SO READY

Early one spring this little fellow stopped his busy activities at the edge of our woods for just a moment. Bluebirds are such a gift when you see one - so pretty and breathtaking. I was happy to get his picture (on film back then) before he took flight again.

One spring I took photos of Papa Bluebird teaching Junior to take a bath in the bird bath outside the studio window. Mama joined them during the whole funny escapade, and I must paint it sometime soon. That day, I'd gotten up from painting to stretch, and as I walked toward the far window, I sensed the need for my camera - one of those 'intuition times' that I listened to. They'd been long gone if I'd gone to grab the camera and returned to the window.

It's always thrilling for me to observe God's creatures because they are immensely delightful and usually full of surprises, and so often I'm inspired to try to share their world in a painting. This was painted several years ago, and I'm itching to paint birds again. The birds were REALLY singing today a lot, and I think maybe the snow and ice melt a little faster when they sing so much. I can wish, anyway.

"WATCHING FOR SPRING" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 8 x 18" Collected

WAX BATIK & WATERCOLOR

Seeing Venice for the first time must be a thrill. We'll find out in late September when seven of us arrive in Venice to paint and explore for several days. I'm sure some shopping will be in order, too.

Our niece and nephew visited Venice several years ago so upon their return, I asked Kristin what she'd like painted from her trip - as a gift from us for her college graduation. She chose a more traditional style painting of Venice that I did for her, but the same scene as this one.

I had to try the picture again on rice paper using melted wax and transparent watercolors. I think the batik effect is both colorful and dramatic because of all the accidental textures, however, you never know until you iron off all the wax just how good or bad the painting will turn out.

My friend, Linda, first showed me the basics of how to do a watercolor batik many years ago. As a matter of fact, she's the one who finally convinced me to go to Italy two years ago! (Thank goodness!!!) And TODAY is her birthday. Check her blog out on the sidebar - Linda Schuler - and wish her a happy birthday. Thanks for sharing so much with me, Linda. Have a great birthday, too.

"CANAL VOYAGE" Wax Batik with Transparent Watercolor on Rice Paper 15 x 13" Collected

YUPO ONCE AGAIN

Any time that 'texture' is a strong feature in a painting, I usually want to paint on YUPO. The variety of textural effects that can be accomplished easily on YUPO still amazes me. Plus, the intensity of the watercolor on YUPO is so brilliant.

Can you imagine having been a pioneer and dragging the really heavy cast iron cookware across the country? I'm sure thankful for the ease of life we have now compared to the toil it must have been then. My grandma used to cook with cast iron skillets of many sizes. I think I've only owned three pieces of cast iron..... and prefer not to use it since it can't go in the dishwasher. Ooooh. Spoiled? Yep.

I had fun letting the pushy colors move the paint around on the YUPO to create the textures on this array of cast iron cookery. Click on the painting for a close up of the textures/pushy colors. It was also great to be able to lift off color where I wanted to pull an area back to white, too. Glad I didn't have to scrub these pots and pans after supper, though.

This was painted several years ago during the opening of an art show. Sitting at a show and watching people look at paintings makes me restless, so if I can, I set up to paint, usually with my back to the crowd so that they feel comfortable coming up to look over my shoulder.

Artists who paint in public certainly could write books about the comments they hear. Some are so sincere and generous, while others are hilarious, (but I dare not laugh.)

"REALLY CAST IN IRON" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 14 x 20" Collected (Giglee' prints available.)

SEEING SLOWLY & CAREFULLY

Happy Birthday to Suzanne G:-) today, who's looking forward to learning more about painting reflective surfaces like glass. This painting's for her to study. Check out the shapes created by the darks and light values. Check out the placement of the darks and lights. Examine the edges carefully.

Some edges are sharp, hard. Some are soft, fading away. Some values literally disappear into another value, never having an edge.

Seeing what is there is so critcal in making something look real on a flat piece of paper. We all tend to observe what's around us fairly well. But I think the trick to painting realistically is not to just observe, but to carefully see and slowly look at the shapes, values, and their edges, then paint what we've seen. Keeping the really white shapes pure white helps a bunch in creating the depth in a watercolor. Painting really good darks where it's the darkest gives great dimension to the reflective surface, too.

At the end of this month, we have a special demo planned for Thursday morning's class on reflective surfaces. I'm looking forward to it. Painting glass and brass is easy to do as long as you look slowly and see where the edges and values are. We'll make it look REAL, three dimensional. Wish you all could be in class.

"APPLESAUCE SOON?" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 10 x 22" Collected

HILLFOREST

There's a beautiful, historic home sitting on a hill above the Ohio River in a town next door to our town. "Hillforest" was built for the Thomas Gaff family, who lived there from 1855 through 1891.

