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A Little More on Flack

This article is a beautiful one about self censorship. I think that at some point we all lose our way toward our personal voice/vision for our own art. Call it authenticity or whatever, but we have to fight to get back to it. Fight for our unique and personal vision to come through.

In the past all you had to fight was yourself, the expectations of critics and your own inner critic. Now we have the machine of the "art" industry pumping out tools and toys for us to use, straight off the shelf.

For me part of the joy of art was learning to make do with what I had and adapting other tools toward my needs.A little gumption and an idea was all I needed to stoke the creative fire already buring inside.

Trying to Pare it Down

I’ve been obsessing on micro journaling lately. The idea of carrying with me ONLY the barest necessities of journaling, paring down to less and less. Until i’m left with... 1 journal (MTNKO) and one pen.

It seems crazy from the woman who often carries 2 or 3 journals, a pen bag of pens, a watercolor set, and a selection of brushes.

My bag was starting to weigh me down. It would weigh in around 20 pounds.* I stitched a new shoulder strap support and patched the frays in my bag. At some point I realized I was carrying just too much. It could also be that I’m obsessed with my MTNKO. I don’t know. But I’ve cut my daily carry down to the following:
MTNKO
Serwex 962
TWSBI 530 and 540
2 Pentel PBP
If I’m working on PioP I carry my Exacompta journal with me and if I’m planning on drawing stuff that I want more room with I’ll carry a larger sketchbook with me. My hope is to incorporate all of the PioP stuff into a journal I can put into my large MTNKO as well as create a few pamphlet stitched journals of sketchbook paper that fit.

That’s considerably lighter than what I was carrying all of the time. A good part of what i’m doing now is actively thinking before I pack my bag, “Realistically, what will I be working on today?” Then packing accordingly. Additionally, having a jotter that is for truly random stuff in the back of my MTNKO allows me to make random notes that I can transfer to the appropriate notebook when I get home.

So far this is working for me and I hope to try it out over the summer and see if it conintues to work for me.

Challenge!

I’m pretty stoked to tell you all about the Challenge! group on AJ Ning. I’ve asked a group of my arty friends to help me out by being Hosts. Each month a new host will introduce the Challenge! Each Challenge! has 3 parts: Images, Colors, and Material. Depending on the host, you might get images they shots, copyright free images from Flickr’s Commons.

The images are meant to give you some inspiration. You don’t have to draw them, or even use them as collage fodder for your journal. You could be inspired by them to write about them, or doodle a new pattern, or even, write about how much you hate them.

The colors again, are meant as inspiration. You can use one or all of them in your art journal. You could do a whole page in one color, or 2 or 3. You could try and mix the colors. There are so many options with color it’s amazing. What about staining paper?

The material challenge is the cult of stuff aspect, use it up! If you have it in your stash, use it up! Test it out, use this Challenge! to try it out in multiple ways, learn how to use that one material in every way possible. Try it, test it!

Each Challenge! will lasts 2 weeks, then the next will start. We get each host for a month!

First Round: Ink Fade Testing (lightfast)

At the end of December I was wondering if my inks were lightfast, or not. I was wondering given that I’ve done a great deal of drawings with these inks, mostly sketches in my art journal and I was considering venturing out toward finished art with inks. I want to be sure that the art that I sell lasts longer than it takes me to create it. Art lives in very different circumstances from sketches, ie in full light and on the wall. My sketches stay in sketchbooks or live on the walls only when I’m contemplating.

Now, the middle of the winter in the Northeast US is a terrible time to test the light fastness of anything. We’ve had a pretty mild winter with plenty of sunny days.  I took all of my inks with my glass dip pen wrote their name on a sheet of paper twice and scribbled a roughly 1cm high line the width of the page.

Over the weeks I noticed that a few inks immediately changed color and some immediately faded.  Others didn’t show any changes until the last week or so of the test.

The winners in terms of not changing color at all:
Noodler’s Black, Noodler’s Heart of Darkness, Noodler’s Luxury Blue

The near winners, or those that show little fading:
Noodler’s Eternal Brown, Diamine Chocolat Brown

Faded, but not badly:
Noodler’s Nikita

Terrible fading, losing a component of the color, color shifting, marked change in color and intensity:
Private Reserve Sonic Blue(withing a week), J.Herbin Bleu Nuit (within a week), Noodler’s Fox Red (within a week), Omas New Gray, Noodler’s Lexington Gray

Showing a color shift, and is truly darker than before, though not the same color:
Private Reserve Electric DC Blue

So what does this all mean? Not much in terms of journaling and writing. I’ve looked at some of my sketches from a year or so ago using J. Herbin’s Bleu Nuit, Noodler’s Red Fox, and PR Sonic Blue and can’t see a difference. It takes time in the sun for much of these changes to take place and most of the issues won’t affect anything in a closed journal. I won’t stop using these colors for sketching or journaling anytime soon, but I will stop using the fugitive colors in finished art work.

