February 2023 – Painting to see : Peindre pour voir

Greens

Do not try to do extraordinary things
but do ordinary things with intensity.
— Emily Carr.

Testing out different green swatches today for my next trip to Costa Rica this year. These look quite boring but they are quite difficult to do, well for me anyway. I could have chosen for each swatch more saturation or less, more intensity for one colour as opposed to the other, so I tried to do to get consistently equal washes in both colours. That was the main difficulty. Some of the colours that really stand out for me are the following. The spring green, olive, khaki, dark green, rich green, mahogany, grey, and moss green. Generally, Lemon Yellow and Cobalt Green gave the lightest greens and the Hansa Medium made the brightest greens. The Raw Sienna gave the dullest greens and the phthalo green gave the most intense, bright greens.

I have always bought the DS Ultramarine, but the last one has been granulating, which I do not like, so I did another Ultramarine by W&N, which I prefer. The Prussian DS makes gorgeous greens; I will add this colour to my palette for Costa Rica in April.

If you like learning, you could look at Shari’s online classes. This is one of the exercises in her new “trees” course. She is well organized and her classes are always fun, especially since they are online.

DS: Daniel Smith :: DV: Da Vinci :: H: Holbein :: W&N: Winsor & Newton

Paper: 12″x9″ Hahnemulhe CP

Drawing, Handbook Travelogue

Small dominical pleasures…

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments

It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw,
not because she is Canada but because she’s something sublime that you were born into,
some great rugged power that you are a part of.
— Emily Carr

Here is a small sketch of today’s small pleasures… with a small clip. We are leaving in April and I am preparing my painting paraphernalia. It grows and shrinks as I put in stuff and then take it out! Hah! The story of my life, I should say. The question of the day was: “How many clips should I bring? And what size clip should I bring?” It seems as if today, I do have time on my side. I had the time to ask myself these silly and mundane questions, but still necessary questions for a painter. Just imagine. When I think of people all over the world that are going through a rough patch, war, hunger, migration, poverty… Emily Carr’s quote feels so real to me, as I have been blessed living here.

Sketchbook Molesine, Techniques

Chill Mama

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments

For art and joy go together, with bold openness,
and high head, and ready hand — fearing nought and dreading no exposure.
— James Abbot McNeill Whistler

Forget everything I wrote about my scanner problems as I have resolved them. So here goes. Mac OS Ventura and Silverfast software 8.8 on my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner — which I love by the way. So I twiddled around with the settings and looked up info on Google. Hah! Who doesn’t do that nowadays? Anyway, I listened to one of the “specialists”. Argh! Everything that he mentioned was causing more problems than resolving them.

So yesterday I started tweaking the settings again and Eureka! Now everything is fine. Can’t believe it. Under “Preferences” –> CMS Input at Epson Perfection V600 –> Reflective –> Internal at EPSON sRGB. And that’s it. Everything is back to normal. So this is the image that I tested everything with.

This is my Chill Mama that started out as a tree and ended up as the Chill Mama. Sometimes I just let my brain and fingers do their own thing, without any guidance whatsoever. This can end in utter disaster, or just plain fun. For me, it was the latter.

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook 5″x8″

Handbook Travelogue, Ink, Watercolour

Longing for Greece

Featuredby Jane Hannah5 Comments

It’s not what you look at that matters,
it’s what you see.
— Henry David Thoreau

What better way than to paint what you long for? This painting is vastly overdone in many places, but I am happy with it. I like the grunginess of it all. It is very characteristic of what I have seen throughout my travels in Greece. Some of my shadows are not the right colours and some are too intense. I could call myself an eager painter as I paint in haste.

