GRATE DAY!

Yesterday was the Watercolor Society of Indiana's annual juried show opening.  (Click on my painting at the WSI website to see it enlarged.)  The show will hang in the Indianapolis Museum of Art until early December, and my 'Amazing Grates' received the second place award!  YES!!!  Jerry Smith received First Place for a stunningly beautiful rural scene done in acrylics, also. 

Gerald Brommer was the judge and stated that he judges work on four criteria --- technique, drawing ability, visual design, and the spirit or content of the work.  Although I knew that he dislikes YUPO, I submitted my Grates on YUPO anyway.  

Here's what he said about my painting - "The surface of this painting is wonderful.  Gorgeous stuff happens in the painting.  It is well designed, and the design works beautifully.  The surface is to die for.  The composition fits together so well that one could possibly get 16 little paintings from this big one." 

The painting is 40x26", and it was amusing to watch as one guy tried to 'find' all 16 paintings in the piece.  It's been said that a good painting should be able to be divided into four good smaller paintings, so a big smile landed on my face when I heard what Brommer said.  I consider him to be one of the best workshop instructors ever, besides being such a wise judge:-)  He's a very affirming, positive person.

All the grates and sewer lids in the painting are from Indianapolis.  It was a grate 'happy dance' day!

"AMAZING GRATES" Fluid Acrylics on YUPO 40x26" COLLECTED

AND YET AGAIN

This weekend I simply had to take this painting out of its frame and make some subtle but important changes. The top photo shows the changes.

Changes --- #1 Got rid of that mustard color on it and glazed it with some pale indigo -#2 Eliminated the '+' sign in the small grate on top of it - #3 Integrated the other gold small grate into the grates under it. It was the only full circle, and the edges of it had to be broken. It really helped to clean up that big white grate. #4 Softened the strong, thin, white diagonal at the top right of the painting and lifted some whites out of the fancy grate near it. #5 Added an illusion that the white paint stripe coming from the top left of the painting continued through to the orange grate centered at the bottom of the painting.

That mustardy color on that big grate really seemed to weight down the rest of the painting, but it took me a while to see that that was an issue. Originally, the fancy grate was to have been the focal point, but as I painted, it became evident that the big white grate would be the boss. The white 'T' shape next to the fancy grate became overly important until that mustard color on the big grate was eliminated.

So now it really is FINISHED! (Started over a year ago in my head, then composed in February, painted in most of March, and finished, the first time, in June.) I like that the wording on the grates - about Indianapolis sewer and utility companies - is not noticeable unless you're up close.

The painting's traveling to Indianapolis in a week or so where it will be hung. It will be very hard to part with it, but I will have visiting rights. Right now it's my favorite painting ever. Though it seemed really big when I started it, it only appears medium sized to me now. I must put in an order for a big roll of YUPO to paint on..... wider than 40" for sure.

"AMAZING GRATES" Fluid Acrylics on Heavy Weight YUPO 40 x 26" COLLECTED

GRATE REVISIONS

Several minor adjustments have been done to the top version of Amazing Grates. Using my squeegee and rubbing alcohol, I lifted off some random patterns to add lighter shapes which would help increase the movement in the painting. The lights help move the eye around better now. Minor spots of darks were touched in where more focus was needed, and a few blurs of orange were swished in too. Can you tell the difference between this and the older version under it?

This was painted with fluid acrylics on heavy weight YUPO, 40 x 26" It was a little unnerving to go back to it after thinking it was completed several months ago. I worked slowly making corrections, stepping back between nearly every stroke to see if I should proceed more or stop. Now I'm super pleased with it.

Sewer covers and manhole covers are things we pay little attention to, and yet you can find so many amazing patterns and textures in them. A future painting I hope to do will be of manhole covers from places I've traveled to. Since my sister-in-law was headed to Alaska this summer, I asked her to be on the lookout for any manhole cover that had 'ALASKA' on it so I could add it to my future 'grate travels' painting. She laughed when telling me that nearly the whole cruise ship was scouring the towns for an ALASKAN manhole cover. They found one for me, too. Thanks, Senie:-)

AMAZING GRATES Transparent Fluid Acrylics on Heavy Weight YUPO 40x26" COLLECTED

FINISHED GRATE PAINTING

This is my third GRATE painting. The first one, done nearly 10 years ago, was about 5 x 7 inches, the next 20 x 26 inches, with this one being 26 by 40 inches. It's been a while since I've had so much fun while painting a picture.

The whole process, from dodging traffic while taking photos of the man hole covers and grates - to the preparation and design - to the actual wonderful painting time, has been both challenging and exciting to do. Traffic actually stopped a couple of times on that cold rainy Sunday afternoon while I stood in the center turn lane taking photos of some really great grates. The cars could have gone around us, but the drivers were so polite and careful to wait for me. At another location, a man circled around to ask if we needed help. When we told him we were taking pictures for art, he moved on. Crazy artists! Thanks, Betsy, for driving, for stopping, for joining in on the fun.