There were three Gaff brothers who developed much of the town of Aurora and relied heavily on riverboats for their businesses. Notice the look of a 'pilot house' atop the mansion, and how the front porch resembles a steamboat deck. Designed by Isaiah Thomas, this home has since been carefully preserved in its Italian Renaissance style and is a favorite spot for visitors to stop, especially to see the gorgeous suspended staircase inside.

Just about every artist in this county has painted this house from one angle or another, so several years ago, I had to give it a try, too. I combined my taping technique with some miskit control (for the curved areas of the house and the big Sycamore) to create this painting. The picture now hangs in the Dearborn County Country Club.

An interesting historic fact about the Gaff family - - - their riverboat, The Forest Queen, was used successfully at the siege of Vicksburg as the headquarters of William Tecumseh Sherman for the Union cause during the Civil War.

"TOWN TREASURE" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 30 x 13" Collected

YUPO LIONESS

Sliding paint around on YUPO can be compared to the phrase we often hear now --- '''herding cats.''' (Doesn't THAT paint a picture in your mind?)

For this painting, the sliding paint almost worked for the fur on this cat's face. Then the little spot dried between her nose and eye, leaving an unnatural hard edge where I did not want a hard edge. Somehow, for once, I was able to leave that spot alone and go on with the rest of the painting. Trying to correct it after it had dried would've resulted in destroying the beauty of the cheek area.

Once the whole thing was completed, I found that the hard edged spot no longer bothered me. In fact, I liked what it did for the painting.

I also got lucky under her chin where the background color sneaked into the wet paint of her fur, adding just bit cooler look to the shadow there. The grainy area between the ear and the eye is a result of the Lunar Earth separating or granulating in the Quinacridone Burnt Orange area.

If you haven't tried YUPO yet with watercolor, you are missing out on a great adventure. Although this was painted back in 2001, it's still one of my favorite paintings. Fortunately I'd made giglee' prints of it before it sold.

"GRRRRRRR" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 10 x 12" Collected

SEEING CLEARLY

Figuring out how to paint glass seems to be one thing that stumps some artists. But it's actually exactly the same as anything else we try to paint. Look at the shapes of the darks and lights on the glass surface, and capture those shapes with the correct values and with accurate edges.

Most of learning to paint and draw is about seeing. Training our eyes to see what is REALLY there, rather than what we think is there, is vital to developing our creative process. Observing the actual shapes that are created by the different darks and lights, seeing the changes in the edges of those darks and lights --- seeing values, seeing edges --- that's what helps us know what to paint.

By far, the most influential element that we (mistakenly) think we must paint is color. A person may spend lots of time trying to find the perfect match for a color. However, color's main job is to develop the emotion of a painting. It also adds atmospheric perspective to a painting. Color alone seldom describes an object very well. The darks and lights or VALUE changes are what does the job of telling us what's going on in a painting, what it's about.

When painting glass, (or brass or any shiny item,) a broad range of colors will work as long as the lights and darks are created in the correct shapes with the correct edges. To give more emphasis to this, I've added some Photoshop enhanced pictures of the above painting.

The first pix has much less value change, with fewer darks and lights, resulting in a flatter painting, showing what happens when there's not enough value change from light to dark. While the jars still may look like canning jars, there is no impact when looking at the painting because the value changes are only strong between the metal handles and the glass. The other three 'paintings' now have crazy color combinations, to show that glass looks like glass if the values and edges are correct, whether the 'color' is correct of not. COLLECTED

PORTRAITS

This guy had the most beautiful blue eyes. As he finished his lunch at an old diner in Colorado, I asked if I could take his picture to paint. He was gracious enough to say, 'Yes.'

His eyes were so gentle, kind... and direct, making them the specific reason for me to want to paint the portrait. I wonder why some people are so much more photogenic than others. He struck a casual pose outside the diner, and the only thing left to do was capture it all on watercolor paper, which I was anxious to do.

"COLORADO ROCKY" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Fabriano Artistico 15 x 11"

YUPO LEAP TOWARD THE CHALLENGE

It's LEAP YEAR, and today's February 29th. The artists in my classes have 'leaped' at the chance to grow beyond their comfort zones by taking Myrna Wachnov's first artist challenge of the year.

On her blog in January, she suggested that we select a reference photo to be painted several times. We were to make each painting have dominance of one of the seven elements of design. Each of the seven paintings also had to have a different unifying color throughout every part of the painting, and each had to be created with its own specific compositional design, selected at random ahead of time.

These are my final three paintings of the seven. My other four challenge paintings plus the reference photo are posted at the end of this post, as well as in late January and early February posts on this blog.

The top painting, my Week 7 painting, was based on a SHAPE-IN-SHAPE composition with SHAPE as the dominant element of the painting. It was great that I drew those two together, because it made things a little simplier to figure out.

