What I’d Always Done

Posted on February 28, 2025 by SusanG

A little bit ago I posted on the socials asking if anyone else had spent all day working on a personal project and basically finishing it, only to realize they were going to have to start all over because it wasn’t right. I had done exactly that. That’s why I posted it. I wasn’t upset about it. Though I think some may have thought that. I found it a little frustrating, kind of annoying, but not anything to be upset about. In fact, I’d enjoyed working on the piece so much that I was looking forward to getting it right. 

Starting over means a whole new sheet of paper and finding the starting point and then the reference markers for the proportions and all of that. I knew what I did wrong with the previous one so I was determined not to do that. That was going to require I approach it different from what I’ve always done with this type of piece. 

Typically when I do one of these pieces I start on one side and use that as a reference for the other and for the proportions. I’ll get over enthusiastic about part of it and I’ll go ahead and fill in that first side almost completely before having everything outlined and in place. I get ahead of myself and want to see part of it finished right away. This is one of the things I’m trying to work on. Stepping back and letting a painting or drawing rest before moving on. 

Anyway, I hadn’t done one of these in a long time but when I was doing them more regularly, that’s what I did. Start on one side, finish a little section prematurely and move on. And I’d gotten to the point that I thought I was pretty good at it. Though I did have trouble with placement on the paper, or scale. That’s for a different discussion. Because that was how I remembered to do it, it was natural for me to fall back into that methodology. Not that it was effective. As I said, I had to start over.

When I did start over I took a mental step back and thought about what I’d done that was not right and I thought about my most recent paintings and how I’d approached them by laying in a sketch that could act more like line art that almost just needs to be filled in. I decided that that might be the way to go and since this is practice for a bigger project and I expect to be doing a few more of this type of art, I might as well give it a try and see if it works better. 

I’ve just about got the line art done and the subject of the drawing is looking like it is supposed to, and the proportions that I messed up before are better. And as I look at it, while it sits and marinates, because it is still in loose line art, it’s easier to correct where I see things that are off. I’m a little relieved because I was worried that every piece I do for the project was going to be a struggle and require multiple attempts, and maybe not make it a good idea. Or at least not with me executing it which would essentially kill the whole thing. So I’m hopeful that I’ve found a way forward.

I was thinking about this methodology of the line art sketch and realized, it’s not really a new thing for me. I started using it when I was doing stippling. I would do loose line art for all the curves, and shadows, and of course for the important features I would fill those in with a little more detail so I would know exactly where they would go. As I’ve started doing more watercolor, I realize except for the backgrounds I have been doing the same thing. And I do it for the taekwondo action paintings.

It was just interesting to me to realize, here I was fighting something, the drawing, because I was doing what I had always done. And I didn’t need to do that, I already had a better answer.

I find it a little ironic to be using this line art method or technique, because while it is a skill I have always admired and a style I like it was also something I didn’t think I’d ever really be able to do. So to find myself using it as part of my art, I find it kind of cool. However, I also have a bit of a quirk about it.

When I get the line art right and looking great, I hesitate to start the painting part for fear of messing it up. I’ve got a great outline, I don’t want to mess it up by putting paint in the wrong spot or not keeping the highlights light enough. Or, I am tempted to just fill it in, finish it off, as a graphite pencil drawing instead of a painting because, the pencil is my magic wand and I can erase it if I put a mark in the wrong spot. 

So, where am I with projects and paintings this week? I’ve made some progress. My watercolor painting of the man might be complete. I did some work on the dynamics and a few minor details and now it needs to sit where I can see it regularly for a day or two to make sure there aren’t changes I want to make. The next taekwondo painting is ready for me to start the painting. But I confess this is one that I am so pleased with the line art for it that I’ve been hesitant to start the paint and tempted to just make it a pencil drawing. I won’t. I’ll start the paint soon. And that personal project is coming along. I’ve got a few more resources for it and my practice piece is much more promising this time, thanks to changing my approach. I’m hoping to be ready to share more of that in the next few weeks. And since the watercolor of the man is just about finished, I’m working on what else to start next. I have a few choices but nothing is screaming at me so I’ll be combing through reference photos. Come back and find out what I choose.

