On Not Being Able to Draw

'Checkstand #4'

Every So Often I Get in a Total Artistic Funk.....
.....convincing myself that I've forgotten everything I might have known about painting or drawing.  It starts as a small voice but after a week or so of not doing any art it's pretty much a full out of tune chorus.

On one of those 'funk weeks' I began a Tuesday morning by having breakfast at Whole Foods.  The table I was at was maybe 15 feet from this checkout and after mentally battling the out of tune chorus for as long as I could stand I pulled out the pens and did this quick sketch.

I began with what I felt was the hardest part, the checkout person, looking for something I could visually grab on to.  That 'V' right behind her head where her pony tail was tied was the spot.  After all, anyone can draw a 'V'.  Then the top of her head and down her bangs, then on to the pony tail itself.....and I can't tell you what came next.

Ok, says the chorus, now reduced to a duet, but 'you just got lucky'.  So, for a slap down on the duet,  on the ferry to home I did these two charmers.

The naysayers have now been quiet for a bit so I can finally announce a Marker Workshop coming up on May 18th, 2019 at the Winslow Art Center.  Check it out HERE.

This is a painless one day class that will increase your feelings of artistic accomplishment as well as give you the skills to find sketching both faster and more enjoyable.  Marker Drawing greatly improved all my art after I stumbled on to this technique that uses just a pen and three toned markers.

Hope to see you there.  You get a Free Stress Reducing Sketchbook.  Did I say 'FREE'?

I'll be back with some more drawings.

Thanks for looking.

Gouache Workshop 2015

Today was the Winslow Art Center Gouache Workshop and.....

.....some of you were able to be there to create beautiful pieces of art.  We got a wall full of paintings and didn't even get them all up for the photo.

This was the demo I did to help cement the concept of painting the big shapes before putting in the 'do-dads'....and using a big brush.  Except for the four individual grapes, the whole painting was done with a one inch flat.  Everyone seemed to get the idea because the last paintings of the day were definitely strong artistic statements.

Here is the wall full of color:

Such a committed crew.....even if they had a hard time pronouncing 'gouache'.  

Ran's Beach Chairs, 8x10

Post # 3 in the painting give-away.

We had a great two plein air workshop days with lots of enthusiasm and very solid paintings being produced by everyone.  We used gouache, oil and acrylic....and they all were nice.  The second day I also did a couple in between wandering around and sharing what changes I could suggest.  If there was a common lesson it was 'simplify'....which I often have to remind myself.....because there is so much we see that it is tempting to do it all.

The second day we were out near the end of the sandspit at Randy's little home they call the 'Playhouse'....on one side is the lagoon and just a few feet away on the other is Puget Sound where these chairs sit.  An idyllic place.

I had the most interesting experience.  The sun was so bright (well, to someone in the Northwest) that the white paint looked like dirty purple.  Even fresh from the tube it seemed to have a purplish color mixed into it.  One more plein air challenge.

Make a comment to enter the painting give-away.  Love to hear what you have to say.

Log Raft 2.5, 10x12

Painting Giveaway #2.5.

For reasons known only to the Facebook illuminaries, my blog entries aren't posting to FB...so lots of people are missing out on this contest.  I'm posting this as 2.5 rather than 3 to see if I've got it straightened out. 

Make a comment and enter to win a free painting which I will draw and announce after I've posted number six.  This one counts for comments but not in the six.   This was painted for the abstract qualities of the shapes.

I'm teaching another plein air workshop this weekend and it promises to be a perfect two days for working outdoors.  There is room for another if you want to join us even for a day.  We are meeting at 9 am at the Winslow Art Center and heading out from there.

To those of you that have posted, keep them coming.  It's fun to hear your comments and you get another entry for that free painting. 

Rest of the Clowns, 6x6

Do Clowns creep you out?   The comments that have come through have been that, although people like the paintings, they find the clowns unsettling and a bit scary.  Come to think of it all the comments like that are from women.

James Gurney, author of Dinotopia, had an interesting post yesterday with an image that I find unsettling....maybe this is what people are responding to.  Like the horror movies with clowns, are these the images we have unconsciously grown up with?

Interesting.  I always thought clowns were just fun....oh, well, there was that old Alfred Hitchcock movie....

Anyway.  Here are the other two clowns and we can be done with them.  They were fun to paint. Sweet dreams.....

Gouache is Not Hungarian Hotdish Revisited

The gouache workshop was a great success, although at the end I was completely 'bushed'.  Despite a hectic pace we all survived and put out some fine work.

Here are two of the demos I did for the class.  The first is on toned paper and relies on the opaque qualities of the medium.  The paper combines with the paint and shows through in places, but most of the piece is thick paint that obscures the paper.

This quick second demo only has a few opaque parts with the majority of the white paper glowing through, relying on the the ability of gouache to look and work like watercolor.  Well, it actually is watercolor.

The first exercise was to learn about the paint by playing on toned paper using three primary related colors.  Exciting and colorful results were generated and all were such different expressions reminding me of how uniquely we all see and experience the world.

And here they are playing intensely in an exercise I call 'Interior Landscape".

 

This group got me re-enthused to not only paint more in gouache but to have another workshop.  It's so much fun to have had a room full of artists willing to try whatever I threw at them....and actually look like they were enjoying themselves.

Landscape Workshop

Today was the first outdoor painting workshop of the season and it was a beautiful day. That's 'D' in the front doing not only his first outdoor painting, but his first painting period. That takes courage. If painting indoors is like keeping ten plates spinning, outside its sixteen.

'V', above, is working on the first one of the day and she was hitting right on. 'T' was just getting in the large shapes of the first of six. A productive day. Even I had fun, but I pretty much bombed on my demos....not bad, but not great. I need to get out and paint more. It's amazing how quickly we can lose that facility of seeing.

Marker to Monotype

On Sunday was the Marker to Monotype Workshop. Participants turned their marker value drawings into prints.

The prints shown here are demos from that workshop. The still life is loosely taken from the demo drawing of the day before (see previous entry). I don't call it a good print, but it does make the point of how to reinterpret drawings.

The bottom landscape print is better, also taken from a marker drawing I did on location in the Cascade Mountains last Fall. The drawing preceeded a painting which is now framed and in a gallery.

As usual, I learned a lot from the people taking the workshop. It's so interesting to me how the same materials in different hands can yield such differing and unique results from every person. Drawings from the previous day and other marker workshops were turned into new artistic expressions. I was exhausted yet very gratified.