Art and the Creative Process Part 5 Preparing A Canvas

August 22nd, 2010

I’m returning to a previous discussion with this post since many have inquired about preparing a canvas surface and about what type of canvas to purchase or should one stretch their own. This post addresses these questions with tips and techniques: one oil/acrylic painter’s approach to preparing a canvas surface. This post is a continuation of Part 2 Media and Surface Selections.

Selecting A Pre-stretched Cotton Canvas
Thumbing through the 2010-2011 annual art supply catalogue from Dick Blick, I was struck by the myriad of canvas surface textures. Over the past two years or so, I have noticed an unwelcome increase in the thread thickness of pre-stretched canvas which requires more than the usual one extra coat of gesso to end up with a fairly smooth painting surface. All canvas labels from el cheapo in-house label at Michael’s to Winsor-Newton have coarse, rough, lightly primed surfaces which are fine for palette knife work but horrible for thin paint. Linen canvas labels such as Charvin or Raphael do not seem to suffer from this crappifying but anyone paying $20-$30 for an 8×10 canvas should receive good, nay extraordinary quality. I write for those artists such as I who do not create masterpieces at every session and need a good quality surface on which to work (and who are not independently wealthy). Thus Dick Blick offers many, many linen canvas choices (good marketing since a great surface guaranteesa great painting no matter the skill level of the painter, right?) but few cotton choices.

Tired of  applying gesso 4 or 5 times and often still not getting a smooth enough surface, I began purchasing different single canvases which is when I discovered most cheap and middle priced cotton canvas labels have thick threads and little priming excepting one. Those oil/acrylic cotton, pre-stretched surfaces tried include most variations of Paramount, Practica, Frederix, Creative Mark, Dick Blick, Yes!, and Winsor-Newton. The Yes! Portrait canvas is thinner threads, is fairly smooth, requires one coat of gesso, if any, and is back stapled. This label is medium-priced and quite reasonably priced when purchased in quantities. I have now tried Yes! Portrait pre-stretched surfaces in 9×12, 11×14, 16×20, and 30×24 sizes and have been satisfied. Yes! Portrait canvas is currently available from Art Supply Warehouse . Here is a company selling what we used to get from anyone just a few short years ago, humph.

Preparing A Canvas
Stretching your own canvas or purchasing pre-stretched cotton canvas for oil or acrylic painting requires surface preparation. Because of high humidity and because I gesso a surface with several coats, this preparation can take several days. This discussion assumes you are using an acrylic gesso, not an oil gesso.

  • Select your brush. The coarser the bristles, the more likely ridges will be left in the surface. I use a non-bristle artist brush from 1″-3″. Any shape will do such and I recommend flat or filbert.
  • If preparing a pre-stretched canvas, lightly sand the surface. I use 320 grit sandpaper. The coarser the paper, the more likely you will have ridges. Dust off the sanding grit with a dry cloth.
  • Inspect your gesso. Art supply houses do not rotate or date-mark their stock and, if having sat around for years, gesso will thicken. Acrylic gesso can be thinned with water. If you do so, make sure the resultant mixture is very well mixed and please start with small amounts of water!
  • Brush on a thin coat of gesso. Let dry thoroughly. I gesso surfaces at night and continue preparation the next day.
  • When thoroughly dry, sand lightly with 320 grit sandpaper. Feel the surface first which should be slightly rough. Sand a small area and touch again. There should be a noticeable difference. Sand the entire surface until it is of a uniform smoothness.
  • Dust off the grit with a dry cloth.
  • Repeat the previous two steps if desired. If you do gesso more than once, change directions each time to help ensure no ridges. If priming newly-stretched canvas, I recommend the above gesso/sanding procedure for a minimum of three layers.

Undercoating A Canvas Surface
Many undercoat before beginning their painting. Typically, undercoating means a merely covering the canvas in one color, usually a dark color. Undercoating has many advantages such as adding depth to a painting especially for those who paint in layers. Here is an example of an oil with a burnt umber undercoat.  This painting was done in many thin layers to enhance  the reflection on the table and to give depth to the fruit.  For the oil painter, undercoating in oil paint adds additional drying time for the undercoat must be thoroughly dry as to not mix in with the next layer. Using acrylics to undercoat shortens the drying time for the oil painter. Also, you do not need to undercoat every inch with the same color.