Cheers!

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Where Will This Go

Posted on February 18, 2025 by SusanG

One of the interesting things for me is how often an encounter with something can send me off down some rabbit trail that leads to significant events. Or things that I consider significant. A few years ago it was a video of a live performance of a duet that sent me back to playing music, then back to playing at the blues jams making new friends and learning so much, taking a trip to San Antonio for a concert, and finally making a trip to Australia. Oh, and making me aware of a singer that had fallen off my radar. That rabbit trail lead to several more cool things and adventures. And, that rabbit trail was a long one. Along the way I noticed something that stirred a curiosity around creating something I haven’t done in a long time. But I didn’t act on it. Even when it popped up again a couple of years ago.

Skip ahead to this last December when another rabbit trail popped up in the form of a movie. It was in the fertile field of the experience of the last few pieces of art that I did last year. They were all watercolors. I really enjoyed creating with the watercolors and was starting to think about spending more time creating in watercolor and maybe finding a more narrow range of things that I paint. Watching the movie brought an actress who had fallen off my radar, back into my awareness, much like watching that video years ago, brought that singer who had fallen off my radar, back into my awareness. It happened that the actress was starting to hit the press circuit and talking about that very thing that I had noticed, when following the singer rabbit trail. And it turns out there are more than a few people having the conversation and changing things up, along the lines of what I noticed. Which I find really cool and exciting. And that curiosity that had been sitting just below the surface was stirred again.

The thing is, that curiosity has never quite gone away, I’ve just been busy the last two years working on art for my store and the curiosity isn’t something that I felt I could really share if I did it. So I didn’t pursue it. Often, those things that we keep trying to shove down or put off have a way of making it impossible to continue to ignore them and we get to a point we finally have to do something about them. Such was the case of the curiosity. It finally got to the point that I had to give it a try and satisfy it. And in the process I rediscovered something that I love doing. Between satisfying the curiosity and the discussion around that thing I had noticed, I realized that I could maybe combine them and suddenly I had an idea for a project that could fall flat or be a big deal. Right now, it’s a personal project that needs a lot more work before I am ready to discuss any more about it. I will say that I am super excited about it. I’m also a little terrified. Which I guess means, I have got to do it. Stay tuned. There will be more to come when I’ve got a few more things in place.

The project wasn’t the only thing that came out of all of this. The other part is a greater desire to narrow the scope of subject matter for my art. Which is great. But also presents an interesting situation with regards the work that I have already posted on my art store. 

My art for the last decade or so has been mostly about trying to find a way to do more with it in some way to hopefully create something that could maybe add some extra cash and even take over paying my bills, but without really defining a style or subject matter focus. I kept trying different mediums and subjects hoping to find the one that would spark interest (sell), in others as well as myself. So when I started the store I had a variety of artwork that I could choose from to post, just no cohesion to the collection other than it was art I created. I chose three pieces that I thought were my best and that’s what I started with. They were all in different mediums and while two were related the third didn’t match, it wasn’t even in color. 

As I started making more art for my store I continued to try different things while trying to stick with stuff that I have enough comfort with to not suck in my eyes. I was really just throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what would stick. Now, I like what I’ve created. I even have a few of the originals hanging on my walls. In addition to liking them, it’s a good place to store them. After about a year of doing this, scatter shot approach, though, it became apparent to me that this is getting me nowhere. But, like a lot of people, when it comes to change I was resistant. I was also afraid. I was afraid of getting pigeonholed. Getting locked into one thing. It’s a concept that has always had such a negative feeling for me. I can admire people that are locked into something like a musical genre, or a literary genre, or even an art subject. I just couldn’t fathom doing that myself.

