Making a Gouache Pocket Box

I have a pochade box that I can use for the gouache as tube paint.

But gouache can also be dried and re-wet like a pan watercolor. The paint will not be as thick or as opaque. 
I wanted a small box that I can try using for “pan gouache”.

I had an extra Koi Pocket Box of 24 watercolors. I took the insert out.

Using bake-able polymer clay, I rolled out and flatten some clay. I pressed Altoid mints into the clay for the paint wells. (I read this somewhere on the web. It keeps the cavities in the clay open and dissolves easily to come out. Plus the kitchen smells minty fresh!)

After baking, I coated the clay with Golden’s GAC100 (basically fluid acrylic paint without pigment) to seal.

                        

I cut down a small plastic cup for a water tray.

I bought a set of mini brushes for $9 and kept the Koi water brush & sponge.

Here are the paint colors I put into this box.

Back row:

Cadmium Yellow

Ultramarine

Light Purple

Permanent Green Deep

Cadmium Orange

Front row:

Lemon Yellow

Cobalt blue

Permanent Rose

Lamp Black

Permanent White

I can’t wait to try this pocket box this weekend.

My Matisse Painting invited to a National Juried Show

Batter Up

I was at a Cubs game last week and had the good fortune to have really good seats.

I used one of the photos I took as a reference for this painting.

Although the Cubs lost in the 9^th,it was still great fun to see the action up this close.

“Batter Up”, 8x10”, gouache (opaquewatercolor)

Copying a Master, my way

A while ago, I saw a Matisse exhibit at themuseum. Though his style is not how I prefer to paint, there was something thatintrigued me. I wanted to try copying one of his masters but in a way that wasstill mine. I decided to create my copy in a museum setting.

I was intrigued by how much people werestudying each painting. That was part of the inspiration for this painting.Also I wanted to try copying the style to see if I could get any betterunderstanding for his work.

I was proud of myself for thinking of theidea. Then as I sifted thru images of Matisse’s work. I found that he had doneit himself! He did a scene of the inside of his studio with one of his ownpaintings leaning against the wall!

I had to combine several references as phototaking was not allowed in the exhibit. 

And the two painting I wanted to use did notappear together in the exhibit.

The two paintings "on the wall" areBathers by the River & The Dance. The composition took a lot of playing around. It seemedthat for all the busy-ness of the “museum wall” that the “viewer” needed to besimpler.

I analyzed the reference a lot before paintingeach shape. I'm not looking to make an exact duplicate. But I do want itrecognized as a reference to Matisse's painting.



”Museum Series- Matisse”, Acrylics.30"x40"

I’m happy with the finished painting. I finished it with 2 days to spare before theshow entry cutoff. Yeah!

Fingers crossed that the judge likes mypainting and it gets into the show!

Canoe Shed

Finally on Monday (our last full day at Dillman's) we had a sunny, summer day. What a difference! The scenery went from nice to beautiful.

They have canoes & kayaks available for the resort guest to use. We didn't take them out but I was intrigued by their shapes and colors and the shed that had all the life vests hanging on it and paddles resting against it.

I'm very pleased with how this painting is progressing. I think it is about halfway done. After two hours, the sun had changed the light too much on me so I had to stop working on this painting on site. I like this one enough that I will continue working on it in the studio.

Canoe Shed, 8x10", oils

Birch at Lakeside

In addition to my oils, I brought a watercolor & gouache kit on our mini vacation. Gouache is an opaque watercolor. In my search for the perfect sketch setup, I tried a sample set of gouache I was given recently.  With regular transparent watercolor if you want light colors you have to plan ahead and reserve them. Since gouache is opaque, I could add the light colors at any time including near the end of the painting. Since I am used to working dark to light in oil pastels, I like that I can do the same with the gouache. And as with watercolors, it dilutes and cleans with water.

I had a small sample set of Windsor-Newton gouache I was given recently.  I used it with my Koi watercolor set to give me a larger variety of color in the gouache.

This painting was done in early evening after a day of rain. The sky was still filled with heavy rain clouds. But since I was in a happier mood than the clouds, I took some artistic license and painted as if it were a sunny day. 

This was painted while sitting on a bench on a dock and listening to the birds and chipmunks. 

Very peaceful...

Birch at Lakeside, 5x4", watercolor & gouache

Gloomy Day at the Lake

We just came back from spending 4 days at Dillman's Bay Resort in the North Woods of Wisconsin. Dillman's is a nice, well-run place on a quiet lake. We were greeted when we opened the car door by a very laid-back Golden Retriever who escorted us to the check in desk. He took his job as official greeter very seriously!

I had heard about Dillman's because they run week long artist workshops all summer. We weren't there for a workshop but were invited to the welcoming reception they had for the students. During the reception, a brief rundown of the week's schedule gave the impression that they put a lot of effort into making sure the workshop students have a good week.

