It’s Weird But I Like It

 Using my cheapie disposable fountain pen from Blick, just contour drew one of the pots in my garden. Got to use my new Daniel Smith perylene maroon. 

Alan Summer 10

 I was, of course, fascinated by Elaine’s gouache resist technique. Here’s what happened to me. I started out with a simple gouache still life. 

I let it dry completely and I washed over it with India ink. I let that dry completely overnight. 

Then I washed the ink off in the sink. 

You might be able to see that the paper (decent paper) was destroyed in the process. I highlighted areas where there’s hardly any paper left. Then I balled it up and took it to the trash. I might have been using really cheap gouache, I might have put too thick a coat of ink, I might have rubbed too hard (although I don’t think so), or something else. I went online and found a Blogger post by a woman named Sonjia called paperpaintprint who does this too but she paints a rough watercolor then goes over the places that she wants to save with white gouache. If she really wants to save a color, she’ll paint another layer of gouache over that part. After completely letting it dry, she uses a brush and running water to wash off the ink in the sink. After it dries, she touches it up with watercolor. It looked great but I can’t figure out how to point you to her blogger post. 

I’ll try again. 

So I walked around my neighborhood to do a little urban sketching. I found these morning glories that live across the alley from me. 

             

      5 X 5 hot press

        

I tried a little more abstract.

      5 X 5 hot press 

Then I found some black eyed susans down the street. 

     5 X 5 on hot press. 

Not happy with any of this. Back to gouache resist for another try. 

Blue Poles

 This is the first paint centric on big paper.  So far so good I think, but I have been wrong before.

Closet Cleaning

 Well, now I know what I have….and it’s way too much. This is a rerun from a series I did during the pandemic. Photo by Wendy Fischer Hartman who has published a book of her street photography. This guy is on the SW corner of Michigan and Washington…there’s a glimpse of the Cultural Center across the street .  Keep my eye out for him when I’m downtown but no luck so far  

August 31, 2024 — Elaine O.

Before we get back to serious back-to-school painting, I've been experimenting, palette cleaning and using up supplies. Here's the honesty plant again, using two colors that seem to hate each other (seriously, they separate even as you mix then!) but make beautiful washes together.

approx. 8" x 5.5"

Then I found a sketchbook paper that actually hates masking fluid. I did a light wash, then masked, then applied the background. So far, so good. When I went to remove the mask, it scarred the paper underneath and tore strips from the background, too. And I was being very gentle.

approx. 8" x 5.5"

Then, there's palette cleaning. Besides the palette dirt, I have a few colors that are almost used up and won't be replaced. I don't want to waste the paint, so I did some direct watercolor portraits. Both of these have little regard for actual local color. I'm just using up paint and working on portraiture. Both are approx. 8" x 5.5".

And now it's time to refresh my palette and prepare for some "real" painting when the gang gets back together.

On the road again

 I've been off the road for a couple of weeks, scrambling around in the brambles, turning this way and that stumbling across ideas and discarding them, making sacrifice sheets out of perfectly good paper, pulling my hair and disturbing my cat.  

I want to move this to 18x24, make it grittier, more random, less pretty maybe, or maybe something completely different.

Just glad to be on the road again.

August 24, 2024 — Elaine O.

This week, I've been playing with florals and granulating/separating paints. Today's blind contour is of flowers. Interestingly, no matter how "off" you are, they look more accurate than, say, a human face.

12" x 9"

I've also done some direct watercolor....

8" x 5.5"

... and I've been fascinated by translucency and the honesty plant. It's a challenge I have to revisit.

approx. 5" x 5"

What's with the softer, gentler direction? I "helped" my brother move this week. Here's a quick sketch of his new view. Nothing soothes the soul like sitting in a window seat watching sailboats on a lake. You hardly notice all the moving chaos around you—and that mellow vibe lingers!

approx. 5" x 5"

SS 8.18.24 Ansel's Shingles Odyssey

 I am done with my series of my husband's 4 faces to record his on going Shingles affliction started last year. Each of the 4 painting has a mini recuerdo of a diary of the illness. Painting this set of faces from onset to current situation is reliving the challenges as well as cathartic. At that time of any of the critical stages when the pain was so deep, we felt that some strange stuff was at work, when my husband was just recovering from his 10 days hospital stay in October that he would be sick with Shingles!In hindsight, the reasons were simple: his immune system was low & vulnerable and he was not vaccinated with the shingles vaccine. Pretty straight forward!. I have arranged the paintings as follows: bottom row : left: Onset; Right: World Turned Upside down then top row: left: Scabs;

Right: Silent Pain.  Today, I also submitted this foursome as one painting using my husband's second name: Ansel to a Filipino art show Sep to Nov, 2024 at the Epiphany Art Center. Fingers crossed!

August 17, 2024 — Elaine O.

I'm still in the midst of my summer dilettantism. I thought last week's bird was surprisingly successful, so I went back and finished the other two birds in the demo. Following are the Great Tit...

8"x5.5"

...and the Robin. They're listed as "garden birds," but they're nothing like the little brown sparrows in my garden. Even my robins are darker and less fluffy. I think they're British. 

    

8"x5.5"

While neither of them came out as well as I had hoped, I do like the branches. Other than that, I did a blind contour and experimented with shadow colors on a scrap of watercolor paper...

5.5"x4"

...and made some new curtains, which I documented in my sketchbook.

8"x5.5"

And I finished a sketchbook, so I did a quick self portrait to close it out. I look like a mean schoolteacher asking, "Are you sure you filled ALL the pages in that sketchbook?"

8"x5.5"

Channeling Steve Meyer

 Painted Dr. Hunt first. Then when the child went in, the doctor’s skin was washed out and greenish….so I remembered Steve doing opera washes over people. I think it helped. The hand and the nose were daunting, to say the least,  but can’t do more without disaster. I like the story aspect of this.  In the photo  the woman in the background was holding a squirming child and to the right there were parts of two other women and part of an ambulance all eliminated because of distraction.