Counting is Hard

Posted on January 31, 2024 by SusanG

More specifically counting to four is hard. Counting to four twelve times, and keeping track is hard. No. I didn’t think so either, but it seems to be. And to be fair, in the context I’m talking about, it really, kind of, is.

Here I’m talking about counting in music. Western music in particular because I know naught about Asian music or African, though Carlos Santana will tell you that most of what western music uses are African rhythms so maybe it is also based on a four-beat barre. A lot of music is based on roughly a four-beat barre with some variation. Cut time, or three-quarter time, or even six-eight time are some variations that are common, until you get to jazz and then all bets are off.

Learning to count in music is important. It lets/helps you to be able to play with other people. It’s the underlying thing that holds the group together, along with the key. If you can’t count how long you are supposed to be playing that chord or note, or how long someone else is playing that chord and where you fit in with it, and when they are going to change, then things don’t sound quite as good. And somebody is going to get confused. One of the best tools in learning to count is a metronome. And I’m finding a lot of bedroom musicians do not like to use one. I understand and relate. I didn’t either.

My relationship with the metronome is sporadic these days. It used to be non-existent. I didn’t want to use one, I hated to use one, and I wouldn’t use it. Though, my father, a musician himself who had played in band, and I think orchestra would tell me I needed to use one. He was right. But I didn’t really start any level of practice with one until I started playing with people. I found it was good for helping me learn to stay with the beat so that when I had a drummer to follow, who might be doing fills instead of just keeping the beat, I could stay with them. And while I don’t always use one these days, I do go back to it when I’m working on something that I’m having trouble with getting the timing for. Or when I’m trying to set a pace for my sister if we’re working on a piece together.

And this is how I learned that counting is hard. My sister and I have tried to work on three pieces together now and we did good with the first two though it took some work. The third one we still need to work on, I just happened to get caught up in something and haven’t gotten back to working with her on it. But I got a good laugh at something she put together because of how she matched things up. I forgot to tell her that so when she reads this it will be the first time, she learns of it, and I’ll get a text message. But I digress.

My sister is really my first understanding that counting is hard. And I have fun joking about it with my musician friends that I play with because it is the idea that something we learn to do at a young age is so hard when you get older. But it’s the context. And my sister isn’t the only one, she was just the first. I came across another person who is learning to count. Someone who wants to play with the jam that I play at and said, they aren’t very good at counting or keeping track, they are super worried about keeping up and making the chord changes at the right time, and all of that. And then there is my guitar student. Who takes chorus in school, and understands the notes, I will still have to work with them on counting. And until I sat down to write this, I had not thought at all about what is really going on when we count for music and that it truly is hard.

Let me take you through a basic 12 barre blues. A basic 12-barre blues is often in standard or four-four time. Meaning you get four beats to a barre; a whole note is held for four counts. In a 12-barre blues there is a 12-barre pattern. That means that after you play the first 12 barres you just repeat what you played until someone decides the song is done. So now you have to count to four, twelve times, and you have to keep track of how many times you counted to four. That sounds a little harder but not that hard, right?

Ok. So, let’s add the pattern. One 12 barre blues pattern is: the I chord for four barres, the IV chord for two barres, the I chord for two barres, the V chord for one barre, the IV chord for one barre, and the I chord for two barres. Then you repeat. Don’t worry about what those chords are, I’m just illustrating the pattern. An easier way to read this is:

I have to keep track of counting to four for four times, change my chord, then count to four for two times, change my chord, then count to four for two times again, change my chord, then count to four for one time, change my chord, count to four for one time, change my chord and count to four for two times, and don’t change my chord and start over.  Easy until you try it. Because each count is for the same amount of time.

Let’s use seconds here. So, let’s say you are counting to four. You want to strum or play a note four times per barre. And each one should be for a second. You want to count 1 for 1 second, 2 for one second, 3 for one second, and four for one second. You don’t want to count 1 for one second, then 2 for 2 seconds, and three for one second, and four for 2 or 3 seconds. Then you have six or seven seconds to your barre instead of four seconds. Has your brain seized up and ceased to function yet? Now you know how your child or friend who is learning to play music feels.

So, that’s just chords by the way. That’s not trying to read the notes of a melody or just reading regular music where you have to deal with the whole notes, half notes, quarter notes and all other manner of fractions of a barre and their various combinations. Basically, you need to get the right number of notes to add up to whatever that top number on the time signature is into each barre. So, if your barre is four seconds long, then a whole note is four seconds, a half note is two seconds, and quarter note is one second, and all the notes in a barre add up to four seconds. As a very simple example because it is never that simple.

