FIRST OIL PAINTING IN 43 YEARS!

May 20th I took a delightful oil painting class from local oil painter, Cindy Crofoot. I had not painted in oils for over 43 years, and had never received any oil instruction at all. Here are the two (nearly finished) oil paintings I did in her workshop. I highly recommend Cindy as a teacher. Water color is my true love, but I'm not so scared of oils now.

(Debi...I told you there was a duck!)

SPECIAL OLYMPICS

At the art guild some of us have been giving classes for the Special Olympics athletes. Unfortunately, I only have pictures of two of our projects from April 30 and May 28. It's definitely been fun for me, and I think they have had a good time. We hope to do it again in the fall.

Here are some of the straw-blowing projects. They blew watercolor paint through straws and glued eyes onto them to create some crazy critters.

The theme of the four classes is "All About Me." Here they are painting masks to represent something about themselves and their personalities.These are from May 28.

MASA PAINTING - PREPARING THE PAPER

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING & MOUNTING MASA PAPER

Masa paper is a type of machine-made Japanese art paper made from sulphite pulp. It is soft and white, has internal and surface sizing, and is archival. Masa can be used for a wide range of art techniques, including sumi painting, watercolor, and printmaking. One side is smoother and shinier than the other.

Masa paper is also very inexpensive, compared to the cost of regular watercolor paper. It does, however, need to be mounted on watercolor paper. So this is where your CHEAP watercolor paper comes in handy.

Using masa paper became popular when famous watercolor artist Cheng-Khee Chee (I always think

“Chunky Cheese”)  used it widely. You can find many examples of his art work on line or in his book.

Try Google-ing “masa paper” and you will find some beautiful artwork done by others as well. There

are even a few you-tubes out there on the subject.

Different teachers teach this painting technique several ways. We are going to do it the easiest way

I have found.

1.      FIRST, make a small X in a corner in pen on the SHINY side of the paper. You will not paint on this side.

2.      SECOND: This is the fun part. Wad the paper up and crinkle it until you have the effect you want. (this breaks the sizing in the paper, so when you paint on it you get a textured effect.)

3.      THIRD: dip the paper in clean water to soak it thoroughly.

4.      FOURTH: Spread the paper on some paper towels on your board.

5.      FIFTH: On the side without the X, make washes of clean color over your paper. Be sure to leave some white spots. You do not have to cover all the paper. You can plan a little bit here: put cool colors in shadow areas, warm colors where you want some warms. Don’t over-think this. Have fun with it. Your wash may look dark, but it will dry much lighter.

What masa looks like after step 5.

NOTE: Because the masa paper is so wet, it is fragile at this time, so be gentle with it or it will tear. If it does get a tear, don’t despair! When you glue it down, the tear will not show, but look like part of the crinkle texture. (Not you can see a tear in this picture at the top, but in the picture of it glued down, the tear is not noticeable.)

6.      SIXTH: Dry completely. You can set it over a fan to speed the drying, but the fan will leave

some of its own marks on the paper.

AT THIS POINT, YOU CAN DRAW ON YOUR PAPER AND CONTINUE TO CAREFULLY PAINT ON IT AND THEN MOUNT IT, OR YOU CAN MOUNT IT FIRST. PAINTING ON IT WITHOUT MOUNTING CREATES MORE INTERESTING EFFECTS, BUT THE PAPER BECOMES MORE FRAGILE. CHOOSE WHICH WAY YOU LIKE!

7.      MOUNT THE DRIED PAINTING on some cheap watercolor paper. Now is the time to use up some of that cheap stuff you bought before you knew better. (NOTE: You can also mount masa paper on canvas!)

a.      Make a mixture of 2 parts mat medium or white glue to 1 part water.

NOTE THIS IS MAT MEDIUM, not gloss. Gloss will not accept paint very well.

b.      Using a large old brush, spread the glue onto the watercolor paper, just slightly bigger than the masa paper.

c.      Place your painting over the glued paper and press down.

d.      Put some wax paper over the masa painting and using a brayer or other pressure, roll over all of it to seal to the wc paper. (The wax paper is there to keep from getting glue and wet paint all over your hands and materials….the glue tends to make the paint bleed a little bit.)

e.      Air dry until you no longer feel glue around the edges.

f.       Press the painting between two boards lined with butcher or wax paper and weigh down until completely dry.

8.      DRAW on your sketch using either a light box or graphite paper (Saral). I don’t sketch directly onto it because I don’t want erasures on the masa paper.

9.      PAINT using whatever method works for your painting.

In this painting, I've begun by washing over the red strawberries with two shades of reds, 

letting them run together, and being careful to leave the stems and leaves alone. When that dried, I painted the dark areas by negative painting the shadows behind the strawberries with a mix of red and adding some blue. At this point, they are just beginning to look rounded, and the paint is still transparent looking.

The leaves were washed over with yellow, dropping in a little blue to make the green color. Again, this was done keeping the paint trasparent looking, not thick. I darkened the shadows between the leaves with blue. I put a light wash of green over the stems and buds.  Then I added a slightly darker

green to the lines in the leaves, leaving one edge hard and softeneing the other edge with water.

This painting is not finished. More on it after next class.

Negative Painting on Textured background

Instructions for

Negative Painting #1

Start with a background that you have used texture techniques on:

Salting, Saran wrap, straw blowing, or spattering. LEAVE WHITE,

Especially in the places you want to have as points of interest.

After it is dry, draw on your design. It should have INTERLOCKING

shapes. (This can be leaves, daisies, cone flowers, fish, or any other

repeating shape in different sizes)

The rule is to NOT HAVE ANY TWO NEGATIVE SHAPES

the same distance apart or the same size.