To make this a shape-in-shape, I liked the idea of taking the people off of the street they were on and placing them in the train station - or wherever you think this might be. The window happened by chance. I'd designed an open archway, but closed it up, making the shape-in-shape composition possibly stronger. This was done with transparent watercolor on YUPO and is about 11 x 15". (Quinacridone Burnt Orange was the unifying color, but I forgot to put it in the clothes on the people :-(

For Week 6, the element I drew to be dominant was DIRECTION, and the composition I had to use was HORIZONTAL. These two also went together nicely, but the problem I faced was how to make vertical people shapes have a horizontal dominance.

Remember those paper dolls some of us cut out when we were kids? That gave me the idea to 'stretch' out the line of people so they looked like there were lots of them. I still used my photo reference, but I duplicated the people, reversing them, too.

I miskited the figures to keep them white. Applying the strokes of fluid acrylics horizontally and letting it flow by tipping the paper sideways helped create a stronger directional dominance. Adding the small, thin lines increased the dominance, too. I really liked the little figures that showed up in the negative spaces between the people shapes.

After removing the miskit, I flowed more color horizontally across the people shapes, then added a few details to specific areas on their bodies and around their feet. This was done on Arches 140# CP with Fluid Acrylics and some Transparent Watercolor and is also 11 x 15." (Unifying color was Quinacridone Coral.)

Week 5 was a CHALLENGE for sure. The element to make dominant was COLOR, so ... "piece of cake," I thought. And then I drew STAGGERED for the composition. Ugh. I cut up all the people and staggered them into a design that I thought would work and began painting, thinking 'color, color, color!'

I used color - everywhere - and in pure doses except for the unifying color I'd added in, which was Hansa Yellow. I ended up with a "It'll hurt your eyes" ugly painting. Too much garish yellow and oranges, too many colors everywhere. So I started knocking them down, neutralizing them, graying the intensity of most areas.

After lots of critique considerations and many corrections, this is the result. I'm not sure it comes off as staggered, but I do think that COLOR gets attention in those pure spots that are left. It's growing on me, I guess. Let me know what you think. It was my worst one but may end up being my favorite one. Weird.

This is done on Arches 140#CP with Fluid Arylics, Transparent Watercolor, Caran D'Ache Crayons, and Conte Crayons and is smaller since I cropped a lot of it off... probably about 9 x 12."

Samples of my previous challenge paintings are below - - - - -


Week One - VALUE and VERTICAL composition (Raw Sienna to unify) --- Week 2 - LINE dominance and CHECKERBOARD composition (Transparent Pyrrol Orange to unify) --- Week 3 - TEXTURE dominance and CRUCIFORM composition (Burnt Tiger's Eye to unify) SOLD --- Week 4 - SIZE dominance and ASYMMETRICAL composition (Quinacridone Violet to unify)

- My photo reference for the challenge paintings, taken in London, England in '06.

Painting from the same photo seven times and being challenged to make each painting specifically different was invigorating. I learned a lot and stretched beyond my normal painting habits.

Most of my students are also working on their own seven challenge paintings, and you can see a couple of them by checking their blogs - Chris Campbell's floral paintings and Rhonda Carpenters' challenge paintings of two different themes, the most recent some old time pottery. See the side bars on the right hand side of my blog to go to their sites.

Some of the works I've seen in class simply astound me. Artists are SO creative! And we can thank Myrna for the challenge she gave us ... or maybe some would blame her for the misery it is to push beyond our comfort zones. Surely not.

Happy Birthday to David! February 29th! ...... the only person I've ever met with this birthday.

GESSO AND WATERCOLOR MARKS

I wonder what Polly is looking at. She's so intent on whatever is over there to the right.

Actually, she was a bird in Venice, Florida that used to squawk "Marco," then the kids would yell "Polo!" She loved it and would bob up and down excitedly. My dad liked to feed her bits of crackers.

To get the jungle look behind her, I slapped some random gesso marks over the paper before I began the painting and let them dry. Later as I painted, the gessoed areas accepted the paint quite differently than the regular paper surface, creating a tension and texture that I liked a lot.

The great thing about painting watercolor on gessoed paper is that the paint can be lifted off easily with a damp brush, usually leaving only a slight ghost image on the gesso. Makes corrections easier for sure. Painting on gesso always makes me think I'm painting an oil slick, because of the way the paint settles in funny patterns on the gesso.

"PROUD POLLY" Transparent Watercolor and Gesso on 140# CP Arches 14 x 22" SOLD

HAWKEYE

We have a wildlife area near us that's full of many native creatures. One of the men who enjoys that area, called Oxbow, also has a Red Tail Hawk that he rescued long ago and cares for now. His educational talk one Saturday was exceptional, and I was really thankful to be able to take pictures of this beautiful bird on his arm.