Here’s an example of an acrylic undercoated surface (after gessoing) for a beach scene in oils. I did sand the acrylic undercoat after it dried but would not sand an oil undercoating.

Questions or comments? Please write!

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Art And The Creative Process Part 4b Photographing Your Art

August 8th, 2010

This is the second of two parts about photographing and digitally modifying the resultant JPG files for publishing, printing, or sending to an exhibit images of your artwork.

Today, with online galleries and exhibits often requiring digital images on CD, an artist must be able to prepare representative computer images of their art. This post enumerates why and how I prepare my digital images.  I am neither a professional photographer nor a whiz at photo editing software but I usually manage to make decent .JPG files of my paintings. Also, this blog does not discuss free software found with many printers i.e. Kodak or HP photo manipulation software.  This type of software is for the person who wishes to save photos from their last trip, not for an artist.

There are 4 steps from taking a picture of your artwork to burning the resultant digital files onto a CD. The last two steps are discussed in this post. The first two parts were covered in Part 4a.

The steps are:

1. Taking the photo

2. Unloading the JPG files to your computer

3. Enhancing the digital files with photo editing software

4. And optionally: burning (placing) the images onto a CD

 Enhancing JPG files of your artwork

 Changing a digital image of art is vastly different than enhancing a photograph for the artwork image must retain as closely as possible all characteristics of the actual artwork such as color, relational size, clarity, and contrast.  I use photo editing software for two main reasons: to show a potential customer a painting and to provide an image for entry into an art exhibit.  I also have commercially used images for giclee prints. Thus the digital image must faithfully mirror the actual art.

 For years I used the wonderful and intuitive Microsoft PhotoDraw. Unfortunately this great photo editing software does not reliably run under Windows XP and beyond. Earlier this year when I finally migrated to Windows XP, I was forced to find some other free software which would enable me to easily manipulate JPG files of my art.  The following site has a review of some available, windows based, free software Free Photo Editing Software. This sight is slanted to the photographer and much of what is written is not applicable for me. I slogged through most of the software listed on this site and did end up with one program.

Before discussing what I tried, you need to understand what I require from photo editing software. My artwork images are photographed using a 4 MB pixel digital camera set to maximum pixels as discussed in Part 4a. Thus I will be cropping, changing the contrast, increasing either the sharpness or blurring the image, increasing the pixel amount from 72 to 300 and resizing. I do realize when increasing the pixel rate an averaging method is used since one cannot actually increase the number of pixels and thus a slightly blurred image is the result. Here are my thoughts and final outcome for free photo editor software:

 PhotoScape: no actual problems but features are for those who want to seriously change an image. For example, convert a photo into a poster with graphics, added images, text, etc. I passed.

 Photo Paint: Again, for those who wish to “fun” their photos, I passed.

 PhotoPlus: a few years ago Serif provided PhotoPlus for free, an older, albeit usable version 6.0. Today, Serif provides an unusable free version of PhotoPlus where you can “upgrade” to a usable version for $$. If you can find it, PhotoPlus 6.0 does run quite well under Windows XP and is worth learning (a fairly gentle learning curve).  I passed on the “new” freebie.

 GIMP: never could make it past the learning curve. There ARE drawbacks to open software. Also, the instructional manual is completely online (not a feature!) and was written by yet another; I passed.

 Paint.NET: In spite of being written by the University of Washington in conjunction with Microsoft this is a good piece of free photo editing software.

 Photo Pos Pro: I do know I had a terrible time with this program and, when I went to write an online review, the NAME of the software sets off the “bad” language alarm!!!!! I passed.

 PhotoFiltre: only for non-commercial use so I passed.

 Ultimate Paint: The last one I tried, well, sort of, the download file is corrupted.

 As you have read, I chose Paint.NET and had no problems using this software in the manner I described above. Also, the tools are very similar to MS PhotoDraw, thus I had very little to learn!! Yes! I recommend Paint.NET for those artists who need a JPG image of their artwork.

To download it, search for “paint.net” and use the about.com site to download. I do not think there is a stand-alone site for this software. 

Burning (copying) JPG files onto a CD

 Now you have some decent images of your art and for example, need to send them off to an exhibit. Many exhibits do accept emailed images but the web mail I use has a limit on attachment size plus I need to send in an entry form and payment thus I burn a CD and send it along also.