It was all well and good to be diverse and eclectic in my work, until, I started wanting to apply for some contest opportunities that require a good artist statement, a grouping of several pieces of art for evaluation, and a description of the art you do. For starters. So I started thinking about finding or choosing something that I like doing, that I do reasonably well, and that I feel good talking about as an overall body of work. That didn’t get much traction until I painted the last few paintings of last year. I completed a soft pastel painting and cleaned up the studio before starting a watercolor painting. The next four paintings were watercolor and I started thinking about how much I enjoy working with watercolor. This is much to my surprise. Probably something I’ve written about before, or maybe something for another, shorter post. Anyway. After those pieces I decided to try my next taekwondo piece in watercolor instead of soft pastel. I’ve discussed that one already. It was while I was working on that piece that I finally gave into the curiosity I was talking about earlier.

And from there the idea of a ‘specialization’ of sorts or at least a narrowing of focus started whispering to me. And interestingly, the only real reservations I was having about this was not the new direction of the art I will make, it was what to do about the art I have already made. It took me a bit to figure that out. Once I did, it made it so much easier to move forward with the pieces that I have completed but not posted, as well as new pieces I’ve started, and even with my project. And now I’m really excited about making art, and most importantly, being an artist and talking about it. (Yes, I know that seems weird to some but I’m pretty sure it’s a cousin of imposter syndrome).

This is the point where I could make a big announcement that I’m giving up working on this or that, or working with this or that medium. Or I’m going to only focus on this thing. Or some such declaration. Aside from admitting that I do not like working with acrylic paint, I’m not going to do that. It’s tempting. It really is. Instead, I’m just going to create the art. I am going to create works that let me do more of what I do well. I’m going to do more work that I get lost in even when I walk past and stop to fix just one thing. I’m going to do more work that prompts the spontaneous declaration to my self that ‘I love doing…’ and see where this goes.

Cheers!

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Not All Paintings Work Out

Posted on January 21, 2025 by SusanG

I have this painting I’m working on that isn’t going as I had envisioned. And not really in a good way. It’s a little frustrating and disappointing. And yet, I still keep working on it, because I keep learning things from the bits I keep touching. 

The painting is from a photo I took of a taekwondo action shot. I have been doing these as sketches and then sometimes as pastel paintings. But I had just finished a small pastel and cleaned up the studio and wasn’t too keen on making a mess again or the feel of the pastel in my fingers, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it in pastel. I have created several watercolor paintings recently that I really enjoyed making, one included cloth even. So I wondered if I could do the taekwondo piece in watercolor. 

I sketched it in using water soluble graphite. I started with a basic black one and didn’t like the way it was behaving so I tried the Technalo pencil and stick that I got at the Caran d’Ache store when I was in Berlin. I liked the feel of it on the paper better. The ones I have are the blue tint which should work well since most of the taekwondo images have a blue tinge due to the light reflecting off the blue mat that everyone is standing on. This worked well mostly but also not quite. The failure was due to the paper behavior not the pencil, or stick. 

I wanted enough room on the paper to get the whole body on the page because it is all required to show the action. Fortunately I had a piece already taped up to a board. Unfortunately, for that size the only type of paper I have for watercolor is cold press. Cold press watercolor paper tends to have a divot sort of texture. I expect that they are meant to hold the water and the paint like little puddles or wells. Sometimes I don’t care about this and sometimes, ok a lot of times, I do care. And when it comes to pencil work on this type of paper it can be frustrating. Especially coming from a pencil drawing background. No matter the care or effort I make to get things to look nice and smooth, it always feels sloppy to me. 

Still, I was able to get the sketch down and then some shading in with the stick. I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted to do some of the shading and then add the color over the top. My thought being that it could give it a little more depth or maybe drama. Overall the idea was sound. There are a couple of areas where it really did add to and enhance the painting. I’m quite pleased with that. 

