Easter Painting WIP

Second pass on the painting I started last week.  (Missed it?  Here's the post.)
It's coming together pretty well, I think.  I introduced two new colors and added some depth to the mug/coaster situation.  The handle's a bit wonky, but I can fix that after it dries completely.  Don't like your acrylic painting?  Wait ten or twenty minutes and paint over it.

If you're wondering about my weird paint palette, it is a Fage yogurt lid.  Funny story about that...

I have spent literally hours of my life, possibly even days, scraping paint off a glass palette just to put more paint on it.  One day I got so fed up with it that I grabbed a clear tub lid out of my recycling bin and used that instead of spending another hour in the sink with the glass palette that I'd come to despise.

The yogurt lid worked like a charm, and when it got too cruddy to continue using, I tossed it out and got another.  I still have a bunch of them hanging around, but I've since stopped buying yogurt because dairy isn't Paleo.

So what can I use that is similar to a Fage yogurt lid without buying yogurt...

Clear plastic disposable plates.  The best disposable palette money can buy is 40 cents a pop at most grocery stores.  Take that, "palette paper" pads.


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Now, it's Easter, and I love everything about peeps except eating them.  Sugar coated sugar with so much food coloring you can actually taste it?  Really?  Why do I like these things?  I usually buy one pack, eat three or four of them, and toss the rest out.  This year, I got a tiny peep plush instead.  He's so nice.  He even stands up on his own.

When I went to move my hydrangea off the glass table (I buy them every year... love the smell) before I could start painting, I noticed a funny lump on the outside of the pot.  I pulled back the paper and found a little green shoot there.

There's a secret daffodil growing out of the hole on the bottom of the pot!  I have never seen a plant do this before.

If you celebrate Easter, I hope you're having a wonderful holiday.  If you don't, there's no reason not to enjoy the chocolate!  

I'm Alive! + Painting WIP

Greetings!  

I started a new painting... in acrylic!  I'm going to do a second pass in acrylic with my limited palette, and then finish it in oils to add depth and interest.  It's obvious enough that it's a painting of a coffee cup on a thing with an abstracted background, but my end goal isn't quite so straightforward.  You're just going to have to check back later and see what I do with it.  ;) 

This is the first "direct" painting I've done in a long time; I normally fall back on the Venetian technique.  It's also the first acrylic painting I've done in a long time.  You can tell how much love I've given my acrylics by the fact that I'm still using the long discontinued Finity line.  I also purchased these before I learned enough about pigment to know that Naples Yellow is a pointless color.

Exactly a week ago, I rediscovered my acrylic paints in the middle of a spring cleaning escapade and wondered if I shouldn't just throw them out. I'd become an oil paint convert partway into art college and hadn't touched acrylic since... but then I remembered why I bothered investing in a full set of artist grade acrylic paints in the first place.

It dries in ten or twenty minutes.  It cleans up with plain soap and water.  It handles best with cheapo nylon paintbrushes that I don't need to care about destroying.  I can finish a painting in one sitting if I want to, and if I make a mistake, I just wait for it to dry and paint over it.

I decided to keep the acrylics.

Now, here's why I've been off the artistic grid for so long.
Last fall, I transitioned from working part time with no commute to full time with an hour commute each way, and it has actually taken me these past several months to arrive at a time management routine wherein I can get all the "domestic stuff" done and still have time for my personal pursuits.

I stopped painting because oil paint takes forever.  By the time I set up, it's almost time to put it away again.  Cleanup takes twice as long as setup, and then there's the drying time.  Considering the lack of winter daylight and the fact that I now typically get home from work around 6:30-7pm, I just plain didn't have time for that.  

I got so wrapped up in my love of oils that I forgot why I'd initially foregone them for acrylics.  With a simple change of medium, I suddenly have time to paint again.  (Although daylight savings time also helps.)

Pumpkins, Paintings, and People

It's been a bit of a while since the last update, so here's what I've been working on lately: 

Finished the underpainting and begun "dead coloring" on my Venetian canal painting.  It's based on a photo that I took during a trip to Venice.  I'm taking my time with this one.