Review: Loew Cornell Simply Art Fine Tip Marker 4 Pack

Loew Cornell Simply Art Fine Tip Marker $5.99/ 4 pack @ Joann's

 

 

I was doing some comparison shopping for my upcoming class on pen and ink drawing and I stumbled upon the Loew Cornell Fine Tip 4 pack at Joann’s for $5.99. They claim to be water resistant and non- bleeding. One look at the package and you can tell they are clearly a knock off of Pigma Micron pen put out by Sakura. The short cap, metal clip, and cap post on the end of the pen gives it away.

 

 

The markers are sold in a blister package with some claims and suggestions. The first claim is that they are water resistant. The second they won’t bleed. The back of the package suggests that you can use them with watercolors and other markers. I’ll get to these claims shortly.

The pens have a matte black barrel that is comfortable to hold. The pen is very lightweight. The cap posts securely to the back end of the marker with a satisfying click. While writing with the marker I found the ridge where the nib section meets the barrel to be quite sharp and uncomfortable. I suspect that this will be the main reason I stop using these markers.

 

 

 

 

 

While writing I found the fiber tip to be quite smooth on all pens but the largest, .08, and that nib was dry, as if it had dried out in it’s packaging or was out of ink. The sketching experience was not bad at all, the line was smooth and consistent for each tip. There is no line variation unless you switch pens. The ink is black but seems to gray out as it dries, leaving behind a dark gray line rather than a black line.

 

An additional flaw is that the cap is the only part with a size designation and it’s easily missed so caps could easily be put on the wrong pen. The barrels are only marked with the Loew Cornell name.

As for the water resistance, they are, sort of. I found that a lot of the ink lifted with a fast brush over with water. Leaving behind a strong gray area in any spot that was damp. There was a LOT of bleeding that would discolor any watercolor wash applied over it. This also washed out the lines. I went over my test area with another brush load of water and worked the area with the brush, nothing that would be called a scrub, and with a soft brush. The thinnest lines lifted almost completely and black lines were left grayer than before. The gray that is left is a very nice color. Knowing that these create a wash like this is actually pretty useful, one could throw these into a sketch kit with a waterbrush and get some pretty nice sketches with a wide range of tones of gray.

All in all these aren’t a bad value for $6 as long as you take the negatives into consideration- the grip itself, that one of the 4 pens I got wasn’t working properly, they are kinda water resistant, and that only the cap is marked for size. On the good side of things, you get 4 markers that write a lot like a Micron for a lot less, make wonderful washes, are all black and write pretty smoothly.

I’d recommend these for anyone who is interested in trying out this style of pen- very fine fiber tip. I don’t think these will sell you on the style though, they are too uncomfortable to write/sketch with for long periods of time.... Though a nail file might take the sharp edge off the grip area... Might try that, if I do I’ll let you know all about it. I want to suggest these for kids, but I don't want people to assume that I'm saying they are only for kids. I guess I'd say these are good for older kids- teenagers who are sketching for art class, or are writing or for someone who wants to test this style of pen out. you won't get the same performance as you would with a Micron but it's a good point to start.

 UPDATE: I have been using these in SOME of my cowboy sketches and I've found them far more comfortable to sketch with than I'd have expected. We're not talk ing 2 hour long drawing sessions, more like 15 to 20 minute drawing sessions. I amend my previous statement about them being uncomfortable to being mostly comfortable for sketching. Add to that the blending capability when water or ink is added really adds an other level of darks to my gray ink brush pen. I'll need to test it and see if it's lightfast before I suggest it for anything other than sketching.

Some Observations: On Paper and Frisket

Iv'e been working on a variety of papers, settling on Canson's XL Watercolor paper, for a variety of reasons- it works well with the watercolors I'm using, it's cost is nice and it has a relatively smooth surface that my pens rather like. It's also got 2 sides, a right and a wrong, ot a front and a back; which ever way you prefer to call it, but I like the judgemental aspect of right and wrong... In this case. Any how.

One side has a little more tooth an grab to it than the other, this is the right side. The reverse side AKA WRONG is smoother. It also has less sizing... This affects a number of things- how ink and paint react with the surface. Less size means it's more absorbent.

This is good and bad.

It's bad when you use a mask. I applied a liquid frisket rather heavily to the surface of one of my paintings and the frisket grabbed to the paper so strongly it ripped when I removed it. Quite badly. It was crazy frustrating.

I went ahead with the mixed media piece anyway, knowing my paint would adhere the ripped pieces down and it would be okay, but I had to change my plans for color and other ideas for the image, and I know that the torn piece could come back to haunt me.

Additionally in my frisket/mask adventure I've found that the frisket REALLY doesn't like the spray inks. If the frisket is too thin the spray ink "leaks" through it. A total pain in the ass. So I've learned to put on one thin coat and then a heavier coat to seal it all up.

Honesty, Authenticity, Truthiness and Resonance

When I was in school everyone talked about wanting to make "honest work." The new buzzword for honest work is "authentic." We could spend days over glasses of red wine and mugs of coffee (as we did in college) talking about what this means. In the end it all boils down to, "I want to make work that resonates deeply withing myself and has deep personal meaning." End of story.

Or is it?