I find that painting wildlife brings me a lot of satisfaction. I am lucky to have had parents who took us outside through many state and national parks for vacations or long weekends. Hiking and discovering all kinds of wildlife was a 'normal' adventure during my childhood.

The beauty of wild animals just astounds me. They are so complex and wonderfully made. Glorious creatures!

And so much fun to try to paint, especially with watercolor.

"SHAKE A TAIL FEATHER!" Transparent Watercolor on 140# CP Fabriano Artistico Collected

YUPO SPLASH OF COLOR

The bright red of these geraniums seemed to be dancing in this old window, especially with the sun light backlighting them. The pots and geraniums were painted nearly life size on a 40" long sheet of heavy weight YUPO. I really like working on the heavy weight YUPO because I can move it and tilt it easily. The light weight is so flimsy that I don't work on it at all, and the medium weight only comes in a 20x26" size.

You can really see where the 'pushy' colors moved paint out of their way, leaving some unusual patterns in the dark shapes and especially on the pots. No matter how many times I paint on YUPO, I am always fascinated with the way the paint behaves. Or doesn't behave.

Soon after I painted this, it sold in a juried show in Hamilton, Ohio. It's great to make a sale, to be appreciated, to have others like what you express with paint. But most satisfying is being able to paint. I love it!

"YEARNING" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 23 x 39" SOLD

YUPO PORTRAIT

This was painted several years ago on YUPO before I learned from a George James video how to use a roller and squeegee to control the paint flow. The 'drip' for his jaw line shows how the paint dried with an edge that I did not plan or want. Smoothing it out with a brush after it was dry would have only left a murky, unblended mess. I liked the rest of the picture, so I left that as a ''''painterly'''' mark. HA!

To paint a smooth, uninterrupted space on YUPO is pretty much pure luck, not skill. Gravity helps a little, I think.

Getting a smooth, graded wash like the check and jaw area here is also a big challenge on YUPO. The paint tends to dry from the outside in, but unpredictable edges often occur sometimes where the paint's thinned in the middle of a wash, just like this jaw line did.

Like Nick Simmons says, "You've got to have a Plan B." Mistakes will always change our plans. Sure teaches us to be flexible. No pushy colors were used on the face, which helped make the drying a little more even. Pushy colors (see previous posts) usually dry faster, allowing for uneven areas to develop, not so good in skin or smooth areas like sky or calm water.

Myrna Wacknov just finished a week long workshop with George James. Check out her workshop masterpiece full of colorful figures on her blog (see side bar.) It's an exciting piece. Five weeks from today I'll be at a George James workshop in North Carolina with my friend, Monique! YEAH!!! And it'll be spring there with the big Weeping Cherry Tree in full bloom, I bet.

Looking at this painting today, I think the hat really needs more value and definition. What do you think?

"FRIENDSHIPS" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO, 14 x 12"

WINTER GO AWAY

I love the catkins on pussywillows. They are so furry and soft, and a great sign that spring will indeed get here. I guess I'm more impatient this year for winter to go away than I've ever been. I love the snow when it falls; I like the ice on the trees if I'm inside; I like a good book and a bowl of soup on a cold winter day. I like winter. But this year's winter has been longer and snowier and colder than usual. GO AWAY!

This is a small painting done with the same technique as the tulips from yesterday's post were done. First I saturated the wet paper with lots of strong, dark colors. Next I lifted out the shapes that were to be lighter. Thank you, Cheng Khee Chee, for sharing this technique of painting with us. It's just amazing that it works as well as it does.

The great thing about this method is that the background and foreground areas are both painted at the same time, while the paper's wet. There's no need to struggle with a background because it's the first thing finished in the painting. After the lifting was done, I added some detail in the twigs and catkins to finish the painting. I used a Q-Tip, or cotton swab on a stick, along with a sable brush, to lift out the catkins, too.

"WINTER'S OVER" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches, 5 x 8"

WE WANT SPRING!

More snow today and ice too. It goes with the territory but somtimes I just have to whine about the weather. The older I get, the quicker I am ready for spring. Winter seems way too long this year, more than ever. (And then there's Tracy Wandling up in the dark, deep freeze of the Canadian wilderness. I better quit whining.)

The tulips here were lifted out of the wet, dark background - done quite a few years ago after taking a Cheng Khee Chee workshop at Kanuga south of Asheville, North Carolina.

Each spring, they have a wonderful creatively charged week of top notch watermedia instruction with up to a dozen instructors, all in a wooded setting by a lake. Each artist signs up for one instructor for four days. The evenings are packed with programs, and the energy there is awesome.

I haven't been able to go for two years and have really missed it. This April, I get to go back and will be in George James' class. YES! Hurry springtime.

