Tooting my own horn

I'm in the process of finishing two pieces for the CPSA DC201 annual exhibit in Corvalis, OR next month. It's been a little while since I did a full piece in colored pencil and I found myself reviewing this one as a personal refresher.

I love music and musical instruments. Sometimes I'd rather draw them than play them (and while I can only play a few I can try to draw them all). So I began with a trumpet. I had seen a call for poster art for our local jazz festival and had been listening to some "Satchmo" Armstrong so it seemed like a logical place to begin.

I've already mentioned that I enjoy colored grounds so I decided to try this piece on a black Canson matboard (which, you will notice, does not photograph well).











With the initial sketch in place, I began by putting a tonal layer under the highlights of the trumpet with a cool grey.

From there, I moved on to what I considered the darker colors of the trumpet - the brassy browns and golds.








The color palette was actually quite limited. I think I used a total of 7 colors in all. The reflections from a trumpet actually form quite distinct zones that can be filled in in almost a paint-by-number method.











The final step for the trumpet was to fill in the highlights and then burnish the entire piece with a colored pencil. It helped to blend the color edges just slightly and to add some extra polish. Matboard has a fairly shallow tooth so complete coverage (I learned earlier) takes repeated layers with workable fixative. Since I with dark grounds I never want to take the risk of clouding the background so I did not use any fixative on this piece and just left those small gaps in the coverage for added texture. In a reflective surface, it's surprising what will translate as something just being reflected. (I will add that I have used workable fixative on dark matboard but never more than two very lightly applied layers.)







The final stage was to add the music ribbon. Remember this piece was to be a poster so I left room for text, although I probably would have left the design fairly similar regardless. The music was done with white but the backsides of the spirals with a cool grey 20% to give a little dimension.









The final piece eventually was titled "Where Will the Music Take You?" and can be seen in my Etsy store here.

Where does music carry you?

A fish in the water

"Tails" is a painting I did several years ago and was fun mostly because of the background technique that I was experimenting with. Because it was so long ago, I may not remember all the steps of this particular painting but let's see how I do.

For many years, we had several fish tanks around the house and this particular twin-tail goldfish was one of my favorites. It's always amazed me how much personality a fish can have. If you've ever tried photographing fish in an aquarium, you'll know it can be a bit of a trick because of glass reflections, water distortions and the tendency of fish to shy away from anything that looks like a big eye :). But I did finally get a shot that I liked - very foreshortened but that showed off his twin tails.

I began with a 16 x 20 canvas panel. They have the advantage of being more rigid for paint applications that will be thick or heavy. Plus the rigid base also works better for techniques that involve pressing, rolling or stamping - the canvas doesn't flex like a traditional wrapped or mounted canvas and so the texture stays more uniform towards the edges.

I base coated the panel in a medium blue shade, then while the paint was still wet, I laid a sheet of large-bubble packing wrap over the painting and pressed it in. I let it sit for a minute to give the paint a little time to set up so I would get more dimension to the texture, then pulled it away and let the base coat finish drying.

After it had dried, I applied successive washes of a dark green and white to help "pull out" the bubble shapes on the background. The more dimension to your texture, the more paint will "catch" and show it up.

Then it was time to put my composition together.


Using a 1/2" flat wash brush, I cut in several strands of greenery and then added a first layer to the fish, leaving the area around the eye, gill and body edge near the tail fin clear so the basecoat showed through and would serve as shading under later layers. I knew I'd have some coverage issues from working with complementary colors but was still surprised by how the first layer of orange turned completely yellow. I also added a first layer to the eye with black.


Then it was time to get to the rather tedious work of applying successive layers of orange to the fish body to get deeper color but also to provide contouring. The second layer was a repeat of the first, then I began adding some fin details by shading washes of the same color over the fins, keeping the heavier gradation towards the body.

It was also time to start building up the greenery - using several mixed shades of cool and warm greens to give variety, depth and movement to the "reeds".


About the fourth or fifth layer, I added contouring to the body by using a red shade for the deeper shades and a gold mix for scale highlights. These I added one scale at a time using a slant cut, dense pack 1/4" brush and building layer on layer as I wanted the highlights to build up.

The final step (for the goldfish) was to add a final layer of orange to the body as a light wash to help blend the various areas across the fish. At the same time I picked out some of the highlights on his body that were not scales (ie. at the base of his tails).

