SPRING!!!

We have enjoyed the easiest winter ever here in the midwest.  Still, I am totally ready for spring to be here.  The next ten days should be wonderful with all temperatures above 40 at night and shirt sleeve weather during the daytime!   Awesome. 

This batik was painted/waxed earlier and just finished this past week.  Though we can't plant tulips here --- they are 'deer candy' --- I do love all the colors and varieties of tulips.  The daffodils are blooming in the garden right now, too.  Hope you enjoy spring.

"Sunkissed Springtime" Watercolor and Sumi Ink on Washi  20 x 14"

YUPO WORKSHOP

This weekend will be full of creativity during our YUPO workshop here at my studio.  Artists who have struggled to paint on this slick surface will find success as they enjoy a colorful adventure.



"Donkey Man 2012"

Watercolor and Transparent Fluid Acrylics on YUPO 20 x 26" COLLECTED

This first painting is a new edition of 'Donkey Man," a subject I've always been fascinated with and have attempted several times.  Two other paintings of Donkey Man are below this recent one, both done many years ago.  The first two here are on YUPO and the last one is a batik on rice paper. 

There are good things about all three paintings, I suppose, but I prefer the most recent one because there is a bit more mystery, better temperature dominance, and a surer stroke with the brush. 

Donkeyman 2002 Watercolor on Yupo 25 x 13"
COLLECTED

YUPO, also called 'Lana/Vanguard' in Europe, is an amazing surface to paint on.  It's much like a gessoed canvas, just slicker.  The textures and colors are absolutely fabulous on this non absorbent surface but handling the paint takes some expertise and a bit of instruction. 

We'll be exploring a new technique that we've decided to call 'Independent Layering' in the workshop, which was used to create the most recent Donkeyman.  It will be a good weekend! 

DONKEYMAN BATIK - Watercolor and
 Fluid Acrylics on Kinwashi Rice Paper -
COLLECTED







WAX BATIK WORKSHOP

This weekend 11 artists took on the challenge of creating wax batiks with watercolor and sumi ink. We really put the hours in here at my studio, with each woman creating her own original batiks, planning the works from initial sketches to the final painting process. The majority of the workshoppers were able to get the layers of wax ironed off before they left on Sunday evening but still had adjustments to make before calling the paintings complete. Therefore, there are none of their paintings to show on this blog yet. Hopefully when they email me the finished work for critique, I can post some of them. Their work included a wide range of subject matter, and it was exciting to see the paintings develop.

We used several kinds of washi/rice papers, and my demo batik was done on Thai unryu paper, which I frequently use for wax batik and watercolor. However, this time the sheet shredded in some areas. Frustrating. Possibly the vat where the paper was handmade, in Thailand, didn't get enough pulp in it to make my sheet of paper an even thickness. I really don't know for sure why it shredded, but I was thankful that it didn't happen to anyone else in the workshop.

This is the finished painting, after it was glued down to w/c paper. Several tweaking adjustments were made after the paste dried. The way it looked (before paper repairs) is shown below - notice the holes in many areas. When wet, most rice papers tear fairly easily along an edge if they are picked up, but these areas happened as soon as I put the paint brush on the paper. It was like the paper dissolved in spots. The holes got worse with each successive layer of paint, so I condensed the last three layers of paint into one final wash. Patching the holes was tedious, and one area still looks obviously patched.

The photo of the finished batik was taken outdoors after painting corrections were made, and the one with holes was taken under natural light in the studio, hence the slight color variation. The water and sky in the 'holey' photo depicts the water and sky colors more accurately than the first photo of the finished piece.

In late January, there will be a 3 day workshop here, and we'll all be using masking tape instead of wax to create the batik look. (See sidebar on right.) Late February is the next wax batik workshop here, for three days also, instead of two. Both workshops do have openings, but class size is limited. If you're interested, email me at sandymaudlin@gmail.com, and I'll send you the details.

Seen here - some of the workshop artists working on various steps of wax batik on rice paper..... Thank you all for a good weekend - looking forward to seeing your finished batiks soon. It was great painting together.

