Posts tagged with "Painting"
Thursday, 30. April 2009, 20:26:16
Painting, Journal
I spent the bulk of my time off today running errands and then cleaning my studio up and trying to figure out how to refurbish it. The place is in shambles; there's a broken light bulb on the floor, I had to scrub down two pieces of furniture that got covered in ant raid after I idiotically used a washcloth with sugar or something in it to clean them off a few weeks back, bringing, naturally, ants like crazy; half of the reason I moved my PC upstairs was because of the chemical covering everything, half of it was because I seriously needed to get the PC away from ants, evidently after the sugar on the desk, who were at one point crawling in and out of the keyboard...gaaahhhhh. Cobwebs, plus a bunch of mail and other stuff lying about; I figure I'm going to have to move everything out of there just to scrub down the place. That includes the bench press and weight tree, which I'm not looking forward to moving again, seeing as it's about 500-1000 lbs total in iron and I have a bad back.
Then again, I might just take a flamethrower to it all. But I did get the chemical covered desk and table scrubbed down, so they're drying off right now.
I had to throw out a few of my palettes, and I'm looking to get rid of my old paints, but so far nobody wants them. (They're usable still-the paints, for the most part. The cheap plastic palettes seem to have a brief life before they get stained and ruined.). I did figure out how to clean out the brush cleaning jars finally, and wound up throwing out a few cleaned glass jars I use for water (always, always, clean up unless you want mold...).
But anyway. I'm trying a new approach; got the color mixing bible, a reference book, and a much smaller selection of paints (Dick Blick had two sets of five on sale through April 23rd, which I picked up; an 'artist's' and a 'mixing' selection, little difference between the two, just the primaries and black, green, and brown). Hopefully I'll learn more this way; if it turns out that it's better to use a large variety of color tubes, I can just purchase more over time. In the meantime I get to experiment with colors!
As for writing, that's ground to a standstill for now...I think I just lost my center with my writing and got too glib and carefree about it. Did get a freelance writing book, however, and hopefully I won't have to do that to make ends meet. I can think of a million things I'd rather write than newspaper or magazine articles.
Thursday, 30. April 2009, 20:05:46
Painting, Journal
I spent the bulk of my time off today running errands and then cleaning my studio up and trying to figure out how to refurbish it. The place is in shambles; there's a broken light bulb on the floor, I had to scrub down two pieces of furniture that got covered in ant raid after I idiotically used a washcloth with sugar or something in it to clean them off a few weeks back, bringing, naturally, ants like crazy; half of the reason I moved my PC upstairs was because of the chemical covering everything, half of it was because I seriously needed to get the PC away from ants, evidently after the sugar on the desk, who were at one point crawling in and out of the keyboard...gaaahhhhh. Cobwebs, plus a bunch of mail and other stuff lying about; I figure I'm going to have to move everything out of there just to scrub down the place. That includes the bench press and weight tree, which I'm not looking forward to moving again, seeing as it's about 500-1000 lbs total in iron and I have a bad back.
Then again, I might just take a flamethrower to it all. But I did get the chemical covered desk and table scrubbed down, so they're drying off right now.
I had to throw out a few of my palettes, and I'm looking to get rid of my old paints, but so far nobody wants them. (They're usable still-the paints, for the most part. The cheap plastic palettes seem to have a brief life before they get stained and ruined.). I did figure out how to clean out the brush cleaning jars finally, and wound up throwing out a few cleaned glass jars I use for water (always, always, clean up unless you want mold...).
But anyway. I'm trying a new approach; got the color mixing bible, a reference book, and a much smaller selection of paints (Dick Blick had two sets of five on sale through April 23rd, which I picked up; an 'artist's' and a 'mixing' selection, little difference between the two, just the primaries and black, green, and brown). Hopefully I'll learn more this way; if it turns out that it's better to use a large variety of color tubes, I can just purchase more over time. In the meantime I get to experiment with colors!
As for writing, that's ground to a standstill for now...I think I just lost my center with my writing and got too glib and carefree about it. Did get a freelance writing book, however, and hopefully I won't have to do that to make ends meet. I can think of a million things I'd rather write than newspaper or magazine articles.
