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Painting teeth, part 2

| maggiebird

Last week I left this blog in a sort of a cliff hanger, with a painting of teeth that looked like the wicked smile of a television vampire. This week I want to show you how I repaired that purple smile.

Scrub out mistakes

I’ve heard many people say that watercolor is unforgiving. That’s not entirely true; you can scrub out all but the most persistently staining colors. It’s true that you’ll never get the same clarity that pristine paper under pigment will give you, so in some styles of painting (like Charles Ried‘s off-the-cuff splashy style) scrubbing isn’t really an option.

I paint  tonally, and I find I can work around the surface of the paper being slightly damaged. It also helps that I use a tough paper like Arches #300 that can, like Timex watches, take a licking and keep on ticking.

watercolor image
Erased mistake on watercolor image

I first tried scrubbing out the purple lips with my trusty ancient Winsor Newton Series 7 . There’s something about sable that will gently get into the paper and loosen the pigment.

But sometimes the sable can’t do much. That ghastly purple color on his lips was mineral violet, which is obviously a staining color. What to do?

Sandpaper! I used a very fine sandpaper (P800) to rub away the purple smile. I made sure the watercolor paper was absolutely dry to avoid tearing it apart. The sand paper removed  the color and made a smooth surface on the paper that will take paint almost as well as the original paper.

Redefine the teeth

watercolor image of teeth
Redefining teeth

Using a clean mixture of cadmium red light and quinacridone rose I restated the negative space that defines the shape of the teeth. Getting the shape of the teeth is important for finding a likeness; in this study I made the teeth just a bit too long, so I adjusted the shapes a bit. The brightness of the red is startling, but it’s important to get the right value of the color in the shadows. I lowered the chroma (the brightness and intensity of the color) later.

Why use red in this instance? Because the lips and mouth are areas that are filled with blood. Even if it looks dark, it’s going to be a warm dark. The red gives a base for this warm, bloody darkness; a cool wash will tone this down but still allow the life of the initial red paint to glow through.

Balance color

Painting teeth in watercolor
More refinement of teeth, and balancing of colors in image

I refined the teeth some more, and used a darker red to give the inside of the mouth a bit more color shift. At this point I also balanced the color on the rest of the face.

Final cool wash

Painting teeth
Final watercolor image with blue wash

Once I felt satisfied with  the values and shapes, I took the last scary step: a cool blue wash over the shadowed parts of the face. This is a step that’s difficult to recover from, so I really look closely at a painting, sometimes letting it sit for a few days before I make my move.

When everything was the way I wanted it, I mixed up a very clean, light puddle of cobalt blue and glazed over the shadows areas, paying close attention to the lost and found edges of the wash. This is what watercolors do best; the cobalt blue subdues the brightness of the colors, but allows them to glow through the blue pigment.

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August red moon is also blue

| maggiebird
August moon
Small watercolor sketch of August moon rising over corn field

The moon that rises tonight is the the red moon, the green corn moon, and the full sturgeon moon. Yesterday I made some watercolor sketches to try to capture the images floating through my mind. Those are often the hardest images to catch.

watercolor sketch of moon
Small watercolor sketch of red moon that is also a blue moon

The moon tonight is also a blue moon, which always sounds awfully romantic. That’s a tough color combination: the unearthly green-blue of a summer moon and the glowing red of an August moon (especially if you live in an area hard hit by wildfire).

Watercolor sketch of moon
Red moon 

But my favorite sketch is of the simple red orb floating over our heads in the blue-black sky. I don’t know why the moon holds such fascination, exacts such devotion, and provides such comfort to earthly denizens. Gravity? Magic? Or simply familiarity with a beautiful companion to our blue earth?

Loss and a call for help for a fellow artist

| maggiebird

With great sadness I read that of one of my favorite bloggers, Gretel Parker at Middle of Nowhere,  has suffered the terrible loss of her long-time partner. I’ve read her blog for years, and have admired her for her strength, talent, and courage. I have gotten to know her lovely needle felting, her charming illustrations, and the bits of her story she shared with the world. My heart is breaking for her loss.

The blogosphere is a strange place. You write about yourself as if you were on  a secret desert island and then float your carefully chosen words like messages in a bottle bobbing on the interweb sea. And you find messages from other castaways who have sent out their own words corked in the smokey glass of a blog post.

