I Found The Pen

Posted on May 2, 2025 by SusanG

That title makes little sense if you didn’t see a post I made a few days ago about spending an hour looking for a particular pen because I wanted to use it to write something. So I’ll back up a bit and then fill you in on things.

First off, I’ve been on vacation from the day job this week. I usually take the last week of April, that includes the last few days of April and first couple of days of May, off from the day job. Most of the time it ends up being a staycation, though two years ago my awesome sister treated me to a trip to Paris. Well, she covered the flight, we split the rest. It was still awesome. We thought about making another trip this year but with the state of things right now, we decided not to. 

Anyway. This week has been a staycation. I have several administrative things I need to do and more than a few pieces of art I want to work on and that’s what I planned on doing. And then, Sunday morning I woke up and saw on one of the socials that the museum in the city was just opening an exhibit of the work of Annie Leibovitz. After some research and deciding that Tuesday would be a better day to go, I planned to sit down and do some of the planning work I wanted to do. But, I wanted a specific pen for the work, because I do like to do that type of work with pen and paper. Problem was that I couldn’t find the pen. I could see it in my head, I knew I’d seen it recently but where. I spent an hour looking for it, maybe more. 

By the time I reluctantly gave up actively looking for the pen, I’d shifted into thinking about some of the cleaning I needed to do and decided to start with the one place that I knew exactly what needed to be removed and cleaned and organized. The balcony storage. Yes, the balcony that tends to have wasp issues. It felt really good to get that all cleared out, even if most of it sits behind a closed door. I think as much as our things exist in the physical world, they also take up space in our head, and cleaning out things can be a bit like clearing out the brain. It’s nice. 

I did go to the museum on Tuesday. I really dislike driving in the city here, and parking is a nightmare, and expensive. Even with that, I decided that I needed to make the effort to go because, well, it would be a bit of a treat for myself. And it was. I didn’t really think I was that unusual in regards to the things I’ve paid attention to over the years. But perhaps I was more in tune with some things than I realized. I say this because I’ve mentioned the Annie Leibovitz exhibit to a few people and then had to explain to them who she is. Anyway, I got something from going that I can’t quite explain. I suppose some would call it inspiration, that’s not it as far as how I experience inspiration. It also wasn’t quite motivation. Whatever it was, I’m really glad I went. And for those of you who might not know who Annie Leibovitz is she’s a photographer and has taken some iconic and amazing photos, and portraits, think Rolling Stones, and Rolling Stone magazine, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. 

In addition to the administrative stuff that I had planned for the week, that it took me a few days to actually get started on, my plans for the week included working on some art. Which I have done. That flower piece? I’ve worked on it and made some really good progress. The build of the color is down and now it’s time to work the details. I’m actually really happy with it so far. The other piece I have ready to be worked on is the next taekwondo painting. I have had to fiddle with an area or two a few times and finally have things right enough to start paint. It’s both exciting and nerve racking. 

Now to finding the pen. I was looking for something else today, some papers I want for an appointment coming up. In the course of looking for them I managed to do my filing and a bit of tidying of my desk. Both are feats of proportion. This lead me to something else that lead to something else and in the process, as I cleaned reminder notes off my desk there it was. The pen. Sitting in plain sight. I guess sometimes, what we are looking for really is right in front of us if we can only see it. 

It’s ok, I didn’t expect to get philosophical in this post either. I really just wanted to give a quick update and say hello. I’m off to do more painting, administrative work, and get ready for a trip to the photographer to drop off some artwork. 

Cheers

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A Cool Watercolor Trick

Posted on April 22, 2025 by SusanG

I really wasn’t sure what to write about this week. Nothing in particular had come up that I just really needed to share. Then I thought about the painting I’m working on and how there are things I’m doing with it that are different and new for me and that might be worth sharing. So here goes.

I try to take myself on a walk in my neighborhood on a daily basis. Usually there’s nothing really notable about the walk. I might meet some of the local pups walking their humans or wave to the postman as he drives by otherwise I just walk and listen to my tunes. Once in a while I come across something that is worth pulling out the phone and snapping a picture of. Sometimes it’s just something I thought would look cool and maybe it can be used as a photo for a blog post or for an Instagram post. A couple of times I’ve managed to get some really useful pictures of some flowers. That was the case recently, though it wasn’t quite the situation expected. It wasn’t a purposeful flower.