Paper: Travelogue Handbook 8″x 8″
Colours: Yellow Ochre, Q. Gold, Q. Rose, Cobalt Blue, Prussian Blue, B. Sienna
Fountain Pen: Pilot Penmanship Fountain Pen, Clear, EF Nib, Japan
Ink: Noodlers Lexington Grey (bulletproof), my favourite colour

Drawing, Ink, Sketchbook Molesine, Watercolour

Flowerets II

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Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity…
Any activity becomes creative
When the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
— Author unknown

My flowerets in colour. I tested out 2 new colours today, Lavender which is an opaque watercolour and Cobalt Green. Then I got going with all of the other colours that I felt like putting in… must be because of the weather outside, cold and snow with no sun. This is my way of enlightening my days -))) To note that Moleskine Sketchbooks are not really made for watercolours… but they are definitely made for drawing with a fountain pen or technical pen as the paper has a velvety finish that makes ink go so smoothly… it’s as if you are drawing with butter.

And I’m still having problems with the calibration of my scanner since I have updated to Ventura… humph! The background paper is turning dark grey once I post it on WordPress so I have to calibrate each channel (RGB) individually. A real pain! If ever some of you are having the same type of problem, let me know what your solutions are…

Drawing, Ink, Sketchbook Molesine

Flowerets

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We are not going to be able to operate our
Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer
unless we see it as a whole spaceship
and our fate as common.
It has to be everybody or nobody.
— Buckminster Fuller, 1895-1983
American engineer, inventor, designer, architect

A bit of line drawing today as I think that this is what I love the most. Drawing lines. Then paint. That will be for later. Hope that you enjoy this very unusual flower… my mind got the better of my fingers and started playing around with them. And by the way, this ink is permanent and indelible, so it will not mix with the watercolours.

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook 5″x8″
Fountain Pen: Carbon Pen
Ink: DeAtramentis Document Black Ink

Ink, Sketchbook Molesine, Watercolour

Paintbrushes for Valentine’s Day

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments

Oh boy! When I start on something, I don’t let go! Meaning that I am still testing my scanner today and I am pretty sure that now my colour calibration is on the dot. Yeah! What really helped my quest was that I did not sleep last night — not a wink — and after tossing and turning and wondering how come I could not sleep I started doing calibration tests in my head. Oh bo-boy! When I start doing that, I am so screwed. But, the results are good! Hah-hah! My mother always used to tell me not to worry as a good night’s rest heals everything… well, perhaps that no rest heals other stuff?

Oh! Posted the wrong painting… ah! No sleep, that’s exactly what happens -)))

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook 5″x8″
Watercolours: M. Graham’s Payne’s Grey

Techniques

Scanner problems with MacOS Ventura

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I’ve been having problems with my Epson Perfection V600 since I updated my iMac to the latest MacOS Ventura and eureka! I have just figured everything out. You can disable the colour management completely in the preferences’ CMS tab and lo and behold, it worked.

I just wanted to let you know, if ever anyone is stuck with the same problem as I was having. Of course, you have to do the colour correction yourself, and I went to the histogram tab and readjusted my painting in no time. So here is the same painting as today, but with a new scan.

I had been using Apple’s default Image Capture application which is far below the Silverfast 8.8 application that I am currently using. The Silverfast is so much better. You can see for yourself right here. It is much closer to the real painting.

Sketchbook Molesine, Watercolour

Fooling Around…

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A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.
(Phyllis Diller)

Fooling around with non-permanent pens… and wow! I did not realize that it would make such a mess of the colours. On the bright side, if you want a grungy look this is the way to go as the ink from the pen washes away and mixes with the watercolours. On the other hand, I like my colours to be “clean” so this was the downside. It doesn’t matter as I am experimenting and enjoying my time doing so. Ahhhhhh… the joys of retirement.

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook
Pen: Staedtler triplus fineliner
Watercolours: Hansa Med., Q. Rose, Prussian Blue

Techniques

Pretty colours palette

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Quarrel
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
He who asks for much
Has much to give
I don’t ask for much
Just enough to live
Ooh, in the light
Morning will reveal the spoils of night
Through the walls of Jericho
Ooh-ooh, lies a heart of stone
With you, half the battle is proving that we’re at war
I would give my life just for the privilege to ignore
Don’t call it a lovers’ quarrel
Don’t call it a lovers’ quarrel
— Moses Sumney on Aromanticism Album

I’ve been working digitally on my watercolour palette’s next colour combos. I think that this one will work out fine -) This song, Quarrel, has a softness to it that feels so good in these troubled times.