There were a couple of areas I struggled with when doing the sketch. The proportions looked off, and then when I measured them they were correct. But it still looked weird I decided that maybe when I added the paint and the shading that would fix it. Yeah, not so much. I have one area that no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get it right, but the proportions seemed to line up so I just plowed ahead. In retrospect this is not the right thing to do. I also have one spot that I failed to read the image correctly and so I have a place where there should be more uniform, that is white, than what is there. Unfortunately, at a certain point this becomes irreparable. Because, watercolor. 

Once I “finished” painting the main figure I decided it was time to add the background and use that to help tidy up some of the edges. The interesting thing was that I really liked the way the figure stood out against the white of the paper so it was hard to decide what to do for the background. I decided I needed the blue of the mat, hoping I could show the difference of the feet, one digging into the mat and the other poised in the air at the start of the jump. I also didn’t want to use light colors for the background because the figure is light and I didn’t want it to get lost. The mat thing wasn’t working so I finally decided on a darker, richer background. The good and bad of that decision is that it highlighted some real deficiencies in the painting. 

With the darker background in place I was able to see some things I could fix, and make better. Hooray. There are still some areas I’m just not sure I can do anything about. I have it sitting next to my desk while I work on some other pieces and once in a while I will see something that needs a tweak and I’ll stop and make the adjustment. It does make a difference. But I don’t expect any of the tweaks I might make to make me decide to put it up on my store. I do not consider it a waste though. I have learned a lot from this painting.

The first, most important thing I have learned is to slow down with the base sketch. Get it right, whatever that is for me, and make sure the sketch really shows what it is I’m trying to convey. For what I’m doing, if the sketch isn’t right, I’m not going to get the painting right. Watercolor is not very forgiving in that regard. So it has got to be right. I’ve also figure out or learned to be bold with my darks and shadows. Not because it’s watercolor and I was trying to create a soft, dreamy watercolor painting. More that I just forget to drive the darks back. And I think I’m afraid I’ll get too much color on the page if I do that because of trying to smooth out shading and folds. I’ve got a better handle on how to do that, thanks to the work on this painting. And I expect as I do more of it I will get better at it. Another thing I have learned is that I need to restock my watercolors. I plan on doing a few more watercolor paintings and as you might notice, I sort of abuse watercolor in many ways. I intend to keep doing that but that does require a fair bit of paint to get the depth and richness of color that I prefer.

Originally, when I first realized the painting wasn’t going to be what I wanted it to be I thought I would just start over and try again, with the same pose. As I’ve spent time looking at it and trying to figure out what was ‘wrong’ with it and how to ‘fix’ it I realized that part of my disappointment is that it doesn’t show what I could see and what I wanted. There is movement, but it doesn’t show the dynamics of what is about to happen. I’m not sure that I can convey that through this pose. There isn’t enough tension in the back leg and the twist in the body hasn’t quite got there. So, I won’t do this one again. I will chose a different action shot for the next taekwondo painting. I am going to try it in watercolor again because I really like the potential of it right now and I want to see where it takes me.

I have another painting in the beginnings. I’ve just finished the sketch for it. I took my time with it and now I’m going to sit it to the side where I can look at it for a while before I start the paint. I have another picture in mind I want to do and I might start the sketch on that one while I look at this one. I’m not sure yet. And I’m working on some stuff for a whole different project I want to do but I don’t expect to have anything more to share on that one for quite a while. The good news is that since I’ll be doing a lot of pencil work for that, my sketches for my other paintings, should get better and faster, I hope. 

That’s all I’ve got for now. Cheers!

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And Just Like That…

Posted on December 31, 2024 by SusanG

I have a photo that I want to make a painting from. The photo is one my sister took of her passion flower. It is really cool looking and quite intricate. I have been trying for quite a while to figure out how I was going to do it because of the incredible intricate detail. About a month or two ago, when I decided I was ready to tackle it, I was looking at it closer and realized that because the subject has all these fine almost wispy details I was going to need to do the background first and lay the flower over the top of that. And here is the catch. The fine wispy like details are in white, bold white.