Although we weren't there for classes, we were there for the artist friendly atmosphere. Despite the rain which kept trying to dampen our vacation, I was able to do 3 plein air paintings. And when it was raining, I spent my time reading some of their large library of art instruction books.

This first was done during a few hour break in the rain. The sky was filled with large gray clouds.

Gloomy Day at the Lake, 8x10", oil

A group show at the Schaumburg Library

This evening we hung a small group show at the Schaumburg Library.

I have "The Magic" in the show.

The show will remain up through the end of the month.

Phone app upgraded

Magic Doodle  Premium, Android app on Droid phone.

On the left is the cup I did yesterday with a lot of difficulty. After downloading an upgrade to the app, I tried drawing again. On the right is the cup I did today. The upper rim of the cup which gave me so much trouble yesterday, was easier today. Whatever was done in the new upgrade, made it so much easier to see where I was putting down lines.
The developer of this app also rearranged the color palettes to put them in order so the colors are easier to find.

Thank you Etienne, this app gets better and better!

Peonies in the Park

Peonies in the Park -029, 4x6", watercolor

Yesterday, my friend Anjali & I painted at a local park with a large bed of red peonies.

Those flowers were beautiful!

I'd like to go back there again before they fade.

Phone sketching is ROUGH!!!!

This morning we went out to breakfast. While waiting for our food, I tried sketching my coffee cup.

Wow! It was so hard to control where lines started and stopped and even where they went.

The top of this cup took 4 attempts to get those 3 colors to sit where they are.

This next one was just playing with stick figures.

Schaumburg Plein Air workshop - Final day

We were in Busse Woods near the boat ramp. It was 90+ deg, notthe best day for being away from air conditioning!

I did 2 paintings today. The first was a nice tranquil onelooking over the lake. Worked on this for about 3 hours.

Lake Study 024, 8x10” oils

The second was after lunch. Challenged myself to do this onein 45 minutes with a palette knife.

This sky study was interesting. Each time I looked up, theclouds were in a different formation!

Sky Study 024, 8x10” oils

Schaumburg Plein Air workshop - Day 3

This is the corner of a commercial bldg in town. I was standingon the sidewalk of a busy 4-lane road. The straight wide road was often actingas a wind-tunnel so my pochade box was doing a lots of moving!

I was attracted to the way the sun hit the face of thisbuilding and the streetlamp in the parking lot while the front flowers were inthe shade of a tree.

I’m happy with this painting. I particularly like the looseway the lamp, purple flowers and window turned out.

33 Roselle Rd, 8x10" oils

Schaumburg Plein Air workshop - Day 2

Day 2 of my local plein air workshop.

Today we wandered thru a very old neighborhood and happenedupon a wonderful old cottage garden. Lots of well established old-time flowerslike red peonies, purple flocks and orange poppies.

Luck was with us, we got permission to paint in that garden.

What drew me to this subject was the way the peonies seemedto glow in the sunlight.

Here is today’s painting while still in the garden.

After a critique at the end of the day, I went home and didsome touch ups and small additions. Here is the final painting.

Peonies & Iris, 16x20” oil

 

Schaumburg Plein Air workshop - Day 1

Today was the first day of a 4-day plein air (painting outdoors) workshop.

It was a gray day that kept threatening rain.

In the morning, we set up under the gazebo.

This is my morning painting. It's 8x10" oils on canvas panel.

 Local painter, Frankie Johnson, taught today’s class. Themain keys I got from her were contrast and simplicity.

I also tried to keep in mind what Tom Trausch, another localpainter, told me: remember the purpose of the painting.

I simplified a lot. But I think because of that &keeping focused on the iris, this is the first in a long time that I’ve likedone of my PAs when it was done.

It was a gray, overcast day with frequent rain but we were under a large gazebo so it worked out okay.

Luckily the weather forecast for the other 3 days of theworkshop is sunny.

e-fingerpainting on my phone

Trying to draw on my phone with my finger. 

This poor tree is my second attempt at e-fingerpainting. 

e-fingerpainting on the phone

I stopped during my errands this morning and tried a plein air in a new medium, my phone.
This morning I tried out the Android app Magic Doodle Pro on my Verizon Droid phone. 

From my limited experimenting with this app, the pros and cons of this are:
PROS: 
I’ve always got the app with me so I can paint anytime.
This is the height of stealth plein air. No one could tell I was painting. Looked like I was playing on my phone.
This app could zoom in & out. Had varying brushes and brush sizes.
App has way to email pictures so I can get the finished painting off the phone.

CONS:
The soft brush was too fuzzy. The hard-edged brush is better but will take some figuring out how to use it better. This painting was done with both brushes. You can see the difference.
It will take practice to set the brush down in the right place as my finger is always in the way!
The color palette is not set out in any logical order. While outside, it can be difficult to see what the colors on the palette are. And not being in a chromatic order doesn’t help.

