Alizarine

Honorable Mention

Last week I felt like changing things up and took on a small (10.5"x13.5") portrait. About a year ago Meghan, a former student, posted a Facebook photo of her very blond little daughter named Madeline. She and her family took a trip out west, and the photo was taken in Yellowstone National Park. I told Meghan I thought her photo was iconic and she happily gave me permission to paint it--unfortunately she had lost all of those photos during a recent computer crash.

Maddy is completely unimpressed with Yellowstone National Park. Old Faithful is erupting in the background while an airplane contrail cuts across the sky. That reminded me of a Steve Martin arrow-through-the-head. Her fine hair is blowing all over the place and she is wearing a white t-shirt and one of those plastic gold medals you give kids. The bright sunlight is casting rather harsh shadows on her tired little face, and I worked on that first. I masked off a significant amount of her hair--the masking fluid is shiny yellow, and it protected areas I wanted to stay white.

I posted my progress on my Facebook art page and was pleased to receive this lovely comment from Maddy's grandmother Barb:

"You have captured our granddaughter's mood that particular afternoon. To say the least it was a long camping trip for two little ones. You do such amazing work, you have a true passion for art, and it shows. Thank you for painting her; of course we believe she is the most beautiful child."

Meghan loved the portrait too, and I can't tell you what a relief it always is to receive feedback like this, especially during the beginning stages when a painting can look awkward.

I painted some blondness over the top of the rubbery yellow and allowed it to dry. Then I removed the masking fluid and worked to integrate the resulting highlights with the rest of the hair. I also added the start of a neck.

I covered a lot of ground the next day. The light was a little too warm on this photo, but you can still get a pretty good idea of what I added, including her white t-shirt (the easiest item of clothing to paint with watercolor), arms, ribbon, and a bit of the background. It looks like Madeline is in the desert here. I had to paint the landscape a warm gray first before adding vegetation.

I spent the last day refining details and adding the medal, Old Faithful, and lots of trees and plants, including some small yellow flowers.

As usual, I asked for Jeff's help in titling this. My working idea was "I Deserve A Medal," which Jeff liked, but then he tossed out "Honorable Mention" and we both cracked up. There's something good but kind of not good about an honorable mention. I think Madeline's face really illustrates that feeling.

Prints are available here!

Beautiful Spring

I just noticed that this is my 400th post!

This one is going to be packed with photos documenting the past few weeks--easily the most beautiful spring I've witnessed since I began living here. Jeff and I have been trying to improve our driveway garden over the past couple of years. Last fall I planted a few dozen tulip bulbs and was so excited to watch them bloom. The frilly ones in front are parrot tulips, and I painted the pink one recently. Backing them up are two rows of regular tulips that were supposed to be purple. I think my bag of bulbs was incorrectly marked.

But that's okay--I like these better. They're so cheerful!

We have lots of roses on the other side of this garden and are unsure about how to tame/contain them. The two large rose bushes throw out tentacles that climb up to the sky and then arch down, like dozens of this thing overlapping again and again.

Our neighbor cut down a large, dead tree, and he set the logs out by the side of the road to be removed by the city. Jeff saw one of them and thought it might make a nice display element in the roses, so the two of us rolled that heavy thing down the street (Jeff did 90% of the work while I gave it a few kicks here and there) and installed it. We like how it looks semi-human, and I can't wait for those roses to bloom.

This is the east side of our weirdo house. The redbud trees are in bloom!

I love the redbud-blooming week the most.

It's followed by redbud-confetti week.

We have other flowering trees on the south side of the house.

This one is almost embarrassingly gorgeous.

Crab apples and dogwoods decorate the west side next to the garage.

Needless to say, Bun is a very happy little girl.

She mostly stays on the path during her supervised walkabouts.

And when it's sunny, sometimes she'll just lounge.

On rare occasions she becomes SUPER FIERCE MIGHTY HUNTING JUNGLE CAT;;;;

Ohh, the colors. I still can't believe I get to live here...

...with this amazing creature...

...and my sweet girl.

Too. Much.

PS Mom cut three inches from my hair a few weeks ago, diminishing that grizzly-bear-living-on-my-head feeling. Now it's more like I have a grizzly cub up there.

I hope you're having a great spring, too!

Rose of Sharon

Jeff and I met on Match.com--ain't no shame in it!--and one of the things he liked about my profile was that I had answered the "What was the last great book you read?" question with The Grapes of Wrath. It was one of those books that had somehow slipped through the cracks of my reading life, and I remember finishing it while sitting on a bench in Chicago's Union Station. The devastating ending made me cry, and then I just stared at things for a while, a character Edward Hopper had forgotten to paint: Heartbroken Lonely Woman Crying Over A Book.

Anyway, one of the characters in that book is named Rose of Sharon, and I always thought that was so unusual--she has a preposition in her name! Last year we were shopping for plants to decorate our new patio, and I flipped out when I came across a rose of Sharon. The man who sold it to us said it was blue, which is not as common as the white and pink version, and after planting it, we waited for about a month for it to bloom. It's in the center of the above photo.