Yep, that’s the acrylic painting that kept things blocked up

Needing to put white details over the background means watercolor is not my first choice. Though I have since thought of some ways I could do it, and that would be for another post if I decided to try it. At the time I started planning to do this passion flower painting the only viable answer I could think of was that it was going to have to be done in acrylic paints, or oil but we’ll skip oil conversation for now. I should be able to layer the white over the top of the background with no problems. So, in an effort to warm up to the acrylic paints I decided to return to working on a painting that I had started in acrylic and had sort of abandoned temporarily. 

While the results that I have been getting have been good, that is really the only part of the experience that has been pleasant. I have not enjoyed working with the acrylic paints, either as heavy body paints or using the liquid paints that are more fluid. Some of the issue may be a lack of information, some may just be learning curve, and some, I suspect, may just be that it’s not my medium yet, and it may never be. And that’s ok. 

One of the watercolor paintings for the photographer

What’s most interesting to me though is how trying to work on it so blocked me from working on anything else. See sometimes I’ll have more than one piece in the works at the same time. Especially if one is much larger so that it ends up on the big easel instead of the table. With this acrylic piece it just seemed to get in the way completely. I didn’t even do any sketching. And yet, I also wasn’t working on it regularly, or obsessively like happens with some pieces.

When I finally made the decision one evening to abandon it once again, it was like clearing a passage that had been blocked. Suddenly I was thinking of possibilities for a digital project I’ve been half working on. The next morning I cleared it off the table, put it aside completely and cleared up the paints and put them away. And as that passage started getting aired out from being blocked more possibilities started to occur to me. 

I have another piece of art I want to make, this one from a photo I took in Germany. I started to think about how I would want to render that one. I could do it in watercolor, because I think I know how to do this one part of it that could be cool, or I could do it in soft pastel. I think I’ve almost committed to doing that in pastel. Almost. I’ve just finished a bunch of watercolor paintings and I was thinking it would be nice to do more which is why I haven’t committed to pastel completely, yet.

I have also chosen some Taekwondo photos to reference for another piece. Again, I’m between watercolor and pastel for them. Mostly because I kind of want to see if I can do one in watercolor and I also wonder what it would look like. Would it be as dynamic and would the cloth render up as nicely? 

As I was cleaning up in the studio and deciding how to proceed, and get started on a new piece, because that is the hardest part, a thought occurred to me. I have this piece of Pastelmat that I got last year to try out. I started a to do a pastel painting of some tulips on it and then backed off because it was eating into my pastels so much. Anyway. I grabbed that piece and tested some marks of white over the green background using pastel pencil, and just like that I had the answer to how to do the passion flower. And, I happen to already have a larger size of Pastelmat to do it on because I recently bought some. 

Turns out Pastelmat is great to work with

My recent trip to visit my sister included a side trip to an art supply store in Savannah, Georgia and one of the things that was on the shopping list was some Pastelmat. I have some pastel card from Sennelier and it works really well at holding onto the pastel, but it is a bit courser than Pastelmat and I wanted to give the Pastelmat a better try since I have gotten over being worried about how quickly it was eating through my pastels. And from some videos I’ve seen it looks like Pastelmat might be a little friendlier to pastel pencils than the pastel card I have. Fortunately the art store had a couple of pads of Pastelmat so I didn’t have to order it online. And that means, that I have what I need for the passion flower pastel painting. 

It’s funny, even though I’ve figured out how to do the passion flower, I haven’t started it. I took that piece of Pastelmat that I was telling you about and decided to work on the painting that I started on it last year. It came together really quick and I really enjoyed the surface, Pastelmat. As I make a few more pieces of art using it I may have to make a post about it. 

My holiday PJ’s

For now, I’ve got that pastel painting ready to sign and scan, and I’ve got several watercolor paintings to take off to the photographer. That will be a task for the new year. In the meantime, I’m working on another watercolor. It’s turning out to be not quite what I expected. I just have to be patient so I don’t get heavy handed and mess it up.