Now I get it. Counting is hard. Counting for music is hard. You don’t just keep track of counting one thing. Depending on what your part in the music is you could easily have three counters going at the same time that are all at different numbers. I’ve been counting for music for so long that it is second nature to me. Not that I’m always disciplined at it. I use a lot of music counting slang, I drift and make it up as I remember it. But, if I need to figure something out, I go back to the basics and count it out properly. Counting is part of the musical grammar. It’s part of how musicians relate to each other when they are playing together. So counting is important. And hard.

I will still give my sister a hard time about her not being able to count, because that’s what sisters do. But I understand better now why she has trouble. I’d really never thought about it. Now that I have, I hope to be able to show patience to my guitar student and the musician who wants to play at the jam. It really is a mental work out.

And that’s all I’ve got. Cheers!

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And Now My Head May Explode

Posted on January 25, 2024 by SusanG

There are times when so many possibilities for art projects come my way that I get stuck, and my head wants to explode. It’s exciting when this happens. It’s also nearly paralyzing. It’s like a kid that walked into a toy store and can’t decide which way to go first.

When this happens, it’s very rare for me to jump right in and try to create one of the possibilities. They take time to settle in and gel. I can see in my head how cool they would look but often I have to work out exactly how to do what the piece needs.

NOT one of the guitars my sister took pictures of.

And yes, I have recently had one of those mind exploding, brain paralyzing experiences. My sister, awesome sister that she is, offered to go to an instrument swap meet and take some pictures for me for reference photos. She got some things I can work with and a few that I’m super excited over. And yes, I’ll need to let them gel in my brain before I get started on them. And I’m excited. The ideas and possibilities had me so stuck that I was having trouble getting out of the house to go run some errands. And no. I’m not going to share the pictures; you’ll have to wait for the art.

For some people, when they create their art, they decide what they are going to work on and exactly how it’s going to go. That is not the case for me. Not even close. I get to say, I think this would be a great piece or subject and start it, but the piece always seems to dictate the way things are going to be. I don’t know if this has always been the case. If it was, I wasn’t aware of it. These days though, I’ve learned that anytime I force something and get bull headed about making a piece be just so, or try to force a finish on the piece, or rush it, things don’t go well. Something will go wrong at the last part, or I’ll just not be happy with it. So, I’ve learned to let the piece dictate how things are going to go and at what pace.

I recently had a friend who is also an artist ask about how I decide what to work on or do, and even my mom asked about something similar. I think I said to both of them something to the effect of ‘you think I have a say in this?’ I don’t really. I think I even said to my mom ‘I just do the work.’ Each piece dictates what it wants, how it wants to be worked on, which part gets worked on next. One morning I thought I was going to work on one part of the current piece, the turtle, and though I spent several hours working on it that day and didn’t get to the area I thought I was going to work on.

Fortunately, because I know that if I don’t have something to work on when I finish a piece, I have a hard time getting started on the next piece, I am able to get several pieces, or ideas, lined up, sketched out, and ready to be worked on. I don’t, however, get a say in who gets completed first. Or who gets the bulk of the attention. I just do the work. Whichever work is presented to me that day to work on. Most of the time the piece I start insists on being completed or nearly so before I can start on another piece. The Turtle and Telecaster headstock are an interesting exception. I started the Turtle and was working on the sketch for the Telecaster. Once I finished the sketch for the Telecaster it would not leave me alone. It nagged at me, so I moved the turtle and started on the telecaster. I got the telecaster to the point of being nearly complete, it just needed some resting time, and returned to working on the turtle.

Now, the telecaster needs just a bit more work to be finished and I would like to work on it, however, the turtle is not at all interested in that prospect. So, I continue to work on the turtle. I’m sure I’ll get it to a point soon that I will be able to swap them again and finish up the telecaster. I’m a bit excited for that day. I really thought it would be about 5 days or maybe a week of resting time and then I’d be able to finish up the telecaster and that’s just not how it has been.

It probably seems like a strange way to work for people who are used to choosing what they do and muscling their way through, or having some sort of hierarchy or even pipeline that dictates how they work. I can say that when I have obligations, the art tends to be cooperative, and I can work on the things that have to be done. However, when I don’t have deadlines though, things are a bit different. I try to go with the flow.

And of course, now that I’ve been working on dots for several weeks, and black ones most of the month I’m getting the itch for something a little different and in color. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage it, but I may need to start one of the watercolor pieces that I’ve got lined up. My head may explode.

Cheers!