In looking at it, it was still pretty atonal - not a lot of variation - so I picked out three of the background bubbles and outlined them with white shading. And he still felt too suspended to me. So I added a variety of colorful dots to the base to be the gravel of his tank. The fun of aquarium gravel is that is comes in such a huge spectrum of colors that I could choose anything a wanted. Then a final wash of green (algae-esque) gave a sense of uniformity to the gravel.


I finished the painting with several coats of high gloss varnish at this point (for a more watery feel to the final painting), but I later found a fun idea for framing him as well. Because I used a panel instead of a standard stretched canvas, I was able to find a 2 1/2" deep shadow box frame that suited it perfectly. The combination of glass, gloss and depth make it look even more like he is at home in his aquarium!

So my question after trying this background technique is: what else could be pressed into, dragged across or stamped on a wet base coat to create some fun and fantastic backgrounds?

A trip to the train station

I was recently part of a local business's celebration when the building they were in turned 100 years old. It's a phenomenal building and is the home of Porter's Restaurant. Working with the local historical society, they have done a beautiful job of restoring this building and making the most of its historical elements.

I've always been excited by the fact that this building was built as a railroad station. Some of my favorite buildings are old railroad stations so this was a particular delight to me. As part of their celebration of this anniversary, they invited 50 local artists to each paint their impressions of the building. The resulting paintings will be on display for the month of November 2010 and available for patrons to view and to vote on and to purchase if interested.

It was a unique experience to compose a painting of this sort. Brian, one of the owners, graciously gave us a tour of the building and let us take photos where we wanted as reference material. One of the features of the building that I have always loved is the large curved counter that is the original ticket counter for the train depot. It has been moved into the bar but I wanted to make it central to my painting. I also wanted to give an idea of the time that has passed in this building. (A history of the building can be found here.) Other great features include their patio with antique railroad and luggage items, the building's stucco mixed with coal dust from the trains, a few table tops made from old crossing signs, and the graffiti that has been scratched onto the bricks over the last century by waiting passengers (including the original Bobo the Clown at one spot).








After mulling over several ideas, I decided I wanted the different decades of the building to be represented with the people that used it in a progression at the ticket counter. Think how many stories walked through this building! Several hours of research and several rough drafts later, this was my final sketch.

The restaurant supplied each artist an Ampersand Cradled Artist Panel for Oil & Acrylic and I transferred the sketch to it. This would be a new surface for me and I wasn't sure I would like the texture. (Although I did put it to use later.)





Because I wanted to try to maintain a vintage feel to this painting, I base coated the entire panel in a neutral gray. Then I began with the red brick of the walls - both interior and "exterior". I made my own mix fairly simply in two shades and created a washed area before adding the grout lines. I elected not to add them all because it created a visual grid that was very distracting. There are a few vertical lines added for reference but not many.

Then I filled in the larger woodwork surfaces, again using two prominent shades. I wanted the warmth of wood but not to the point of distraction.



From here it was time to begin my characters. I had chosen a porter, a 1910 woman, a 1930s woman, a 1950s man and a modern-day woman to represent some of the decades the building had been in use. Again, all colors were grayed somewhat to maintain a feeling of history but chosen to provide some color impact in such a busy background. And I also purposely elected not to give them facial features or varied skin tones. Partly artistic preference (I figured that out of 5 faces, 1 would most likely end up driving me crazy by not working), partly historical cultural mix in the area. I haven't totally decided whether that was a successful decision or not but I do like that it adds slightly to the impressionism of the painting.












At this point, I also did some of the edge work. Because I was so tickled at the idea of coal dust being mixed into the stucco of the building, I added Liquitex Black Lava to the gray border paint. I also textured these borders by "patting" the wet paint with the flat side of a 3/4" brush.



From there it was on to details of shading and background. This was a bit of a challenge because from the reference photo above, you can see the impressive number of bottles in the bar. In person they add to the ambiance of the building but I didn't want the painting to be too heavily weighted to one side. So I elected to severely limit the number of items on the counter behind the bar. After they were painted, I washed the whole section with the same dark brown of the counter front to knock back the colors a little, and used the same dark brown to shade the large corner bricks. They turned out very well, IMO. I also added the Porter's logo to the table stand on the left. It's such a delightful logo and, in addition, gave a little balance to the black of the porter's uniform. This is also where the texture of the panel came in useful as one brush stroke skimmed over the surface became a plausible wine label.