In this way we build shipping lanes of friendships and acquaintances from messages floating on the digital tide. And we make connections whether or not we know we are making those connections. Gretel’s blog had a way of doing that.

To help Gretel, who is not only suffering from the grief of losing half her heart, but will also be going through some real financial upheavals, two bloggers, Suzanne Houghton and Tara Change, have started a fund raising effort on her behalf called the Gretel Parker Project. If you have enjoyed her blog, I hope that you will be able to help her out.

And my friends, hug your loved ones. Tell them that you love them and hold them close.

Music Sunday

| maggiebird

JohnFiddling

Portrait of a fiddler (but not my fiddler), done in a Canson sketch book with a Pigma Micron pen.

Music is an essential part of my life. You all know what that means. I almost never play much music anymore.

People are funny that way; the things that mean the most to us often take a back seat to everything else. And despite the fact that the fiddler and I love to play music, (in fact, playing traditional Irish music is the oldest, strongest part of our relationship) we are both scheduled to the hilt with non-musical tasks, and so we don’t often have a day devoted to tunes.  To break this trend, we decided to make last Sunday a music day.

The first event we attended was the 9th Annual Santa Cruz Harp Festival at Our Lady Star of The Sea Church, presented by Shelley Phillips of the Community Music School of Santa Cruz. I hope you’ll see more about this wonderful school in future posts.

Harp players

I’ve never seen so many harps in one place! Pixie harps, celtic harps, concert harps, wire strung harps. The music was lovely, the church was beautiful, with lots of milky winter ocean light pouring through etched-glass windows. Perfect for drawing, but the sanctuary was crowded, and I was, of course, struck with extreme shyness.  Someone might look at me! Oh! The Horror! But I dredged up some grit, got out my journal and sketched while the musicians played. If anyone watched me, I didn’t know about it. I listened to the music and drew. It was like a little bit of heaven.

WomanFiddling

If you click on this sketch, you’ll be able to see a blurry bit on the fiddler’s chin (also not my fiddler) where my pennywhistle dripped moisture as I played a tune over the half finished drawing. Although the pen was a Pigma Micron, and supposedly waterproof, I guess it’s not immune to pennywhistle drool. 

Afterwards we stopped at The Poet & The Patriot Pub for the last bit of the Irish session. It was brilliant fun, and once again I forced myself to open the journal and draw (mostly while the other musicians played tunes I didn’t know). No one even payed attention; they were intent on their jigs and reels. And that was the most lovely thing of all.

Celtic harp

Last year and next

| maggiebird
Luke_unfinished
Luke (detail of unfinished watercolor painting)
© 2012 Margaret Sloan

Finding time for reflection on the past year is difficult, smack dab in the middle of several projects I’d like to finish before the week is out. But after reading Rose Welty’s lovely New Year’s post, I thought I’d take a stab at casting a backwards glance over 2011, and peering forward into 2012.

Here’s what I accomplished in the last year:

  • Entered and won an art competition
  • Had my first solo gallery show
  • Painted. A lot

I admit, I’m not good at marking time over the long haul. The concept of time, longer than a few hours, gets away from me. The past, even just a few weeks ago, seems like it happened in another lifetime. As for the future? I never quite believe that next year (heck, tomorrow) will actually show up, hat in hand, at my doorstep and demand to be let into the house. I realize this grasshoppery attitude probably bodes ill for my little-old-lady future, so occasionally I do try to plan.

My goals for next year:

  • Make an artist website
  • Blog more often
  • Make it possible for people to buy my art
  • Enter  a few art competitions
  • Apply for a residency.

But my main goal? Paint. A lot.  Which may supersede all the other goals. Because painting is what makes the long year worth the heavy slog.

 

P.S. Don’t forget to comment on this post to get a free gift.

 

 

For the love of a hound

| maggiebird

Cordelia and Jack

 

Cordelia and Jack
© Margaret Sloan 2012
Watercolor on paper

My friend Cordelia has two rescue greyhounds, a little female and a great big male. I was surprised to find just how big they are, and also, what great dogs they make for working people. She says her two dogs sleep most of the day, frolic a bit when she comes home, then need to rest up. They are lovely dogs who will take a lot of petting from the houseguest with the big camera.

It was great to spend a day with her, photographing and sketching. I got my dog fix, and had a nice long girlie chat with Cordelia.