After several years of struggling with Roxio, I now use Windows Explorer to copy images to a CD. Windows Explorer under Windows XP is better than Roxio software but getting them onto a CD is still a multi-step process (no drag and drop here!). Simply, have all files to be copied in one folder. Insert an unused, writeable CD into a read/write CD drive. Copy the files to the CD drive which should prompt a “Files To Be Written…” heading in Windows Explorer.  Select the CD drive and click on “Write Files To CD”. After the files have been written, do eject the CD and return it to the drive. Look at each file on the CD to ensure they can be read (use your photo editing software to read them).

 This concludes the two-part post about editing photos of artwork. I hope I have helped another artist with some of those things which are necessary but not an actual part of our creating!

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Art And The Creative Process Part 4a Photographing Your Art

July 25th, 2010

Today with online galleries and exhibits often requiring digital images on CD, an artist must be able to prepare representative computer images of their art. This post enumerates how and why I prepare my digital images as I do. I am neither a professional photographer nor a whiz at using photo editing software but I have managed to find usable and free photo editing software and often make decent .JPG files of my paintings. This blog does not discuss free photo software bundled with many printer drivers i.e. Kodak or HP photo manipulation software. This software is for the person who wishes to save photos from their last trip, not for an artist. Be careful when using this “helpful” software! Kodak’s game is to automatically retain YOUR photos on their server and then charge money for you to download them onto your computer!!!! Best to invest in a USB cable specifically suited for your camera.
There are 4 steps to taking a picture of your artwork to burning the resultant digital files onto a CD and I’ll write about how and why I perform each step. The first two steps are discussed in this post. The four steps are:

  • Taking the photos
  • Unloading the JPG files to your computer
  • Enhancing the digital files with photo editing software
  • And optionally: burning (placing) the images onto a CD

Taking Photographs of Your Artwork

Since digital cameras have a much longer shutter time than conventional cameras, shaking can be a problem. Those who know recommend a tripod. I recommend a table and book, boxes etc to get the camera centered on the middle of your art. Now, after placing the camera on the books, boxes, etc. and using your automatic timer feature, set the timer and voila! A shake free picture has been made. Of course this is very cumbersome if you wish to follow the second piece of advice from those who know: always take pictures outdoors in northern light on a sunny day. So I do not always, well, hardly ever, use the “books”. Instead, I place the painting on my porch, out of the sun (but on a sunny day) and stand over it to snap the photo.
I have found the sunny day is essential or else the photo is too “blue”. My camera settings are: manual mode, “sun” for type of light, AUTO for ISO setting, no exposure compensation, and minimum number of images for greatest pixel count. I have a 4 MB camera which today is prehistoric but it gets the job done. Also exhibit rules often prohibit large images, limiting the JPG files to 1-2 megabytes in size thus an 8 MB digital image must be reduced. Do take more than one photo!

Unloading Camera Images

Digital cameras have a port to which a USB cable can be attached (each camera is different so check your camera’s operational instructions for obtaining the correct USB cable). This port has nothing to do with a “dock” which you may have purchased along with your camera. Your computer has several USB ports, usually on its front face or on a side if you have a laptop. To unload your camera’s digital images onto your computer:

  • With your camera off, attach the correct USB cable to the computer and to your camera.
  • Open Windows Explorer
  • Decide where you will store your raw digital images, say in a folder named TempPics
  • Turn on your camera. Your camera will be seen as a device in Windows Explorer
  • Open the folders under your camera device in Windows Explorer until you see files which may be named something as DSCF1244.jpg
  • Cut these files and paste them into the folder determined above (I used TempPics)
  • The camera device must be properly closed before turning your camera off. Your task bar will have a symbol which shows “Safely Remove Hardware” when you hover over it. Double click on it, when a pop-up window appears, click STOP, then, under the devices listed, click on the camera device to select it (usually the camera’s manufacturer’s name is part of the device name such as …FUJI…), and lastly, click on OKAY. Close the pop-up window. A balloon stating it is OKAY to safely remove hardware should appear on your task bar.
  • Now turn off the camera and remove the USB cable. Your digital images are no longer in the camera and only exist on your hard drive.

Next post I’ll discuss several free photo editing software packages and why I use what I use!