I think the truth of all the discussion and thinking on these topics is that essentially we're afraid of what we put on the paper/canvas/board/ or in the journal. Many of us make work and hide it away. It's why the art journal is so perfect, at the end of your art session you close the covers and never ever have to confront what you made again. Simple right? Except you're missing out on a  prime piece of the art journal process- learning from what you've put down and thus from yourself.

I think that fear is why we also buy into what the industry pumps out for us. It's far easier to follow the industry's recipe for success than to forge our own path and style.

Maybe the real question we need to ask ourselves is, "How do we move past the fear and into creating our work? How do we learn from ourselves to create work that resonates deeply?"

It's this hard work that an art journal is intended and supposed to help us explore. If you never look back at your pages and be critical of them (without gessoing over them) and learning from those pages what are you missing out on. If you focus on nothing but making pretty pretty pages I think you're missing out on a very important part of art journaling.

Here's a challenge: Go through your art journal, either the current journal you're working in or a recent one. Use a sharpie, write on the margins of a page what you'd change on that page. If you are too chicken you can use a post it note. If you get bold, draw right on top of the page with your sharpie.

Out of the Can Thinking

I've been watching some old episodes of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home on Hulu. I grew up watching Julia Child on PBS. PBS being one of the few channels that came in and was approved for me to watch. I credit a lot of my enjoyment of cooking to both my Mom and ravenously watching Julia Child's shows.

One of the things I notice as I watch J&J:CaH is that Julia rambles on quite a bit about how Americans are afraid of their food and how the diet industry is winning out over taste. Secretly, I could watch these shows over and over again.

Julia has a good lesson for us, and it applies to art. We can't let the industry win in dictating what we want and how we want it. Child's recipes for successful tasty dishes included fresh and basic ingredients combined in ways to create layers of food, she poo-poo'd using canned foods and already made stuff. She stated over and over, "It's not hard, the recipe is a guideline!" Art and art journaling are no different. We should be demanding the basic ingredients and supplies we need to make our art and not canned supplies. After all it's not hard to customize and create your own stuff if you only

Dede and Eveline are a prime example of taking a recipe and making it their own and taking it to entirely new heights. Dede put out a challenge to Eve that she make Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas without using his voluminous list of supplies. Eve took up the challenge as did Dede. their results are nothing short of spectacular. Out of the can thinking at it's finest.

The art and craft industry responds to demands, but as it's a big slow and lumbering machine full of people all trying to get the NEXT BIG IDEA and thus the next big paycheck. The lumbering machine hears about art journaling, tries to figure out what it is, there are big IMPORTANT meetings in board rooms to try and figure it out, there are more meetings in board rooms, and hapless cogs in the machine are sent off to investigate ART JOURNALING. They know nothing about it, they watch a few youtube videos, read a few blogs, and maybe a few of the more intrepid cogs join AJNing. They take some notes, maybe even dabble in a little art journaling and finally something like the Smash Book is born.

Now, thousands of people will be introduced to Art Journaling via the SmashBook. It might even be a decent product, but it's not what I consider a true art journal. It's an interesting concept and an interesting way to finally grab hold of a potential market. Hey, it's even got it's own special glue stick, color coordinated tabs, and a hundred other things to buy to go with it. ARGH!!!

Go simple, buy yourself a sketchbook, a cheap one, a few markers, maybe a cheap set of acrylics or watercolors, and start splashing shit around on the page. Try stuff, watch some videos on youtube get a few recipes but for goodness sake don't be afraid to only use it as a guideline.

 

Watercolor Play Experiments

I've been using watercolors for close to 20 years now. It's crazy when you thinkg about it. The first 5 years or so of using watercolors, I hated them. I used them primarily to add a toned color to a sketchbook, large flat washes of one color, let it dry then draw. Lovely.

Then about 10 years ago I decided I was going to master them. I never did. What I did do is learn how to use them better. I learned how to layer colors, be patient and let one layer dry before floating another over it.

I also learned to love the happy accidents, like the things you see in my current videos.

I learned to give up control and get beutiful results.

I get messages on youtube where people ask me, "How do you do this? Where did you learn this?" The video below is my answer.

 

The truth is, you have to give up control. You have to be willing to get something ugly to get something that really is beautiful. Sometimes in the midst of the ugly is just one spot that speaks to you and will motivate you to create more. Then you try again and again and again and find more beauty, and beauty in colors you'd never have combined before.

I don't usually use the word play, I prefer experiment, test, and try. The truth is that when I use those words with other people they give me a look like it's scary. If I cay play, suddenly we're out of science class (I forget I was a geek and loved science class.) and back in the area of playful experimentation where we can leave behind our concious thoughts and truly try things out. So get in there and play.

It's Been Awhile

I took a break from a lot of online stuff ove rhte last 6 months or so. I realized I hadn't done a video in over a year. Holy smokes that's a long time. So I did a quick flip through of ONE of my current art journals and I'm loading a few more now. See it below.