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A Little Review, A Little Update

Posted on January 9, 2024 by SusanG

Welcome to a new year! I know it’s a week old. Still.

I was going to write this as a quick recap of last year with a little look forward to this year and what I might have planned or want to do. But any quick recap would just look like a laundry list of things that happened or got done and that seemed kind of boring.

I definitely had some memorable moments last year. A trip to Paris France thanks to, and with my sister, being the most memorable and coolest. Oh, and floor seats on the 8th row of a Doobie Brothers concert with my sister and joking about what we would have been doing in a parallel universe or a different life, her a rock photographer and me on stage, was also pretty cool. And then there was opening my art store a trip to Houston and several other really cool events. Highs often come with lows and first losing a family friend, and then later losing a friend to rather aggressive cancer were mine last year. Last year was one for the books as far as lots of events, happenings, changes, and the like, some things big, some small, and some things that were more than they appeared to be. And a fair bit of art happened last year. Not the volume of when I was doing the sketchbook projects, which were a different type of art and easier to do lots of it, still a good bit. And a good bit of stuff that surprised me, in size, detail, subject, and often times, just the fact that I created it was what surprised me.

I didn’t sit back and take a break from art over the end of year holiday period. I have several pieces ready to be worked on. Their sketches are done and waiting for me to put pen to paper or brush to paint and then paper. And one that has, like many pieces I’ve worked on lately, been rather demanding of my attention.

I’ve been working rather diligently, because it won’t leave me alone, on the Telecaster stippling painting. It’s been interesting as I didn’t color the surface like I did for the Ovation painting. The advantage of the white surface is that I haven’t had to work as hard to get the color to show and stay true. However, in the right light this also gives a false sense of how well the subject actually shows up on the paper. It may look like it’s really vivid and stands out well but when you step back or the light hits it just right, like the sun coming through the window in the morning, you can see that there isn’t good coverage, and it needs another layer of dots.

Something I discovered when resuming the work on the Ovation painting, as starting by doing the background, was that because the background is brushed on, not stippled, and bold and not neutral, it can help me see if my subject mater stands out properly and as vibrant or vivid as I want it too. So, I finally filled in the background for the Telecaster. That was very helpful.

One thing I tried this time was how I handled the canvas board. For the Ovation painting I didn’t have much experience with canvas or canvas board, and it didn’t occur to me that the texture would be an issue, until I’d put many hours into it and found a little frustration with trying to precisely place dots on a surface of dips and peaks. So, this time I tried adding a couple of layers of gesso to smooth out the surface a bit. I ended up with a surface a little closer to paper in its smoothness which has made laying down dots easier. However, the nature of the acrylic ink offered its own interesting quirk.

Acrylic ink is not like using regular ink which is a water like solution with tinting or pigment added to it. Acrylic ink is like thinned acrylic paint with pigment suspended in the medium. While it absorbs into the surface to some extent, with the acrylic gesso as the surface, it basically sits on top of it and creates texture that with the art lights, casts shadows. I discovered that texture of the dots because they were casting misleading shadows when I would take a picture of the work in progress. It made it look like it was denser than it was.

Because people often ask how long it takes to do a piece, particularly a stippling piece and because I should know for myself, I’ve made a point of keeping track of the time I work on the Telecaster. At this moment I’m about 40 hours into it, that includes the time I spent trying to get the sketch right. I think I’m in the final detailing stage. It needs the strings finished up and a couple more small tweaks and it will be done and ready to sit for a week or so before varnishing.

I’ve really enjoyed working on the Telecaster. When I first started it, I think I approached it as something of a ‘paint by numbers’ or a ‘color in the lines’ type of piece. I didn’t really feel there was room for the type of delicate finessing that I do with the black and white stippling pieces of the animals. However, as I moved into the finishing and detailing stages, I found I was doing a bit more of that than I expected or even thought would work in the ink. Instead of just putting in dots of the right color, I was finessing shadows or crevices or glint on metal. And the fact there is some wear on the guitar gives the guitar some character and including that in the painting gives the painting some character that takes that finessing to achieve.

I have thought, for years, to do a series of paintings, stippling in particular, of guitars or parts of guitars and working on the Telecaster has rekindled that desire and with getting into the final stages of the piece I’ve found a bit of a stride and vision for doing more guitar pieces. I’m even looking forward to the challenge, even if it feels a little overwhelming, of painting/stippling a guitar with a burst finish, and one with quilted wood. The quilted finish will take a lot more finessing to get it right and feels like it will be a much bigger project. I don’t have one in mind to do yet. I’ll have to find the right candidate. But I probably have a picture of one with a sunburst finish. I’ll have to look.

