August 8, 2016
I managed to work on a few things this week – as well as three drawings.
Aug 5
Aug 7
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ― Cesar A. Cruz
Paintings
“Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.” Mark Rothko and Adolph Gotllieb manifesto
August 1, 2016
A little more progress on my latest lemon painting, and the completion of my July 31 Drawing A Day Challenge!
July 26
July 27
July 28
July 29
July 30
July 31
What I learned from my Daily Drawing Challenge:
- It’s the commitment that makes the difference – the commitment to post publicly on Instagram and the commitment to each drawing while I’m drawing it. I’ve drawn daily before without publishing and would often start and then scrap the drawing if I didn’t think it was going well. This time I didn’t have the luxury of time for that. Instead I kept going and figured I’d make the best of it. And some of those drawings are my favourites.
- I realized awhile ago that if my finished images look nothing like what I was working from, it doesn’t matter because no one else knows what it was SUPPOSED to look like. With this project I decided that even if the drawing clearly doesn’t reflect reality – as in it’s obviously not proportioned correctly, etc – that’s not actually irredeemable. It can still become a sweet little drawing if the character of line is interesting, and a bit of colour is added with care.
So my intention is to continue drawing regularly – but not daily. I am committing to three drawings a week published on Instagram and here with my weekly post. Let’s see what comes of this…
“My art may be conceived during a hedonistic Bohemian love-in with the muse…
July 4, 2016
“My art may be conceived during a hedonistic Bohemian love-in with the muse, but it comes into the world, like any birth, with labour. Always.”
Finished! I feel like this painting has taken far longer than it should have. It’s been a busy June. July looks like it may include a little more freedom and so I have taken up a daily challenge this month. For each day in July, I will create one small ink drawing and play a little with watercolour. I have almost zero experience with watercolour, but I do have this great little travel set of paints to use. So far, I am finding it … challenging. Perhaps by the end of it I will have gained some sort of proficiency. … or not. Either way, it’s something new. I’m posting the images to Instagram daily and will add them to my weekly posts here as well.
July 1
July 2
July 3
July 4
“Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary.” – Amédée Ozenfant
May 30, 2016
In 2013 I attended Series Summer Art School at Red Deer College and worked under the instruction of Jen Mallinson for a week playing with her plaster technique that combined acrylic paint, plaster and an assortment of other materials to create unique backgrounds. In Jen’s work, she would often complete her pieces with beautiful charcoal figure drawings. I left the week long workshop with a number of panels ready to go. This weekend I finished one of those panels. The results are below.
“The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely ‘well adjusted,’ he cannot go along with currents and trends.” Marshall McLuhan
May 23, 2016
Two paintings that I am declaring finished.
“A world without art would be blind to itself.” – Dan Franck from the Preface to “Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art”
April 18, 2016
And here’s the second in the series. Colours used are Paynes Grey, Prussian Blue, Cadmium Orange and Titanium White.
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a hallucinating idiot…for he sees what no one else does: things that, to everyone else, are not there.” ― Marshall McLuhan
April 11, 2016
Something new: I’ve decided to play around with a series of 6″ X 6″ canvases that I have been asking to be made useful. This is the first of a series that will consist of circle patterns and a limited palette. Colours used are Cadmium Red Deep, Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Green and Titanium White.
“Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?” ― Terence McKenna
April 4, 2016
In January I attended a demo of Golden products where I was inspired to pick up a few new items to try out. This isn’t exactly what I had hoped it would be, but I learned some things along the way. Here’s my process:
- Black gesso on the edges of a 6″ X 6″ canvas
- Golden fibre paste applied with a stencil to create a raised design
- Slight sanding of the fibre paste to soften the edges a bit – this wasn’t all that effective due to the spring of the canvas though
- Soaked the surface fairly thoroughly by spraying it with water
- Applied drops of Golden high flow acrylics: indigo, dioxazine purple, green gold, iridescent pearl
- Applied spray inks
- Sprayed water here and there, removed water here and there, all rather haphazardly
- Repeated steps 5-7 again
- Three thick coats of Golden clear tar gel. A slight misting of rubbing alcohol helped to eliminate the bubbles on the surface.
- Hand-lettered text added with a Golden marker and high flow acrylic in Indigo
Notes:
- As much as I tried, I was unable to get the hi-flow acrylic to bleed like watercolour. I will play with this more and see if I can accomplish it yet.
- I really should have taken another photo after I finished adding colour and before the clear tar gel (next time I will)
- I’m a little concerned that the very thick layer of clear tar gel may crack as I chose a canvas support for this one. I will try it on masonite next to see what happens there.
- I had wanted to build the tar gel up until it created a smooth surface, but at three coats it seemed to becoming the slightest bit cloudy so I stopped there, even though it still has uneven areas.
- I like the depth that is created between the background and the paint applied to the surface of the tar gel. It might be interesting to build up an image between layers of tar gel to see what that would do.
- Next time I clean the marker, I have to remember to remove the ball-bearings from the marker BEFORE dumping any unused paint down the drain. Sadly, I did NOT do this and my ball-bearings are now somewhere in the drain system rather than in the marker itself.
The text I chose was inspired by:
- Austin Kleon
- the last four kilometres of my long run yesterday in preparation for next month’s half-marathon
- the general malaise and lack of inspiration I’ve been experiencing in my artwork lately.
I’m still working on my second experimental stencil piece and we’ll see how that one turns out.
“Writing about art is only useful when it leads to the experience of art.” – Darby Bannard
February 8, 2016
Something a little different today. On December 31, my kids and I visited the Art Gallery of Alberta. One of the exhibitions was of the work of Chris Cran – my current favourite Alberta artist. After seeing some of his work with paintings of half-toned images, I thought I’d play a little. This is more of an experiment to see how the technique would work in preparation to play with these ideas more in future pieces.
I started by painting the surface of a 6″ X 6″ canvas with flourescent pink acrylic paint and the edges with black gesso. Then I taped stripes onto the surface and covered it with a layer of acrylic gloss medium.
I proceeded to paint a half-toned image over the tape in oil paint. While the paint was still wet, I removed the tape.
One of the questions that this experiment poses is, how much of an image do we have to have available to us in order to understand what we’re seeing? There is a lot of room for improvement with this. One of the biggest problems here is that my scale is all wrong. But it’s the first one. I will continue to play with this idea for a bit and see what I can come up with.
susanne semchuk 