I’d somewhat recently dared to enter an art store. I came out with a lot more than I’d planned. Heh. One of those new items was a new color, indigo. Nice color, though it dries duller and lighter than it is applied.
6″ x 9″ watercolor, 12/10/2009
I’m not sure what his deal is, but I don’t think he’s up to any good.
That was fast. I guess I’m in a minor painty mood lately…if three paintings counts for that. Anyhow, Payne’s grey done in a monochrome. Payne’s is actually ultramarine blue and black or brown mixed together, and it shows sometimes, if the paint is really really thin…sometimes the two separate. At least, they did a long time ago; they haven’t on me lately. So it does count as a color! It’s a very very dark blue-gray! Anyhow, I kinda like this one right now.
4″ x 6″ watercolor, 11/12/2009
I’m still slowly (oh so slowly) making my way through my colors on my palette. I have no clue what I’ll do when I get to yellow. So far, if there’s any pattern here (which I’m not saying there is), it’s that purple likes mystery, blue likes plants (and muses), black inexplicably likes laid back (I am saving Payne’s grey for a proper monochrome, but I have to wonder if it’ll be as laid back as the portrait part of the portrait I’ll add to the bottom of this post!) and green…likes bizarre winged organic whatsits. I’m not sure if that’s an ambivalence I have toward green because it doesn’t seem to have the range I like, or if there’s something else to it. I love viridian mixed with alizarin, but that is mostly dominated by the alizarin. We shall see how alizarin fares all by itself with no viridian. And Hooker’s…I thought it was darker and ‘forestier’ than this?
4″ x 6″ watercolor, 11/11/2009
And now for the portrait…figured I might as well post it, since it’s art, and I do like drawing (painting, whatevering) portraits. This is of Wes Bentley playing Blackheart in a very bad movie from a few years back called Ghost Rider. Avoid it unless you are really just interested in mindless borderline entertainment; there are much better comic book movies out there. As to why I painted this? A friend pointed out he looks like a real life version of a character from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a while back. It got complicated after that. Anyhow, this one is mostly Payne’s grey (well, the portrait part is), but is not part of my monochrome watercolor ’sketches’. I still, as it would seem, prefer to tint rather than mix my colors…though the subject in this case really was that close to black and white that I might as well.
2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″, watercolor, 11/7/2009
For a few of my recent paintings, and, depending on how that goes, possibly some of my older artwork, I have and will have prints available for sale through deviantART. Right now the selection is small, but that should improve later. I won’t be able to offer prints of some things simply because they aren’t able to be professionally scanned and I can’t photograph them well enough to make my own scans, but if there’s anything I can do to offer older works, I’ll figure something out. Of course, I’m also willing to sell them…and the screenprints and etchings, I have a few left of their runs, too.
A few days ago I was bord silly and a little depressed, so a friend said, “Paint something!”, so I did.
4″ x 6″ watercolor, 9/10/2009
It’s not nearly as bored looking or depressed as I was feeling, and I rediscovered just what a lovely color real cobalt is. This isn’t a hue, this is the real thing. And whether or not that’s obvious from the scan, I don’t know, but it’s obvious working with it.
Incidentally, another friend suggested I look into deviantART for printing. Now that they’ve significantly changed their TOS since I bailed on them years ago, I just might–I know some people would like prints of these little watercolor ’sketches’. Maybe more than a few? Well, I’m working on getting something going with that–it’s easy enough to satisfactorily scan a 4″ x 6″ painting at a high enough resolution to allow the purchase of 8″ x 10″ prints that would still look good if someone wanted, but…my scanner isn’t 12″ x 16″. And I’d like to offer prints of my old paintings (how many people have offered to buy Emberhouse and flaked on me? Really, I can count the number and need more than one hand for it), but again, scanner = small, and while I can borrow a DSL camera, I can’t take a decent picture with it to save my life. So I need to find somewhere that can do high quality scans of large artwork.
I had planned to audit an art class today just so I could get out of the house and do something, but alas, the class was closed yesterday, so no auditing for me this semester. Next semester I’ll just register for the class for a grade.
So…I decided to paint something. It’s not a color, per se, except it is, if you count black as a color. It’s certainly monochrome.
