First stab at People and Salvage Piece

The lighthouse image to the left is another salvage piece. When first playing with acrylics, I slapped two layers on the canvas, a blue/black at the top, and a green/yellow at the bottom, and with smooth side to side strokes, called it "depth", the latest, greatest new age / abstract art piece there could ever be. Then, a month later, I added the land, light house tower, light and moon.

The other image, "Apalach" is endearing and precious to me as I'm taking a stab with people in it. PLUS, it is from a photo I took while we were crossing some huge bridge heading to St. George Island. Lovely memory, sweet people. I am learning that just hints are fine. Details aren't too essential to painting people and if you get hung up on it, it saps energy from the picture.

What do you think?

Today's lesson: Salvage away! And as for people, don't be afraid of trying your hand at suggesting them in your paintings.

Painting for myself

After creating so many paintings for other people, my husband and I decided it was high time I did one for us!

We both loved the red/orange tree branch one I had given my son Kris, so I did another like it for us. Except ours is huge (24 x 36) and now hangs in our dining room! It is simpler than the other. I tried using a heavy, thick brown paint (Liquitex Super Heavy Body) for the branches to give it more texture, but honestly, it was awful to work with since I was applying with a brush. I'm sure using palette knives it will do great, but with a brush, forget it! I had to redo parts of it several times over (the sky areas, especially) and decided to outline most leaves with a strong blue, the compliment to orange, to make them pop. I think it's a pretty decent one. Especially in digital version and when you stand far back from it.

Today's lesson: If you plan to use Super Heavy Body paint, use a palette knife!

End the madness... paint!

Today, I had a lovely conversation with Mary, my sister-in-law who is a skilled oil painter. I'm honestly shy talking about my painting endeavors with most people but she was so nice and inviting to chat with, and encouraging too.

And she put something I've been unable to express in words much better than I could: "I'm a much nicer person to be around when I paint," she said.

My mom used to swim laps in a pool to "swim the meanness" out of herself, and some people work out, do yoga, or whatever. I know when I can take a "purposeful" walk, it is pleasurable and relaxing.

I find when I am able to go into my studio or to painting classes, I feel this sort of release, a physical sigh, and my whole body relaxes into the moment. I forget about worries that I can't control, things that might or might not be coming down the pike, and just let go and create. There is something sensual and luxurious about controlling a paintbrush as it glides along the canvas or paper. As I mentioned, I write, and can get lost in typing onto a screen words that flow to the point I forget to eat. It is similar, but the dot dot dot of characters and words appearing on a computer screen do not compare to the pleasure of seeing a line of paint flow across paper or canvas support.

Today's Lesson: Painting is good therapy.

The last Christmas Gift paintings

I discovered what a great way to make folks feel loved and special AND practice painting all at once: PAINT them gifts!


And dirty little secret time: The middle one "Haybales" was done on recycled canvass I got at the local Goodwill store of a painting someone had started but never completed! It was a totally different style, so I gessoed over it and had a blank white canvas again!

The first one is also a sort of recyled one. It was done as an experiment using rubber cement as masking fluid before I ever bought any and with watered down acrylics, like in watercolor painting style. I hated it and it floated around the studio for a while until I took the brush and full strength paints to it, and really livened it up. It has special meaning to a lovely friend who lost her husband. She loves and collects hearts and we consider him a star in the sky. Get it?

The final painting is for another of my brothers. It's a simpler style crest which looks identical to the one we had hanging in our house as we were growing up. I think he's gonna love it!

Kris' Brooklyn Skyline

My older son, Kris, who lives in a gorgeous neighborhood in Brooklyn Heights, NY, wants a painting of Brooklyn. But he likes impressionist work, and wants one that has a sort of old-world feeling. I had a 6 x 12 canvas and a great image of the Brooklyn Bridge skyline at night and decided to try to convince him that THIS is what he really wanted for Christmas. It's in the mail and he's busy with final exams, work, and volunteering at a community shelter over the holidays, so I don't think he'll be reading this post and feel safe posting it...

Some of it works kinda nicely, I think. I used bubble paint for the light dots and some other streaks of light reflection in the water but didn't want to use too much of it.

I worked on this one, the Borch family crest, and the Bavarian Church scene all at the same time. Crazy stuff!

Moving mountains

This image is painted from a photo I took while traveling in Bavaria, Germany in 1991. I was staying with a lovely family who took me around the countryside on daytrips. I have kept in touch with them and decided what better way to express belated thanks than by making a painting of one of the scenes we experienced there together?

I am feeling more comfortable working with acrylics than watercolors, as you might be able to tell here. The trees came out really easily, and while the structure has a bit of wobbliness to it, it's not half bad, is it? Hazel added the gorgeous golden afternoon light glow to the building and we thought it was good to go until we noticed that the highest mountain peak was right behind the church's tower. I figured this was accurate since it is how it was in the photo, but Hazel and I went round and round about factual accuracy and art. In the end, I caved, moved the mountains (messed up a previously lovely sky), and ended up with this. When I tell you I messed up the sky, I'm serious, there are so many layers of paint under this I'm sure the postage will be increased by $3 because of the weight! LOL.

It's a pretty little thing, though and I like the serene feeling it evokes.

So, the moral of the story is, never put a mountain peak, tree trunk, rock crevice, castle, or other big structure directly behind your main subject. I hope that makes sense?

The Borch Crest

Working from a horrible copy and doing several hours of research, I was able to come up with this for the ex-husband.

I used a sort of tracing paper you can buy at art supply stores to trace the image onto the canvas, and worked from there.

Tackling the Walsh family crest

Growing up, my Walsh family had two things it could count on: chaos and the family crest. I don't know where the original came from, but dad had a copy of the full crest mounted in a large picture frame on the wall, and wore the pierced swan on a gold ring all his adult life. The motto is "transfixus sed non mortuus", wounded but not dead.

My younger brother, Kevin, who knew I was trying my hand at painting hinted a while back that it would be cool to paint the family crest. He even showed me a spot on a wall in his rec room where it would fit perfectly. So, I researched, got the best image I could find to reproduce, and used an enlarger lamp device and copied the image onto a 16 x 20 canvas with pencil. I had seen my BFF Bindy enlarge computer generated images in this way and figured it might just work.

The first day back to painting class for a shorter, 2 week "intersession" I brought in the pre-traced crest image and my acrylic paints. Starting with a very large (1-1/2" mural) brush, reasoning that I was painting a large area, Hazel came by, first told me to work with a smaller 16-round brush and not worry about laying the paint on the canvas in any good order to begin with since I'd be covering and reworking it several times. I had been trying to paint as one would paint a wall, strokes all going in the same way, but she explained that doing that would show subsequent brush strokes that couldn't possibly mirror the same length and style of stroke I was already using so random, smaller ones were better.

This was an absolute b**ch to paint, pardon my french! I had not planned it out too well, the greenery around the shield was supposed to be exactly the same on both sides, and the "arrows" that look like eyes and nose are supposed to be identical in size. So much for perfection. And I do recall Kevin saying he wouldn't be bothered by a loose interpretation of the crest. He just wanted something...

All told, I think I spent more than 20 hours on this, but am very, very proud of the effort. I know I'll have a hard time figuring out how to ship it -- he lives in Virginia, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Sorry about the lousy photo - it'll have to do in a pinch.

I plan to do at least one more crest for another brother, and try to do one of the "Borch" family for my ex-husband. As my son's family name, I figured they would appreciate the effort I put into the research and creation and I knew he'd like it too.