"LIFTING OUR HEADS HIGH" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches, 22 x 15" SOLD

YUPO AGAIN & AGAIN

This painting looks incredibly dark to me now, but it was one of the very first "I-finally-got-the-paint-to-go-almost-where-I-wanted" YUPO paintings that I did. I've mentioned before that it took me about two years of trying and failing before I figured out how to manage painting on this slick surface. Now I absolutely love painting on it.

The strong blue in the dark shape on the far right is an example of a pushy color. That pigment was not as finely ground as the others around it, and when added to finely ground wet pigments, it 'swam' underneath them and pushed them out of the way, creating either a fantastic or irritating shape. Now I've figured out when to use the pushy colors and when to steer clear of them. Most sedimentary colors are 'pushy.'

For those of you trying YUPO, I've printed a list below that I hand out in my classes regarding the colors that are pushy. The ones with an *asterisk are extra pushy, and I'm sure there are more than what I've listed. Most of what I use are Daniel Smith brand, but the same pigment in another brand should react the same way.

YELLOWS = *Bismuth Yellow, all Cadmiums, Naples Yellow, Nickel Azo Yellow, Nickel Titanate Yellow

EARTH COLORS & NEUTRALS = Indian Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Mars Yellow, Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber, *Lunar Earth, *Lunar Red Rock, Burnt Sienna, Brown Madder, Raw Umber, Graphite Gray, *Lunar Black, *Minnesota Pipestone, *Burnt Tiger's Eye, and most all the other *Prima Tek colors by Daniel Smith, (since they're made from earth pigments and not finely ground)

ORANGES = Permanent Orange, Cadmium Orange, Perinone Orange
REDS & PINKS = Indian Red, Venetian Red, all Red Cadmiums, Pyrrol Scarlet, Pyrrol Red, *Potter's Pink

VIOLETS, PURPLES, LAVENDARS = Raw Umber Violet, Côte d' Azur Violet, Mars Violet, Rose of Ultramarine, Ultramarine Red, Manganese Violet, Cobalt Violet, *Cobalt Violet Deep, Ultramarine Violet, Cobalt Blue Violet
BLUES = French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, *Cerulean, *Manganese Blue (true Maganese,) *Cobalt Teal Blue, *Blue Ochre Vivianite, *Lunar Blue, *Genuine Lapis Lazuli

GREENS = Prussian Green, Cobalt Turquoise, Cobalt Green Pale, Cobalt Green, Terre Verte, Chromium Green Oxide, Bohemian Green Earth, Undersea Green, Olive Green, Rich Green Gold, *dGreen Gold, *Malachite, *Serpentine Green

I discovered that if I used only the 'pushy' colors together in an area on YUPO, the colors behaved since they had a similar weight or size of particle. If we asked Bruce MacEvoy (see HANDPRINT on side bar) why the paints behave differently on YUPO, he would be able to give us an accurate, well documented, and scientific reason for the movement of the paints. But I just guessed what was happening according to the way they behaved and what properties I knew they had in common. The metal pigments like cobalts and cadmiums I figured were heavier, too.

It was so weird at first to watch a normally quiet color like a cobalt charge into and actually take over a normally bossy color like a phthalo. How the paints behaved was so opposite to how they acted on regular paper, and it drove me nuts at first. Once I figured out to keep similarly ground pigments together unless I wanted some action, I loved working on YUPO.

George James' videos from Creative Catalyst Productions also give wonderful info about handling YUPO. He is THE Master, and I admire him and his work immensely!
FYI - The name YUPO was derived from the names of the parent companies, formerly Mitsubishi Petrochemical (Yuka in Japanese) Co., Ltd (presently Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation) and Oji Paper Co., Ltd, thus forming a "paper bridge" between the two. 'YUPO' is always capitalized, too. Cheap Joe says it's pronounce like 'You Poor' without the 'r' on the end. Painting on YUPO is a blast!

"THE LINE UP" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 16 x 12" SOLD

YUPO, OIL, & WATER

Our older son loves to fish, and he says that this is one of his favorite paintings that I've done. Created on YUPO paper, this time with a totally different approach, the painting really astounded me with how it turned out.

The bubbles "showed up" when I spritzed Murphy's Oil Soap, mixed half and half with water, onto the wet paint. By tipping the paper slightly, I was able to suggest a lot of movement in the water.

I made sure the fish area was a darker shape while all the paint was still wet. I'd miskited the white lines on the the fish before I ever added paint to the YUPO surface, and it was easy to lift off the miskit after the paint dried by using some rolled up masking tape.

Final touches were to paint in the details needed on the fish. Oil and water don't mix, but they sure helped make a believable deep blue sea!

"DEEP" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 26 x 20"

YUPO QUILTING

I've sewn one quilt square in my life for a quilt we made for our Quaker preacher and his wife. I love to look at quilts and always go nuts in a fabric store with all the cool batik fabrics, but sewing is too frustrating for me. So I paint the quilts.

