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!

Posted in Art, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on And Just Like That…

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!

Posted in Art, General Commentary, Uncategorized, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s Always More To Learn

Brief Catch Up, Trip and More

Posted on November 29, 2024 by SusanG

The last few years of this blog have been very hit or miss, as you know if you’ve been reading it. Or trying to when I do publish a post. I have been so hit or miss that without actually looking I would venture that several posts have started with or contained some sort of apology for the length of time or delay since the previous post along with a promise to do better. As tempting as it is to do that again, I’m going to do my best to refrain, from doing either. Instead, I’m going to share with you why it has been a challenge to keep up with the posts.

Before the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, I was going to a local blues jam regularly and it generally gave me plenty to write and post about. And I did that. But then we went into lockdowns and isolations and I didn’t know what to write about. Should I shift my focus to this idea or that idea? I even tried. I wrote a series of posts about the idea of manufactured need. Most of it didn’t feel right enough to keep posting about. So my posts would be varied and mostly catch up posts on things I was doing at the time. Along the way there was more art in the posts than music but I still wasn’t sure about what to write about. What to share. What you would want to read about. 

I still don’t know for sure. But I’m going to take a stab at something and see how it goes. Hopefully you will enjoy reading the posts and I can get more in the habit of posting regularly again. It’s going to take some work though. 

Before I get to that, I have an update on that trip to Germany. It happened. I had a great time. I was happy to be in Germany, and super excited to get to try to use the German that I’ve spent so long trying to learn. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to get by in a few cases. And even enough to get positive comments from some of my colleagues. 

As a reminder, the trip was for the day job. I spent my first week there working in the office and meeting with colleagues in different areas so I could get a better understanding of technologies that are being used and how they might be leveraged in the US offices. I enjoyed meeting my German colleagues and having conversations with them either over dinner or lunch in the cafeteria. All in all they were great, welcoming and helpful. 

The second week of the trip I took vacation and was mostly on my own, though a couple of my colleagues did check on me to make sure I’d made it to my destinations since I was traveling by train for the first time. I went to Hamburg for a couple of days and then Berlin before returning to my starting location to catch the plane home. Hamburg was cool, I didn’t see everything I thought about seeing due to me not properly planning much. I did see some cool things though. One was the museum of arts and crafts. They had an exhibit about the history of water and it’s usage. That was quite interesting. I also found the Chocoversum. The chocolate museum. I have a new appreciation for mosquitos. I also made it to the viewing platform of the Elbphilharmonie, though not the full tour. That was quite a view. 

From Hamburg I went to Berlin. I rode the hop on hop off bus and got to see many of the well known places. I did not hop off to see the museum island. Though it is something I would go back to see. I had arrived through the main train station and noticed that it was four floors but hadn’t really registered how very big the place is until taking the bus ride past it. I have more appreciation for the gentleman who pointed me to the correct exit for grabbing a taxi because, wow. The station is huge. I ended up being in Berlin on a holiday, reunification day as it turns out. For those that don’t know, holidays in Germany are much like Sundays in that there is very little open. Transportation, restaurants, and museums are pretty much it. All good. I booked the trip to Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam for that day. That was fun. What made it especially fun was our guide. She turned up in style with black faux leather pants, a bright orange puffer jacket, a small backpack, and 40+ years of tour guide experience. 

As I said, it was a great trip. And I have to thank my colleagues because they helped me with booking my trains and my hotels in Hamburg and Berlin. I also learned a lot about how I would travel again. Starting with, a smaller bag, and even two bags instead of just one. I had one very large bag and it was really too much for me to manage well. I did it but, I would have managed better with smaller bags. And, even though I could have got all my goodies in it coming back I was concerned it would have been overweight as just the one bag so I purchased another smaller one for all the goodies. Some of the other things I would have done differently include, plan a little better, choose a central location and take more day trips, even if that meant an early train there and a late train back. I also now have a better idea of what I would want to see and even how to go about finding some off the beaten path sites and attractions. 

