China

We are back. China was wonderful, interesting and educational. I highly recommend going. Hello out there to my fellow travellers.

I was on an ordinary tour with minutes to paint here and there, but I still had a breakthrough. I managed to fit all of my supplies into a zip-lock bag. That was a revelation. Since there were so many people around that I couldn't sit down, I then I found that I could hold all that stuff in one hand and still paint with the other.

A painting tip that I'd lit to share now is my sketchbook. With so many variables that you have to deal with when painting out, it is best to use the paper that you always use. One less variable. So I take Arches paper to Staples (and other such stores) and have 6 pages bound together for a few bucks. Cut the paper any size and shape that you like. 

Why only six pages, though? These sketch books become very valuable as they fill. If you lost one, you don't want it to have all of your sketches in it. When I pack up to go home, I place different sketchbooks in different suitcases in case a bag is lost.

People who buy the original sketches get them with the holes punched in the top. I recommend that they frame them up so that the holes show. This guarantees that they were done on location.

China Here We Come!

I am off to China, and can hardly wait to see what I'll come back with and how this will affect my art. I have done some wonderful sketches on painting trips (like the one pictured here of Italy), but this is a regular tour with my sister, her husband and my husband. We will see if I can get the kind of work done that I'd like to do. 

I did buy a fishing vest with lots of pockets that holds my art stuff. I really wanted this for hiking around North Carolina, but will give it it's first try in China.

Wish me luck.

 

Content--Recording Today's World

After seeing one of Jane Filer's paintings in an Asheville, NC gallery, I began wondering what I could do with her images of pillars. So this painting began with the notion that the pillars of society are failing us. Drawing my center house on those pillars was exhilarating. But building the neighborhood around him became the ultimate challenge for my crazy brain. What do you see? Where was I going with these ideas? How can you make ideas into images?

A Business Plan for the Mature Artists ;-)

Sue Smith has posted a small book on Lulu that might be of help and interest to us artists of advancing age. "Ancient Wisdom: Emerging Artists, A Business Plan for the Mature Artist." Check it out.  

Fracturing with a New Subject

After working with texture in the past two florals, I wanted to try those techniques with another subject. 

I was the art critic for a local paper in my past home of Rockford, IL.  Here I worked with this young artist on several occasions--and painted him 3 or 4 times in styles from Manga to sloppy realism. 

This painting was developed on the plaid in his jacket. Boxiness being my favorite way of doodling, the sharpened back end of my paint brush provided just the right tool.

The Wonders of Packing Tape, Part 2

Here is my second pass at fracturing a floral using my packing tape. I was never one to explore texture--especially if it meant damaging my paper. Now I just feel the need to move on and do something different. 

Here I have relied on sharpening the end of a paint brush in my pencil sharpener, dipping it in purple paint and using that to draw with. There are some dots of oil pastel in the lower right and some shaved watercolor pencil in other places.

The Wonders of Packing Tape

Those of you who have read my book or taken one of my workshops know the wonders of packing tape as an essential art supply--and about the cheapest one around. I use two inch wide, clear tape for several purposes, but here I am using it to fracture my painting. 

It has been too cold to paint in my studio, so I grabbed my watercolors and moved upstairs to a bedroom. Painting neat, clean and small, I decided it was time to try fracturing to get more ideas into a smaller space. 

Simply dividing my paper with tape and painting this bouquet in various ways on each side of the tape created a new look.