2019! Happy New Year

As the days begin to get longer here in the northern hemisphere, many of us take the time to consider what we might like to accomplish in the new year. Do you have plans or goals for your art practice?

Thanks to all of you who have taken my workshops, read my books, and shown up to my blog posts, videos, or newsletters, I feel an overwhelming sense of support for my own work.

Here are a few things on my list for 2019:

1. Spend some time with oil and cold wax. I keep "dabbling" in oil media, but haven't spent concentrated time on it. Here is a post about pigment sticks and oil media. Here are some of the pieces that came out of that exploration; they are 10x10":

2. This is always on my list: work larger. By the end of 2019 I would love to have some idea of what it is like to work on a piece that is 6'x8' (72"x 96"), or somewhere on that scale. I don't aim to finish a piece that size, (if I make that a goal, it will not happen), but to work on pieces of that magnitude.

Here is a mock-up I did a few years ago that allows me to imagine myself working at a much larger scale. Thanks to Photoshop.

3. I want to do a project I'm calling "Art on a Roll": painting/drawing on a continuous roll of paper or canvas. This is inspired by Mayako Nakamuro. Check out her Emaki Study here.

This is a gallery shot of one of Nakamuro's continuous scrolls.

If you have tried this, let me know. It seems as if it would lend itself to a communal project, but I'm not quite sure how that would work. Any ideas?

4. Anther thought that has been kicking around awhile is: incorporating referential (representational) imagery into my abstract paintings. I don't know how I will approach this, but I've been dancing around the idea for a while and it's time to plunge in. Maybe I'll take a workshop, or work from photographs, or make cartoon doodles of chickens or trees or bicycle tires. I just have no idea where this idea would/could lead. Any suggestions are welcome!

In my teaching practice I have a few plans too:
I plan to offer more small mentoring workshops in my schedule. I love painting with people, and also love talking to people about their work, outside of any assignments or content that I might "teach". At the other end of the spectrum, I am adding some beginner workshops and resources to my offerings. THANK YOU for all the feedback and suggestions you gave me in this post about workshop suggestions.

I would love to hear from you, either in a comment on this post or in an e-mail, about your plans for 2019 in terms of your art practice. What is new for you in 2019?

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.

Encaustic on Paper

I had another Wax Day the other week, with Jeri MacDonald (as soon as she gets her web site updated, I will post a link).  I love working with encaustic on paper.  This is 300# hot press watercolor paper, Arches, I believe.  We both work with encaustic medium, a few colors, oil stick or pigment stick, and a bit of oil paint. Here are a few of my 5"x5" pieces:

The pattern of circles on the left is incised with a stylus while the wax is warm.  Incised lines on the right, the dark ones, are rubbed with oil paint.

This one is probably not finished, well, definitely not finished. Not sure where it will go next.

The color in these that looks like Qinacridone Gold (an acrylic color) is Alizarin Orange.  I have it in encaustic paint and oil paint.

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.

Encaustic Collage Experiments

I am quite revved up about encaustics, having had a fabulously stimulating time at the Fifth Annual Encaustics Conference in Provincetown, MA the other weekend. I have been experimenting with various techniques I learned at the conference, and corresponding with artists I met there.
Above is my first encaustic "Scribble Collage" experiment.

I've also been experimenting with a way to apply my Scribble Collage approach to this exciting medium: painting tissue papers, then using them for collage. As acrylics are not compatible with encaustic, I tried painting papers using oil paint mixed with cold wax medium, and let them dry for a few days.

I scraped the paint/wax on using a credit card, and then did texture rubbings and transfers.

I also scribbled on the papers with oil sticks and pigment sticks (which are the same thing) and oil pastels (which differ from the above in that they contain no drying agents).
I don't know if this combination of oil media and encaustics is safe and durable yet, and I have sent out feelers to determine the best way to approach this technique and will share more as I learn.

This piece is done on unryu (say: un-RYE-you), a tissue-weight paper with a distinctive fibrous texture:

Meanwhile, if any of you have suggestions, comments, or questions, please e-mail me or leave a comment on this post. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME until I get the goods on safety! There may be a better medium than cold wax to do this process. Read this for more info on cold wax. I'm trying to find out if the solvents in the cold wax evaporate sufficiently during drying to be compatible with this process.
THANKS for visiting!