Oh, and I still have a video I’m working on editing of me doing work on one of the watercolor paintings. I’m not as excited about the video as I was when I started the project because the aspect ratio of it but since I have written about it, I will get it posted. The video thing may be another topic later on, once I work out what I like best.

That brings you up to date for the end of the year. I wish you good health, happiness, and good fortune for the new year. Cheers!

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There’s Always More To Learn

Posted on December 10, 2024 by SusanG

That’s the thought that popped into my head just before I started writing this. It was triggered by what I was going to do and then decided not to do just yet, because I need to learn how to do something. Or at least figure it out and I wasn’t ready to commit the time. So, I’m writing this. Yes, this is just a different time commitment. 

What I was getting ready to do was to edit together some video of me working on a piece of art. But I realized that I might need to do the tutorial that popped up when I opened the software. Now, I haven’t started editing the video so I can’t really tell you about that. I can tell you about what I was working on when I recorded the video and why I recorded the video. So here goes.

I’ve been wanting to capture video of me working on one of my art pieces. But I tend to sit down at odd times thinking I’ll just do a little bit and tweak one or two things and the next thing I know I’ve spent two hours and I’m so far along that it doesn’t seem worth it to try to get video. I’ll probably change how I feel about that in the future but up to now, that’s how I’ve been thinking. This time though, I did things a little different.

I don’t have all of every single moment from the sketch to the end of the painting in video. I do have pictures of some planning sketches and then the piece with the outline done and then video of me working on different areas or aspects of the painting. I tried to make sure I was getting key segments so that it was really illustrative of the process of making this painting. 

The painting I was working on while I recorded the video was my painting of multiple candy canes laying around and over-lapping on a green background. It’s a holiday type design that I wanted to try to do. Because, over-lapping red and white twisties in the shape of canes seems like a fun challenge to map out and try to make sense of. And that it was. But it wasn’t the first candy cane painting I did this year.

I thought I had all my holiday paintings done. They were all done around Halloween so I was planning on working on other stuff. Until. One of my friends asked if I was working on any more holiday paintings. Since I wasn’t I asked if there was something he’d like to see and he suggested a candy cane like the one of the piece of candy corn. Ok. 

So I did a rough sketch and it came out pretty good so I tried again in watercolor because it seemed like a good medium. And I really like the way that one came out. At first it was just the candy cane on a white background but it wasn’t quite done, to me. So I added a little shadow. I like the way it came out. I also tried the candy cane in pastel. That turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected. The pastel dust from the read kept getting everywhere and the white just couldn’t keep up at times. It was messy. It still turned out pretty good. I might have stopped there.

Except. When I posted the watercolor candy cane on social media, before I added the shadow, I got a comment that I should do a painting with more than one candy cane. And of course I responded that that was not the request. It did get me to thinking though. And I decided I wanted to go a bit more over the top with a many candy cane painting. So I put some thought into what might work and even tried sketching out a couple of the ideas before settling on the design I chose. 

And then after I started painting in the red stripes it occurred to me that it might be cool to capture the process of this painting. I did it mostly for fun and to see how people like it. I also did it because I know that I don’t paint watercolors as watercolors. I generally paint them more like a gauche, acrylic, or even oil, to some extent. And that’s because I don’t generally use washes and thin color. I prefer my color to be deep, rich, and vibrant which I suspect makes my watercolor a little of an different thing. Though maybe not. I’ve seen some amazing watercolor that is rich and deep and lush. 

Of course, now that the painting is complete and ready to go to the photographer, I have video that needs to be edited together with some photos and I want to do some voice over for it to talk a little about it as I go. I’ve got about two hours of video to work with so I’m hopeful I can put together something that will be a little interesting. So, yes. Video is coming. I will post about it when it’s ready. Cheers!

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