 

Technique Tuesday: Grunge Glaze

Last week I mentioned distressing and grunging a journal color wiht my grunge glaze,  so this week I’m going to tell you about my mix for what I call “Grunge Glaze.” It’s a special blend of colors to give me a perfectly abused and dirty look to any page. Here’s the  recipe:

• 1 part Carbon Black
• 1 part Burnt Sienna (Red Oxide would work too)
• 1 dash Burnt Umber (this can be skipped or another color added to warm or cool the mix)
• 2 parts gloss gel medium (add more if you want more transparency.) Use glaze medium if you want a fluid grunge glaze. I like my glazes thick so that I can have brush strokes show up as thicker layers of color.
• 1 dash retarder (skip if you want it to dry fast, add more if you want it to dry more slowly.)
• Put all of this in a jar with a lid and mix well. Adjust as needed.

I spread this on with a rag and rub it in and off as I want a heavier or lighter coat. It dries pretty quickly so I can layer it easily. A spritz of water before fully dried allows you to lift more off than with a dry rag.

Go forth and make glaze mixes and call them fun things.

I know I've harped on this time and time again (as far back as my participation in 21 Secrets) but you don't need to buy those premixed glazes. You can mix your own. This is just one example of a glaze you can mix with gel medium or glaze medium. Share recipes in the comments!

Make a Watercolor Tin

I'm obsessed with making watercolor tins. I've been looking for more and more adaptable methods since I  made my first with medication blister packs. (I have a UStream about this.)

On my way home a few nights ago I had the brainstorm to try to make the pans out of moldable epoxy putty, like that Mighty Putty stuff. I have a bunch of tubes of that but can't find them so I stopped by Ocean State Job lot to look into their glue section. (They generally have a ton of weird glues.) If I hadn't found it I'd have headed to Home Depot. I found a tube of Elmer's Automotive Epoxy putty. You could also use Mighty Putty, Sugru, or JB Weld's Putty.

The key to this project is that you get MOLDABLE epoxy putty. The Elmer's has a working or open time of 2 minutes after it's fully kneaded together, which works for this project.

You cut a chunk off, knead it until it's fully mixed, roll a snake and then press it into place in your tin and then mold it into a wall. Keeping your hands damp through the process helped a lot.

Once the walls firm up you can trim them with a knife. I used a utility knife to trim the walls into a nice straight surface, well mostly. Partially hardened the putty carves pretty easily.

After I built all the walls I let it cure and then sprayed it with a kind of even coat of white spray paint. I also sprayed the outside with a little gray spray paint.

This little adventure cost me the $2.50 for the gum and $2.99 for the epoxy putty. If I were chewing the gum anyway (which I do) it's sort of an even sum thing. If you have a friend who chews gum or is a mint addict this could be even cheaper. I used approximately 1/3rd of the putty. A larger tin like an altoids tin would use more and a mini altoids tin less.

I made myself 6 areas for paint and a small mixing area. The wells are 3/4 a full pan of a half pan and a half (this will only make sense to people who have half pan watercolor sets.) Anyway pictures:

Technique Tuesday: Planner Journal

Awhile back I purchased a  planner* from gouletpens.com and I didn’t do anything with it. I snagged it for about $4 off their clearance rack because it was for the 2010 and 2011 school year. The pages while tough enough for a lot of use for I was planning I felt needed a little heavy duty treatment,  so I started gluing pages together, every other page. This gave me a very heavy weight page.

I then applied a coat of gesso and watercolor crayon to each left hand page. I used a soft brush to really blend the colors into the gesso. Each page has a soft tint of the watercolor crayon. I then used tape that I’d masked off painting (it's got random colors all over it) with to cover up dates and calendars on the right hand page, leaving me with a nice framed grid on the right hand page.

I cut no pages from the planner. I know it’s strange but I really like that stressed out thick spine look. I also plan on adding a lot of collage to the left page. The right page may get some collage but I plan on mainly writing on it.

The other thing about this journal? I’m drawing in it with sharpies and nothing else. It’s the reason I wanted to glue pages and gesso them, so that I wouldn’t get soak through.

So far the journal is a combination of collage, sketch and writing. I always work in spreads so this journal is really working well for that.

Here’s what a spread in the book looks like with no sketching, collage or writing.

 

And here are a few finished pages:

Paint Swatches

After my art adventure with Jane Saturday I really wanted to narrow my palette down to the 8 colors I thought would work best for me. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do when I run out of the paints that are in the small 22ml tube sizes. I may be forced to remove the water bottle from the pochade and just use my drinking water bottle for rinse water. If I do that I’ll switch to my 40 ounce KleenKanteen instead of the 1 pint bottle I’m using currently.

I headed to the basement and painted swatches of how colors mixed with one another. A scientific approach to picking the right colors for me. I used cheap mead 3x5 inch index cards. I painted on the blank side and wrote the name of each color represented. Here are some pictures. Please be aware I did not focus on making these neat, merely on mixing 2 colors; sometimes 3 colors.

These are held together by a 7 Gypsies cable ring that Dede kindly sent me. These things are super cool and very useful. I may have to buy a whole package of them. Or figure out how to make them…

Limiting the Palette

Important to note that this post was written with acrylic in mind, watercolors have their own palette choices that work differntly from acrylics. I'll address watercolors in a future post.