Artist Peggy Brown from Nashville, Indiana, actually paints right on cotton fabric, then stitches the fabric to create beautiful watercolor wall hangings. You can check out her work at http://www.peggybrownart.com/.

This painting was not done on cotton paper or fabric, but on the synthetic paper that used to be called Kimdura and is now called YUPO. I really like how the colors painted on YUPO stay lively and vibrant. They sit right on top of the paper and never soak in like they do on cotton paper.

Today in class, Kathy created a fantastic painting in just a couple of hours on YUPO. There was a lot of creative energy in Tuesday's class, with some really good work being created. I can't wait to see the results next week.

It's so invigorating to paint on this slick YUPO surface. I just love it.

"QUILTER" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 16 x 38"

PAT'S PAINTING

It's blustery and cold for these parts. Digging through old photos of paintings, I found this one which I'd painted on a winter day just like today's was, but on location outside of Boston.

I was visiting my sister maybe 16 years ago, and this was looking out her dining room window onto her backyard in that rural area. Later that evening after this was painted, we went out to supper, and by the time we got home and pulled into the driveway, it was lightly snowing. The headlights of Marilyn's car shined into the edge of the woods, where we both saw a very, very long thick tail on a very large blonde animal that was leaping over the low stone wall shown in this painting. We looked at each other with the BIGGEST eyes. We were actually scared to jump out of the car and hurry inside.

The next morning, we looked in the mud and snow by the old stone wall and found cat paw prints about the size of a man's fist, maybe a little bigger. Needless to say, I did not go on any long walks while I was there. It was in a beautiful area and only about 40 minutes outside Boston.

When we drove into Boston that weekend to visit the museum, I saw my first bald eagle flying right above us over the interstate --- with a fish in its talons. Amazing! I lived in rural Indiana at the time but had to go to the big city in the east to see wildlife. And over the interstate, no less!

"BIG CAT COUNTRY" Transparent Watercolor on 140# on handmade Nujabi Indian Paper (with no sizing - most difficult paper I've ever tried to paint on) 22 x 15" SOLD

SURPRISED!!!

What a day! We set up the art show for all my students today in a great space at Sharon Woods Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio. It looks awesome. Over 160 framed paintings by 46 artists really show off the creative talent of the unique and diverse group of artists in my classes.

It continues to astound me how much people WANT to help. Getting a student show ready is a lot of work, and in the past, before moving here, I did nearly all the work for my students' shows {it was for them, from me, so I expected to do all the work} except for food for the reception.... (remember I'm very domestically challenged.)

People here BEG to help out. It's simply amazing and such a team effort to see something as big as this show be pulled in a few short hours. Over a dozen people spent most of their day helping hang the show and polish the edges. It sure looks great.

Our reception for the artists is Sunday from 1-4, so stop by if you'd like to meet some really talented artists and see their exquisite paintings. The show will be open everyday, starting tomorrow morning, through Sunday the 24th, from 10-5.

The post here is an older painting that was a chaos-into-control approach, kind of like hanging the show was today! With no preconceived idea of what I was about to create, I threw some gesso over parts of the paper, then painted randomly. Several 'feather' shapes appeared along with a partial profile resembling a man. I continued to carve out the painting, making shapes be more evident until it pleased me.

My Thursday night class from long ago - the one started 13 years ago tonight - helped with suggestions for the painting. One of those ladies is still taking classes from me, and her work in the show is dynamite! Marianne Wiggers is her name, and the colors she uses bounce across the room! Happy anniversary, art classes!

This painting won a fifth place award back in '97 at Viewpoint, a national show held each fall at the Cincinnati Art Club. I find it extremely challenging to 'bring' something out of forms and ambiguous shapes so receiving an award for this was pretty special.

"SURPRISED" Transparent Watercolor on 140# CP Arches 22 x 30" SOLD

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

This weekend I watched our four young grandkids laborously sign each of their Valentines Cards, and memories of long ago school days surfaced. I loved decorating shoe boxes or those small grocery sacks we'd use in the classroom to hold our Valentines. I loved getting Valentines.

I just really didn't like to sign all those cards for all my classmates. WHINE. If I could've painted their names, that would've been fine. Handwriting was never my strong suit. Wonder why my fingers still cramp up when I write, but I can paint for hours. Hmmm.

These swans seem to be flirting so I thought they belonged on the blog for Feb. 14, even though it's an older painting. Happy Valentine's Day to each of you! Enjoy.......

"SWAN LAKE" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches approx 18 x 24" SOLD

INTIMATE ENCOUNTER

It was ten years ago, and I was sitting on my old wooden swing on our lower deck, sipping coffee, while drinking in the peaceful view of the late afternoon woods. A very slight movement near the bottom of the slope caught my eye.

When I looked closely, I was amazed to see, nearly hidden amidst all the foliage, one deer gently washing the neck of the other. I sat there entranced, in awe for being included in such a tender moment of nature.