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Art and the Creative Process Part 3c Color Selection

July 17th, 2010

The Watcher

Part 3 of this series discusses color selection based upon light and the use of a warm/cool color wheel.

I have now finished roughing in the painting using warm colors for areas in sunlight and cool colors for those in shade.  This method (see parts 3a and 3b) does not use an addition of purple nor use the mixing of a complement to produce a shade color.

Rich colors are evident throughout the painting. Grey/mud colors which are often due to using a complement are lacking. Using yellow/blue combinations to make greens for the foliage results in rich, natural greens. Many painters do not use sap green or permanent green light because of their artificiality. Permanent green light usually is mixed with something to tone it down.  If I do use this green I mix in cadmium yellow pale or a touch of cadmium red.

There are some problems with this palette (cerulean and ultramarine blues, cadmium yellow pale hue, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson and white).  Both browns are warm browns. The liberal use of burnt sienna throughout the shaded and sunny areas of the painting is confusing. Adding a blue to the shaded ground areas may alleviate this.

Also, the short stone wall has too little differentiation between the sunny and shaded areas. A touch of thinned yellow on the sunny portions may help once this layer has dried. Another area in which the sunny/shade areas are not well defined are her socks. These shaded areas need almost a straight ultramarine blue and the lit areas require lightening using cerulean blue mixed with white.

Using this color selection technique results in a colorful, more pleasing painting, helps to avoid muddy greys and browns, and aids in differentiating between shaded and lit areas. The artist has added another dimension to their bag of tricks and has achieved a better understanding of one’s tools.

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Blog Spammers

July 7th, 2010
Reflection

Humph!

Well!  It’s great that some are reading my posts and enjoying and hopefully, learning something about the creative process but, really, people spamming blogs? Because I have run up against cheats and do not wish to be an accessory to their schemes, I will now cast a wary eye upon each comment. Much of what I write below has been gleaned from Wikipedia to which I greatly thank.

According to Wikipedia most blog spamming is done to create artificial links to a site to increase the site’s rating on search engines. And it’s usually not “people” doing the spamming but programs written by people. As Wikipedia states: “Adding links that point to the spammer’s web site artificially increases the site’s search engine ranking. An increased ranking often results in the spammer’s … site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers.”
There appears to be several type of spamming of blogs:

  • spamdexing: automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors [is] a target.
  • blogspam: most common meaning is the post of a blogger who creates no-value-added posts to submit them to other sites.

    • The Wikipedia article goes on to say “If an actual comment is given it is often just “cool page”, “nice website”, or keywords of the spammed link.” so……
    To those of you who are blog spammers in any sense of the phrase, watch out! Since I moderate my comments, those comments which fit the criteria of “great site” or “thanks for the article” without any specifics, you are history.
    For those artists or art lovers who do comment, I apologize. – Diane

    Roughly three weeks ago I wrote this post and since then I probably have received all possible varieties of “comments” from spammers, from “thanks for the information for my college paper” to “Good post! your opinion counts!” to “I’ll certainly pass this along to my sister/friends/etc” to the obvious spammer who writes ”please see my informative video at….”. And there are those non-native English writers who just manage to have a slight grammatical error……which I delete immediately.

    Since so many are funny and all are unethical, I think I’ll start collecting them….. Diane

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    Art And The Creative Process Part 3b Color Selection Continued

    June 30th, 2010

    This multi-part blog relates the creation of an original oil painting from idea to varnish. Parts 1 & 2 dealt with selection of subject, medium, and surface. Part 3 discusses one theory of paint selection for a painting of an old woman sitting in dappled sunlight. Because of its complex nature, Part 3 will appear as several posts. This is the second post of Part 3

    If I do not have the scene or objects in front of me I paint from photographs. Often the color(s) in the photograph are not suited to nor what I desire.  Because I do not wish to be influenced by colors in the photo, I often take a digital photo of the photo and, using computer software, change the digital image to be in black and white values. I may adjust its sharpness for detail clarity or to enhance contrast before printing out the black and white image.

    The photo I have chosen as an example for Part 3 Color Selection is of an old woman, sitting on a bench in partial sunlight facing left front and looking to her left. The view is a front quartering pose with a dirt path leading to your left. There is a low stone fence along the path side. Trees, bushes and other wild plants grow behind the stone fence and behind the sitting woman.