This app has possiblilities but is going to take quite a bit of practice to achieve anything worthwhile.
It would be good for quick, thumbnail value sketches.

Overall, worth the $2 spent on the app and I’ll be playing with it more.
I’m also going to send these comments to the developer. He seems to be very responsive to suggestions.

Curiosity -Finished

I went back and tweaked some of the shadows on on this painting.

Now it's done.

16x20" oil pastel on gesso board, Curiosity

Link to post for work in progress

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Curiosity -Work in Progress

I thought the shared curiosity of these kids was a great idea for a painting.

The original reference photo had the kids a much smaller part of the composition. I cropped closer on the kids.

(Ref photo by “spydah” from the WetCanvas.com Ref Library.)

This is on 16x20" gesso board. (trying a new support).

First layer (underpainting) is cheap oil pastels, Lowell-Cornel, spread around with Res-N-Gel. (First photo)

The gesso board did a good job of letting the gel dry overnight. didn't dry as fast as paper but not too slow.

Then I started building up color using Sennelier oil pastels.

I still need to work the shadows a bit more on the little girl but I think I'm mostly done, just tweeking left to do. 

  

 

 

Taught first children's OP class

I taught my first oil pastel class today. 

2 boys, 2 girls, ages 7-10. It was great! 

Some ideas I went in with worked, some didn't. They caught onto concepts quicker than I thought.

But I overestimated their drawing skills. I adapted and walk them thru drawing shapes. We have 3 more weekly classes in this session. I need to figure out a way to help their drawing skills and still spend plenty of time painting. I need to ponder on this...

Here is what we did the first class:

(These are photos of my demos. They were working along with me. Next time I have to remember to take photos of their work.)

I asked them to pick out a warm and cool out of each of 4 brands of oil pastels. They all already knew what warm & cool colors were.  Then we made a large swatch of one of each brand and smeared it with a finger. We started out with the one that was about $3 for 60 sticks and progressed up to the one about $250 for 60 stick. I wanted them to see and feel the difference between hard & soft sticks as well as low and high pigment load.

Next we created a color chart of all the colors in the oil pastel box we were using. 

Cray-Pas Expressionist is a good quality with a good pigment load for not a lot of money. 

And the set of 25 is a good size to start with.

After that we started talking about lights and shadows.

Block on the top left is where i asked them what color to use to lighten orange. White. Then I asked what color to use to to darken orange. One girl answered " You can't use black that's too dark so maybe gray". I was impressed that she knew not to use black.

Then I said I had another way to do it (block on bottom left). I explained that we would use the color wheel and move 2 steps right and left to lighten and darken. And if we needed something really dark, we'd go straight across the color wheel to the complementary color. One boy knew what that was and offered that red & green are complementaries. When I did the blue shadow and added orange (complement) over it, They saw how this gave me a nice dark color.

Then I did the block using the color wheel again (top right), this time with them doing it with me. They caught onto these concepts so quickly and were telling me which colors to use. When I suggested that the2 step wasn't light enough, we tried adding a little white. And they saw there wasn't just one way to do it.

One surprise I had was that I had to coach them thru drawing line by line. I realized this when I drew the cubes above and asked them to draw one.So when we went on to the still life of the colored blocks, I drew center lines thru my photo and had them do the same on their paper. We located each line, what direction and about how long it was. I did it at the board and they followed on their papers. It took quite a while but they ended up with better results.

We went  thru putting colors on each block with them telling me what colors to use and me making occasional additional suggestions.

Their works varied greatly in how enthusiasticallythey spread the OP around but they all did good. And I think theyhad fun.

The Magic

"The Magic"

8x10" oil pastel on paper

(Heads are about 1" tall.)

The reference photo for  this painting was from a visit my niece & I took to Disney World last summer.

Since this was OUR Grand Adventure, I ignored the other 12, 000 people in the reference photo when I did the painting!

It's still winter here with snow on the ground. It was nice to work on something that reminded me of sunshine and warm weather.

Farewell Gift for Chelsie

4x6" oil pastel on paper



A friend was leaving the dance studio.

She only gave us one day's notice so I quickly painted this ballroom dance shoe for her.

It's kind of Cinderella-ish, the shoe left behind idea.

Like Cinderella, she has left an impression behind and will be missed.

And like Cinderella, I hope all her dreams for the future come true.



Chelsie, good luck with school!

Hoffman Estates Art League Show Jan 2010

   Link to Gallery







Today was a show opening a the Positive Strokes art gallery.

The show consists of painting from 9 artists from the Hoffman Estates Art League. (art league link)

I have 8 paintings  in the show.









I had such a great Time today. So many friends stopped by to see my paintings and chat.

The time just flew.

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