Now, I’m off to put more dots on canvas board or paper. Cheers!

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Not Quite What I Intended

Posted on December 27, 2023 by SusanG

At one point this past week I had five – 5, works in progress. That wasn’t at all what I intended or was aiming for, it just sort of happened. I am ever so grateful and happy to have so many ideas wanting to manifest through me. I’m just a little surprised to have it happen. And to even have ideas for how to approach some additional projects come up while I was working on these. I think this next year is going to be pretty cool for my art.

So how did I end up, unintentionally, or accidentally having five pieces of art in progress at one time? It started with being a little antsy in a meeting. I decided I needed to do something to be able to stay a little focused so that I didn’t miss the meeting, so I got out the sketchbook, which I need to do more often but that’s another story. I will often draw a snowman and use that for testing a technique or a medium and that sort of thing. I was wanting to look at blending colors in stippling by using the different colored dots to get a color I want instead of mixing the color and then laying down dots of that color. So, the snowman was going to be my test of that idea. It sort of worked. But. I don’t think I’ll be focusing on that for a while. Anyway, I showed the piece, not done, to my sister who said it was cute and I should put it up on my store. Before she said that I had decided not to finish it. It’s in stippling and my pens are quite fine tipped.

My sister is very good at encouraging people. I like to call it ‘egging them on’ but we’ll go with encouraging as I’m sure that’s what she prefers to call it. To be fair though, I have been wanting to do something with Snowmen for a while now. I have done several Snowmen over the last several years. I have a lot of fun with them. They are never the same. They each have their own personality. I have one with a surfboard and one with a garden basket. So, it wasn’t like she had to push too hard. I decided to finish the piece. The nice thing was that because it was in my sketchbook, and small, and with liner pens, it meant I could sit on my couch and work on it while watching a holiday special.

That was one piece. I already told you about the turtle that I was working on. The sketch for that is finished. And I told you about the Telecaster headstock that I was having trouble with. That sketch is also finally finished. And I told you I was planning on some flowers. For those counting, that’s three pieces. That’s how many I was planning on starting but it doesn’t include the other subject matter I intended to work on. That would be the flowers.

I was thinking about how I was going to paint the flowers, which is a grouping, and I came to the conclusion that the format of the paper I was going to put it on wasn’t going to be the right shape, or big enough. While thinking about my past flower pieces, and the format, and what my options might be, I remembered that a few months ago I purchased some larger paper of the brand I used on the earlier flowers. The company is Shizen and I love the watercolor hot press sketchbook that I use. The paper is really lovely. The sketchbook is 8 inches by 8 inches. The larger paper is 12 inches by 12 inches. I think it might also be cold press instead of hot press. Anyway, I grabbed a piece of the larger paper and taped it to a drawing board and started sort of roughing in the placement of the key parts and before I knew it I had most of it sketched in, certainly I had it all placed with just a couple of areas that needed better detail. That brings the count to four.

Apparently, it wasn’t enough that I was in the middle of finishing the Snowman and had most of the sketch for the flowers done because later that night I started thinking about the previous flower paintings that I’ve done and how this new one, while the same shape, doesn’t quite fit. It’s a grouping where the previous pieces have basically been one distinct flower. So, I had a look at the reference again to see if there was a way to get a similar layout with this and make it look interesting. When I saw it might be possible, I got out the Shizen sketchbook and started to do a reference sketch for it, with enough detail to make it usable. And that’s how I got to five pieces of art in progress.

Before I continue with the current status of everything, I want to revisit what was my delusional ambition from my previous post. I was hoping to varnish the Ovation painting, finish the three sketches and get started on at least one of those. At this point I might have surpassed my ambition.

Here’s the status of my current art pieces. I have the Ovation painting varnished. I have got to get better at that. At least it’s protected. I hope it won’t make the photographer too crazy. It is supposed to be a satin finish but it’s glossier than I expected. The Snowman is finished and signed, it just needs to be scanned and posted on the store. I have four sketches complete and ready to start.

It really is exciting for me to have so many pieces in progress and ready to be worked on. And I have ideas and plans for how to approach some of them. And while I was working on a couple, I had ideas for how to switch up some of the composition for some future pieces. I’ve said it before, or something similar, I do so much better when I have something to start on as soon as I finish a piece. When I don’t have something to start right away, I lose momentum and sometimes have trouble getting started again. I had a little bit of that this time but once I got it going, things really started to happen. As you can see.

