'lulu' ~ watercolors, gouache, acrylic paint, oil pastels and matte gel medium on collaged paper, 4" x 6"

i've been having a good time painting on collaged paper...  it's great to let the paper tell me what to draw/paint.   i take my glasses off, hold the (collaged) paper at arms length and see what shows up. if i don't see anything i squint either harder or looser!

 

'sir edgar and lady elaine' ~ all of these pieces have the same ingredients as 'lulu'

sir edgar and lady elaine (of the magenta branch of intercessors) are headed out. sir edgar appears to be in charge, but don't let appearances fool you...

a nameless white intercessor...  

on all of these pieces i used cream or white oil pastel for the skin. this may be my favorite way to do skin...   one thing that people have asked is how i get the oil pastels into small places;  i use a blending stump to push them around, or i use a white prismacolor pencil in very tiny spots.

the piece i'm working on now...  i've just put white oil pastel down for her skin.  i so love the way it looks, as is.  sometimes i just wanna stop there.  the bird is under a layer of gel medium.  i painted him last night but couldn't see anywhere interesting to go with him (within my skill level, lol), so i decided to make him a layer.  somehow or other the girl showed up after i did that.  (i may have been squinting just right)

if you've been coming here for a while you know that i stopped using acrylic paint a while ago, yet here i am listing it as an ingredient again!   i decided to switch back to white acrylic because  i just don't like the smell of casein paint.  so i bought the blick white acrylic, which i really like.  it's very thick.  the bleached sand was leftover from my acrylic days...   they're good for covering stuff up...

 

'adele' ~ colored pencil and graphite in pocket moleskine

i drew adele this morning.  as you can see, she and lulu have the same kind of hair and shape of head.  and they both have flowers in their hair!  maybe lulu's her crazy older sister...

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"The art student should be doggedly persistent.  If things don't go well in a given practice session, s/he should know that the best of artists have had many such sessions. But, the remarkable thing about going through a disheartening session is that the student is very often on the threshold of marvelous discovery."

~ Jack Hamm, 'Drawing the Head and Figure'

'edna rose' ~ watercolors, goauche, oil pastels, graphite and acrylic paint on collaged paper

after doing (more or less) precise, neat paintings for a while, it feels great to get messy again...  and i'm always impressed by how they inform each other - what i learn while doing neat influences the messy stuff, and vice versa.     

the main reason i'm working messy again is that with my dh's help, we reorganized my art room.  he took out an iron drain pipe that kept me from pushing everything against the wall.  now i have more room and easy access to what i need without getting up or turning all the way around in the chair.  this room was originally a laundry room - so imagine a space a little bigger than a full size washer and dryer side by side, and that's my art room.   i've always loved it, but it had gotten way too crowded.  it feels so much more spacious now and i wanna work in it again.

these days, any being i draw/paint that has wings or a feather/s i'm calling an 'intercessor'...  so edna rose is an intercessor,

 same ingredients as edna rose

and this is her partner.  you can tell they work together because they're both wearing green feathers.  ; )

that blue is really periwinkle, but nothing i can do in photoshop elements will make it so...

i'm working in three books (not counting my 'daily book') besides on pieces of loose paper.   it occurs to me that with blogging what we do tends to appear linear, when in fact for me nothing could be further from the truth.   i'm all over the place - working on/in whatever calls to me at the time.   

these pages are from the 'smudgy face' pocket moleskine i started in october.

i haven't stuck with just faces,

but i do always use colored pencil and graphite.

i'm okay knowing that it might take a year or two to finish a book...

watercolors, gouache and colored pencil on old paper

back to loose pieces of paper, this is too big to fit in the book box.   but, wow, that old, soft paper called to me... 

so maybe i'll do this with it...   if you click you'll see rows of bulldog clips hanging on nails; art can easily be rotated by changing what's in the clip!  i really think i'm gonna do this in my art room...   

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“Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.” 