    In Part 3a a theory of color selection based upon light was presented.  A warm/cool color wheel (shown below) was described and its use discussed.  I had selected the blues to be used for the old woman’s clothing, cerulean blue for sunlit areas and ultramarine blue for shadows.

    Now let’s continue on with my paint selection. Because the light source is a yellow light, the sun, shadows will have a component of yellow’s complement, purple. This is not a hard and fast rule and, as you will read, one I do break. What I will not do when using this method of paint selection is make the color of a shadow a complement mixed with the paint color in the light.

    I have chosen to keep paint selection to a minimum and thus will mix a purple. I selected alizarin crimson to be my red and I limit my palette to one red. Alizarin crimson is a cool red in the cool color family (see warm/cool chart above). Because I do not wish any orange to be apparent (I am painting wet-on-wet), I may have to overlay sunlit portions of her clothes with yellow after drying. This is a problem which I can shelve for now.

    The old woman is wearing a sweater over a skirt/dress and the sweater will be one color (blue) and the skirt another. By making the outer garment blue and the skirt reddish purple and their shadows blue and red/blue respectively, will lend cohesiveness to the painting. For my greens, I again keep my palette simple and mix the greens using the selected blues and cadmium yellow pale hue. I have written about not interchanging synthetic paint colors labeled hue with natural paints but here’s an exception – I have found little difference in cadmium yellow pale and cadmium yellow pale hue in Winsor & Newton oil paints, you may not be so lucky.

    For browns, I wish to have lively, warm browns and keep my limited palette (ultramarine blue and cadmium orange makes a good brown as does ultramarine blue and cadmium red light). I select burnt sienna, a warm brown in the warm family and yellow ochre another warm brown in the warm family (see the warm/cool color chart above). These paints can be mixed with my purple and still stay interesting and not muddy.

    At this point I have painted the sweater portion of the woman using the blues as discussed with no addition at this point of purple in the shadows.  If I do add purple and since I am mixing the purple, it will be a blue-purple. Here is how the sweater and skirt is currently painted.

    Now that my palette has been selected, cerulean and ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow pale hue, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson and white, I will rough in the rest of the small painting. My next post, Part 3c, will discuss pros and cons of the painting to this point with emphasis on basing color selection upon the light.

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    Art and the Creative Process Part 3a Color Selection

    June 24th, 2010

    Many books, nay, encyclopedias have been written about color theory for the painter. While a dry subject such as color theory is often overlooked and neglected by many artists, knowledge of color theory is necessary to make a meaningful paint selection. Rare is the successful painting where color theory has not been applied. Parts 1 and 2 of this series covered the selection of a subject and medium and surface. This post begins describing a paint selection methodology which is based upon light, a color theory topic. Names of oil paints are used throughout this post. These names may not correspond to acrylics or watercolors.
    Color has several properties including temperature and value. The temperature of a color is either warm or cool and the value of a color is its lightness or darkness. Temperature is the influence of light upon an object. Are you painting a sunny scene? or a scene on an overcast day and indistinct shadows? or an interior scene with artificial light? What color is sunlight? It’s yellow or sometimes yellow orange or orange. What color is the light on an overcast day? It’s purplish grey which is the complement of yellow. Traditionally, warm colors of red, orange, and yellow were associated with a sunny day and cool colors of green, blue and purple were associated with an overcast day.
    In contrast, the paint selection method described here and in future posts considers warm colors as those having yellow in them and cool colors as those having purple in them ONLY IF THERE IS SUNLIGHT. In general, the paint selection method described here is two fold and is NOT traditional: 1. your warm colors will have in them whatever color the light is (yellow, orange, purple, blue) and 2. your cool colors will have its complement. By determining the color of light in your scene and relating this color to warm paints and its complement to cool paints, lit surfaces will be always painted with warm colors and shadows with cool colors. This method results in a simple, easy to remember paint selection process.
    There are major benefits to selecting paints using this procedure. These benefits are: 1. Warm colors are said to advance or appear more active in a painting, while cool colors tend to recede which is an aid when painting scenes with perspective such as a landscape or a face. 2. The mood of a painting, always an elusive feature, can be enhanced by the use of warm/cool colors. Warm colors are said to arouse or stimulate while cool colors calm and relax. 3. No muddy shadows are painted. Instead, shadows have a life of their own for they are not created by complementing a color.
    Below is a table of oil colors and their respective warm/cool intensity. Note: Oil paints with the word “hue” in their name are not formulated in the same manner (they are synthetic) as those without “hue”. And be careful, cadmium yellow hue for example is vastly different in color than a cadmium yellow pale, light, medium or dark. Do NOT substitute paints with hue in their name for those without “hue”.