I took a photo of the first rose and saved the picture for a future painting. I started it a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't all that revved up to paint it at first, but after a day of work I was excited. I loved the light on the petals, and the variety of blues and purples I used to create the bloom was challenging.

I fine-tuned the white thing and added more details and texture to the petals.

Then I filled in the background with some bloopy, blurry colors, and I started the rocks in the lower-left corner. Most of the white areas would become leaves and branches.

Next up: I spent a lot of time with that dry grass on the left side. It had lots of different blurry colors going on. I texturized the rocks with purples, blues, pinks, and browns. Finally, I did some yellow underpainting on the leaves, masked off the major veins (seen above as yellow lines) and added an additional green glaze over the top.

More leaf work...

I added a lot of details to the leaves and attempted to soften and refine the veins.  Leaves in direct sunlight called for bits of blue, permanent green light, and a whole lot of no-paint. The bigger/closer leaves required some micro veins. This process reminded me of the way I painted the colorful leaf from my Mushrooms painting a year and a half ago. The colors in the photo above are a bit too bright--I took the picture during a thunderstorm and got aggressive with it in Photoshop.

On my last day of painting, I added a branch and some grassy shapes in the center. Those were surprisingly complex and colorful. And then, as if on cue, our new scanner arrived in the mail!

Eleven years ago I bought a kind of so-what HP scanner that did a wonderful job with my watercolors and cartoons, and Bun liked to sit on it, too. When it died in 2009, I assumed it would be easy to find a replacement. But that was not the case--the ones we've tried since then can't handle subtle color changes or things like pastel colors outlined in black pen.

Last month Jeff did some research (and great things happen when Jeff does some research). He found a used Epson Perfection V30 for only $30. A watercolor artist had blogged about this scanner and showed how to configure the settings to work for watercolors. It seemed like such a great deal, especially when you consider that I tend to pay $12-$15 per big scan at FedEx. The only problem was that the vendor was in Hawaii, and the scanner had to endure a month-long boat odyssey and cross-country road trip before it reached us.

We set it up and scanned my painting (which was too big to fit) in two sections. Photoshop miraculously pieced them together--seamless! We were impressed at how the scanner even managed to pick up on the texture (or tooth) of my watercolor paper. Terrific!

And you can find prints of this new painting if you click here!

Imagekind has finally gotten its act together, and now my other new-ish floral paintings are available as prints, too!

Click here for Wilting Parrot Tulip.

Click here for Passion Flower.

I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO BUY ALL THREE! :)

Like me on Facebook, yo!

Favorite Parts

Almost every watercolor I paint has a sweet spot--an area that makes me breathe easier once I've completed it. Sometimes this is a section that "makes" the painting. Sometimes it's the hardest part, and if I'm satisfied with it I think, Well, if I can paint that, the rest of this will be no problem. And sometimes it's one of the painting's unsung heroes that nobody ever points out as being especially good, but it's one of the places I focus on.

I thought it might be fun to explore some of these. Readers who are familiar with my work: see if you can recall the painting from which I've taken each chunk! Here they are, in absolutely no particular order (click on the links to see the entire paintings and read more about them, and click on the images to see them a little bigger).

Apple Blossoms: This is the best leaf I've ever painted. I like how the shiny spring green on the top contrasts with the velvety khaki underside.

Glass Gems 3: The area under the red gem seemed molten, and I loved playing with that color range.

Planets and Foil: I like the way this marble seems to be grinning, and I'm especially happy with the window reflection near the top-right. I painted it with pink-yellow-orange, and it felt weird at the time, but I think it really works.

Mushrooms: Ugh! Those little purple fingery things were so hard!

Abandoned Knowledge: Most people focus on the apple, but I'm happiest with this vinyl seat. This was a one-shot, wet-into-wet situation. I really had to nail it. At a juried exhibition a couple of years ago, I was told that the judge pointed at this part and said, "Yep."

The Graduates: This little blue pot was tough. The colors shifted from cool to warm in a very smooth way that, like the vinyl seat, required wet-into-wet. Similar color problems are happening with the plant, too. This whole painting has a lot of individual still-life moments.

Dale's Super 400. The couch my uncle Dale is sitting on had a bunch of velvety pillows, and that's a tough texture to achieve with watercolor. Plus one of them was floral!

Married With Cats. This is Bun's happy pose, and I liked how her tabby pattern makes her blend in with the rug. Plus cute little belleh, sweet haunches.

Mabel. The Roger Ebert book is to the right of this section--I think I did a better job on these books than I did with his, but whatever, he loved it! I was thrilled to paint the magazine that was shoved in there backwards near the left side of this chunk. It featured a truck ad, I think.

Dr. Terry Sherer: I thought this was a cool intersection of patterns: his plaid tie, checked shirt, and the studs on his leather chair. The chair's arm features yet another softly shiny surface that required wet-into-wet.

Art Theater: This painting was very dark, so the bright areas really popped. These are just some orange/yellow lights on the left side of the street.

Ruby Liberty Dragonfly: I like this whole section, but I'm especially proud of the disco ball-looking glass earring. It was hard to draw, and I had to consider each segment individually in terms of color choices. I had the 15-minute version of Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix on repeat as I painted it.