"SERENADE" Watercolor and Sumi Ink on Thai unryu paper, adhered to Arches 140#CP 16x22" COLLECTED

BATIK WORKSHOP DATE CHANGED

The wax batik workshop, originally scheduled for September, has been changed to Nov. 13-14. You can see several of my wax batiks in the previous post. The process includes using watercolor, along with sumi ink and hot wax to create amazing paintings on rice papers. It's an intense process yet the results are so worth the effort. Get more info about the workshop by emailing me at sandymaudlin@gmail.com.

EXPLORING BATIK AND WATERCOLOR

Date changed for BATIK WORKSHOP. If you love the look of batik and want to learn to create that fascinating effect using watercolors, check out this 2 day workshop. It will be held in my studio near Cincinnati on November 13 and 14. (Dates were changed from Septemeber.)

Posted below are several of my paintings done with this fascinating and ancient process. We'll be using hot paraffin, rice papers, regular watercolor paints, and sumi ink. Every artist will be painting their own original works of art, using special techniques to create their one-of-a-kind batiks.

Cost is $150 and includes two very full days of instruction as well as the use of melting pots, hot wax, and an assortment of tools. Contact me at sandymaudlin@gmail.com for more info. Do hope you can join us.

REVISIONS

Yesterday my copy of Between Two Kingdoms arrived. The author, Storyteller Joe Boyd, has blogged about how many revisions he made to his book and how it felt like he was sending his child off to college once it was finished. Probably many artists from many genre are this way about their creative work. I certainly am with specific paintings and really regret with having parted with a few of them.

This painting from last summer went through several revisions itself. It began as a watercolor batik on rice paper but is now a mixed media painting on rice paper, mounted on a wrapped canvas. It, along with a couple of other paintings, left home this week for an art show that opens this Friday in Oakley at The Red Tree Gallery, east of downtown Cincinnati.

Some may prefer the original look of the painting - see first draft posted below - but it's long gone - now covered with more watercolor, fluid acrylics, caran d'ache crayons, and some ink. The original dark border was so inhibiting, and the pattern of lights and darks in the original was too weak to capture the eye. The arch on the right appeared too dominant, and the beautiful stone wall by the steps seemed like a fussy soldier, nearly forbidding entrance up the steps.

Those were my thoughts when I began to play with the adjustments. It also seemed to need something personal in it, too, something alive other than plants. Now there's a fairly obscure woman looking out of one of the windows. Putting someone walking up the steps seemed like the obvious thing to do and too predictable, too. A cat might have been nice somewhere perched on a step???

Sacrifices of some of the good parts of a work of art are often necessary to make the whole piece pull together. That's what happened here. No longer is this so obviously a watercolor batik, but hopefully, the painting is stronger. While I totally loved the glow in the original,- shown here to the left with the dark border - the impact of the revised painting above tells the story so much better of the ancient buildings and passages in a charming village on Lake Como.

If you are interested in seeing the original with its initial revisions done this past July click HERE. Have a great week!

"COMO COUNTRY" Transparent Watercolor and Hot Wax on Kinwashi, with Sumi Ink, Fluid Acrylics, Caran d'Ache Crayons, mounted on Wrapped Canvas 18 x 24"

ADJUSTMENTS

Batik adjustments are easy enough to make once the wax is removed and the batik is adhered to either canvas or acid free watercolor paper. The posts here show the final result first, along with the stages the batik went through after I'd ironed the wax out of the rice paper. This was one of the demos done for the Craftsummer Workshop which I taught a couple of weeks ago at Miami University.

This final painting, posted first, shows the many value changes as well as color and shape adjustments, compared to the original, shown next. The artists at Craftsummer only saw the batik as seen below, with the warmer overall temperature and paler border.

I'd planned for a cool temperature painting with a warm focal area, but that just didn't happen. Many adjustments had to be made to improve the painting, and I decided I'd rather sacrifice some of the batik effect, if I had to, in order to pull off a better painting.

The window in the upper left and the archway in the lower right really needed help, as did the strength of the shadows on the steps. I also wanted to add some cool teals and turquoises to the warm areas to help alleviate the heat of the painting.

The corners all needed to be darkened to help 'enclose' the painting, but even after doing that, I felt that it still lacked depth. Darkening the border considerably and minimizing the diamond shapes in it helped give the painting a better sense of depth - - - compare first pix with third one - shown here with lighter border.