One change I did make from the final sketch was to add a single light fixture over the bar on the left. It made a visual break in the double window, and added a lighter highlight to keep the eye transitioning through that section of the painting.




So that was my adventure into a historical impression painting. I was a little surprised by the amount of color mixing even though I'd kept my palette relatively limited because of the small panel size. I always enjoy painting clothes and fabric so that was a treat for me. All in all, it was a fun exercise and I'm please with the overall effect. It still remains to be seen if the diners agree :).

Ballet Slippers in Graphitint pencils

I've always loved ballet. There is an elegance and a style in ballet that really doesn't exist in any other type of dance. The dancer's lines stay so long and lovely that my art sense starts twitching each time I watch a performance. So after years of collecting images and sketching ideas, I eventually decided to start with the slippers, prompted in part by a beautiful colored pencil piece by Marianne Anderson.

I wanted dance shoes with a story. Used shoes of any sort have a zillion times more character than the shiny new ones. I found this pair at a local dance studio. The owner/teacher had spent time dancing professionally and kept several pair of her old shoes hanging on one of the barre's in the studio. They fascinated me every time I was there. So I finally asked if I could borrow a pair for a week and used the time photographing the shoes in a variety of settings, situations and positions. (It seemed appropriate for ballet shoes :) ) This was the shot I started with:

It wasn't everything I wanted though so I added a rose from this shot, a bud from another, etc.

In the end, this was the final sketch.

I LOVE working on colored grounds so chose a stony blue Strathmore pastel paper this time. I was a little concerned that the final art might be too "cool" but after reflection decided it matched the style I was aiming for.







I should also mention I was testing out a new set of watersoluable graphite pencils - Derwent Graphitint Pencils. I began filling in some light background on the shoes and building some of the highlights with a white pencil.





One problem I realized fairly quickly is that I hit a saturation point where the surface became too slick to add more far sooner than I liked. On a different paper, it probably wouldn't have happened as quickly but I didn't want to give up on the piece at this point. To compensate somewhat, I hit the darkest shadows with the darkest blue the set had to offer. But I wasn't concerned about "finishing" these areas until I had more color in place.





The next step was to start adding the greens. This set offered three shades and I varied them to keep the light consistent with the slippers. The greens actually blended very nicely and I left the leaf veins alone until the final layer was ready to be put down after the roses were colored.







The colors in the roses provided more of a challenge. A very limited sets of reds/pinks in this set meant I only had one or two choices. After a couple false starts down in a corner of the paper, I elected to use only one color for the roses but build the layers to provide the shaping and shadow.

Once these areas were in, I went back with the white pencil and smoothed the layers of the rose petals, adding a few highlights, as well as pumping the contrast as much as I could on the slippers. When the white wouldn't lay down any more, I switched back to the deep blue and built up the shadows around the slippers to increase the contrast. I did find the background a bit too cool still so took a medium brown to shade a little further out around the slippers. By the "rules," a warm background can seem awkward but because the whole piece was so cool in tone (by my design), I liked the contrast it provided.

I still found there was a bit of a "disconnect" between the flowers and the ballet slippers, but eventually resolved that by putting very thin (and I do mean very thin) hints of the burgundy shade from the rose into the edges of the slippers - around the toes, the lace casings and the satin ribbons over the insteps. It didn't take much accent at all to help give a harmony to the entire piece.


An extra comment: I took this piece to a critique night framed with a black core grey mat and a white frame. It looked fine but, again, made the shoes recede a little into the mass of cool background. After some more experimentation, it is now framed with a standard white mat, and a hammered pewter-colored frame. It's a classic look and I am pleased with it.

The finished piece can be seen in my Etsy store here.


*Note: I mix the lighting when I photograph my artwork to give me a sense of what might be missing in certain conditions. Sometimes, the photos look a little foggy as a result but it is intentional on my part. You get to see it as I do.

The words to go with the pictures

Part of the excitement of developing artwork is in the process. There are distinct stages to any work of art, both good and bad, and I will share some of mine here. Not out of any sense of egoism, but because I've learned some of my most powerful lessons watching other artists at work. If my progress or my mistakes are any encouragement to you, I'm happy to share them.

So here we go...