© Oscura Photography

It's pumpkin season!  You know what that means.  Baking pumpkins, eating pumpkins, taking pictures of pumpkins and photoshopping them onto my body for ha-has.... I mean... okay, maybe not that last one.

I made this little guy in pretty harvest colors, following a free crochet pattern from Little Muggles.  It was a fun break from drawing, painting, and job searching in my new locale.  

A little drawing of an eye, with an Alda Merini quote.  Mostly I wanted to play with my inks, and mixing colors.  An unlikely combination, mixing a true violet with Antelope Brown yields some very lovely warm tones.  I'm definitely going to use this color combination in some larger projects.  

And, lastly, sketching people at the beach.  They're little because I was spending maybe twenty seconds on each doodle, since the people who go to the beach in 60 degree weather move around a lot more than the typical sunbathers.  Fun stuff!  It's also the same violet ink I used in the eye.  

Teatime Musings

© Chromeheart

I'll let you in on a little secret... half the time when I glue art paper into my sketchbook, it's covering up a drawing or something that I didn't like so much.  Some Italian blackletter that came out wrong is hiding under this one, and nobody would ever know just by looking at it.  Books are for secrets.

Flipping back through this sketchbook, which I started about eighteen months ago, I realize that I haven't been using it right.  After all this time, I'm still trying too hard to be "good."  I still want to go back and cover up everything that didn't come out so well; glue my pages together so nobody can see what's inside and paint over old mistakes until you can't tell what they were.

You can hide your mistakes, but there isn't enough paint in the world to make them go away.

Maddy Rose

© Chromeheart

I haven't done a messy pen sketch (as opposed to a not-messy pen that has the ink inside of it) outside in a public space since Italy.  When I started using fountain pens, I decided that carrying ink bottles and dip pens and a cleanup kit around is too much hassle and the potential for an ink accident is too high.  Once upon a time I accidentally dumped a bottle of acrylic ink across my hands, my pants, and my watercolor block while sketching outside in this manner.  

This is hands down my favorite drawing pen.  If there is a non-messy pen that handles anything like this, I haven't found it yet.  It's a D. Leonardt mapping nib, purchased in Italy while I was studying abroad.  It's possible to find them in the states, but a bit difficult.  

Today's supplies: HB pencil, my favorite pen, F.W. Artist's Acrylic in Red Earth, a cappuccino, my Travelogue Handbook, and a small bottle of water for cleanup.  Cappuccino is totally an art supply.

(seriously, though, don't use an open ink bottle as a paperweight ESPECIALLY if it's windy)

Ca d'Oro in Ink and Watercolor

Finished sketch

The Ca d'Oro is a famous Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal, so named because its entire front facade was radiant gold in its heyday.  Of course, most of the gold has come off over the past few centuries, but the Ca d'Oro remains a prime example of Venetian-Gothic splendor, regally presiding over the inevitable traffic jams between gondolas, vaporetti, and assorted motor boats below.

In progress

I began this sketch with a loose layer of liquid watercolor, added detail in waterproof acrylic ink with one of my favorite D. Leonardt nibs, and finished it off with an overlay of pink to hint at the sunset.  Original photo sourced from Pinterest; I do not know who the photographer is to credit them.  No copyright infringement is intended.  This work is solely a personal enrichment exercise from which I receive no monetary benefit.  

You've probably noticed that I've been inactive for quite some time-- well, here's the story.  After a lot of stressful job-and-apartment-hunting, I have moved back to the North Shore and and am just beginning to get settled, quite happily.  I can smell the ocean in my living room, when the wind blows the right way.  It doesn't get any better than that.  

And God said: Let There Be Coffee... so I started unpacking in order of importance.

It might have been the place...

©Chromeheart (images only)

Since I've begun experimenting with fountain pen inks (which are very water-soluble once dry), I thought I might try revisiting the one wet media that I could never learn to like.  These sketches are both done in a mixture of fountain pen ink and pan watercolor, and I'm surprisingly pleased with the results.

Quotes are sourced from an ebook called Carnival for the Dead, and I am merely scribbling passages I enjoyed in my personal sketchbook for no reason other than personal enrichment.  No copyright infringement is intended and I do not stand to profit from this work.