Grey Outside, Color Within

I'm in love with the way line and color-fill can create accidental patterns on the paper.


But what happens when oil is on canvas and lines are drawn with crayon, and color-fill is added?


The oil areas take on a three dimensional quality that is starkly obvious in contrast to the color-fill and crayon.  Hmmm.

Friday Sunrise Horses

     Catching up a bit! Realized that adding layers of same color enriches!

Not Quite Chinese Calligraphy Brush

I've been playing around trying to get the effect of a Chinese calligraphy brush.  It's proving a little tricky.  Using the pen tool with a taper, but curling the stroke back on itself works for some of the strokes, but not very well. On the other hand using a high rotation gets the turning effect at corners.  These are supposed to be the characters for meat and pig.  My teachers would raise their hands in dismay, but at least I'm back at calligraphy!

The Buddha in My Sister's Backyard

My sister messaged me a photograph, and using it as inspiration for composition, I created this for he,r using pen, paint-can and watercolor brush set very tight.  Lot's of credit goes to the gardener who created this scene some years back, although Pier 1 did supply me with the Buddha; he's gilded glass, and of Southeast Asian style.

Simple Sunday of pen and fill

Had to get going on this quickly, because I had to swim, and I must, must, must spend the rest of the day packing up materials to submit to the Old Limerick Journal in Ireland.  If I get that done, writing another blog-post on the Orienting of Me thru Gourmet Magazine.  Speaking of Gourmet, I'm starting with the era in which they did pen drawings to illustrate their restaurant reviews, not photos.

So this was superfast.  I can see that the next few months are going to be all about exploring Bonnard by painting what I see from my windows as the California spring and summer come gliding in.  P.S. I've started encorporating my initials, MLB, in the pen work, a la Hirschfeld's famous LISA in the New Yorker.  Can you find them?

A Lazy, Rainy Saturday

Can't think of a better day to be on the French Riviera, and Bonnard takes me there.  This was an exercise in studying how he does his sun-lit colors, and the contrast between shaded interior and bright garden seen through the open window.  The oil paint, oil brush and palette knife of ArtRage sometimes trick me into thinking I have to watch out for wet paint. I do note that I got a bit carried away with blending, and sometimes it looks more like Munch than Bonnard.  It was wonderful to take a break, simply by closing the iPad cover.

Drawn Last Night, Color Added Today

One of the neat things about ArtRage on the iPad is that clean-up and prep are just a cover snap away. I can continue work on the trolley, after lunch, anytime, anywhere.  Yet it still feels spontaneous, gestural.  And unfinished.  I need to think about what it means to go back to something for a more finished look.

Inspiration

End-of-day.  Sitting in chair, feet up on ottoman.  Draw what you see.  My grandmother's plate, a gift from her ex-pat son.  Daffodils, single yellow ones. A little like the double jonquil in a jelly jar of years gone by.

Yesterday and Today

This is a simple experiment with a new idea in mind: ArtRage and the iPad make it possible to be interrupted, to put down the brush or paint and pick it up again.  And this would lead to more ambitious projects, things beyond quick sketches and quick fill.  I'm not sure I'll go there right away, but the seed has been planted.

Suddenly I knew it was italic!

Not much of a painting today, but a lot of learning sent from New Zealand.

I couldn't figure out what aspect and rotation, two of the options on the pen tool were meant to do.

The pen tool icon, you see, looks like a Pilot fine point.  Turns out it can also be the virtual equivalent of an Osmiroid pen! I will need more time fine tuning the settings and my stylus, but this looks like it will be great fun.

Visible Mistakes

This morning I decided I had to branch out and try a new tool, to wit, the pencil on really rough paper. I knew it would act a bit like a pencil, a bit like pastel, and so it did.  It begs for more elaboration, and mixing of media.

I got lazy with the filling of window-view of orange tree...and the wall beneath.  I see now in the thumbnail that I've chosen poorly for that color; I will play with said choice.

Here's a question for whoever is watching: When should I start to sign these?

Weekend Studio

Another iteration of painting what is right in front of me.  Still testing the tools and still puzzled by some of the settings!

After Matisse's Red Studio

Experimenting with what it takes to get the effects Matisse achieved in his almost mono-chromatic paintings of his studios.  It requires a lot of practice because you have to know each of the images you include, so that you can render them with Picasso-like efficiency of strokes.  That The rich color sense is a gift I my not have.  Still, some improvement in my second try, above.

Tools in Use, Useful Tools

Okay, so not everyday will be a day for lots of color and texture. Today I was at the Asian Art Museum, shadowing an experienced docent giving a tour of the Gods, Demons and Avatars of Southeast Asia.  I stayed on afterwards in the galleries.  One of the reasons why I love to draw is that it forces you to look long and hard at what you see.  Pretty soon I was drawing the kurtimukka, the gargoyle like monster above the doorway on the little of the right of these terra cotta temple models.  This is a motif that travelled from India all over the archipelago and mainland Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos and Vietnam.  I had just never noticed it before.

Making art is about looking! I'm grateful for sight!

Finding My Groove

   
     I hate Daylight Savings Time, because I like light early in the morning.  It is raining here, expected to continue for a week.  We need the rain but it makes it even darker in the morning.  However, the silhouetted pine tree, black against the   cloudy sky reminded me to get painting, to capture that view.  The pen tool, slim with no taper, and now using my Nomad stylus, the short end, allowed for expressive line.  The paint can fill tool did the rest.  I quickly discovered that without sufficient coffee I wasn't closing off shapes, and the undo arrow is my new best friend forever.

Exploration Day

Turns out that the technical pen is the way to achieve one of my favorite Chinese painting brush strokes.  By setting "taper" to the max, I can put down bamboo- leaf-shaped strokes, which are awfully useful.  This is going to be my one and only painting for the day, as there's grocery shopping and checking footnotes for Irish article to be done!

Virtual Experiments

     I confess I'm swept up in this love affair with ArtRage.  Can't stop experimenting and playing. From no drawings in months to five in one morning. What is intriguing are the unexpected results obtained from layering media and color. What's not possible so far is relying on my old strength, my quirky pencil line.  This morning I constructed an improvised stylus. Because of the iPad touch screen technology, such a device must be conductive.  No problem that aluminum foil wrapped around an unsharpened pencil and protected with tape cannot solve.  With said device, I no longer feel like I'm finger painting, although  it is true that with pastels, that was exactly what I was doing.  Next stop on the learning curve is making notes about what settings on each tool give results I like.  Onward and upward with the arts!
     Final painting from yesterday: real violets and watercolor brush tool, fully loaded and layered.  Art is long and life is short!

Daffodil Sunday

    Artists have to see to create, yes?  Writers can use their other senses and work as long as they've access to pencil and paper or some assistance.  Sight is a gift and not forever.

     

     With a studio full of oil and water paint, canvas, paper, pastels, pencils, what stops me from sketching and painting? Set-up, tear-down, lack of portability; these are all excuses for not doing something that I want to do as long as I can.

     When I read about the latest in visual applications for computers, I was intrigued.  I'd tried a tablet and stylus a decade ago, and found it too cumbersome, too desk bound.  Now, for $2.99 (+$399 for an iPad!) comes ArtRage.  

    

     Now, I've no more excuses. I can sketch anywhere I can take my iPad. More than sketch: Oil, watercolor, brush, roller, pencil, airbrush, watercolor brush and colors that can be layered transparently...do I sound like the proverbial kid in a candy store?

      

     So here's my vow: I will paint and post my painting every day for the next year, as I explore the possibilities.  If there's a painting you'd like, let me know, and I will investigate the possibilities of reproduction, too.