Silk Vineyard

Silk Vineyard

Image Size 13" x 19"

Silk dyes on silk

This is the other silk painting that I took to demonstrate on at the Tustin Art League.  I painted the sky to show them how to work without resist and then blended colors within a leaf and a couple of other places but did most of the painting this past week.  I like the realistic feeling of the sky juxtaposed with the graphic quality of the rest of the painting.  I used black resist on this one to give it the look of a stained glass window.

I haven't steamed this yet and it's not stretched so the border is a little uneven but it will look better when it's steamed and stretched.

Laguna Beach in Silk

Laguna Beach in Silk

Image Size 20" x 20"

Silk dyes on silk

My silk painting demo last week went well.  I really enjoyed it and I hope everyone else did also.  I didn't do much actual painting.  There was so much information to give them so I painted a sky using the watercolor technique (on a different painting) and did some color blending in a couple of other areas.  Mostly, when the resist lines are used on silk, painting the piece is like 'filling in the blanks' and I know anyone new to silk paintings can do that on their own.  I described what to do and how the silk dyes would react but didn't want to waste time having them watch something so simplistic.

I took this painting to work on with the sky and border already painted so that they could see a finished sky and an example of the texture on this border but I worked on another painting that I had done the resist on but not any painting.  You'll probably see it finished in a week or so.

The border texture in this painting was achieved by adding alcohol after the dyes had dried.  The texture in the foliage is a combination of salt being added to wet dye and alcohol being added when the area was dry.    I tried to demonstrate how salt reacts with the dyes but it was so dry here (5% humidity) that the dyes dried before I could add the salt.  Luckily, most of the people watching were watercolorists so they were familiar with using salt.  This painting hasn't been steamed yet and its just pinned to a board.  After it's steamed, the white lines will be more distinct and I can stretch it so that the borders are even.

I've used this image many times but never in silk and since it's one of my favorite spots, I had to use it again.  I think it translates nicely to silk.

Silk Hibiscus

Silk Hibiscus

Image Size 8" x 10"

Silk dyes on silk

I'm going to be the demonstrator for the Tustin Art League on Wednesday and I will be showing how to paint on silk.  I will be showing the serti techique that uses a resist to control where the dyes go as well as the watercolor technique, which uses no resist and creates blurry colors. I also want show an example of how the dyes are controlled when using an all-over resist.  I have an all-over resist that is made by Jacquard called No Flow which I've used in small areas of other silk paintings that I've done but I've never coated the entire piece of silk and tried painting on it.

That is what I did with this painting.  The No Flow keeps the dyes from spreading and they act more like regular paints would on paper or canvas.  It was fun trying this technique but I missed being able to get the dyes to flow together and give that beautiful blended effect that can be achieved using the watercolor technique.

I also tried this same technique using spray starch as the resist.  It didn't seem to resist quite as well as the No Flow - the edges fuzzed a little bit - but it was almost as good.  I tried painting using the starch surface first and had okay results but I felt that there was something missing so I added some broken lines of black resist to create a look of pen and ink along with the color.  Here is that one:

I think I need to add some indications of other flowers and leaves loosely in the background.  I'm not crazy about this composition but I drew it in about 5 minutes so that's why it is as it is.  I learned that salt doesn't have much of an effect on this treated surface which makes sense because the salt can't draw the moisture out of the dyes like it can on an untreated piece of silk.

Overall, these two paintings were a fun experiment and I've added another technique that I can talk about during my demo.  Now, I just need to figure out what I'm going to paint that night.

If you are in the Orange County area and are interested in learning the basics of silk painting, you are welcome to come to the meeting.  It will be held in the board room of the Tustin Unified School District building at 300 south C street, Tustin.  The meeting starts at 7:00.

Early Morning Clouds

Early Morning Clouds

Image size 3.5" x 8"

Pastels

This is a quick pastels study.  I rarely work in pastels but I do enjoy using the medium and I especially like the look of pastels.  I feel like I struggle with the medium which is probably why I don't use it often.  Of course, if I practiced more, I would get better and I would enjoy it more…the old vicious cycle.