The sun behind them lit up the scene better than any movie set could have. I captured it with my camera and couldn't wait to paint the special intimacy that I'd just encountered.

If I repainted this now, I think that same emotion would come out again, but I'd be able to use several more years of experience to create a better painting. Still, I felt good about capturing that almost hidden moment that I still relish.

"INTIMATE ENCOUNTER" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Fabriano Artistico 15 x 11" SOLD

NOW IT'S BARN SIDING

One good way to learn to control the amount of paint and water in your brush and on your paper is to paint wet-in-wet. Creating the look of worn, weathered barn boards is a great 'theme' to use to learn this.

I start out with a soaking wet sheet of paper which is wet on both sides to keep it wet longer. Previous to wetting the paper, I streak areas with miskit, especially along one side of each of the boards.

I also splatter a bit of miskit on the paper before I wet it. If I'm planning on putting in a chain or lantern, like the pictures posted, I miskit those entire shapes, too.
Next, streak the soaked paper with various shades of blues, oranges, purples, earth yellows, and browns. The colors blend softly together to give a muted depth to the eventual barn boards.

Now streak the paper with some narrow, darker lines where the boards meet, to help define the cracks between them. The color diffuses again since the paper's still very wet. Then randomly splatter some darks over the paper. Now pick up a 'broken-in-half' credit card and scratch some lines into the damp paper. The existing paint sinks into the scratch, making them much darker.

Repeat the process as the paper slowly dries, streaking with colors of paint, adding more dark in thin lines again to help better define the older diffused ones, then scratch again with the credit card. At some point while the paper is damp, add an irregular shaped knothole or two where there are no scratch marks.

Splattering at different times as the paper slowly dries results in various sizes of dark spots, some much more diffused than others. Take care to make each board have its own identity so that they all look slightly different, one more streaked, one more textured, one with lots of cracks, etc.

The whole process takes almost an hour, and you must wait for the right time to add more color, but make sure not to get it too dark. I'm careful not to paint on 'unshiny' but 'damp' paper, unless I'm dragging a dry brush or fan brush for one of the streaking layers.

I also make sure none of the streaks criss cross, since wood grain never crosses over itself, but always runs fairly parallel. I continue adjustments to the knothole, too, darkening it, creating the cracks shooting out from it, and darkening around it to look like discolored wood.

The final hour or more is spent working on totally dry paper to bring into focus some of the raised edges of the weathered wood. By adding a thin dark line along small areas that have an irregular edge, you can create the look of raised rough wood. I soften the outer edge of those darks, too.

The whole painting is truly a series of streak, splatter, scratch, streak, splatter, scratch. Using the broken credit card at various stages will help add texture, too, since the paint is squeeged off by the rounded edge of the card once the paper begins to dry.

Taking the miskit off (when the paper's completely dry) adds a lot of needed white to the painting. The white misketed edge is always too harsh (one of the big draw backs of miskit) so I soften it a bit, but make sure to maintain some clean, untouched white paper for contrast and sparkle.

I add Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Lunar Earth (Daniel Smith Watercolors) together to paint the rusted chain, etc. Before it dries, I touch in, not brush in, some very liquid but dark French Ultramarine. As the Ultramarine floctuates with the two browns, they separate to look exactly like rust. I love it. The less I touch the wet paint, the better it looks. Sometimes I have to tip the paper slightly to get them to blend better. Fold a tissue smoothly and place it on the very top edge of the hook while it's damp to lift off a highlight there.

Adding stronger darks under the shadowed side on the chain helps add dimension, too. A shadow of the hook and chain painted as one complete shape on the barn siding finishes off the painting.

It's almost magic to watch the blurry, wet-in-wet paint slowly be transformed into a surface that looks like weathered wood. When I teach this in classes, each artist's work is expressive and different, some looking like ocean side bleached wood, some like mossy covered wood, others like well cared for barn siding. It's amazing how the same wet-in-wet process in each artist's hands produces individually expressive results.

Both of these paintings are done with transparent watercolor on 140#CP Arches. The one at the top with the hook and chain is 15 x 11," and the one with my Grandpa's lantern is a full sheet, 30 x 22" Both were done many years ago and are SOLD.

BARN-a-MANIA!

Buck County, Pennsylvania Barn to left & Ohio Mail Pouch Barn below

My specialty --- "Maudlin" sunsets.... meaning '''overly sentimental!''' Enough said.

A couple of weeks ago, I threatened to post a bazillion old barn paintings I'd done over the last 20 years. Fortunately for us blog-aholics, I only found a few of them.

The barns at the top are the most recent, probably done within the last eight years as something I taught in an intermediate class lesson. The farther down this

post you look, the older the paintings are.

