'Choke

'Choke

Image Size 8" x 10"

Watercolor

I wasn't really in the mood to paint this week and I think it shows.  This isn't one of my favorites but it is done.  I think I got the shadows too dark and I fought with the paper a lot.  This paper is Fabriano Artistic which I don't usually use so I'm not that familiar with its properties.  It's easy to lift color from this paper but conversely, it's hard to add layers without lifting the previous layers.  Since I love to glaze many layers of color, this probably isn't the best paper for me to use.  I like Arches because it works with my way of painting.

Rat Condo

"Rat Condo"

Image size 30" x 22"

Watercolor

What a horrible name for a painting, right?  Well, living in Southern California, we have palm trees everywhere.  Some are well manicured and some have a lot of the dead fronds hanging below the pretty green ones.  When I see these trees that aren't well maintained, I start imagining what critters are living in those dead fronds.  I mean really, what a perfect home for rats and other critters.  Nobody is disturbing them and they can live there forever!  Rent free!

I came up with the name for this painting before I painted it.  Sometimes that happens and I actually like working that way.  It gives me a goal instead of painting a picture and then struggling to think of a name.  Sometimes, naming a painting is the hardest part of the process.

This is a poured painting.  I save the white areas of the paper with resist and then wet the paper and pour red, yellow and blue over the whole paper.  Then, I decide what areas I want to save that are that value, add more resist and then do another pour.  I continue until I have achieved the value contrast that I think will work.  After the resist is removed, I tweet the painting where it needs it and then I say, "It's finished!" 

Rain Dance

"Rain Dance"

Image Size 30" x 22"

Watercolor

I know there are parts of the country that are having serious problems with flooding right now, but here in Southern California, we are praying for rain.  We were promised some rain last Friday and I tried to do my part by painting this, doing a little dance, and begging for some rain.  We didn't get any but it sure looked like were were going to have a storm.  We were teased by the heavy black clouds, but we didn't get any precipitation.

We are in such a desperate drought situation after four years of very little rain and I really hope that we have a mild summer so that our need for water is lessened.  However, it seems that in the past several years, the summers have been much hotter than average so I'm not going to hold my breath...

Contempt

"Contempt"

Image Size 30" x 22"

Watercolor

I love the textures and dimension that can be achieved with watercolors.  I used two of my favorite paints in this painting; Daniel Smith's Lunar Earth and Lunar Black.  They are the most sedimentary colors that I've found and are beautiful straight from the tube or mixed with other colors.  I'm sure you can't see the sedimentary effects in this photo but in person, they are pretty interesting.

I painted most of this on wet paper.  The initial painting layer was allowed to completely dry and then I re-wet the paper to add additional layers.

Papaya

Papaya

Image Size 7" x 10"

Watercolor

I struggled with picking a subject for this week's painting.  When I saw this papaya in the store, I decided to paint it.  Papaya is my least favorite fruit.  In fact, I really dislike it and would never choose to eat one, but I do think the inside is very interesting looking.   It took longer to paint than I thought it would, but since I really wasn't planning to eat it, I wasn't too upset when it looked really dry and unappetizing by the time I finished my painting.  Usually I eat my still life set ups once I've finished painting them but this was an exception and although I do feel a little guilty about wasting food, I think I'll get over it especially since I don't think of papayas as an eatable fruit.

Mexico Surf

"Mexico Surf"

Image size 15" x 22"

Watercolor

I wanted to work on a saturated piece of paper for this and I could tell as soon as I wet it that the sizing was gone.  The paper looks translucent when wet if there is no sizing.  Since this has happened to a lot of my paper, I'm becoming used to working with this blotter-like paper.  The things that make it hard to work on are:  

* You can't blend colors because the paint soaks into the paper immediately 

* It's hard to get dark darks. 

* Color can't be lifted

This probably wasn't the best subject to pick having a paper with these limitations but I muddled through anyway.  It was actually fun because I went into this not expecting much.

I would have liked to have the look of some misty spray from the waves but that wasn't possible with this paper.

In this photo, you can see the ripples in the paper because I haven't flattened it yet.