And for the question some ask, ‘would I go again?’ Absolutely. I plan to. I just haven’t decided when. I felt very comfortable in Germany and particularly enjoyed Berlin. I liked seeing the contrast of the cold war era architecture next to the restored older architecture. And it was in Berlin where I found the Caran d’Ache store for art supplies so that certainly helped. 

The trip was quite impactful for me on a personal level as well as day job professional level. Personally there was all that I’ve shared as well as the general impact travel tends to have and more. Professionally, day job speaking, I came back with a lot of work that needs to be done. Some I knew about, some was hinted at, and some had been set aside, all of it big projects and undertakings. And because of that, as well as other work that was underway when I left on my trip, the day job has generally been taking it’s toll. Which can make it difficult to find the energy, physical and mental, to work on the things I want to work on and to create the things I want to create. And yet, things are still happening.

I’m making some changes to my art store. I’m setting up a gift shop feature so you can find the merchandise items easier. And I’m setting those up so you can just order them. You won’t need to worry about if they are going to look good when you get them or any thing like that. I’m setting the art on the items in a way that I want the art to be viewed. This should make things much easier for you. As with the day job, there is a lot to still do here. And there is a lot more that I want to do so expect some incremental adjustments as I work to improve things. And yes, there will be more art added.

I have three pieces of art back from the photographer and a couple of pieces that I can scan or have scanned that will be appearing on the store soon so look for those. I did some Candy Corn art for Halloween. That was fun. I also have another watercolor painting finished that will need a trip to the photographer. And at a suggestion of one of my Taekwondo friends I’m working on some Candy Cane art. I’ve done more than one piece. I did one in watercolor first and that will need to go to the photographer. Another one is pastel and small enough that I can scan it. And I’ve got one more I want to do that I’m planning to do in watercolor as well. That’s not all that I’ve got in mind. I am planning the next Taekwondo painting. I may do something different with it and I’m excited about it. I have another painting that I want to do, I’ve done part of the sketch for it, but that one I want to surprise someone with so you’ll have to wait to hear more about it once it’s done. And I have another one I want to do that I think I’m going to try acrylics, again. I will need to be patient. 

So yes, the trip was good and now there is lots of art related stuff happening. Art being created and the store getting updated. Maybe that will give me more to write about. Cheers!

Posted in Art, General Commentary, Just Thoughts, Travel, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Brief Catch Up, Trip and More

I Get to Go to Germany

Posted on September 19, 2024 by SusanG

I think I mentioned in my last post that I have a trip coming up for the day job. There are a couple of cool things about this trip and the coolest is probably that it means I get to go to Germany. That’s where the ‘home office’ for my day job company is. I’m excited. 

And here’s where you get a little background. When I was a wee child, my biological father was in the US Military (Air Force to be specific). We were stationed in Germany for three years. I was just old enough to remember bits and pieces of it. Things like the ironing lady Frau Brindel. Or the German teacher who came into our classroom periodically to teach us German. I also remember bits of camping trips, and trips to castles. I even remember a little bit about picking some plums. Mostly I remember a big bug that came out of the sack when we got home. I don’t like bugs. 

We returned stateside and I remember we got a care package of sorts that contained Gummi Bears. At the time, these weren’t easy to come by in the states, and they were a favorite. They still are. I can’t wait to get some “REAL” Gummi Bears. Yes, I know I’m mixing my German and English. Which leads nicely into, I have been trying to learn German since I was a teen. The first high school I went to didn’t offer it, just Spanish and French. The second high school did and I jumped at the chance to take it. The fun bit, was that my German teacher was the husband of my sister’s Kindergarten teacher. 

Anyway Herr Z not just taught us German he told us about the year he spent teaching in Germany. Unfortunately, I only got two years under his tutelage before I graduated and started trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I took German in community college two more times, they were two different schools. I finally got determined after working at my day job for many years and seeing ‘home office’ emails in both German and English, and I started with an online course to learn German. This is one of the best things that came out of the pandemic lock down. I got consistent. I did the Duolingo course and even finished it. 

