I’m super excited to tell you that this painting of a little Irish dancer has been accepted to the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society’s show, “Think Large…Paint Small.”
It’s one of my favorite paintings I’ve made this year. I saw this little girl dance last spring at an exhibition show for children at the Bay Area Discovery Museum; she was the only one in her beginner class, and she danced alone. I thought her quite a brave little girl to dance solo for an audience of her peers.
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Happy After-Solstice Saturday!
My birthday doodle has turned into a painting idea.
I like to plan my paintings, doing lots of composition sketches, and then making thumbnail color sketches. (which color combination do you like best?).
Then I spend time perfecting the drawing.
Still some work to do on the woman’s arms and torso, and some cleaning up of the face.
The little girl finally has a face.
Tomorrow I’m hoping to begin painting.
My artist friend Cynthia says that I like the planning part best; that’s the big part of my process of making art. Yes, she’s right.
I do like to plan, and not just because I’m a tad bit compulsive. I like to plan because that allows me to be more spontaneous when I get to the big painting (on the expensive paper). I like to experiment before I start, trying out many different things. In fact, I wish I had time to do more of it.
Who knows how this painting will turn out? Sometimes it’s all a crap shoot, really. Sometimes all the pre-planning in the world doesn’t make for a good painting.
My blogging friend Chris (who brilliantly identified this drawing as a mandala, before I even made that connection), at Groundswell, likes to play Mahjong at the computer. She wrote last week:
“We think we are at the end. . . that no other possibilities for movement exist. . . and then, we see one more tile, turn it over, and everything opens up, everything changes.
We can never see everything or be fully “prepared” for what’s to come. And in this Mystery is much of the joy that is life, and, of course, some of the suffering.”
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Red-haired Girl (cropped) Watercolor 300# Arches hot press Copyright 2012 by Margaret Sloan
Model guild benefits are wonderful opportunities for painting. There are often two sections: short poses and long poses. I like to spend the morning at the short pose session, warming up with gesture drawings. After a quick lunch, I get down to brass tacks for a single long pose. After racing through the brittle morning time of 1-, 2-, and 5-minute poses, I can relax into the long 3-hour pose, and the afternoon unravels and stretches like a rubber band. My mind settles solidly into the work.
It may feel luxurious to have 3 full hours with the same pose, but the model’s timer is still ticking, so I like to organize my process. For this 3-hour pose, I allowed myself 40-minutes (2 20-minute periods) to make a graphite drawing, then I started painting. I try to get an accurate drawing quickly, as poses shift slightly over time, and even the best, most rock-solid models have to take a breath now and then. And once you start painting with watercolor, you can’t make a lot of easy changes.
There is really nothing like painting from life. You are able to see infinite numbers of color that could never show up in a photograph. The blue-green in the shadows around the eyes, the mineral violet in the shadows. You can see the subtle shifting of values, the way the skin flows over muscle and bone.
I’m not against painting from (your own) photos. In the interest of time and money, I often use digital references. But there is nothing like painting the portrait of a live person. Here’s to life.
L’chaim!
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After reading Sue Smith’s blog at Ancient Artists about pushing your art to the next level, I felt I needed to challenge myself. So, watercolor backpack in hand, and a stack of failed paintings (the backs of the paper still pristine, ready for work) under my arm, I headed to a local life drawing session to try my hand at sketching with water and paint.
I was in a kerfuffle from the first moments, adrift without the guiding compass of charcoal pencils and kneaded eraser. And painting at the session was completely different from painting at home. Normally I stand at my easel and work on a vertical surface; at the session, I sat at a table, paper propped on my backpack.
1-minute watercolor war zone
Right away, my body rebelled against sitting. My neck and back ached, my hands stung, and my butt fell into a pins-and-needle coma. The process of painting like that was awful.
I floundered during the first 20-minute set of 1-minute poses, completely rudderless and out of control. I thrashed about with brush, paper, paint, water, making a mess.