The gray barn with the two white silos and fence posts was done as a result of reading an excellent, inspiring book by Valfred Thelin regarding pouring on paint and letting it run. Somone's since borrowed my book... the price I pay for loaning them out..... I still have hopes of seeing it again.

There's an old mail pouch barn near us that HAD to be painted, of course, (see 2nd painting.) The late evening sunset was done before they moved the barn and put it on a concrete block base - looks ugly now, but it surely is a relic from the past.

Some of the barns came out of my imagination while some are from photos I took. The weird (and profitable) thing is that all barn pictures sell well here in the midwest. And there are lots of them, some much better than others.

Talk to an artist who's been painting a while, and they will roll their eyes about painting barns. I will too, probably, because I realize now that it's not the barn that should be painted, but the feelings we have about 'old' things like barns that need to be expressed in our paintings. I've done a couple of more modern, abstracted barn paintings that were fun to do. They took the longest to sell.

Fortunately, I'm not counting on sales to survive, so I no longer care to paint the things that I think might sell the best. I can paint what I want to paint, what interests and challenges me. And seldom is it barns anymore.

Back when I got excited about getting commissions to paint, a woman asked me to paint her grandparent's old homestead, the one here with the big white house, oak tree, garish green pines, and two distant barns. After it was done, her siblings all wanted a copy.

Now days, with the giclee' process, that would've been easy to do. But seventeen years ago, I had to repaint the same picture, with a few minor 'memory' adjustments, for all four of her siblings. GROAN... or so I thought. I found out the value of challenging myself to make it a better painting every time. Each painting was a full 22x30" sheet of paper, and I charged $129 each. YIKES. What was I thinking? But, maybe I got the best end of the deal, too, considering the lack of mature composition, garish green trees, awkward oaks...

Enough about barns. And thank goodness, they're are all sold.

Big barn above with mountains was done when I attended my first workshop in Estes Park, Colorado with Tony Couch. What a great week with gorgeous surroundings. And as he explained, we can't really paint barns. We can only paint shapes, textures, colors, lines, values, sizes, and direction.

Left barn is a scene I usually teach in my beginner's classes.

This was painted about 8 weeks after I started a beginners class with Suzanne Mayes Wentzell in Kokomo, Indiana. Nice fog but what pathetic trees:-(

THE END! (Transparent Watercolor used in all these barn paintings.)

STRETCHING THE TRUTH

I've been participating in a weekly challenge from Myrna Wacknov, and this is week four's painting. Using the same photo that I started with early this year, this time I had to come up with a way to make 'size' be the important feature or element in the painting - so I stretched the people and gave them raisin heads (a Carla O'Conner ploy.) Plus, I had to use some sort of grid in the background with an assymetrical balance of the subject. Challenging, for sure.
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First I glazed the whole sheet with a pale glaze of Quinacridone Violet to help unify the entire painting. From there, I began to develop the background areas, not caring if they had depth or dimension to them. I was going for more of a design quality this time, with flat space, not depth.
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I painted rather timidly for a while because I felt unsure about the grid/asymmetrical compositional thing. I made the colors match, etc., instead of taking my usual liberties with color choices.

After a class critique (Thank you, Tuesday's class,) I moved in with flourish and added color and value where it was weak. I liked the results and think this is my favorite of all of the paintings of this subject that I've done. Thanks again, Myrna. And there are 3 more paintings to go. Can't wait to see how they turn out. The next one is a 'STAGGERED' composition, new to me.

"STRETCHING THE TRUTH" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 12 x 17"

ANOTHER TIME

Painting portraits is exciting and challenging. When the brush gets it just right,the person comes to life. This photo of an old man from China was taken in the 1940's and brought back to the U.S. by a serviceman. His wife said she'd let me paint it. I was thrilled. There was a certain regalness about him that I liked, although he must've been very poor.

His droopy eye, his beard, and his hat - I loved them. And his coat wrapped him up so snug in that cold climate. My friend Linda has the painting now, looking down on her in her kitchen. He has a good home now.

"LOOKING BACK" Transparent Watercolor on 140#HP Arches 16 x 21" SOLD

HOOKED

Playing with an idea or theme can be like a story telling itself. The artist only holds the brush and goes with the ideas that come each moment.

This watercolor started out like that story waiting to be told. Using stamps I'd fashioned out of mat board as well as stencils I'd cut from sheets of plastic, I added and subtracted shapes and colors as it seemed right.

Both transparent watercolor as well as gouache watercolor made the process easy and fun. Gouache is made of the same dry pigment as transparent watercolor but has a type of chalk added, making it easier to lift and very opaque. I liked how the opaqueness of the gouache seemed to make the transparent watercolor seem even more luminous. The hardest part was knowing when to stop.

"HOOK, LINE & SINKER" Transparent Watercolor and Gouache Watercolor on 140# Arches Hot Press 15 x 11" SOLD