I came across this lovely purple violet flower growing up through a crack in the asphalt. Judging by it’s size and that it had bloomed it had been left alone for a while, at least a couple of days. I’m not quite sure how I missed it growing before the day I saw it in full flower. Lost in my head as I was walking I guess. Anyway. I stopped to take several pictures from some different angles and when I got home and really looked at them I realized there was a cool painting to be made.

With the exception of one, I think, I tend to paint flowers on a roughly square shaped paper. I looked at doing that with this and quickly figured out that wasn’t going to have the impact I wanted. For me a big part of the impact of the image is this flower in the asphalt which for me means that more of the asphalt needs to be in the scene than would be if I made the flower the center of the painting. In that case I would only have a little bit of the leaves in the corner and an insubstantial rim of asphalt. So I looked at a larger less square paper in order to have more asphalt. And as it turns out better composition.

The big key here is the asphalt. I really wanted that look. However, I didn’t want to try to paint it all bit by bit, and I didn’t want it to be just a blurry watery grey/black background. I wanted the texture. And this is where the fact that I was planning on using watercolor turned out to be the advantage. There are different effects you can get when using watercolor paints that I suspect are a little more difficult to get with other paints like oil or acrylic. You have the standard watercolor technique of wet on wet, where you wet the paper and then using a fairly wet or loaded brush add paint to the surface and let it sort of bleed across the paper. You can also use this technique and then add things to the surface such as rubbing alcohol, or sand, or salt, and likely several other things, to get some really cool effects. 

I happen to have some rock salt, like for making ice cream, that I thought might work well if it would give more of the look of the bits of salt to make it look like the pebbles in the asphalt. I tested it and it did do that but it was fairly sparse because I was just doing a bit of a test. The good and the bad is that when I did it for the painting, I didn’t get as pronounced an effect as I did in my test, so there weren’t the distinct pebbles I had hoped for. As it turns out that’s ok. It really worked out well. Though, at first it was a little monotonous. There wasn’t enough variation in dark and light so I did a second pass and now I’m really pleased with it. 

The salt technique is just one of a couple of what I think of as specifically watercolor techniques or tricks that I’ve used so far on this painting. I also used a masking fluid to keep the edges of the flower and leaves tight so I would be able to paint them without the black or grey coming through. And I used a water repellent additive. I’m not sure how well it worked since I haven’t got to that part yet. But when I tested it when I first got it, it worked pretty well so I’m hopeful. That one I added some light yellow to the fluid and then splattered it a bit in a few areas. The idea is that as I paint the flower over this areas, it won’t take up the paint and will leave those tiny light colored bits behind.

I find it really amazing and a little strange working on this painting and using some very watercolor centric techniques. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never really considered myself a watercolorist rather someone who happens to paint with watercolor. I don’t tend to treat watercolors gently. I expect them to be strong and vibrant not so much soft and delicate, though I should probably reconsider if that’s still true after my last kick painting. It’s just with this one I feel like I’m starting to actually appreciate the possibilities that come with painting with watercolor. 

Cheers.

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I Broke a Rule

Posted on April 15, 2025 by SusanG

When I started working on the latest Taekwondo kick painting I broke a rule and then panicked about it. I did something that I thought was right and cool. And then I saw it from a side angle and panicked while thinking, now I know why that’s a rule. So I tried to undo it. But…

A little background. The painting is in watercolor. In watercolor it’s generally considered not ideal to use white paint to get the paler colors, instead just use more water. White watercolor paint has a tendency to make the colors not as bright and luminous. I suspect, because I don’t know all the science behind it, that it has to do with how it’s made and that in order to get the white you have either more or larger pigment particles. Whatever the reason, it creates a sort of opaque layer when used and when colors are mixed with it they can be sort of chalky looking. That means the paper doesn’t have a chance to shine through and let the light bounce off of it. And it can make things look a little dull.

I know this rule about using white in watercolors but when I set out to do the bright areas on the uniform I decided that I really wanted to have a pale pale yellow and not just a fine tint. I wanted the white with just a faint bit of yellow to make it glow. And it looked great when I laid it down on the paper. The paper isn’t as bright white as what I was able to get with that combination of white and a touch of yellow. It added just a little extra. I thought it was going to look great. Then I saw it from a side angle with the light hitting it just right and I panicked. 

