How do you work?

"The reason that art (writing, engaging, and all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map." - Seth Godin

Today I thought I would blog about how I get a sketch ready to paint. I'm always curious about other artist's workflows and I would love to hear how you work too. Feel free to leave a comment here.

I have two ways of working when I sketch.

If the sketch itself is the focus I tend to focus on the detail. I draw out my rough sketch first and then refine the shapes and add the details as I go. Shading and crosshatching to bring out the form. All the drawing is my own work with no shortcuts.

However;

            

If the painting is my main focus I only draw in an outline of the basic subject and paint in the detail as I go. If it is a landscape I may even just start straight into the painting and just roughly guess the scale as I paint. But if the painting is of something detailed that really needs to be in proportion I might even go as far as to trace an outline of the subject from my photograph just to get it done quicker because the sketch itself was never the focus of the work. (I'm even more likely to do this if I've already painted a small scale version and just want to quickly start on the full size piece. It's sheer laziness really but I drew it once already so why do I have to start from scratch again? I learned to work this way at school.)

I know this may sound like cheating and I guess it is in a way, but I know plenty of other painters that work this way. Some absolutely hate to draw or can't draw and the painting is the art for them. Some even project their image outline onto their canvas using projectors, or print it out and trace an outline onto the canvas that way instead. I can understand people working on huge over-sized pieces working with a projection, you'd spend a lot of time running backwards and forwards checking your scale and proportions otherwise. 

Below is an example of an outline that I would use to paint from. It's darker than I would usually draw it so that it would show up here. Just before I painted it I erased the pencil down to just a light marking, how I would usually have it marked out. The image above is of the finished bird.

As you can see it's just an outline of the bird's shape. A lot tidier than it would usually look because I darkened up the outline and you can't really see the other rough wobbly lines. I work on all the birds the same way regardless of colorings or markings on them. The details I just paint in as I go.

Something else I do is, when I'm working with watercolor paint I mix up all the colors I want to work with before I start to paint. When I'm working with acrylics I mix as I go.

So, how do you work when you're setting up a painting? Do you have any tips or shortcuts you would like to share here? I look forward to hearing from you.

Have a great week :)

I've found the answer!

The important thing about a problem is not it's solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution - Seneca

Last time I blogged I was testing out using acrylic paints as watercolors. I'd finished two paintings and although I felt that the finished product was okay I still had an irritating feeling about using acrylics this way. I decided to continue with the experiment to see if I could figure out what it was that I didn't like.

Today I painted three more bird pictures, shown here, using acrylics as watercolors and I think I've figured out what it was that I didn't like compared to real watercolors. It's the finished colors or perhaps more correctly their luminosity or lack of it. The watered down acrylics seem flatter and duller somehow even though the colors used are the same. I'm not talking about the finish, they are both a matt finish. It's more that the colors are somehow less luminous, they have less life in them than the watercolors do. 

Just to make sure that I'm not imagining it I'm going to paint the next couple of birds using the real watercolors and compare the results again. If I'm right I guess I'll have to stop being a scrooge and buy some more watercolor paints ;)

I've also just noticed that the shapes of the birds on the next page are showing through on these scans. One of the pitfalls of working in a book and not scanning each image as I finish it I guess. Note to self, put blank sheets of paper behind the images before I scan them or scan each image before I start the next one.

I'm not too happy with the owl anyway, it's having a bad hair day lol. I suppose that not everything is going to work out how I envision it and I'd better get used to it. On the plus side I discovered that peppy music gets me singing and working quite productively. I guess music and it's effect on my work is something else I should explore a bit more. Perhaps it may help me get in the mood when I really don't feel like painting.

Please let me know if you've discovered something similar with the luminosity of watercolors vs acrylics watered down.

Have a great week! :)

Using acrylics as watercolors

Acrylic is the only painting medium that can be all mediums - it can act like watercolor, it can act like oils, and it has it's own innate properties - Andrew Hamilton

Recently I've been experimenting with using acrylic paints as watercolors mainly because I have lots of acrylic paint lying around and I haven't got much watercolor paint left. The results have been quite interesting.

I first tried mixing up a few test paints to see how well they would flow and whether the colors would change when they dried. The test was done on a scrap of watercolor paper and was just some rough markings and a few test patches to try blending the colors. The first paint I mixed up had bubbles in it which I didn't think much about until I actually painted the bubbles onto the paper and they dried as bubbly marks. That was unexpected and I'm not sure why there were bubbles at all, I guess acrylics need more mixing in the water than the watercolor paint and this causes the bubbles.

I found the acrylic paint stayed very vibrant when watered down and I didn't notice much of a color shift when they dried either.

For some reason though, and I can't put my finger on exactly why, I prefer using the watercolor paint.The two paintings done here were both done using watered down acrylics and I'm happy enough with the results, but I just have this niggling feeling that I would have made a better job using watercolor.

I've decided to keep using the acrylics for now though. I want to explore layering washes more and I'm hoping that whatever it is that I don't like about using the acrylics this way will become clearer with more practice.

On a positive note, I bought some .1 sized pens and I'm very happy with how fine they are compared to the .4 that I used on the Thrush and Kingfisher.

Have a great week! :)

Autumn Collage Fun

Autumn Leaves

Golden and red,

spinning,whirling, dancing

in circles to the music of the wind.

The trees shake off their autumn coat

to dance naked in the winter chill.

The ephemeral mists silkily

caressing their limbs,

before abandoning them to

sway in gentle rhythm

to Mother Natures music.

- Carolyne MacMillan (me)

About two weeks ago Miss 7 and I collected lots of autumn leaves from our garden and pressed them for a week. The Liquid Amber leaves were particularly lovely shades of pink and red. Yesterday we decided to collage with some of them. Miss 7 also used some of the other paper collage items we had lying around. I also found a packet of skeleton leaves I didn't remember we had and we started to create. The images were to represent our vision of Autumn. 

It turned out to be an interesting exercise in patience for Miss 7 who had trouble with everything sticking to her fingers and not to the paper. Dried leaves are very fragile and for a while I thought she might give up but after a lot of effort though she got everything where she wanted it and started drawing with felt pen within her collage. In the end she decided that it needed to dry out before she could do any more and we packed up for the afternoon. I was pleased when she asked could we do this again next weekend, I wasn't sure she had enjoyed this exercise as much as some of the others we have shared. So hopefully she will finish her collage next weekend and I can add a picture here.

Autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the colors all pinks, reds, oranges and shades of brown and the misty cool mornings. I think it's the best season for early morning walks with my camera. Winter is a close second for me though. We don't get snow here but crunching through icy grass on a cold morning is fun and I love the stark tree shapes half hidden in the mist. It's a great time to be alive.

You can keep my Spring though, too rainy and it spoils the flowers and Summer is just too hot to bother with really. 

The photo above was taken by me back in 2009. It's taken on a walkway around one of our local lakes and our families favorite place to go for walks. I never have to ask twice if anyone wants to go for a walk around the lake :) 

My collage is a mixture of acrylic paint and leaves.