This past summer, just before I finished the course, I was at multi-day meeting for the day job and a couple of our colleagues had been invited. I got brave and made a few comments to one of them in German which caused further conversation and a generous offer to practice with me on video chat. And now, I get to actually go to Germany, and have an opportunity to practice my German even more. I’m excited, it will be an adventure. 

Not only will I be going for the day job, I will be staying longer to do a little touristing and sightseeing. I’ve narrowed down my destination for that time to Hamburg, with the possibility of a short trip to Berlin. But with the recent weather, I’m not sure if I will be wanting to change any of those plans. I was just reading that both Berlin and Hamburg are artist cities, like say New York in the States. So that will be cool. 

I found that Hamburg has a big concert hall called the Elbeharmonia (I think I got that right). It’s not even ten years old. It is a concert hall built on top of an old warehouse and the top part is designed to look like waves of glass. And the photos of the inside of the main concert hall look just amazing. The acoustics have got to be awesome. I’m hoping to get to do a tour of the place much like I did when I saw the Sydney Opera House. 

There are so many places to see and choices of things to do that I’m still a little overwhelmed by the possibilities. Fortunately, some of my colleagues have agreed to help my make some decisions, and maybe even have some recommendations. I’ll be taking my camera, and a sketchbook. I expect to have lots of pictures and hopefully some will be art worthy. 

So that will be my adventure the next couple of weeks. I’ll post some pictures on Instagram as I go so if you follow me there you’ll get to see them before I get them here. But do come back because I’ll post a bit about the trip here, when I get back. 

And quick before I go, I’ve included some pictures of some things I’ve worked on recently. Some will be going up on the store soon and some will need a trip to the photographer when I finish them.

Cheers!

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on I Get to Go to Germany

To Share or Not

Posted on August 20, 2024 by SusanG

Yet again, I have started this post more than once and I am starting over again. Sometimes I’m just not satisfied with the thoughts that I first think I want to post and sometimes by the time I get around to reviewing them, they are irrelevant, or slightly out of date. While the previous attempts are not totally irrelevant, they are a little out of date, and not really what I think I want to say. So here we go again. 

Occasionally I like to do a bit of experimenting. With my blog and more especially with my art. I’m always looking for the right way to create whatever vision or idea I have. Sometimes that is with pastel, sometimes it’s with watercolor, or pencil, or acrylic ink or paint, sometimes it’s something completely different, though not usually.  

I’ve had some ideas for things I want to create that I thought should be done in acrylic paint for a variety of reasons and perceptions. So I got out some acrylic paints and started trying to work with them. I’ve tried oil in the past too, I chose acrylic this time for the ease of cleaning up after. Anyway. When I got ready to start trying to get used to the paints and figure out how to work with them, I got stuck. I needed a way to practice but I didn’t want to use any of my canvas or canvas boards because they are too “precious”. They are more expensive and more permanent so they are not suitable for practice. This was my thought process. And it was holding me up. Until it occurred to me that I could use watercolor paper to practice on. It’s not as permanent feeling, not quite as expensive, and takes up less space. Hooray.

So I set about trying to get accustomed to painting in acrylic. I had some good results and some not so good results. In all cases, I learned something. I’m not sure I really liked the experimenting. It was a little frustrating, though, I did have one that came out really nice. I wanted to post it on my store to share with everyone because I really like it. But, as it is an experiment and on paper and small, I hesitated for a while. A couple of weeks. Then I finally decided that it is still art. It still looks really cool and I should share it. Who am I to judge what others might like, especially since I like it. And I’ve posted a couple of other experiments that turned out to be pretty cool so why not.

