Month: October 2016

You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another… noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you.
— Leonardo da Vinci.

Since Jane Blundell’s Workshop last month I have really been thinking hard about watercolour paints and how I should be using them. One of the many things that I learned was that Alizarin Crimson has a high lightfastness therefore we should not be using it as it will fade with time. I had been using this colour for many years now, and I am so happy to have learnt this… amongst many other things too. Permanent Alizarin Crimson is fine though, even though it is a synthetic blend.

For many years now I have been looking at the excellent website Handprint.com and there was a section that I told myself that when I had the time, I would surely test it out. And finally I tested it out today, even though I had no time, and it was much easier than I had originally thought that it would be. It is called “Learning how dilution feels” on the site and can be found under the link “The secret of glowing colour“.

I started with a tiny teaspoon that I filled with tube paint… which one did I use? Well, the one that I have tons of at my house and that I will not be using anymore for anything else than for tests. Alizarin Crimson. So I filled up the tiny teaspoon and with a synthetic brush I put that quantity on my clean palette. This is the “Raw” version 1:0. Then I added 1 tiny teaspoon of water and mixed it well to the paint, and this gave the 1:1 ratio of water and paint. The texture was one of molasses or corn syrup. You can easily follow what was the next step, huh? Well the colour started singing at 1:3 (cream texture) and this is where it started beading too! From 1:3 to 1:6 (milk texture stage) the colour had attained its maximum chroma and I was thrilled to see this. 1:7 and 1:8 were really nice too and at ratio 1:9 it started feeling watery… fine for some instances, but the colour had definitely lost its chroma. At ratio 1:12 blooms started appearing, a sure sign for me anyway that I have overwatered. Wow! I loved doing this as I always have problems of overwatering or underwatering my paintings… hard to find the right balance! Hope that you enjoyed this test -)

Colour: W&N Alizarin Crimson
Paper: Handbook Travelogue Sketchbook 8″x 8″

“Each of us is an atlas of sorts, already knowing how to navigate some portion of the world, containing innumerable versions of place as experience and desire and fear, as route and landmark and memory.”
— E. B. White, found on Brainpickings.org

The Montreal Urban Sketchers are meeting tomorrow at the Grande Bibliothèque de Montréal and at this very moment they are predicting partly cloudy and the rain finishing for 7:00 am. We can always go outside if the weather is warm, even though they are announcing 9C maximum. Brrrr… we are not used to this as our bones are still in warm weather mode.

One of my favourite pine trees just lies about 500 feet from my house and today even though it was rainy, it was singing. The wind gently lifted its arms and it seemed as though it was looking up to the sky. I do have imagination, I know!

Paper: Handbook Travelogue 8″ x 8″
Colours: Yellow Ochre (WN), Venetian Red (DS) & Cerulean Blue (WN)
Fountain Pen: Platinum Desk EF
Location: Rigaud, QC, Canada

“In the wholeheartedness of concentration, world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.”
— Jane Hirshfield, poet.

Four pears painted with a traditional colour wheel theme, as seen below. What is weird is that I really have trouble with backgrounds… they seem so easy, but to me they are not! I am also impatient and never wait for the watercolours to dry… so you can see that result with the top right pear bleeding into the bottom one. Humph! No matter, this exercise was really beneficial for my brain, my heart and my weary and tired eyes after prepping for two new courses from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm today. November is looming and the correcting frenzy for my courses has already begun. My heart is soothed as I read excerpts from Robert Henri’s book The Art Spirit. In his book, he says: “Art is life, an expression of life, an expression of the artist and an interpretation of life.”

Reading and thinking about Robert Henri made me think of Jane Blundell’s workshop as she noted that when we practice watercolour painting, we should actually be testing out water intake versus pigment. If you dip your brush once in water and shake it three times… look at the result. If you dip your brush twice… what happens? If your brush is dry, that is pure watercolour… which we rarely use or only use at the end, to put some calligraphy onto our painting.

Handprint.com also has an excellent section on these exercises.

Paper: Handbook Travelogue Sketchbook
Colours: Da Vinci Hansa Yellow Light, Daniel Smith Pyrrol Scarlet & Winsor & Newton French Ultramarine
Location: Rigaud, Quebec, Canada

I found I could say things with colors that I couldn’t say in any other way – things that I had no words for. – Georgia O’Keeffe

During Jane Blundell’s workshop this weekend, we drew and painted from a reference photo using different watercolour techniques. During the workshop I did not really kow where she was taking us, but she knew “exactly” what she was doing. Bravo Jane -)

Techniques used: Toothbrush flecking, salt on wet canvas, watercolour pencil shavings dropped on wet pear, indenting with end of brush, dip pen brushed on with colour to create stem effects.