Long ago, I put pumice gel on scrap pieces of mat board to have them ready for pastels.  This is a piece of black mat board that has a texture.  I probably should have put the pumice on the back side and painted a surface color instead of using the front for the color and having to deal with this texture.  I like random texture that can be created by the pumice gel but don't like the overall pattern of this texture.  It's hard to get the pastels into the divots and I find that patterned texture annoying.  Oh well,  I tried to deal with it and not let it bother me in this painting.  I like bits of background color peeking through but I think the pattern is distracting.

Irvine Park II

Irvine Park

Image Size 9" x 9"

Oil

I've finished another unfinished project.  Yay!!  I must have started this at least 10 years ago when I tried plein air painting for the first time.  I finished it in my studio making it up as I went since I didn't have a reference.  It was a good exercise and it felt good to finish another project.

A View From The Bluffs

A View From The Bluffs

Image Size 8" x 10"

Oil

This is another view from Heisler Park, which is on the bluffs above the beach in Laguna Beach.  I love these red flowers on the aloe plants that are growing all along the bluffs.  This is one of the most beautiful places I've seen and I'm lucky that I live fairly close to it.  

I painted this on a 8" x 10" canvas which is very different for me.  I usually like to paint on square or long, skinny canvas shapes but this scene seemed like it would look best on this shape.

Loose Landscape

I haven't done silk painting for awhile and wanted to try doing one without resist and playing with hard and soft edges.  I did the sky first wet into wet and allowed it to dry.  Then I did the distant hills and let that area dry.  When you add silk dyes to an area that already has been dyed and dried, a hard line forms.  Sometimes that is a good effect and sometimes it is not.  I was trying for that technique with this project.  I continued to add colors once the previous layer was dry and then I added textures by drying the silk and adding more dyes.  I thought my background hills were going to be lighter than the foreground area when I was dying it but obviously, I miscalculated it.  I should have added the background hills while the sky was wet so that the edges were soft which would make that area recede.

There are things I would do some things differently next time but I think it does look interesting.  I'm really happy with the sky though and I like the juxtaposition of the realistic sky and the stylized ground.

Golden Plumeria

This is another painting that was started a long time ago.  The background was done but nothing else.  In person, the blue is much prettier.  It is a clear, cool blue, but this is how my camera saw it.  I'm not into painting flowers as much as I used to be, but it feels good to finish another unfinished project.

Hot press paper isn't usually my favorite surface on which to paint but this wasn't too bad.  The paint tends to sit on the surface of the paper rather than settling in so it is really easy to lift but harder to build up glazes without lifting what you don't want lifted.  You can see the unevenness in the background.  It is hard to get a smooth wash on this surface too, but in person, you can see the granulation of the pigment rather than splotchiness, which is actually very interesting.

Cloudy Reflections

Cloudy Reflections

Image size 11" x 7"

Watercolor

This is a small painting that was done mostly wet into wet.  I really wasn't in the mood to paint this week so I decided to just finish this small painting that I had started several months ago.  Clouds are becoming a favorite painting subject for me.  I need to get more reference photos of dramatic skies to paint.  We have mostly sunny, cloudless skies where I live but we are supposed to get rain by tomorrow morning so maybe I'll be able to get some interesting pics soon.

Cactus Apples

Cactus Apples

Image Size 18" x 24"

Watercolor

I really fought with this painting.  I started it as a poured painting just doing one layer and then directly painted the rest of it.  I used Arches 140# paper which is usually really tough and easy to use but I had trouble glazing this without the previous layers lifting.  I'm not sure if that happened because the poured pigments sit on the surface or because the sizing was bad.  This is a piece of paper that I bought recently.  I've heard from many people that Arches has changed their sizing and I haven't talked to any artists that like the new formulation so maybe that was the problem.  This also seemed to buckle much more than my previous paintings on this brand of paper.

Anyway, I like the final look that I got by starting with a poured layer.  Also, I think the analogous color scheme gives this painting a very soothing feeling.