I think it seems counter to everything we are taught, about how we should find our medium and niche and stick with those and become masters of them, to decide to experiment with something and share the cool outcome even if you aren’t sure whether you will ever do another piece that way. So I often get stuck on ‘do I take the time to experiment’ or ‘should I share my experiment that came out really cool’. And I hear a lot of other artists worry about the idea of finding a niche or a signature style or theme. And I think this is what has always frustrated me. The expectation that we must pigeonhole ourselves in order to be accepted or understood or appreciated. I have diverse interests and skills, and I know others that are the same. It seems a shame to not get to use some of it just because we can’t be marketed if we are “all over the place”. It’s a bit of a frustration for me, but, I see more and more people sort of ignoring the efforts to be pigeonholed and just going ahead and doing all the things they want. And it’s working. So I guess the answer is ‘to share’.

With that. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been working on.

I have been working on a pastel of a flamingo since I finished the Rhino, which was shortly after I got back from a trip to Florida. It’s a large piece and I did struggle a little with how exactly I wanted to handle some of the background, so I haven’t always stayed focused on it. It’s coming along. I have completed an entire first layer so I could do the first coat of spray fix and now I’m onto the next layer of pastel. I’ve got part of the flamingo done and parts of the background. I was showing a photo of it, as it looked just after the first spray, to a friend and they thought it was done. I explained to them that it isn’t because it needs at least another layer, the color isn’t saturated enough. A few days later, after I’d added some of the next layer I showed them another picture of it at that point so they could see the difference that additional layer and saturation makes. The flamingo is still not done.

I did that experimenting that I was telling you about. I started with a snowman because, well, I like to draw snowmen. They are fun, and simple and make for a quick way to test out a new medium or paper or whatever. So I did one with the acrylics. I’m not really pleased with it, though I like the way some of the background turned out. What I did in my acrylic experimenting and practice that I really like is a butterfly. The background is abstract greens with the butterfly as the focus and by chance, it came out really nice. I particularly like the vibrancy of it. 

I did attempt another piece in acrylic that didn’t work out as I have hoped or expected. It’s salvageable if I decide I want to finish it. I’m not sure yet. Not all experiments turn out to be worth sharing, and not all get finished.

The reason for wanting to use the acrylic has to do with wanting bold and vibrant color and along with the ability to really blend and shade things well, oh and detail. But, I wasn’t getting comfortable with the acrylic paints as quickly as I would like and it was keeping me from creating the work that I really wanted to do. So. I finally decided to do it a different way. Though it did require I get past not wanting to do something that was going to eat up my pastels, as in, use them up.

When I create a piece of art using pastel, I usually use pastel paper. It has some tooth but not too much, and requires a fair amount of spray fixative to be able to get really rich color and to not have the paper peaking through. A few months ago, I watched a video by a pastel artist who was comparing the different pastel paper options and giving a review. It was really cool and as a result I decided to order some of the textured papers for pastel to try. I really liked the way they hold onto the pastels and how rich the color looks on them, but, they felt like they really ate into my pastels as I was using them, and somehow this felt wrong or irresponsible. Like I was wasting resources.

I really wanted to do another taekwondo piece in color. I wanted it to be bold and vibrant and hopefully exciting, so I decided to try the textured pastel card again and just deal with the fact that it was going to wear down they pastel faster than I was used to. I am super happy with how it turned out. When I was working on it and making progress, I’d walk past it during the day, when I couldn’t work on it, and I’d stop and look at it and admire how they color popped. And yes, I’ll be using textured pastel card, and surfaces again. I’ll just buy more pastels.  

At this point I have three pieces of art at the photographer right now. They are all pastel paintings. They are; the Rhinoceros, a painting of five tulips, and the taekwondo painting. Hopefully I’ll have them back in the next week or so and can start posting them on my store.

So that’s where I’m at. And for my plans…? I have been working on a few other things artistically, as well as that flamingo, and I have another couple of piece already in mind to start. I also have more travel coming up for the day job which, I need to do a few things to prepare for. This trip will be a big adventure and I expect to have plenty to tell about it once I get back. And I’m going to try to get another blog post done before I go. 

Cheers!

Posted in Art, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on To Share or Not