Why is palette choice so important to painting en plein air? Ultimately you want to carry the minimal amount of equipment to make the picture happen. You could carry every color you have available but that would make for a very heavy pack and awkward hiking. Using every color available tends to leave a painting with a disharmonious feeling. Paintings tend to have a harmonious feel when colors have been mixed with other colors in the painting. When you using paint straight from the tubes paintings tend to not jive as well as if you’ve added a touch of another color in your palette to the other colors.

The important thing with an en plein air palette is the colors you get by mixing 2 and 3 colors together. Some people use the same palette over and over again and others are constantly rearranging their palette, dropping in a new red or blue or swapping out a yellow. To each their own.

In acrylic I tend to work with the same palette for a warm season and switch to a more expansive palette in the winter months. This is because I usually work mostly inside in the fall and winter whereas in the summer I tend to work on location far more often.

Currently my palette is considered pretty large by plein air standards and it’s highly likely I’ll get rid of a yellow and a blue shade, but we’ll see.

Here are some excellent links on the subject of limiting your palette.

 Gurney

Learning to See

Channeling Homer

Channeling Homer also has a "pamphlet" about palette picking, and it's good

I frequently limit my palette to 2 or 3 colors, usually titanium white, a blue and then a warm color like titan buff or yellow ochre. This is an exercise I may explore again.

Picking a Palette

Yesterday Jane and I headed to Salem Willows for a little painting. My goal today was to get a handle on my sky and the forms of the trees. Whilst painting I realized that the palette I’ve included in my pochade is not completely right for what I’m doing. Jane and I also had a discussion about palettes and how somethings are right for some things but not others, like portrature verses landscapes.

My current palette is as follows:

• Cad yellow light
• Cad yellow Medium
• Cad Orange
• Aliz Crimson
• Pthalo blue
• Cobalt Blue
• Ultramarine Blue
• Unbleached Titanium white (Titan Buff for you Golden fans)
• Titanium White
• Mars Black

Now to be fair I’ve never included a black in my pochade palette in the past and I just sort of tossed it in on a whim, which is strange to think given how damn small this pochade is and how much smaller it is than my last box.

It is also interesting to note that I don’t have a single earth tone in here- not a drop of raw or burnt umber or sienna. Again, an oddity given my love of earth tones and their heavy use in my watercolor palette. Perhaps I was unconsciously rejecting my watercolor palette? Who knows, but an earth tone or two will be included in the next packing of the pochade. Also, yellow ochre is nowhere to be see.

It’s as if I closed my eyes and picked a palette not really suited to the sort of painting I was planning.

The all of the color except unbleached titanium were colors that my Painting 101 instructor listed on the “to buy list” for the class. Perhaps I was just grabbing some old familiars?

I’ve been trying to mix all the shades of green that I want but the truth is that it’s making me smash my head against the wall. Color mixing is entirely different for watercolors and acrylics. With watercolors it is much easier to mix the shades of green you need from just a few shades of blue and yellow. It is not the same for acrylic. I’m adding pthalo green to the mix. It will replace one of the 3 blues, which I’m not sure but right now I’m leaning toward ultramarine getting kicked out. I’m replacing the black with burnt umber.

This will shock people, given my love for this particular color, but I’m considering kicking Alizarin Crimson out of the box. It’s a great shade of red but for the space in the pochade I can get more mileage out of Napthal red. If I add nappy red (as I like to call it) I’ll also get rid of cad orange. Nappy red makes great oranges with either of the cad yellows. I will keep both cad yellows as they mix with the blues and the pthalo green to make different shades of green.

Cobalt blue may be replaced with cerulean blue but I’m not sure yet. This leaves me with the following:

• Cad yellow light
• Cad yellow Medium
• Cad Orange-
• Aliz Crimson- Napthol red
• Pthalo blue
• Cobalt Blue (questioning this one)
• Ultramarine Blue- Pthalo Green
• Unbleached Titanium white (Titan Buff for you Golden fans)
• Titanium White
• Mars Black- Burnt Umber

After I got back from my art adventure I headed to my studio and dumped the contents of the pochade out and started making color swatches of the colors in the box, to see what colors I could mix by mixing each color with the others in the box. It was enlightening and led to the switches seen above. Then I look through my swatches and I debate removing ultramarine from the mix…

Next up will be mixing a series of swatches from my studio palette. That will take substantially more time, I have 20 or 30 colors of paint. Then... I'll be doing this with my watercolors. This will certainly cut back on my cult of stuff purchases. I have that in check with watercolors, as I've always kept a list in my planner of the watercolors I need to replace. INterestingly enough I rarely stray from that list. Though on the rare occasion i have, I've ended up with colors that I use regularly, like indigo and red ochre.

 

Technique Tuesday: Deep Darks in a Painting

I want to tell you about mixing darks. For years I lived under the impression that a “real artist” doesn’t use black paint, even though it’s a part of many colors, like one of my favorites Payne’s Gray. In school mixing black with anything was definitely frowned upon. Instead we were expected to mix colors together to create deep dark shades. One of my professors taught me a dark that I really like and still use. It’s useful with a variety of colors because it can be mixed warm or cool.

It uses the following 3 colors:

• Pthalo Blue
• Alizarin Crimson
• Pthalo Green

 

For the standard deep dark color, mix all 3 in equal proportions. If you’d like it warmer add more aliz crim.