12″ x 16″, watercolor, 8/19/2009
I can’t say I’m particularly happy with this one, and I apologize for the lousy photography–it was much too big to scan. I wasn’t in a very good mood when I painted it, but I’m not sure if that carries through or not. I suppose it depends on what you see.
12″ x 16″, watercolor, 3/2009
(By the way…is there a problem with legitimate people commenting? I can’t really tell since no one appears to have tried. I know I’ve had a few comments eaten by WordPress filters. If you’re REAL and trying to comment, and not able to, feel free to e-mail me so I can try to sort it out.)
I recently learned about this not-entirely-new-but-entirely-too-broad law…
I have no plan to make much political talk here. Still, I couldn’t in good conscience not mention this, especially as I have considered making dolls for children and I do make jewelry, though it’s not designed to be for children under 12.
Anyhow, yes, I have heard it enough that “you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet” and how this could all be an over-reaction, but…all things considered…it doesn’t really matter what I personally think. It’s what might happen and what has happened. It doesn’t take much work to find instances of people suing and winning over the most insane little thing, and this law is “FOR THE CHILDREN!”
Here’s a good link for information about it: Overlawyered’s CPSIA coverage.
I find it more than a little frightening that there is a law on record that is resulting in the closing down of thrift stores, hand-made clothes and toy makers’ shops, and the mass-destruction of children’s books printed before 1985.
Another monochromatic color whatsit. I chose to use watercolors for this not because I am any good at watercolor, but because for what I’m doing, I can do it quite fast and inexpensively–I’ve already got several blocks of watercolor paper, brushes, and fifteen or so colors to use which I’ve had for quite a while. I know watercolor is very unforgiving, but since I’m essentially playing, ‘doodling’ you could say, it’s not that big of a deal that I can’t erase anything. I would like to try this with oil though. My preferred medium is pencil, but my colored pencils are pretty decent quality which means they break constantly and cost more than a buck a piece…I think I’d wear one out too fast trying to use only one color and getting the range I can get out of paint, and I can’t work as quickly with colored pencils.
I do need to remember/relearn how to protect watercolors (other than putting them behind glass)–the parts that look black are really a lot of pigment built up, so it could be very easily damaged.
I planned to do more purple paintings, but while I was riding back from the doctor’s office today, one of my muses decided he wanted me to paint him. OK, two of them did, but the other one isn’t obnoxious. I might paint him in purple. Anyhow, I don’t think there would be any point in telling you who the muse is, because he’s not recognizable in this form. I did have a vague idea of what I would paint this time, but it’s still all playing, I didn’t sketch anything out first, I just painted. Which will go a long way in explaining why his proportions are so utterly off. No reference for it, so he doesn’t even look like the muse in question (which is pretty much OK, since he stopped looking quite like himself a long time ago anyway).
12″ x 16″, watercolor, 1/20/2009
A short note on muses–I think most creative people have them, whatever they choose to call them. I personify mine when they ‘earn’ personification, but they are always an aspect of me, of this I am perfectly aware. This one pretty clearly is based on how he wanted to be painted.
Someone suggested to me that I try monochromatic colored artwork rather than my preferred gray-scale. Systematically go through the spectrum, starting with the darkest colors. This person thought that I’d benefit from doing some exploration with color. Maybe so, but what this person suggested more importantly, perhaps, is that I not worry about what it was that I made when I did these color ’studies’, that I have a hidden side that I don’t show anyone, and I should tap into that, not be afraid of what’s there. That I’m limiting myself in some way.
She has a point. One that, ironically, I now realize I’ve been trying to tell myself for close onto 15 years in various quiet and sometimes strange ways. Kinda frustrating and embarrassing that I needed someone else to tell me something I’ve known for a long time.
It’s time to stop being afraid.
Anyhow, as this is unrestricted playing, without necessarily any idea beforehand of what I’ll do or make, it’s very freeing. I don’t particularly care if this is good or bad. It’s fun, and I need that right now to kick-start my getting back into actually making art again.
So here’s the first–purple watercolor. I forget which shade in particular, since my watercolors are pretty old (fortunately they’re also fairly good quality so they’re still good). 4″ x 6″, painted about as fast as I usually paint (couple hours tops). This was done maybe a week ago? I just thought of posting it today.
Oh, and no matter what your monitor setting, it’s purpler than that.