I expect to have some in progress pictures next time. And depending on what I’m working on maybe some insight regarding either the subject or the process. Oh, and, we’ll have started a new year as well. Here’s hoping for a great 2024. Cheers!

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The Next Round of Art Projects

Posted on December 20, 2023 by SusanG

Before I get to the topic for today… I have declared the Ovation painting complete and I’ve signed it. It’s not ready for the photographer yet because I want to varnish it. I’ll probably varnish it this week and then get it to the photographer the first week of the new year. Which will make it the first new piece on the store for 2024.

Now to today’s topic. I finally decided what I want to tackle next. And I decided to start three, not just choose one. I’ve finished the sketch for the black and white stippling already. It’s a turtle that a friend and I came across while at the park in September. I was going to make it a 16-inch by 20-inch piece but the paper I have that size is a little warped so it’s difficult to dot on. I did start out on that size. I started drawing or sketching in the turtle and got the whole turtle on the page and realized that not only did the turtle need to be bigger, and not the whole thing on the paper, the paper needed to be bigger. So. It’s now on the 18-inch by 24-inch paper. Same size as the Penguins. And by blowing it up and making it big enough to make the head and face a focal point it has made the composition better.

I am also going to do a color stippling piece. This one will be a guitar headstock. I’ve chosen a Telecaster from 1955 that I saw several years ago at a guitar show. It’s got some wear and should make for an interesting piece. I am going to do that on canvas board, like the Ovation. However, I have added a couple of layers of gesso to smooth out the canvas texture a fair bit so hopefully it won’t be as frustrating to work on as the Ovation painting. I started the sketch for it and have had to start the sketch over. I had the same problem with it as I did with the turtle. I made it too small and tried to put too much of it on the canvas. That made for a really weak composition. Not that there is a lot that I thought to do with the composition. Maybe the next one. Anyway. I also had some trouble getting the shape and angle just right. Telecaster headstocks are just a little odd and they have more of an angle than you think. It’s been challenging. I hope it turns out good.

I’m also going to do a watercolor of some flowers. This will be a little larger than the other flowers I’ve done. And it is a small cluster of flowers. This one will be interesting. I tried painting a flower of the same type as these on some handmade paper with watercolors and found it a little frustrating. Partly because of the paper and partly because of the flower. The color is a real challenge. But I’ve seen some demo videos that have given me an idea of how to approach them so hopefully this one will work out.

Of course, as soon as I decided what I was going to work on next, all sorts of things made it difficult to start working on them. It was a little frustrating so to keep at least a little art going I worked on the experiment a little. I made some adjustments and I’m starting to work on the cliff detail. It wasn’t really enough to keep me in drawing/arting shape though. I think that’s why I struggled with the turtle and even the telecaster. Hopefully the flowers will go a little smoother.

I came across an Instagram post one day of someone testing color mixing and eye mixing of paint. It was really interesting. Even with the discrepancy of the digital camera not allowing for true eye mixing, I could see where the eye mix gives a much more vibrant and true color versus the paint mixing. To demonstrate, they painted a swatch of the mix color they wanted in a circle. Then, around the outside they painted the colors they used to mix the inside color in alternating patches. Then they spun it like a roulette wheel and filmed it. You could just get the blur where the two colors mixed, and it was the same color as in the middle but a bit purer. It was cool. And it started me thinking about pointillism.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll share it again. Pointillism is what Georges Seurat did. And it is a lot like what pixels do or the older tv’s where you put the red, green, and blue colors next to each other and the eye mixes those colors based on how much of which was present. Basically, pointillism is putting the pure, or close to pure, color next to a complementary or contrasting color, or even a black or white and letting the eye mix the colors. That’s a very simplistic description and probably not 100% accurate but it should convey the idea.

So, after watching that demo of the way the eye mixes, I started thinking about seeing how that would work. I tried to mess around with it and see what sort of results I would get. I just did a small sort of basic sketch with some colored multi-liner pens. And while it looks cool and should be very effective, I’m not sure if I like having to be as precise in my placement of my dots as it seems I would need to be to make this most effective.  So that idea will probably simmer for a while longer.

As you can tell, I have a few things I’m working on. Fortunately, I have a few days off from the day job for the holidays so I might get to some of it. Actually, I have ambitious delusions that I’ll get all the sketches done, the varnishing done, and at least one of the three pieces started. I’ve also got a small music project to play with so while my ambition isn’t entirely unrealistic, it might not all happen. Check back to find out how it goes.
Peaceful holidays to you.

Cheers!

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