This recipe can be changed up by mixing in various proportions:

• alizarin crimson
• Pthalo Blue
• Cadmium Yellow Med or Cad Orange

 

Again start with equal amounts of each and adjust the colors to get the shade you want and need.

The various art professors who had issues with black said it “muddied” your colors. To a point that’s true, if you add a TON of black to a mix of colors it can turn to mud and not be clear. That being said, adding a  touch of black to a color will dull it and darken it.

One professor that I had suggested that we use it as a base color for shadows. Where another suggested that we use thalo blue for shadows and another suggested that we use thalo green for shadows.

I’ve found that the truth lies somewhere within the maze of contradictory and fuzzy advice these knowledgeable ladies and gents shared with me oh so many years ago. The core of this whole discussion is that you need to stare at a shadow and decide for yourself what color does it lean towards? Red Blue Green? Depending on what you see you should lean that way.

For me, my shadows lean toward the blue purple side of the spectrum so I start with a touch of pthalo blue and a tough of alizarin crimson hue or quid magenta.

Even though I feel okay using black now, I still tend to make my darks from blends of colors. In the image below that dark dark color is the second blend I wrote about AND I had it lean toward blue.

Barriers

I’ve said that I’m anti-copyright, let me explain further why.

I see copyright as an invisible barrier between myself and the viewer of my art and writing. I think art and writing need fewer barriers. I like to think that my writing and art have a relationship with the viewer and when you start a relationship off with a bunch of legal disclaimers, it’s off to the wrong start.

That being said I don’t want people to use my art for just any purpose, I want to have control over who uses it, after all I wouldn’t want to see a a group I dislike using my work. But I really want to see you be able to share if you like something. All I ask is a link back. It's why the blog and my art is licensed under Creative Commons, link is to the left of the screen to provide more information. This allows people to share my work as long as they are not for profit and they provide attribution.

Copyright is designed to protect big companies (the man) and intellectuals from the average person using their stuff. Sadly, it doesn’t do as good a job protecting the average person from big companies snagging their stuff, after all check out the blog You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice. It's a whole site about bigger companies lifting the designs of smaller designers and artists. In some cases the design is a line for line lift, in others it's changed just enough to avoid legal issues*.

I used to be ALL ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT. Remember the woman who bought my journals, only to swipe my design so she could teach it? Or my penslips and the myriad of crafters who thought it would be OK if they made them and sold them? (I now encourage people to take my design and make and sell them, open source crafting.) Or the term I should have trademarked, Jotters?

My initial reaction was that I was pissed off that people would have the gall to take someone else’s design and remake it, stitch for stitch and then sell it, thinking it wouldn’t be noticed. Then I realized, this is the price of doing business, online and offline. (Please note, I’m not saying this is right. It’s still very very wrong.) Crafters and artists have been fighting this fight since, well, probably the dawn of time. I’ve read about people going to craft fairs and snapping pictures of items and then grilling the crafter about how the item was made.

The whole thing is just rude.

I feel like copyright is for “the man” with deep pockets. It doesn’t cost a lot to copyright your work, but as I said previously if I registered for copyright on everything I produce or posted online, I’d soon be broke. Really, what would I have? Other than a bunch of art with a barrier between it and the viewer? Money shouldn’t preclude protection from being ripped off.

I know now that when I post something that I’ve made online that I stand about a 50% chance of having it ripped off by a crafter somewhere.

It’s why I’ve taken the tack of throwing on here all my process shots. If I make something, well, screw the people who want to steal the design and then sell it. No, I’d rather see my readers make it themselves. If you aren’t going to buy an original from me, well make your own.

A friend pointed out to me that the best protection to being ripped off is to be so uniquely you that when you are ripped off it is blatantly apparent.

I am also not a proponent of the idea that everything on the internet is free. There should be respect.

*This is a whole other issue, when designers/artists/authors who understand copyright enough to manipulate what they use just enough that they aren't infringing on the other person's copyright and they can then avoid legal consequences. They can then hide behind the phrase, "ideas can't be copywritten."

The Gift that Keeps on Giving; Cult of Stuff!

The cult of stuff has been great. I've felt more free since I identified the worm of stuff inside my head. The need to buy more and do less with it, collecting supplies like they are Hummel figurines. (Don't know Hummel? I bet your grandmother had one or 2.)

Since casting aside the yoke of stuff I've noticed I'm more inspired to create. I went painting again this weekend. This time Jane couldn't go so I headed to Salem Willows on my own to grab a rocky patch and do a little painting. The pochade on the tripod was a raging success. The adjustable legs let me set up where ever I wanted. The thing I was mostly worried about- stability of the quick release head, I'm pleased to report, it did just fine. There wasn't any wind to speak of so the stability of the lid and bungee cord wasn't tested, but I suspect it will do just fine.

Moira, of Crafty Moira has a post up called "Buy Nothing Summer." It's great and she quotes the Cult of Stuff in it. Go Go cult of stuff!

Do as I Say, but not as I Do.