~ Philip Guston

'charlotte' ~ watercolors and goauche on white arches drawing paper, 4" x 6"

i've been feeling mighty quiet... 

i'm still painting/drawing on arches cotton drawing paper (both white and cream) and dura-lar;  i enjoy the arches paper so much, and i'm slowly getting to know the dura-lar.  definitely best to use a kneaded eraser on it.

colored pencil and graphite on dura-lar

i like to draw/color pieces on dura-lar to lay over paintings on paper... 

watercolors, gouache and colored pencil on misc. papers

i've also been working on this canvas paper and i like it a lot!  the piece on the top right is on it.  the piece in the middle left is strathmore 500 series bristol (vellum surface) and i don't like it so much.  watercolors aren't brilliant on it, and it just feels sort of flat to me, even with colored pencils.   i still might try the plate surface, though...

and i've printed out photos of art that i love (by artists who are no longer alive - i think this is legally cool).  after my pogo printer quit working i bought a canon selphy cp900 printer; it prints truly gorgeous images but i've hardly used it.  one of the best things about it is that you can print up to eight different images on one 4" x 6" sheet of paper.  i printed two per sheet for most of these images.

so what am i doing with all of these pieces of paper?!  i'm putting them in a box that i made from a book.  this is what it looked like in the beginning. i love the modern library logo and didn't intend to cover it up,

until i saw this picture of frida.  i wanted something to keep everything in, and so far i'm tickled with this idea.   the 'box'  looks full, but if you press everything down it's only about half full.  i am already thinking about the next one, though. 

the book was published in 1944 and is what they call a 'flexi-cover'.  it's fabric over thin-ish cardboard (thin bookboard?), so it's very lightweight.  plus it's a modern library book.  i adore modern library books...

one thing that i like about painting on loose pieces of paper/dura-lar is that you can mix them up and create new combinations.  in the morning i had this dura-lar piece over another painting;  late in the day i put it over this one.    it's very smile making!  i'm still painting on both sides of the paper, just as i would in a book.

if you're wondering what happened to my 'daily book', well, it's sitting there...  still dearly loved but not being used for now. this is the first time since i started painting in 2006 that i've worked outside a book.   i'll just follow this trail and see where it leads...

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"The mouth is singularly the most important feature of the face for conveying the mood or feeling of the individual.  It is the number one sign of expression.  It is forthright and seldom subtle as the eyes may be.  The corners of the mouth alone speak worlds."

~ Jack Hamm, Drawing the Head and Figure

'pearl etta' ~ watercolors, graphite and colored pencil on arches drawing paper

i drew pearl etta while looking at this painting by irina korsakova;  within minutes she was a (mini) woman instead of a child, though,  and little boots seemed like they'd just look so good!  she's up there because her dress is pink, which fits in with this post...  otherwise i've been drawing and painting a lot;  getting to know dura-lar and arches drawing paper. 

once in a while as i'm scrolling through my tumblr dash,  i think about why i like some paintings and not others. there seem to be many factors,  but one thing that will almost certainly make me adore a painting is the presence of pink.  so, for a little something different, here are some of my recent pink favorites...

August Macke ~ Rosa Azalee

 Henri Lebasque ~ Seated Nude Woman 

 Edgar Degas - Avant l’entrée en scène

Henri Matisse ~ Geraniums

Sano di Pietro ~ L’Ange de l’Annonciation 

(did they really have neon pink paint in the 15th century?)

Marjaana Savander ~ Karhunruusu oljy kankalle

 Kees Van Dongen ~ The Pink Hat

 Suzanne Valadon ~ Still Life with Flowers and Fruit 

 Edouard Vuillard ~  Nu couché

 Paul Klee ~ The Garden in Hot Weather 

 Gabriëlle Münter ~ Blumenstilleben

 Louis Michel Eilshemius ~ Snake Dancer

it wasn't easy to pick just twelve...