In the first picture you can see the interlocking leaves drawn over the textured paper. In the bottom right corner, you can see where I have begun to paint blue behind the leaves, in the negative space. I've carried that color to the other side of the leaf to avoid looking like a patchwork quilt.

Using a medium value paint, PAINT THE NEGATIVES, or the spaces

between your shapes. This should make all your positive shapes pop

out. You should be able to see whether you have a good design.You can always make them darker later.

When painting these negatives, remember to bring your color through

to other shapes so they don’t look like a patchwork quilt. You want the

illusion that all of that is behind your positive shapes.

When you are happy with the background, you can start on the positive

shapes. The positives are brought out by painting into the shape underneath them,

making that a negative space. (More on that next week)

In the second picture, you can see all the space behind the leaves has been painted in with a medium tone. You begin to see the leaf shapes.

NOTE ON COMPOSITION:

We also talked about the “Golden Mean” of composition. This is the ideal

place to put your center of interest, the natural places your eyes want to go

first. There are many ways of making something “pop” as a center of interest

You can use complementary colors; very light against very dark; harder edges

if most of your surrounding edges are soft; or  a spot of “surprise” color.

WaterColor Class: Textures 1

Instructions for

WC Textures #1

RULE #1:

Always paint on very dry or shiny wet paper. Nothing in between.

Check dryness by touching your finger to unpainted paper, then

touching the painted section. If the paint feels cool or damp to the touch,

it is not dry enough to paint on. If the painted section is still shiny, you

can still add more paint to it.

Divide your paper into four rectangles using masking tapes. The tape

is just there to keep paint of one practice from bleeding into another.

You only need three paints, one of each primary: yellow, blue, red.

Make puddles of each color. (When you put the paint on the paper, the

color will be a medium value, not puddle-y, not thick, but not too thin

and watery. You want it to stay transparent. ALWAYS TRY TO HAVE

YOUR PAINTS DILUTED AND READY so you are not at a critical

point and have to stop to mix paint.

In this picture you see the first section salted; second saran wrap; third straw blowing; fourth spattering. When the paint dried, I lifted a picture of a dog and a circle into the salted section.

Wet the first section with your brush. (You can use a spray bottle to

wet it, since we are using the whole section wet into wet.) Brush in

paints loosely, at least a medium tone. (too light will not show effects)

Apply kosher salt on half of the paint, PAINT MUST BE SHINY,

NOT PUDDLE-Y, and apply popcorn or table salt

to the other half. (To apply salt, take a small pinch, hold about 12”

from the painting, and gently sprinkle. Too much salt will be a pain

to remove.) LET THIS DRY ON ITS OWN. As time goes on, the

salt keeps reacting.

USES: snow, a kittens fur, beards, small white flowers in a field, sand.

On the second section, apply paint wet-into-wet as before. This time,

Crinkle saran wrap and lay it over the wet paint. Weigh it down. Let it

dry on its own.

USES: fast flowing water, reflections in glass, rock, leaves, flowers.

On the third section, make a quarter-sized puddle of paint. Blow it with a straw.

Make another puddle of a different color and blow it with a straw. See how

Many spidery webs you can make with this.

USES: wild grass, jelly fish, just for fun.

On the fourth section, make a wet clean stripe down the center. You

Will be spattering the entire section, but spatters will look different on the

Wet section. To spatter, load your brush (probably a round one) with paint,

Then smack it against your finger or another brush. Use several colors.

On one of the dry sections, lightly spray water to move the paint just a bit.

It will look softer, but not as soft as the wet area.

USES: distant flowers or foliage; rocks or gravel; speckles on an animal,

Rusty metal, old wood.

 After all was dry, we used a stiff lifting or scrubber brush to lighten an area.

Beginning Watercolor Project April 13

INSTRUCTIONS FOR JOYE MOON’S PROJECT USING SHAPES

Credit for this project goes to Joye Moon. In her book, Exploring Textures in Watercolor, Joye Moon shows this project and many more in an easy to understand format.

1. Draw shapes on your paper, making them overlap and creating new shapes. Use circles, squares, triangles, etc. Make sure you have some large, some medium, and some small shapes.

2. Wet a larger shape with water. Charge in a primary 

color along the edges, allowing it to bleed into the 

center, leaving the center mostly white and creating 

variations of the shade. Repeat this with the other two

primary colors on two other larger shapes. This created 

a “modeled” shape that gives the illusion of volume,

 instead of looking flat.

The edges that you create on the outer part of the shape

is a "hard edge. It defines a shape. The soft parts on

the inside are "soft edges," sometimes called "lost edges."

3. Try some with putting red in one corner, 

blue in another, and yellow in another. Notice the 

beautiful neutrals this creates.

4. Choose three other shapes. In each of those, wet each shape, one at a time. Put one primary color at one corner and another primary color at another edge. Allow the colors to co-mingle on the wet surface to create greens, violets, and oranges. Be sure that you paint only next to an edge that is dried.

 5. Combine complimentary colors to make a variety of neutrals and grays. Again, wet a shape. Put one color in part of the shape and add its compliment at another, allowing them to mix. (blue/orange; yellow/purple; red/green


6. The rest of the shapes are painted “flat,” without wetting the paper first. Try to find sections where you can add an analogous (or neighboring) color. For example, put a red near an orange or purple.

7. Leave some of the shapes as unpainted spaces to create a more interesting design.

 TERMS and subjects covered

Wet-into-wet              primary colors         painting only on very wet or very dry paper

Charging                     mixing colors          using the largest brush that will do the job

Neutrals                      painting only on very wet or very dry surfaces

Hard edges                  soft edges

Hope you enjoyed this introduction to water color!

Japanese Girl in Kimono

I just completed this water color last night. At first, I thought it was kind of boring, but then I used a washi rice paper with a bamboo look on the background, applied with mat medium. I love the effect. It really makes the subject pop out.