My original photo, below, shows the scene that inspired this batik, but I used lots of artistic license to create a better composition. My goal was to capture the feelings I had while we were in this incredibly beautiful little village. I left Linda out of the painting and wondered later if the painting might have been more interesting if I had included her. Too late now, though.

A close up of the focal area shows details of the temperature changes - last pix posted here - as well as the stronger colors added for the flower areas. There were really a lot of adjustments on this batik, but not as many as on the one I'm working on now.

During one of the last days at Craftsummer, I was painting hot wax on this batik to completely cover the whole sheet of rice paper. Suddenly, I realized I had my other batik-in-progress UNDER this one. Where I'd just added the hot wax, it soaked into that underlying rice paper batik-in-progress.

A couple of the artists helped me carefully pull the two pieces of waxed rice paper apart, and now I must iron off all that 'mistake' wax on that bottom batik. YIKES! Once I re wax the shapes, I hope I can continue that batik and pull it off. We'll see.....

Batik is an intense process that's very time consuming, but well worth it. I won't give up on that batik-in-progress yet, since I already have a lot of time invested in it. If it doesn't turn out, I'll still have some beautiful pieces of colored rice paper to use for collage later.

Finished Painting at Top of Post ---
"COMO COUNTRY" Transparent Watercolor Batiked with Hot Wax on Kinwashi, with Sumi Ink, mounted on Wrapped Canvas 18 x 24"

Detail of focal area

GREAT ART & NEW FRIENDS

Teaching a five day workshop is invigorating and fulfilling for me, (as well as exhausting.) As a teacher, I get to watch wonderful, creative artwork being born as well as get to know some fascinating and often unusually talented artists. The supplies we use and the techniques we employ give us similar vehicles to uniquely express who we are as artists.

Each person's use of color, line, shape, and texture is different from the next. Approaches varied for each assignment, and the results were stunning. Some of the batiks were over two feet long, but most were between 12" and 18".

Batik is an intense method of creating art using hot wax to preserve shapes. We all learned from each other, from our successes and from our failures.

It seems that each painting expresses a special part of that artist in a way that only she can express. The happy accidents along the way added to the mystery of making art. It was a wonderful week. Thank you all for being such a great class, for working so hard, for making it fun to be with other artists. The hardest part for me is always saying "goodbye" at the end.





Linda Lyons - 12" square circle design

DeeAnne Helm - Harbor batik

Emily Hostetter - City lights

Sondra Karipides - Daisies

Kathy Storrie - Venice

Sarajane Steinecker - 12" square leaf design

Irene Friedman - 12" square design

Jenny Koch - 12" square design

Amber Michaels - Portraits with collage

Andrea Stewart - 12" design

BATIK CLASS AT MIAMI U

Here are some more of the exquisite batiks created last week in my workshop. When they were completed, some were adhered to white watercolor paper while some were mounted onto a wrapped canvas. All are originals, designed by each artist. More to come in the next post, too. ENJOY!

Sondra Karipides 12" square design



















Kathy Storrie - Hands

Andrea Stewart - Fluid design with border

Amber Michael - Drink of water

Sarajane Steinecker - 12" square on Itchimatsu rice paper

Linda Lyons - Non-representational batik mounted on canvas, with embellishments

Irene Friedman - 12" square on Itchimatsu rice paper

Jenny Koch - Lily pads

Emily Hostetter - 12" square on Itchimatsu rice paper

DeeAnne Helm - 12" squares

Anne Bongiovanni - floral batik

That's all until the next post.

NO SLIDE SHOW

After spending lots of hours trying to post a great slide show of last week's Batik Workshop, using Flickr, Picasa, and slide.com, I give up. Nothing worked. Help???!!!???

Nevertheless, here are a few of the fabulous pieces our class painted, using watercolor, sumi ink, and hot wax. More to come.....

First three batiks by - Anne Bongiovanni, (man to right,) Jenny Koch, (nets to left,) Sondra Karipides (landscape with sun)

Fish batik by Andrea Stewart

Circular designs by Emily Hostetter

Porch by DeeAnne Helm

Abstract design by Amber Michael

Abstracted design with border by Sarajane Steinecker

Fruit by Kathy Storrie

Color design by Linda Lyons

Waterfalls batik by Irene Friedman