Please be aware as you read this post that I'm not "claiming copyright" to the IDEA behind cult of stuff, the idea that we've got too much stuff and that we fall victim to marketing. What I'm claiming is that someone was inspired by my post, wrote their own after reading mine and seeing that it was quite popular (over 600 hits in 24 hours), and then posted their post. What is the usual course of events with blogs is that the blog post that inspired the post gets a linkback, it's blogging courtesy. What I'm complaining about is a severe lack of blogging manners.

You’ll notice this blog is covered under the creative commons license. There’s a button somewhere on here that states which license it’s covered under. I do this so that people can repost parts of my blog (with attribution) and my images (also with attribution) so long as their blog or group is not for profit. I do this because I see copyright as divisive (more on this in another post). As it’s currently set up copyright is designed to protect big companies (will further be referred to as “the man”) and not the little guy, aka me, as a blogger or an artist. Legally sure it does but it costs money to copyright something and if I were to copyright (register) everything I produced I’d soon be broke.

That being said, I don’t think people should copy other people’s art work, teach classes that other people came up with, buy journals from bookbinders only to steal the design, nor do I think that someone should take someone else’s ranting tirade and rewrite it so that it’s more palatable for their audience and then post it on their blog. You see all of that is wrong, and when people do such things they are morally corrupt people who care more about their bottom line than they do about their fellow human beings.

Just as a for instance. I had an email conversation that sparked one of my cult of stuff posts. I wrote to the person with whom I had the conversation with to be sure that she was okay that I riffed on our conversation. After I got the okay I posted the rant. If I write a response to a post, or a post inspired by another blogger I write “hey this post was inspired by so-and-so over here, read it!” That’s blogger courtesy. I’ve been blogging for a LONG time, since 2000. So this is something you learn when you’ve been blogging for a long time and perhaps it’s something you don’t get if you come out of the old school publishing industry. One might think that it’s something you’d pick up after a year or more of blogging.

My point being if you like one of my blog posts, feel free to repost it with a link back. If you can’t link back don’t repost. It’s simple. IF you like a blog post but don’t think it’s quite right for your audience, contact me I’m willing to do a rewrite. IF you think you can write a better post, feel free, but the courteous thing to do is provide a link back to the author who inspired you. If you can’t or won’t do that, well you are probably of questionable morale judgment and I don’t want my blog and writing associated with you.

On another note don’t talk about respect, copyright and copywrong if you aren’t going to follow by your very own rules, it’s hypocritical.

Some assorted pictures supporting my theory of blog-lifting:

The Good Advice

I got a camera to help me take shots of the places I take my pochade box, so that I can better finish the piece when I get home. It’s rare that any one piece is 100% finished outside. I find a lot of the advice given for photography is similar to that I’ve received for painting en plein air.

A brief round up fo advice that applies to both:

#1 Don’t be lazy. (This applies to all art.)

#2 Chase the light.

#3 Look at lots of art/photos, good and bad, you can learn a lot just by looking.

#4 Make lots of art/ Take lots of photos. Throw away the bad. (Paint over)

#5 Be authentic. (don't hit me for using the buzz word)

#6 It’s all been done before except for your vision.

(Also Scott Bourne, a bignamephotodude is into the cult of stuff read this post.)

As an aside I added a tripod mount to my pochade making it even more bad ass than before. Now I don't need to rely on rocks to prop my pochade, now I simply need to lug in a tripod...

Adventure

I’ve been thinking of the concept of adventure or a life filled with curiosity and exploration. Perhaps the recent death of my Great Grandmother brings this concept home for me. I think of the way I’d like to live my life and how I conduct myself.

Fpr some reason the word adventure comes to mind. I think because it embodies a never ending curiosity with life and the things around me.

Adventure is wrapped around art and art wrapped around adventure.

Sometimes I try and make a trip to Starbucks and adventure by walking the long way and snapping pictures, or I’ll get my coffee and sit outside and sketch. Of course it helps that it sits on waterfront and there is a nice view of boats and pretty trees.

This weekend I’m headed to a tougher place than my usual haunts for a little en plein air painting and possibly photography. I’m looking at it as an adventure in a pretty but run down place. Jane and I will be slinging paint from 10 to 2.

I have more to write on this subject but the words are failing me.

It's How You Use It

I took a class a few years back at a really well known art college in the area, the sort filled with faculty who were showing in Boston and New York and Paris and all over the world.

I just wanted to take a moderately priced Continuing Education class in Figure Drawing.

I didn’t care about the professor credentials, hell, I didn’t even look them up.

Apparently he was something of a BIG DEAL.

I just wanted to draw naked people on all kinds of different kinds of paper and different sizes.

He was kind of stiff, really serious and totally had bromance for Jim Dine, which I totally get. He also did the en plein air classes in Paris for the school. 2 weeks in paris with this guy? NO THANKS.

However he let me look through his sketchbook and told me about his process. Which was totally fascinating. He worked in these small watercolor sketchbooks he picked up somewhere fascinating and his palette was a 2 part fly fishing fly box with all the foam ripped out, one side held his tubes of gouache and the other held the paint. He squeezed colors out into great gobs in the palette. Mixed in corners were various shades of greens, reds, blues and shades of white. In his sketchbook were lovely colored sketches of Paris in winter, spring and summer. There were quick studies of Boston at all times of the year. The paper was cockled and warped but this fastidious stiff old dude didn’t care.