I should probably buy some new paper to be sure that there is sizing in it (apparently the sizing degrades over time) but I have so much paper that I need to use first so I'll wait.  I hate to waste art supplies.  Also, I think working with this limitation is a good exercise and will force me to work differently which is a good way to grow.  I can always seal the paper to keep the paper from slurping up the paint but a sealed piece of paper has its own challenges and is also different from working on a piece of paper with sizing.  

Silverado Creek

"Silverado Creek"

Image Size 48" x 72"

Oil

Here is another one of my projects finished.  This one has been hanging around for over four years!  It's hard to stick a 4 foot by 6 foot painting in a closet.  It's been on my easel all that time and I'm so glad that it's finally finished!  Now, I can use that easel for something new and exciting.

This painting has gone through many stages through the years.  Originally, I planned to paint this as though you were seeing the image through a window.  The white areas would have been dimensional looking with the window divisions shaded as they would look as if it was a real french paned window.  I wanted to hang it in our bathroom and have it look like there was another real window in the room.  I thought it was a great idea at the time.  It started out as a scene that had mountains in the background, an orange grove in the middle ground and would have the upper parts of eucalyptus trees in the foreground - as though you were seeing them from a second story window.  Here is as far as I got on that idea:

After it sitting at this stage for a couple of years, I decided that I wasn't motivated because I didn't like the scene so I changed it to its first layer of the current scene but still kept the window idea:

It continued to sit until one of my friends told me that she didn't really like the idea of the window because it was too distracting.  I realized that I probably wasn't in love with that idea anymore either which was probably why I wasn't motivated to work on it.  My friend said that a couple of months ago and it was the motivation that I needed.

I've always loved this scene and have painted it before several times but only in watercolor.  This one is oil and it is the largest oil painting I've ever done.

I will probably play with it a little more after seeing it in this photo and looking at it in my studio over the next week but for now, I'm considering it finished!

Pastel Hibuscus

Pastel Hibuscus

Image size 7" x 7"

Pastel

I haven't worked in pastels for a very long time, but I'm trying to finish up some of my paintings that have already been started and this is the one I picked to finish this week.  I started it a couple of years ago, but lost my motivation.  I'm not really painting flowers as much any more so I'm not sure my heart was really in this, but it does feel good to have finished it.

Pastel is such a fun medium and the look can vary from totally blended -which can look like an oil painting- to sketchy and gestural.  I usually prefer seeing the strokes but I had already started this with blending the pastels in the background so I continued that look there but made the flowers a bit more textural.  I like having both techniques in one painting.

Morphing

"Morphing"

Image Size 7" x 11"

Encaustic

I'm still working with encaustics.  I've decided to finally get a blow torch and experiment with that for future paintings.  I'm interested to see if it is easier to control smaller areas of the wax.  I should probably stick with the heat gun so that I don't have more control but why fight my basic personality?  

This painting has a shellac burn in a couple of areas and I've added more wax on top of that in a few areas. 

Slow Burn

"Slow Burn"

Image Size 35.5" x 48"

Acrylic

I felt like painting another large acrylic abstract and this is what I created.  I started with a base of blues, reds and a neutral and let that dry.  Then, I poured a mixture of gesso, water and matte medium and spread it randomly over the surface using a small piece of mat board to create a busy, abstract texture.  Where that mixture was thicker, it was an opaque white and where it was thin, the base colors showed through.  After that, I used thin veils of a neutral to tone down a lot of the background to make it recede and threw some white paint to create a feeling of energy.  That always makes me feel good - throwing paint is the best sort of therapy.  Then, I began adding my black and rust colors.  Once I got those areas looking the way I wanted, I added the white details. I mixed the white paint with a gloss medium so that it would be different from the matte finish of the rest of the painting, but that detail doesn't show up as much as I would have liked because the lines are so thin.

I'm very happy with the texture in this painting.  The reds and blues in the background are very subtle but add interest.  One of the things that I love about abstract paintings is that the longer you look at them, the more you see.  Sometimes, I think that can make them more interesting than representational paintings.  They sure are fun to paint.