I thought I’d done this all wrong. I mean what was I thinking. That white was so messed up. I was going to fail and make a mess of this watercolor painting. So I tried, as can sometimes be done, to basically scrub it out with a lot of water. This was a bad idea. Really bad idea. I used too much water and too much scrub and started to damage the paper. So I stopped. Let it dry and then regrouped. 

What I saw at that angle was that the white paint was sitting on top of the paper. The other paints were more absorbed into the paper. And that’s what made me think I’d done it all wrong. I didn’t want that to stand out like that. It might look weird if it were shown in an exhibition, it might show up when it goes to the photographer, and what if someone looked at it from a certain angle then they’d know that I did it wrong, so I would have to take it out.

As I said, trying to remove it didn’t really go well. The integrity of the surface was compromised in the area that I tried the most to lessen the effect. I finally stopped and decided to just keep it and go with it. I did end up redoing it, (adding some of the yellow tinted white back) to a few places so that the ‘glow’ it was meant to create was back. I also had to fix the surface so that it didn’t look rough and like it was peeling or pilling. If you’re wondering how this is done, it’s done very carefully with a razor blade. You basically shave the bits that are sticking up.

I cleaned up the mess I’d made and fixed it back to how I had originally painted the particular areas. I was annoyed with myself at this point. Not because of using the white. I was annoyed at trying to remove it because I felt like I had second guessed myself and had not trusted my instincts. 

As it turned out there was no need to panic. It became a non-issue and adds the bit of pop that I was hoping for. No, you can’t see the white paint sitting on top of the paper now that it’s complete. And that’s because of something I knew I was going to do for the painting when I finished it, I just didn’t know all the effects it would have on the painting. That’s for another post. The good news is that I panicked for nothing and got a lesson in trusting my instincts.

Cheers.

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Not My Style

Posted on April 8, 2025 by SusanG

Since I was having trouble figuring out what to write for my posts, I put a post on one of the socials asking what people might like to read if they were reading and artist’s blog. I got one response. At least I got a response. The person suggested I look at DaVinci’s notebooks. Ok. Why not, right? So I made a trip to the bookstore to pick up a copy. We’re going to try to ignore that I left with 4 books and 2 magazines for now. One of the books may come up later so…

One of the magazines I bought

I am an artist. Being an artist does not require having a formal background in art, or a degree in art, or even a bit of art history. I am however at least a bit aware of history. While I admire the Fauvist movement, I’m not a big fan of the look. I like some impressionists, just not the ones that seem to be best known for it, Caillebote and Rousseau come to mind as favorites. I also like Bruegel and I appreciate the starkness of the Bauhaus movement and the technique and mind bending art of Escher. One of the things I like least when it comes to art, art history, and instruction is the idea that someone who is not the artist can ‘interpret’ what was meant by the use of a particular blue or brush stroke or whatever. If the artist didn’t leave notes then how do you actually know? I’m going to stay off my irritable soapbox on this, trust me I have strong opinions on it. And they were a factor in my youthful choices regarding school and art. Moving on.

A couple of art books

The thing about the DaVinci notebooks is that he did just that. He wrote notes about what he thought about creating art, and how one should learn and master art, and what makes a real artist, and he wrote notes about his art. The Vitruvius Man. His notes discuss the proportions of the different body parts as compared to the body itself. It is interesting. And particularly since I draw people in motion. However, as I read some of his other notes, I couldn’t help but hear the same ‘authority’ that seems to come from critics and scholars and not so much from artists. Maybe. Maybe for those who teach art that is a natural way to explain something or how to approach something. And I’ve been fortunate enough not to come under such tutelage. It would not have gone well. 

Hopefully, needless to say, that is not my style at all. I can tell you what I observe and what works for me. I don’t know if it’s ‘right’ because I believe that if it works for you, or gets the effect you want then who am I to judge. There are ‘rules’ for perspective, and proportions and color mixing and even in oil painting for fat over lean, and these things are still just guidelines. Yes, the human body is generally considered to be so many heads high, and hand is generally a certain size as compared to the face. However, those are still guidelines. If you follow those rules you get a perfectly proportioned human. If you are depicting a specific human or a human in motion with foreshortening, these ‘rules’ might not apply. And even though the fat over lean is a practical rule, if you are looking for the effect that the opposite creates, well then, it’s still just a guideline. 