    Run your eye over the table and note the warmest paint  is cadmium yellow light abd the coolest is cobalt blue and the greens straddle the fence.

    Are there any neutrals sometimes called pure colors? There are two neutral oil paints – cobalt blue, for cobalt blue has neither yellow or purple in it and cadmium yellow light which contains neither orange nor green. All others have either a “warm” or “cool” component. In the reds, for example, cadmium red medium has a very slight orange component and cadmium red dark a very slight purple component.
    An example is now to help clarify what paint selection based upon light actually means. Let’s paint a picture of a woman in a blue dress sitting on a bench in sunlight, surrounded by trees in the middle afternoon (so there are shadows). Remember, because this scene is lit by the sun, we are associating all warm colors as those with yellow in their mix or makeup and thus objects which have sunlight upon them will be painted with a warm color. In contrast, shadows will have the complement of yellow which is purple and paints (mixed or straight out of the tube) used for shadows will have purple in them.
    Keeping my selection simple, I’ll pick a warm blue for the cloth in sunlight and a cool blue perhaps mixed with a purple for dark shadows. I’ll choose cerulean blue with white for sunlit cloth since cerulean blue has yellow in it and is a light blue and I’ll pick ultramarine blue for shadows since it is a dark blue, shadows are dark, and ultramarine blue has no yellow component. I may mix the dark blue with purple. Until I determine if a red will be on my palette, I do not know if I will mix purple or use one out of a tube. Also, because this process does not create shadows by complementing the colors used for lit objects, you do not need to select a complement for the warm paints i.e. I will not have the complement of blue, which is orange, on my palette.

    To this point I have selected one color family (blue) and the paints I will be using (cerulean and ultramarine blues) out of this family. Next post, I will continue with the selection of colors for my painting of a sunlit scene.

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    Art and the Creative Process Part 2

    June 20th, 2010

    Media and Surface Selections in Painting

    In Part 1 I touched upon the inception of a painting, its inspiration and your first physical act which for many are preliminary sketches. This entry will focus upon media and surface selection.

    For many, there are no decisions to be made about media and surface selection. You are an acrylic painter on canvas, enough thought there! But for some, such as myself, the medium and surface selection choice is not straight forward, mood and subject dictate these choices, not the type of painter I am!  And there’s personal preference. I dislike the hardboard (masionite) surface for its very smooth face which does not grab paint and gives little tactile feedback.  But hardboard lends itself well for portraits since blending is easily accomplished. A more textured surface, today’s cotton canvas surfaces for example, with very little gesso and thick weave, is horrible for traditional portraits.

    Each medium can be manipulated for a desired effect but some media are more suitable than others. For example, for the Three Sisters, which I wished to be whimsical without being cartoonish, a water media was desirable and probably several layers would be necessary. True, thin oils would be usable but since I did not want the layers to mix (no wet-on-wet blending here) nor did I wish to lose the spontaneous feeling of the painting, drying time was a factor and oil ruled out.  The first Three Sisters was done in acrylic, the second painting in watercolor. Both media were thinned quite a bit and the watercolor paper used in the second painting was not wetted before applying paint.

    Acrylics lend themselves quite well to a wide variety of surfaces including paper, canvas, wood, cloth, and china which does not mean they are suitable for them over time. Being, in effect, a plastic (just try to get acrylic paint daubs off your shirt!) (okay, acrylics are not a plastic but a polymer for those who wish me to state facts) they adhere to much. “Jack’s Linseed Studio Soap” claims to remove acrylic paint from brushes, floors, and more. There are cheaper linseed soaps available and, considering the condition of my studio floor, I may break down and buy/try some.

    Once a medium is determined, the surface selection is made. For my watercolor, the choice was paper and, since this was not a portrait and since I like some texture, cold press paper of medium weight was used. For the acrylic, I used personal preference and gessoed/sanded several times a 16×20 inch cotton canvas surface. The acrylic painting was to be my first and since I was more likely to not get the desired effect, I might need to repaint several areas. A canvas surface would handle these corrections better than paper.