First we need to look at what we are painting and decide then if we need a warm or a cool blue… and onwards for the three primary colours. I then painted the background colour with Cerulean Blue (cool) and Q. Gold (warm) going over the six pears. I then “lifted” with a Scott Towel the bottom right pear in its entirety first (as it was the lightest one) and then lifted out the highlights from all of the other pears only.

The top left pear I used Goethite pigment first and then finished with Raw Umber as these are granulating pigments that will enhance the dots on the pear. One of the techniques was to use salt on a still wet pear (see pear at the bottom left–even though I forgot to add it in when it was time to), then the bottom right pear has three grated watercolour crayons dropped onto the wet pear.The top right pear we used an underlying green colour mix that we mixed ourselves and topped it with its shadow equivalent (adding red to the green mix), the middle pears I did with one application and the right middle and I could have taken the end of my brush while my pear was still wet to create dents in the pear and the right hand middle pear I had to wait until the pear dried fully before putting in the final crimson mixed with phthalo blue-green pigment. Fiew! I am amazed that I can still remember all of the steps without having to look in my notebook -) Was great fun and I would redo it in a jiffy!

She also spoke of the different water textures that we can expect… from directly from the tube, to butter, to coffee, to milk and then weak tea.

Paper: Arches Cold Press
Colours: Quinachridone Gold (DS), Goethite (DS), Pyrrol Crimson (DS), Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue (W&N), Raw Umber (DS), Viridian (DS).
Location: Centre communautaire de Lachine, Québec, Canada

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.
In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
For nothing is more precious than the life force & may the love of that force guide you as you go.
― Patti Smith.

What an incredible weekend filled with watercolour demos, instruction, theory & practical hands-on exercises… which I have not finished yet, I might add. Jane Blundell is an amazing watercolour teacher — her speciality is really colours and the theory behind it, but she is also an amazing artist. We were 11 students at the Centre communautaire de Lachine which is perfect workshop space… we all had good chairs, good tables, good lighting and it was mostly quiet… apart from a few musical bursts that were flowing in from downstairs as there was a wedding preparation going on, and eventually the ceremony started.

I received so much information that my head is still whirling, in a good way. One of the things that I retained is that when starting a new sketchbook, as the first page is always daunting, why not create a colour wheel of your present palette? An idea… She also made us create five different colour wheels, going from bright clean colours to earth colours and then we had to apply that colour wheel to a pear painting, only using those three primary colours — the triad. Here is one example. We painted from a reference photo and the aim was to get the colours down and not try to paint perfectly… with that I am quite good! Ask me to mess up a painting, and I can! Well joke aside, it was really nice to do and the only ting that I would change is the background colour … I should have put a cool colour combo in the background and that would have helped the foreground to move forward… as everyone knows that warm colours move forward and cool colours move backwards? Just testing you -)))

Paper: Travelogue Handbook Sketchbook
Pencil
Colours: New Gambodge (warm), Sennelier Red (cool) & French Ultramarine (warm)
Location: Centre communautaire de Lachine

 

Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith

She is benediction
She is addicted to thee
She is the root connection
She is connecting with he
     Here I go and I don’t know why
I flow so ceaselessly
Could it be he’s taking over me
     I’m dancing barefoot
Headin’ for a spin
Some strange music draws me in
It makes me come up like some heroine
     She is sublimation
She is the essence of thee
She is concentrating on
He who is chosen by she
     Here I go when I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly
Could it be he’s taking over me
     I’m dancing barefoot
Headin’ for a spin
Some strange music drags me in
Makes me come up like some heroine
     She is recreation
She intoxicated by thee
She has the slow sensation that
He is levitating with she
     Here I go when I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly
‘Til I lose my sense of gravity
     I’m dancing barefoot
Heading for a spin
Some strange music draws me in
Makes me come up like some heroine
     Oh God I fell for you

Oh boy! Preparing new courses takes everything out of you! I prepped my courses this morning, corrected on Saturday as I have been working six days weekly since the semester has begun… and this has been gruesome and is taking its toll. Today I actually had the time to squeeze in a small drawing, made quickly and so out of tune that it came out rusty-looking -) My hand-eye coordination was simply not there. In frustration, after three different tries, I settled on this version even though it is not up to par.

However would you like to know the most amazing thing in this whole affair? I feel elated and content-)  Why is that do you think? I do not really know… but as I grow in age and wisdom (huh-huh) the process is more important than the result and in art, the process is everything. The act of drawing relaxes me like no other activity can… apart from playing music and perhaps tai chi. So just doodle away tonight or tomorrow or on the next day as it feels so good -))) Love it!