Reminder of what watercolor paper I’m enjoying so I can buy more

It has taken me a long time to reconcile this with regards to some of my own art. It tends to set my freewheeling artistic side against my more pragmatic and structured or disciplined side, which usually wins out. I was comfortable with pencil because, it’s a pencil, how can there be rules of using a pencil. I mean there are people that have particular ways they use it and maybe even some that think it should be held a certain way, but since I can write with a pencil it didn’t really occur to me that it mattered how I held my pencil when drawing. Watercolors. That’s a different story.

I finally came to the conclusion that I abuse watercolors. And I’m good with that. I think I’ve written before that I don’t typically do delicate watercolor paintings. My colors are usually bold and saturated. My taekwondo paintings may be the exception to this, and yes, I did use some watercolor technique so I might actually be a watercolor artist. Wait, what? I fought the idea of being a watercolor artist for so long because I didn’t like the delicate, often washed out, colors that I associated with watercolor. And then I finally, saw some watercolors in a museum that were saturated, and I finally found a way to describe some of my approach to painting with watercolors, I abuse them.

Oil paints. I do own them.

I’ve tried oil paints, and I’m thinking about trying them again. The one ‘rule’ I will be trying to abide by is the fat over lean because of the practicalities of the rule. And beyond that, I have serious expectations that whatever I do with the oil paints, I won’t be doing something ‘right’ because, how many versions of ‘right’ are out there. Is Van der Meer right, or van Gogh, or  Monet, or Rousseau, or Caillebotte, or Da Vinci? 

All of this to say, that while I appreciate the suggestion to reference Da Vinci’s notebooks for what to write about, that’s not my style. I just don’t see myself in that role, as the ‘authority’ on what is right or wrong or the only way in art. I’ll share what I do, or try, and how I feel about the results just to share, because hopefully it’s interesting to someone. Beyond that, I’m just an artist rambling about what I’m working on and hoping someone finds it worth the read. 

Cheers.  

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You Think Too Much

Posted on April 1, 2025 by SusanG

That’s what my sister told me after my last blog post. Followed by an admission of the ‘pot and the kettle thing’. And she’s right. I know she’s right. And I told her she’s right. I think she thought I was going to fight her on it when I asked “About?”. I asked because I was curious if it was in general or specific. It’s general. And again, she’s right. 

I could sit here and write all the possible reasons for thinking too much and basically self analyze, but that would be boring to me. I have looked at it. And think I know at least some of the reasons. And that’s enough because, I’m aware of them and I’m aware that I won’t grow and move forward if I keep doing it. If I keep overthinking in a way that keeps me from getting stuff done. Not everything has to be perfect, not everything is going to be perfect and that’s ok. Because, I am human. And I’ve come to grasp that even those people, who we think are amazing and have great lives, a lot of the time there really is just another human behind that facade with dirty dishes that need taking care of, favorite food weaknesses, the same ‘saving that for something special’ quirk, and their own self doubts, and so much more.

We live in a world where we are bombarded with what to do and what not to do to be correct in how we live. I mean how many things on the socials have you seen that say something like ‘you’re doing X all wrong’ or if you want to do X you “HAVE TO” do this. And the ones I like the least, things a woman or person over a particular age should or shouldn’t do, or should or shouldn’t wear. OMG. Please! So it’s easy to overthink because of this. Because, what if you’re misunderstood and someone gets upset, or what if you do something that puts off vibes that you didn’t intend. As just a couple of examples. So yeah, it becomes easy to think too much about stuff. 

I even think too much about what piece of art I want to do. Mostly it’s about if I want to paint that particular pose because of how much detail it might have or how challenging it looks. Sometimes I worry that if I do a painting of a particular subject that I really want to paint and then share it, then people will think that that’s what I do. Or if I try a certain medium or technique. I’m afraid someone will say something like, ‘so you’re a X artist now’. Or ‘so now you’re doing these types of paintings’. And then I’ll have to justify why I’m doing that piece and if I think I might do more or not. What if I just wanted to try it, and show off that I tried it. 

So yeah. I definitely think too much about some things and it does get in the way. I’m going to see if I can break the habit and just start going with things a little more. And part of that is going to be trying not to cover everything in every post. Let’s see how that goes, shall we?

Cheers!

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