Friday, 2. January 2009, 00:53:59
Instruction, Drawing, Art, Painting
I'm going to go through my books and update this post accordingly-as they become useful. If I work my way through a book with little improvement, i'll say so. If I find one handy, I'll also say so. What i'm trying to do is save a beginner, someone with as much experience as I had to start with, time and money; there's art books that are useful, and there's some that really aren't or assume a lot of experience...
I will say this much. Buying and reading books is useless if you're too lazy to do the exercises and practice in addition to them. However, here goes...
The Complete Introduction to Drawing - Barrington Barber : Just got this one; i'm on page thirty five or so, been going through it, and i've found it helpful, it's already gotten me drawing from life (Today I drew a complicated camera and several views of a wine glass, in addition to scribbles). Judging from the look of the table of contents, it covers everything in depth...(oddly enough, I haven't found the other two books I have by him all that useful)
Drawing Landscapes and Seascapes - Jack Hamm : An excellent book, and useful. I will probably return to it as a reference when I need it.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Only worked through part of it; however, the insight in it about seeing properly is invaluable to the learning process.
To be edited later...
Monday, 29. December 2008, 01:42:01
Painting, Watercolor, Art, Drawing
So that I can play around with watercolor and new technique in maybe getting a landscape done or something. If you're not familiar with watercoloring, you can buy a canvas (I got one for Christmas) or soak and stretch paper. I usually do the latter; it's cheaper, and I have no idea how actually using a canvas would work out. It's been months since i've done any painting, probably not since before I was with my previous employer. Drawing, yeah, but painting's a lot more daunting at this point...i'm thinking of making a goal of painting on days off from work, and drawing and writing and reading daily for the new year. A goal, not a resolution; the UN makes resolutions, and look at what happens to them?
Today I went to the fine arts museum, and just by dumb luck, they had a graphite exhibit. They'd taken away some of the avante-garde type stuff (I don't know what it was, one was gouche on a gigantic canvas, just a bunch of crossing stripes of color at random angles laid over each other. I have no idea what, if anything, it was supposed to express. I'm with Ray Bradbury on this one; I'd sooner do sci fi and fantasy art.). Anyway, I forget the artist's name, but he did studies of people back in the late 1800's, and they were all gorgeous. The rest of the stuff in the VA Fine Arts Museum was mostly the same that'd been sitting there for as long as I can remember, the stuff in their private collections. I mostly skipped over it. But it's not the first time they've had a nice section devoted to one of my mediums; a year or so ago they had some of the oldest (and finest looking) watercolor landscapes i'd ever seen in my life, some done entirely in one color.
Edit: Now i'm waiting on all the paint to dry. Did a grey tree, blue leaves, purple and magenta background. I've discovered the following: I'm clumsy with a brush, I need a tub for soaking paper in, not a table top and a spray bottle, (the paper buckled even though I wetted it down, causing for some annoying friggin effects), and I seriously need practice. The graphite tree I used as a reference was much, much better...I'm guessing it's not a straight jump from drawing to watercolor, it's practice with both daily (and writing! eep!).
What pisses me off is the other two papers I stretched will probably buckle as well...
Sunday, 28. December 2008, 03:54:59
Art, Watercolor, Painting
Some gorgeous paintings with a sort of transcendental feeling to them. Two galleries:
http://www.awakeningarts.com/gallery/index.phphttp://www.crowhillgallery.com/Prints.htmEnjoy. It's an area i'd like to play around with in with my watercolors some day. But for now, it's all graphite...
Wednesday, 19. November 2008, 04:19:14
Writing, Painting, Art, Drawing
Something I learned last night was that the whole reason I haven't been working as diligently at my painting and drawing is that copying is BS in comparison, and working from imagination is an incredible high. Even more so when done with a level of success.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do much, much, much, copying to learn anything.
It's a lesson that an illustrator who gave me four three-hour lessons a year or two back (before I bummed off into not working at all) tried to impress upon me, with little success (since then, the only education I've gotten is a few weeks at a community college. It was horrible. I failed out for missing one day.). I wanted to do photo real work. I'm guessing I'll get there eventually; I know it's possible, at least from photographs (maybe from life if I can ever afford a pair of glasses). Oh well. I guess I'll have to mix work and play.
It's the same way with my writing. Fiction, I can churn out about ten pages doublespaced in a matter of hours, on a daily basis (after much, much practice), yet what I really want to do beyond that is work well with watercolor and graphite media. To get the imagery out of my head without having to use words.
This is easier said than done...
WIDGETIZE