Emily and Cupcake: When my sister was little, I loved the way she looked when she slept, and a lot of that innocence is still there in this picture.

Last Meal in Italy: I painted this watercolor during a couple of snow days back when I was still teaching. I liked this white shell and the way it reflected the turqoise building nearby. Painting those tiny ridges was no joke!

Self-Portrait: I really need to scan this painting. What you see here is from a photograph, and in real life the titles, etc, are more precise. Anyway, this section was such a speed bump, and for a while there I completed one square inch per hour. But I loved the spines of these books, some with creatures and famous paintings and sculptures, some old and falling apart, and some instantly recognizable based on color alone. I painted this during my "I will never use masking fluid" phase, and I made myself paint around all of the white or light-colored words. That really slowed me down.

Treasure: This painting featured several orange glass beads that were incredibly tricky. The darker areas called for muted purple-orange-browns, and as with the earring from Ruby Liberty Dragonfly, the many diamond shapes had to be dealt with one at a time.

Sunflowers: When I see this part I instinctively squeeze my fingers together, mimicking it. I rarely work with this much yellow.

Wilting Parrot Tulip: The challenge here was to paint extremely bright colors in shadows. I toned them down a bit with some greens and browns, but they're still pretty blazing.

Hey, I enjoyed that! I have lots of other paintings I'd like to chunk-ify, so maybe this will turn into a series.

Imagekind update: as of right now (Sunday, May 5), it's still having problems, so in the meantime please visit my merchandise store for all your Cinco de Mayo/art-related needs. Thank you as always for your support!

Spring Flowers

After a month of gray-dominated paintings involving grandparents, I was overjoyed to return to vivid colors. In August I'm going to have a one-person show at the Decatur (IL) Area Arts Council. I had applied for a 2014 exhibit, but their August 2013 artist had to back out due to--I think it was a house fire...? Talk about one of my greatest fears. If our house was burning down, I know which paintings I'd try to save first, but I definitely wouldn't be able to rescue all my work. I can't even imagine how that would feel.

Anyway, the Decatur people asked me if I could display my work in just a few short months, and I said yes. So between now and then, I'll be producing as many new paintings as I can to bulk up my body of work. That kind of rules out creating month-long paintings like Treasure or Ruby Liberty Dragonfly, although I plan to paint more jewelry still-lifes for the show. But each of these paintings will feature four or five sparkly things instead of something like eighty.

But back to the flowers! This is a wilting parrot tulip after I had worked on it for a couple of days. I planted ten of these frilly, fancy tulips a year and a half ago and was beyond excited to watch them emerge last spring. They were even more beautiful as they wilted, and their petals created interesting and dynamic shapes. I took several dozen photos and saved this one, the queen of them all, for the next time I felt the urge to paint something floral.

That super-hot red is a combination of opera (out of control pink) and cadmium red light (stupefying orange). I can't tell you how pleasing it is to mix those two colors. Something scientific/magical happens.

I tightened up the petals a bit and added some freckly spots. The background came together quickly, and I painted some of that during my watercolor workshop a few weeks ago (also at Decatur). It's been a while since I've had an audience, and it took me back to my teaching days when students would watch me work. I took some photos of people at the workshop, and here is my favorite one:

On to painting two! This is a passion flower I spotted at Kevin and Natalie's home in Orlando. Jeff and I visited them last month, and as soon as I saw this strange blue flower/mini-spaceship, I knew I would paint it. To create its dozens of stringy blue petals, I masked off those parts and painted the petals and leaves behind them.

Next I worked on the flower's amazing center, a fun combination of magenta and acid green, and painted the petals a flat blue (with dark purple and white areas). I don't even want to know how many petals are on this flower.

I added shadows to each petal (painstaking!) and lifted some highlights with a combination of tiny brush/water/paper towel. That took the better part of an afternoon, and I fell into assembly line mode. Done, done, on to the next one.

 

And here's the finished product!

It was smooth sailing once I finished that flower, although I began to suffer from dark green fatique. The bud/pod and the little springy things provided some relief. Both of these paintings are 10.5"x13.5", and I'm eager to pop them into frames.

We've reached the part of my new-painting posts where I link to Imagekind and beg you to buy prints, but Imagekind has been having site-wide technical problems for several weeks (!!). They've assured their artists that they are working on solving the problems, but many of us are understandably disgruntled. I make most of my money in November and December with a little Mother's Day bump in the spring. So the timing here is bad for me, especially now that I'm in portfolio-building mode and not painting people's grandparents for cash.

While we wait for Imagekind to get its act together, I have this gifty alternative for you:

It's my CafePress merchandise store, and last night I spent three hours uploading images and creating new products for you to peruse and enjoy. I'm sorry, but I want that bag so damn much! Please consider supporting me by picking up a thing or two, and I'll let you know when Imagekind is back to normal.

Please like my Facebook art page if you haven't already! I update it every few days with in-progress paintings, and let's face it, commenting is easier there than it is here. No stupid Captcha thing, and I respond to just about everybody, too!

Thanks for your support. :)

PS It's Bun's birthday today--she is 12!