, so a link is unnecessary.
• Cheap Oil Pastels: I used ProArt, but Cray Pas are comparable; Van Gogh are good inexpensive oil pastels.
• Sennelier Oil Pastels:  these are buttery and pigment-rich.
• Holbein Oil Pastels:  I love these; they are a bit harder than the Sennelier, and just as smooth and pigment-rich.  They come in a H U G E range of colors, with tints and shades of many colors as well.  These are a bit larger than Sennelier, and comparably more expensive per piece.
• Caran d'Ache Neopastel: yummy, not as soft as Sennelier, good pigment load.  These are a little smaller than the Sennelier, and very slightly cheaper.  Probably the same price per unit of weight or volume.
• Caran d'Ache Neocolor II:  these are the water soluble crayons I use all the time. 

In some of the above pieces I've used graphite crayon, graphite pencils, and pitt pens as well. Fun FUN!! 

Newfoundland Paintings

I am calling these "Newfoundland Paintings" only because I did them last week with my mind still swirling in the fog of Newfoundland (see previous post).  They are 22"x30", and come from the 9"x12" drawings I posted recently, blind and otherwise.

NFLD1, 22"x30", acrylic, graphite, ink, and crayon on paper

NFLD2, 22"x30", acrylic, graphite, ink, and crayon on paper

I will probably change the names of these pieces (I don't even know if they are finished yet) once I get to know them a bit better. "NFLD", or "Newfoundland" is much too general.

Thanks to those of you who commented on my previous post about the 100 Drawings class.  I will plan to offer that class early in 2015, as I have three online classes coming up in the fall.

Back from Vacation

I've been away for a couple of weeks, visiting Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  Fogo Island, off the north coast of Newfoundland, was one of our main destinations.  I will post about some of the artists, craftspeople, and inspiration I found there once I've had a chance to digest.  Meanwhile, back in the studio yesterday I encountered the familiar struggle of re-entry, so I decided to continue with the blind drawings.  It really is a great way to get something going.  Check out my previous post for links and suggestions, plus the video.  Here is the output:

This one has a depth and space that some of the others lack.  I want to pursue this today.

I am always thinking about teaching.  I get all enthusiastic about something that happens in the studio, and immediately my brain goes into Workshop Mode.  Anyone interested in doing this drawing thing as a workshop?  This is like Big Fat Art, only smaller.  "100 Drawings" in a six-week online class.  What do you think?

While on vacation, I found a few spaces that would be ideal for workshops.  One in La Have, Nova Scotia, one in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and one on Fogo Island in Newfoundland. 

Newfoundland, with Fogo Island circled.

La Have is on the South Shore; Wolfville is a university town on the Bay of Fundy.

Subtractive Techniques with Open Acrylics - a GIVEAWAY!

I am probably not the best person to show you this technique because I haven't used it much in my own work.  However, I found myself scratching lines through paint using various tools, and thought that Golden Open Acrylics would be particularly useful if you wanted to draw into wet paint and take your time.  Regular acrylics dry pretty quickly, which limits the time you have to work them.  Golden Open Acrylics take forever to dry unless applied in a very thin coat.  You can modify them, as you'll see in the video, to make the drying time a little quicker, by mixing them with regular heavy body acrylic paint or with a regular acrylic medium. 

I am offering a GIVEAWAY of a set of Golden Open Acrylics, plus I'm throwing in two tubes of metallic Open Acrylics. To enter, please comment on this post.  You must live in the US or Canada, and it is your responsibility to check in to see who the winner is on Saturday, May 31.  The winner can contact me via e-mail to give me a mailing address. 

Here is the set I am giving away: six tubes of Open Acrylic in a starter set, plus two regular sized tubes in Iridescent Gold and Iridescent Copper.

This is the sample from the first part of the demo

This is a demo piece using only VanDyke Brown (transparent) on a ground of Hard Molding Paste.

 For the ground I am using Hard Molding Paste, which gives you a surface like porcelain.  For more information and videos on Open Acrylics, go to Golden's web site.

Notes from the Studio

Just wanted to share with you what's going on in my studio this week.  First, this morning for some unknown reason I wanted to work in oil media:  oil sticks, pigment sticks, oil pastels and oil paint.  So I painted on some drawings I'd made yesterday.  Here are two of the drawings:

Drawing #1; 20"x20", acrylic, charcoal, graphite on paper

Drawing #3; 20"x20", acrylic, charcoal, graphite on paper

There were four of these, and I kept #1, but painted over #2, #3, and #4 using oils.  Here are the results so far.  THESE ARE STILL IN PROCESS, so if you post them somewhere, please indicate that.

Oil #1, 20"x20"

Oil #2, 20"x20"

Oil #3, 20"x20"

I am using an alkyd resin medium with the the paints and over the oil pastels (makes it dry faster), and mostly using my fingers to apply the paint.  I've been looking at some colorful work on Pinterest, in particular recently Madeline Denaro, Wendy McWilliams, Charlotte Foust, and others.  I'd been getting very scribbly and linear, and using neutrals, so I'm looking maybe to bring in some shapes and patterns?  I don't know.  This is just a baby step beginning.

On the 3'x3' front, I will show you several stages of the painting I put in a recent post:

This is where it was in my Working Large post.

Here is is somewhat transformed.

And here I totally obscured the India ink portion.

This is a detail shot of the piece at this point.

 This, of course, is still in process.  I've done a little more to the red area, but it has a ways to go. 

Here are links to some of the materials I used:
Holbein Oil Pastels
Sennelier Oil Pastels
Caran d'Ache Neopastels
R&F Pigment Sticks
Gamblin Oil Paints
Alkyd Resin Gel (Gamblin's brand is called "Galkyd")

Some of the above links are to the manufacturers; some are to Blick Art Materials.  All of the above are available at Blick Art Materials, and many other art supply retailers.

My work table this morning.