: )

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“The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”

~ Glenn Gould

watercolors, gouache, colored pencils and graphite on arches drawing paper

lately i've been feeling like this...

watercolors, colored pencils, gouache, acrylic paint and graphite on arches drawing paper, 4" x 6"

but also like this

 watercolors, colored pencil, gouache and graphite on arches drawing paper, 4" x 6"

and definitely this...

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'to paint is to love again' ~ henry miller

a happy, happy me yesterday...  new paint, beautiful paper, a gigantic collection of colored pencils - everything! pales in comparison to the joy of this for me... 

and to draw in the sun is the best!   i took this pic to show you my setup...    that's my homemade colored pencil box that i've had for almost 2 years now.  it's been a great way to carry pencils around,  first and foremost because it keeps them off the ground.  i try to keep them in the box at all times because once they hit the ground they begin burrowing towards the center of the earth.  and because they completely fill up the box, they don't bang around in it;   i haven't found lead breakage to be more of a problem than with the ones i have at home.  originally i wondered if it was too extravagant to have a box of colored pencils for walking that duplicated the ones at home.  the definitive answer to that is 'no!'

all of that stuff (book, pencils, and sharpener) stays in my walking bag so i never have to wonder if i've got everything when i head out...

prismacolor pencils in sennelier journal, 4" x 6"

i drew the little girl (inspired by a kiki smith drawing) and rosebud on another day; yesterday i drew the face and flowers on the right...

watercolors, colored pencil, graphite, and soft pastels on arches drawing paper, 9" x 12"

this is how the sheet of arches drawing paper in the last post ended up.   all of that color makes me smile...  : )

it's almost over, but happy love day...  and may every day be a love day...

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“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could."

~ Georgia O'keefe

tombow marker, watercolors and colored pencil in stilllman and birn 'gamma', 4 x 6

thank you for the smile making words you left on the last post...  : )

i drew the face above at the same time i drew 'the unbearable lightness...' face, but i didn't paint it for a few days (heh, i was distracted by dura-lar and arches drawing paper).  i used a black tombow dual brush pen to draw the outline, and then used watercolors and water to spread the ink around.  even though the ink had been on the page for a few days, it was still completely soluble and moved around as if i'd just put it there.   i really, really like this pen and thank tammie for turning me onto it.  the tombow number for this color is N15.

sumi ink and watercolors in my 'daily book'

back to sumi ink...   i like to use ink to work looser if i start feeling too detail oriented, although, lol, i think i'm pretty hopelessly detail oriented.   the other thing that's freeing is to paint faces without drawing in the outline of the head - let the shading of the face determine the outside edges...

colored pencils on dura-lar

a darkish picture of a piece on dura-lar.  i can say unequivocally that it's the most perfect surface for colored pencils i've ever used, but, i haven't used acetate so it may be better or just as wonderful.   it's super smooth and you can keep adding layers of color...

watercolors and watercolor pencils in my daily book

thinking about seed pods... and faces...

watercolors in my daily book

i drew these pods from online images...  thinking about what i've been learning in the botanical illustration book helps me at times even when drawing from pictures, although i have a strong urge to just make things look the way i think they should look!

watercolors, colored pencils, and soft pastels on arches drawing paper, 9" x 12"

this arches drawing paper has my heart!  oh my!    this is the third sheet i've worked on - i was working on the figure in the lower left when i took this pic.   i've decided to fill the pages up without thinking about 'composition'.  i just want to draw and paint on this paper - cover the surface...

the color swatches on the left were done with albrecht durer watercolor pencils, and they're nice on this paper, but regular watercolors are even more gorgeous.  the rose hips were painted with sennelier watercolors and in person they're vibrant.  also i love the way watercolors spread out and leave those beautiful watery edges...

and soft pastels, sooo beautiful on this paper.  i was practicing drawing the head at different angles.

if you have a suggestion for a particular brand of pastel pencils i'd love to hear it...  

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“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” 

~ Robert Henri