Grates have fascinated me since childhood, when I was afraid to walk on them. I love the lines and edges, the lettering, the strength they have, and especially the patterns and textures that the paint and rust make. Some are really works of art in themselves. Now anywhere there's been a neat one underfoot, a photo is a must. In my studio you can find quite a photo collection of amazing grates.

One of my self imposed challenges for this painting was to create a design with circular shapes that allowed eye movement from shape to shape. Squares, equilateral triangles, and circles are predictable shapes that usually capture the viewer's eye, to the point of stopping eye movement in the painting completely. Using both value changes and color contrasts helped to create a flow throughout the painting.

The second challenge was to paint a more curvaceous painting. When painting, I always seem to prefer straight edges over curves, so doing the reverse could help me stretch a little. Somehow the challenges helped me stay directed.

I'm super pleased with the results. Sounds like a 'pat on the back,' but it's not. It just makes me very happy with how the painting turned out, and I really enjoy looking at it. It's almost as if it appeared on the paper magically, and I had little to do with it. (That's not true, of course, since there are more than 50 hours of work (play) in its actual creation.) Check the previous post on this blog for the work in progress of this grate painting. You'll see that several changes were made from that post to this finished piece.

Don't you LOVE textures? They are so incredibly inspiring and tantalizing. Artists HAVE to paint them, don't we? Since this is Fluid Acrylics on YUPO, creating amazing textures was just way too much fun. At first, my focus was on developing a good composition, then the textures were a blast to add after that was worked out.

It's been said that texture is the 'icing on the cake.' If the painting's a good one, people will want to get closer, then be surprised by the textures and details. If the painting has a weak composition, they may pass by it too quickly, and even the most wonderful textures in the world won't make them stop and look.

I really hated for this painting to be done. And the title is still undecided. GRATE JUNK - GRATE EXPECTATIONS - ROAD TRIP - UNDERFOOT - AMAZING GRATES - ETERNALLY GRATE FULL - TREAD ON ME - HITTING THE PAVEMENT...............

Here are photos of my other two grate paintings. The 'close up' grate is Watercolor on YUPO, and the Italian Grates are Fluid Acrylics on YUPO, completed about two years ago. Now for the next one!!!!!!!

GRATE ADVENTURE

This post is the beginning of the last three weeks' adventure in painting and shows the progress of my painting process for this GRATE painting. So many times I've said that planning takes almost 75% of the time I spend on a picture. I thought that would be true this time, too, since it took over 12 hours to take the pix and develop the overall plan. But the painting time also took MUCH longer before this one was done.

After taking photos of my subject, I cut them up and montaged them onto a board to get an idea of the effectiveness of the future pattern of lights and darks. No matter how unique or fascinating a subject is, unless the light and dark values make an eye capturing pattern, it's unlikely the viewer will want to walk up to the painting. The first black and white photo of the above montage shows a weak pattern, so adjustments were made with pen and ink and a white marker - see the second black and white. Some shapes were moved slightly and some eliminated.

Next the drawing was transferred with a regular Derwent watercolor pencil onto a full sheet of heavy weight YUPO paper, and gray Pebeo miskit was painted into a few important white shapes. Then I liberally applied a colorful wash over the whole paper, as seen here, using FLUID ACRYLICS like regular watercolors. Color choices were determined by the future colors in the painting but applied in a very random manner. No attempt was made to 'color' in the lines. Creating accidental textures and wonderful color nuances seemed most important to me at this point.

Once the basic wash dried, I attempted to define specific shapes as seen in the progression of the next three photos. The last photo here indicates the painting less than half finished. There's more to come in the next post which will show the final GRATE painting.

This photo shows the fancier grate redone. In the photo above, it has a tired, overworked look, so all of the paint had to be removed, (YEAH for YUPO) then the drawing redrawn before the grate was repainted.

Thinking of a title has been fun because of the possibilities of interchanging GRATE and GREAT. Initially it was to be titled, "OVERLOOKED & UNDERFOOT." What are your suggestions?

GRATE ART

This painting is a result of my love of taking photos of what's under my feet. In Italy and Switzerland, I was fascinated with the grates in the walkways and streets and decided they all had to be incorporated into one painting.

Created on YUPO with fluid acrylics, this painting was my favorite one I did during the last couple of days of independent study at our North Carolina workshop.

The past four days here have been jam packed with instruction from an AWS artist, Janet Rogers. This morning's class enjoyed watching her paint a beautiful bouquet of roses, then Rhonda drove her to the airport. Next, Janet and her husband, Steve, are teaching in Key West. It was a very special weekend.

"MORE GRATE ART!" Fluid Acrylics on YUPO 20 x 26"