The quick gesture paintings looked like a war zone. Body parts were disconnected. Chaotic limbs and runny torsos bled across the page. The figures turned into misshapen blobs of color.
During the break in poses, I screwed up my courage and asked if it would bother anyone if I stood. Talking to people! Asking for something! That was a breakthrough in itself, overcoming my little mouse-self that doesn’t like to make a fuss in public.
You know what? Nobody cared. So I stood.
That helped. The next set of 2-minute poses made me much happier. I began to make friends again with my paintbrush, and like any good friend, my trusty Kolinsky sable helped me to see in a new way. It taught me to look for the large shapes, forms, and shadow patterns.
2-minute watercolor sketches
The 5-minute poses came along a bit better . The one below is my favorite. The horns on her helmet-hair were accidental, but I love them. Watercolor warrior woman!
5-minute watercolor sketch
At 10-minutes I thought that I could give myself a few graphite guidelines to help me control where I put the paint. And that is where I lost the energy of the previous paintings.
10-minute watercolor sketch
Below you can see the final 20-minute pose. Except for the extraordinarily long arm, it’s a pretty correct representation of the model’s position. But that’s about it. It has lost some of the wonderful freedom of the quick sketches.
20-minute watercolor sketch
Somewhere between loss of control and total control there are pictures to be made. The challenge is to navigate to that tricky space.
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Kate Watercolor 23″ X 19″ 300# Arches hot press
Copyright 2012 by Margaret Sloan
When I painted this picture, I remembered that Mary Whyte, in a workshop, told us to name our paintings before we made our first washes of color. I couldn’t for the life of me remember this girl’s name (the daughter of a cousin-in-law, she’s a delightful girl, but I only met her once), so I just called her princess. I don’t mean princess in a bad way—all diva and finer-than-thou—but princess in a good way, a fairytale Cinderella-sorting-ashes or brave-and-loading-bullets sort of way.
As readers of fairy tales and fantasy-fiction know, names have power. So I let the word princess guide my brush. When I was stuck for a color choice, I whispered the word: princess. The taste of the word on my tongue gave me the flavor of the color I needed to use in that passage.
My favorite part of the painting, and the whole reason I wanted to paint this, is the shadow that curls under the sunlit eye. I love the way the curve describes the roundness of the cheek. There’s something delicate and fragile in that shadow, a sweetness and hope particular to young women.
Kate Detail Watercolor 23″ X 19″ 300# Arches hot press Copyright 2012 by Margaret Sloan
Then suddenly, as I approached the end of the painting, I recalled that her name is, or might be, Kate. If it’s not, it’s still the name of this painted princess-girl.
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Looking forward Watercolor on Arches 300# hot press Copyright 2011 by Margaret Sloan
It’s an odd, drifty feeling to paint without a teacher at my shoulder. It’s like being dandelion fluff caught on the surface of a pond, stuck to the water film but still blown about hither and thither (that thither-zone is an uncomfortable place!).
While I painted this picture, I anchored myself in the painter-pond by studying painters I liked. I kept those painters’ images on my computer, and every so often would take a break from my painting and run over to study how they handled a similar passage. I didn’t feel as if I were copying a master, but rather, as if I were asking a master a question.
I also talked incessantly to myself. I’m sure I sound like a muttering madwoman escalating into a full-blown fit: What color should go here? Should I use a warm red or a cool red? Can I get away with a purple or a green? How can I get this form to turn? Is the value dark enough yet? It’s too dark! Oh no, that’s Alizaron Crimson, it won’t lift off the paper! What am I going to do now? Gah! What am I thinking?!!!
At this point there is much wailing and whining, stamping of feet and tearing of hair. Then I do what Rose Frantzen recommends: I take a paper towel and clean my palette. She’s right. It’s calming. It resets my clock.
I’m stuck on the background of this painting right now. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit, and will probably have to think about it a bit more. Turning and churning it in my head while I float about uninstructed.