Building better habits

| maggiebird

 

Fox in Snow
Watercolor sketch done as part of nightly habit-building practice

Since surgery, I’ve been having trouble climbing back on that part of the wheel where I paint and draw. It’s not just the exhaustion and residual pain that keeps me from picking up pencil and paintbrush; it seems like something deeper. It’s as if my drive chain got rusty from all the anesthetics and antibiotics.

This will never do. A few days vegetating in front of Netflix is okay, but I would never be happy with this as my lifestyle.

But serendipity often smiles on the frustrated. This week, Paul Fox at Learning to See began a daily practice forum that will last for a week. Only 6 days. And the beauty of it is, he emails every morning to remind us.

The idea is this: To develop a habit (any habit, but in this case, a daily art practice habit), you look for a trigger action. It can be anything small, but definite. Like drinking a cup of coffee. Or combing your hair. Something that’s routine, so that you’ll do it everyday.

You use this trigger as an entry point into the habit you want to create. It reminds you of the following action. For example: After you drink your coffee, you take out your sketchbook and draw.

I chose the trigger of our nightly walk, which is a longstanding habit that’s triggered by eating dinner (believe me, we never miss a meal). After coming home from my walk, I stretch a bit, take off my shoes (putting them away), and then start to paint.

It’s worked for 4 nights in a row. We’ll see if I can keep it going after this lovely little habit-building forum is over.

St. Stephen’s Day

| maggiebird

Yesterday we spend Christmas on the San Francisco Bay. It looked rather like this, although this painting was actually painted this summer, under Felicia Forte’s tutelage.

Baylands
Oil on panel

It was a bright, hazy day yesterday, another spare-the-air day, so we couldn’t see through the smog to the mountains across the bay. But we knew they were there.

Today looks like this:

Fog study
Oil on Panel

It’s a foggy, muzzy morning, and I’m taking a good rest before the Wren Boy madness that tonight will bring.

Happy holidays to all, and may you have a good winter rest sparked with late night music and dancing!

Can a painter travel lightly across the land?

| maggiebird
Painter's travel kit

I haven’t been posting much lately, because I’ve been painting! Painting and traveling.

We took a trip to Chicago in the spring. Despite the Chicagoan’s fanstasies that the weather was springlike, it was a bitterly cold city. (Where I’m from, we complain when we have to put socks on in the winter. Any temperature under 59 degrees F., and I’m done.)

It was also a city where, I was advised, we wouldn’t need a car, since the public transportation is epically transportational.

What? No car? I’m a person who chooses automobiles based on the amount of nooks and crannies on the passenger side. When I travel, I need a rolling art studio. I paint while my husband drives.

The best car I ever used was a Dodge van we rented for a camping trip. Cubbies in the door held paintbrushes, pencils, and pens at the ready; 4 drink holders between the front seats kept steady two cups of water and two cups of coffee; the deep, wide dashboard displayed paintings that were not yet dry; and the open door of the glove box made the perfect mobile easel.

You can imagine how much stuff I brought on that (or any) camping trip. Several sketchbooks, a folder of watercolor paper, a couple of Arches watercolor blocks, and a lined notebook. I even brought the laptop and Wacom tablet.

But in Chicago, traveling by bus and subway, I had to pare down. Way down.

Homemade travel journal

What you see in the photo above is what I came up with.

I’m not a book binder, so I couldn’t stitch together anything fancy; instead I cut to size a variety of papers: Strathmore drawing paper, BFK Rives printing paper (tan colored), and Arches 300-lb cold and hot press papers.

Then I got the local copy shop to drill holes in the paper. They couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move the bits on their drill, so I was lucky my notebook fit in the 8.5-inch slot on the paper-drilling machine.

They wouldn’t drill the covers. They said, what the h*ll is this stuff? It was merely illustration board covered with acrylic gesso, but I guess it looked like some strange building material to them.  I had to drill those with my trusty hand drill (it used to belong to my grandfather. It’s probably 60 years old, and still works like a champ.)

Binder ring journal

The paper was all held together with binder rings.

It was perfect for the trip. I could paint or draw on whatever type paper I wanted that day. I didn’t have to work sequentially, because at the end of the day I could reorder the paper as I liked. And to reduce weight (and protect the already painted pages), I would only bring part of the journal each day as I shivered my way around Chicago.