    Thus, both media and surface for the two Three Sisters paintings were chosen. 

    Acrylic on canvas

    Watercolor on paper

    Part 3 will begin describing color selection, talk to you then.

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    Art and the Creative Process Part 1

    June 16th, 2010

    The 3 Sisters 1st Painting

    There are probably as many ways of approaching the creation of an original piece of fine art (painting in my world) as there are artists.  This series will focus on what I have learned and what I am currently learning about creating which, in turn, may help others. Earlier (“About” and “Introducing Me and Art”) I wrote about why I paint. Part 1 examines painting the first in an ongoing series.

    Since art is a method of expression, when a passion for something or some place arises, an outlet for the expression is at hand.  For me, the 1930s holds such an interest.

    The 1930s in the U.S.A. was a time of great tribulation. How people coped with their circumstances, often made worse by natural disasters during this period such as the Dust Bowl drought of the Plains, is fascinating.  Many public domain photographs are available for reference of this period to aid in reflecting aspects of the era. Also, family photographs and memories are personal sources of inspiration.

    Beginning with family photographs, “The Three Sisters” was created, a simple scene of three young sisters, my husband’s aunts, during the early 30’s on a brief holiday at Niagara Falls. In this series I wished to reflect a time where many met each day with gentle resignation. But young people have often a resiliency and the sisters greeted the camera lens with happy smiles. No resignation in their faces.

    To create this painting, I had to choose a medium, colors, and technique which would allow me to express what I wished by painting this photograph. And I had to “feel” the situation or teach my hand to render the scene. This can be done by sketching the scene or parts of the scene in various ways.  Often, making preliminary sketches is a beginning step and is taught to be so in schools. But I have found if I sketch a scene, even once, when I finally face a blank canvas some of the raw emotion of this scene has gone. This reminds me of eating something delicious. By the final bite, the deliciousness and the anticipation of eating has been dissipated.  So, after thinking about this painting-to-be, I sketch once on my canvas, in pencil, and gesso over the drawing so the graphite does not mix with the paint. Athletes use visualization as a method of improvement or learning.  For me, visualization about the subjects and how I emphasize with them works best.

    The 3 Sisters 2nd Painting

    This visualization also determines the medium.  In Part 2 I’ll discuss various media choices and continue with the creation of the “The Three Sisters”.

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    More Novice BLOGGING Thoughts

    June 12th, 2010

    But this art blog is for….. you know, I just realized, blogs are an offshoot of that wonderful invention of the 80s and 90s the “chat room” except without the bothersome necessity of having to actually “chat”.  Chat rooms were invented for people to have something to do on the World Wide Web while those wonderful other-side-of-the-brain people were busy thinking up how to make money on it. Also, chat rooms let you have chats with those who you would cross the street to avoid or with overactive twelve-year-olds. BLOGs do have a slight advantage if you are selling a product, it is harder to pretend you are not twelve.

    Since I have been posting, I have gotten around to other blog sites and, since anyone can write anything and post it (I’m evidence of this) there certainly is a lot of irrelevant stuff out there. I have also learned, albeit not recently, never to assume any “fact” on the Internet is a “true fact”. I understand why Wikipedia is so popular; they do have some credibility.

    For me, the most useful blogs are the teaching/learning ones and those which impart information. So far my blog does not fit either of these categories; I hope to actually begin to impart information via my blog soon!

    This has been quite the experience beginning a blog. I had written about my background in an earlier post titled “About” that, to avoid living in a box, I became educated in a profession with a little more probability of actually providing a living for me.  This profession was in the computer field, actually real-time programming. Way back then, large manufacturing firms were automating production operations to save money and thus LANs and “robotics” and WANs were born. Of course today firms save money by outsourcing instead of advancing technology. But way back then, solutions to manufacturing problems and cost savings were actually resolved in the existing plants. So, having been in the computer field for many decades, even at the bits and bytes end of things, I believed setting up a blog would be, well, not trivial, but doable. Ha! But I’m moving along, mainly thanks to WordPress and wonderful other blogs.

    Now excuse me while I get back to what I need to do…  -Diane

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