Looking forward (Detail) Watercolor on Arches 300# hot press Copyright 2011 by Margaret Sloan
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Boy with Chicken Watercolor
Copyright 2011 Margaret Sloan
I met this young boy at Hidden Villa one late afternoon. He was with his family, looking at the chickens. Suddenly he scooped up one of the hens and cradled her in his arms. She didn’t seem to mind. I asked if I might take a photo of him. He nodded silently, so I snapped a few photos. I wish I knew who he was so I could give him and his folks a copy of this.
I made this painting after taking Ted Nuttall’s watercolor workshop. If you compare it to the painting of the fiddler that I finished before the workshop, I think you’ll see a lot changes and improvements. At least, I can see them.
In past paintings, I’ve worried the paint to death. I’ve tried to make every transition smooth, and ended up making everything is bland, and even, and lifeless. Ted’s workshop made me finally see that what was missing were edges (although other art teachers have preached edges to me, I evidently wasn’t ready to hear that painting gospel). When I did paint edges, they were too abrupt, unsubtle, unsophisticated.
Edges are important. They give a painting movement and life, tell the story, sing the song. Hard edges can describe a fold, a crease, or the boundary of a cast shadow. Soft edges show a rounded structure, a form shadow, or a distant horizon. Between the nounage of hard and soft edges, there is a whole visual dialect—a spectrum—of edges that make a painting speak with nuance and grace.
When I think about edges in a painting, I’m always reminded that in nature, the edges of eco-systems are the places where life is most abundant. And now, when I paint, I’ve been trying to remember that edges are ok; they are, in fact, necessary to the life of the painting. Edges are where things happen.
Face—Detail of Boy with Chicken
Feathers—Detail of Boy with Chicken
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This portrait is on Arches print paper. I inherited this beautiful paper from a friend whose father was an artist. He’d passed a long time ago, and when they finally cleared out his workshop, they found a stack of this lovely paper that probably dates back to the 60’s. Isn’t that an artist’s fantasy—to find beautiful, antique paper from a time when craftsmanship still ruled the day?
I love to draw on this paper, and small sizes worked okay with watercolor. But this painting is big—a full sheet of paper, 22X30—and there were some issues.
Paper for letterpress printing has less sizing than watercolor paper, which makes the press paper lovely and soft, but without the sizing to protect it, the paper sucks up the paint. Plus, even though I stretched it and stapled it firmly onto a board, when the paper got wet, it got all floppy like a wet cotton sheet. But it dries nice and flat. The painting is still on it’s stretcher board, and I may rework it a bit.
This was painted before I took the Ted Nuttall workshop. I now refer to this as my BT (before Ted) style. Next post, I”ll show you my AT (after Ted) style. Very different.
Before the Big Adventure
Watercolor from Ted Nuttall Workshop Copyright 2011 by Margaret Sloan
In early fall I took a week long watercolor workshop with Ted Nuttall, one of my favorite watercolor painters. Ted is a marvelous painting coach, and I feel like the workshop changed some important circuitry in my painting mind. Ted said that one of the things he hoped to accomplish in this workshop was changing the way we think about painting. I was looking for a change and I was an easy mark; he succeeded.
The most important thing I learned? Do not be afraid. Go ahead and make mistakes. In fact, Ted says he often purposely paints unexpected colors, streaks, daubs, dribble, and of course, his famous “sloppy dots” in order to give himself problems to solve.
Watching him paint is like taking a roller-coaster ride. (Yeah, I know, painters are easily thrilled). Some strokes made me gasp in fear—I’d never make that kind of mark deliberately—but Ted deftly tied it in to the rest of the painting as he moved along.
I’m not quite brave enough to deliberately make mistakes. I make enough accidental problems to solve in the course of a painting. But I think the answer to that is to make more paintings, and learn from all those accidental mistakes.
More painting? That’s never a bad pursuit.
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Mockingbirds at midnight 
