The Evolution of a Painting--"Skimming"

I started this painting in a workshop I taught in March. I liked the heron, but found the background too contrived. I was influenced by my success with another vertical strata painting, and wanted to revisit that compositional format in a horizontal painting. 

 

The next step I took was to get rid on the thin decorative line under the bird, and tone down the ink made marks in the gold/green bottom layer. This was done by tinting white gesso and covering the bottom part of the the painting and texturing it with my toothed credit card tool.  I made the upper squares larger and added calligraphy to enhance the line coming down to the dark. I also made the hard line above the water more interesting by adding some collage pieces. (Ignore the overall color change, as it is simply a photo and computer issue.)

 

Eventually, I got rid of the light colored upper strip, combining it with the dark, yet leaving the break made by a stamp. Once this was done, I had to make the upper wing light against dark, rather than dark against light. I had to use light around the upper squares to keep them from just blending into the dark background. I got some advice from a friend on how to make the forward wing more interesting and believable. I put a blue/green wash over the foreground to tie it in with the top of the painting, creating more color harmony.

 

Today when I looked at the foreground, I realized that the green was too dominant. But how would I neutralize it? (I thought back 20 years to when the house paint I bought turned out to remind me of the color of urine. Since I had bought several gallons, I took it in for the paint expert to neutralize the yellow and create a tan that I could live with. I remember my surprise when he said he would add a few drops of magenta.  It worked!) So today, using that past memory plus stuff I've learned through my years of painting that a magenta transparent wash would do the trick. To finish the painting and give the horizontal composition a vertical line, I cut around a stamped paper and painted a pleasing color on it, glued it down at the bottom. I adding that green to my upper squares, de-emphasizing the white. So now is it finished?

 

Skimming, mixed media, 22 x 30

A Sunday hike: Retrieving Game Camera

 

A few months ago my husband, Mike, bought a game camera. It is a great hobby for him, since it includes getting out in the woods, investigating areas for a good viewing, and learning about the habits of the wildlife in our area. He is careful not to share too much about where he's filmed the animals, since he's captured cougar, bobcats, bears and other animals someone might be inclined to eliminate, but he's generous with the footage. You'll find a link to view the wildlife caught on camera in the last 2 weeks.

With the wonderful change in the weather today, I decided to walk in with him to retrieve his camera. Above you see him unscrewing the camera case. It was an interesting walk, as we encountered lots of animal signs, but way too many signs of humans as well.

 

Sign of wildlife: tree rubbed bare by elk antlers.

 

Sign of human: crumpled metal roofing in the woods.

 

Sign of wildlife: a large elk footprint.

 

Sign of human: boundary sign used for target practice.

 

Sign of wildlife: a woodpecker's handiwork in a fallen log.

 

Sign of human: dumped clothes washer.

There are stories left in these woods, like the one behind this grave-site. The dog collar left on the wooden cross tells us a small portion of the story.

 

And for me, there is always the enjoyment of the plant life --like this wild iris

 

and the dogtooth violet (Erythronium dens-canis).

 

Thanks for taking today's walk with me. Here's the link to the wildlife footage (both nighttime and daylight clips.)  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3tPsPKaT4A

Eye of Newt, Boy with Cast, Man hauling Boy

 

Two and a half weeks ago our four-year-old grandson, Noah, had surgery on his left foot, landing him in a big ol' cast. The surgery was done to further release the tendons in his foot. (He was born with a club foot.) Kids being kids, Noah has learned to scoot, crawl, climb and become pretty self-reliant.

Mike and I volunteered to bring him down to Blue River for a vacation. It's the first visit when he is the only kid here, which is a treat. Mike and I are getting quite an upper-body workout lifting Noah here and there. But outside, it's the time tested wagon as the preferred mode of transportation.

 

Yesterday, we spent several hours outside. Noah played with dinosaurs around the rock garden and supervised Dabbadoo's power washing techniques. While gardening, I dug up this newt, which was pretty entertaining.

 

Anybody know the name of this amphibian?

 

Wow! Now Come Awards Aplenty

 

The Watercolor Society of Oregon held their annual Spring Convention April 13-15. I was involved as the Vice President of the organization and was pleased to have my painting, River Strata, juried into the show of 80 paintings. I was secretly hoping that my piece would make it into the top 20 award winning paintings that go on state-wide tour, but the competition is strong, and I've only been in the top 20 once before.

Imagine my amazement when my painting was awarded the top prize, "Best of Show," by the Juror Carla O'Conner. I feel deeply honored, dizzily happy, and pinch-ably surprised in receiving this award. To all the other WSO artists in the show, your beautiful paintings make my award very meaningful, because all the paintings were wonderfully creative and thoughtfully rendered.

If you live in the Portland area, the show will be at the Oregon Society of Artists Building, 2185 Southwest Park Place, Portland, OR 97205. The gallery is open Tues.-Sat. afternoons.

As if this wasn't enough, I also had my painting, Rogue Heron, in the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies show at Las Vegas at the same time. Rogue Heron was awarded the Mary "Betts" Baepler Award, with a "Certificate of Recognition for an exceptional water media painting," by Juror Gerald Brommer. With that came an amazingly large ribbon. (You need to know how enormous our cat is to truly appreciate the size of this ribbon!)

 

My friend Ruth Armitage attended the convention in Las Vegas and took this picture for me. Rogue Heron is hanging bottom row, second from the left.

 

Following the WSO convention in Portland, came a workshop taught by Carla O'Conner. I was lucky enough to be one of the 20 folks in her workshop. She is such a creative and talented painter that I was really inspired to try some new things and continue to take risks.

What was a totally unexpected upshot of winning the top honors at the show, was that I now feel a pressure to live up to that level of competence and creativity in my future work. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that in upcoming posts.

Minor Changes Can Improve a Painting

I painted Gone To Ruins this past summer. I entered it into a competition in the fall and it was rejected. 

It was, in ways, a hard piece to paint in my style, because it is a structure and there are no organic elements except for the sky. I liked many parts of the painting, but always felt it was too static. I also saw the small pieces going out of the painting as too busy.  

Because I still had faith in the painting, I decided to make some minor changes to correct the 2 things I saw as problems with the piece.

 

Gone To Ruins   (Before)

 

Gone To Ruins (After)

To add a bit of movement to the piece, I made a small stamp and used it in a number of places to add interest, a sense of play, and detail to tie the large blocks to the more intricate interior. I also reworked the lower portion to eliminate the smaller blocks that had pulled the eye out of the painting. 

I entered the revised version of the painting in the Emerald Art Center's National Show competition and the piece was accepted. 

Do you see the changes as improvements?

A Spring Break Project--The Pouch

I have been eyeing a project from Mary Todd Beam's book, Celebrate Your Creative Self, for some time. Having a seven year old who is packed with creativity and stick-to-it spirit seemed like a perfect time to try it out.

One of the things I liked about this was gathering materials, especially natural things. We had to substitute certain materials called for in the book that we didn't have on hand, but that made it even more fun.

 Marin started with an old painting of mine and tore it up. To this she applied matte medium and acrylic paint. This made the paper very flexible, somewhat like leather. We let this dry overnight.

Next steps involved a hole punch and shoe strings to fold the pouch and tie it together. We gathered feathers, sticks and great lichens blown out of trees with the spring storms.

Today, we found a nice piece of home-grown bamboo to hang it from. Marin strung some beads and buttons to hang from the pouch. She glued feathers to the stick to decorate it. The final step was to fill the pouch with Mother Nature's treasures.

 

Marin with her project almost complete.

The Pouch

 

The final step, filling the pouch with found natural objects.