It was all about the art.

When I took his class I was just starting out with bookbinding and I’d take a week’s worth of drawings stack them, pierce holes through them and then use a rivet to hold them all together. He was fascinated by this and how much easier it was to carry a stack of my loose drawings rolled up when secured in such a manner. He asked me a ton of questions about where I’d learned it and he seemed surprised when I said I’d just done it. We talked for a brief moment about my college sculpture professor who was into bookbinding and how I felt rivets were faster plus, I didn’t have any cord to bind the sheets.

Necessity.Mother.Invention

All that stuff.

This guy who thought nothing of buying $30 tubes of gouache painted with something I thought was a riot, those 50 to 99 cent Loew-Cornell brushes you used to be able to buy singly and now come in blister packs and multi packs for $10, you still get 15 to 20 of them but you can’t do what this guy used to do and buy 20 of the same size at a time.

I watched that professor paint the model once. He attacked the page- scrubbed the paint onto the pages of his small sketchbook, aggressively mixing colors, squinting his eyes at the model, capturing darks in deep purple tones and lights in swaths of golden yellow.

He did with that cheap brush everything I’d been taught NOT to do with a brush since kindergarten. He hardly ever rinsed colors from it; he simply dipped the dirty brush into whatever the next color he was interested in using. Then he applied it.

Watching him paint was mesmerizing and a study in focus and attention. What got me most was he was using those ultra cheap Chinese bristle brushes that no one would have dared to bring into one of my college painting classes. This guy created great stuff with them, all painted with 2 sizes; a #2 round and a #3 flat.

It was the second time I’d met a working artist that used what I’d been taught was a garbage tool, and used it well.

Hmm. Has to make you wonder if the pricey expensive tools are quite as wonderful as the companies making them would have you believe.

Cult of Stuff part 10

One of the things that really gets me going in the online art world is the concept of the online art instructor saying things such as, “You’re an artist because I say so, “and the “I give you permission to create.” It’s patronizing, condescending, arrogant and downright self-absorbed.

I am an artist because I believe I am; I create because I must, not because someone on the internet says so or gives me permission to do so. I’ve voiced this opinion before and the major argument was that these statements are put out there to give others self confidence. I submit that the reason you are here (reading my blog or at aj ning) is at least partially because you have an interest in art, maybe you don’t call yourself an artist, and that’s fine. Maybe you are looking for inspiration, and that’s fine too. If you are looking for permission  you are looking in the wrong place.

I can’t give you permission to create or to call yourself an artist.
I can’t do that because the permission comes from within.
You have to give yourself the permission to create.

You have to make a conscious decision to call yourself an artist. Maybe you never will. Maybe your kids think you are. You could be like my Mom and call yourself a really good craftsperson.

Maybe if you are looking for me to call you an artist (or some other online art instructor) then maybe you aren’t ready to call yourself an artist? Maybe you don’t want to say it. Maybe you don’t want to be labeled. You could need more time. It’s not up to me or anyone else to slap a label or pigeonhole you into something you may not want.

You need to make that choice.

You need to grab permission and take it for yourself. If I give you permission to create you’ll always be looking for my approval. I don’t want that. I want you to create art because it is inherently wonderful for you. I want you to create because you love it, it relaxes you after a hard day and because you learn that you cannot live without creating.

You need to make your own permission.

Cult of Stuff part 9

I recently found a journal I’d forgotten about. It’s from the time when I’d moved home and was going through a painful break up. It was a tough time in my life but filled with lots of friends and family. It’s probably one of my more raw journals. I worked in ink, colored pencil, crayon, watercolor, glue, tape and ephemera. The drawings and doodles are not anything like the art I was doing at the time, which was mainly landscape done in watercolor, gouache and ink.

When I worked in that journal I had no notion of what my art journal SHOULD look like I simply worked in it. I wrote more than I drew and painted. I never took that journal with me places, unlike some of my other journals that I did during the same period.

Back then Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter did not exist. Loading an image from my dial up line took forever and was mostly reserved for my eBay sales. Sharing art was a commitment. Blogging was just starting out with services like LiveJournal and DiaryX.

It wasn’t until many years later that I’d make the commitment to sharing my art via the various photo sharing sites like PhotoBucket. It wasn’t until LiveJournal took off that I found many images of art journals being shared.

By that time my art journals had a look of my own, but still I felt I needed to add more stuff to make them more artsy.

Then I got over it and worked in my own style and used the materials that I liked, not what others dictated that I should like.

I like to use photos in my art journals. A few people might say that takes my art to the realm of scrapbook but I don’t think that is the case. I’ve been using polaroids, film prints and mini polaroids in my work for years. The only difference is that now I’ve got software that lets me adjust the images to what I want them to look like.

What I’m trying to say is that an art journal can have anything I want in it (or you.) It’s all based on how I best feel I can express myself. Let go of what you think your art journal should look like and what you feel others tell you it should look like.