I’m almost finished with the painting! All I have to do now is the horse today or tomorrow!
The plant died weeks ago. They don’t live long in my apartment. Lucky I did that color rough when I saw it wouldn’t last because I needed it yesterday to mix the colors and arrange them.
I hope this picture gives you an idea how I’m trying to arrange a composition, which isn’t my strongest point in art. I’ll have to change this around to decide. The model horse is out of its element with the giant crabs. I was thinking of not using it, but didn’t decide yet. Maybe it should be there to represent a person who doesn’t fit in with society. If you have any suggestions I’d like to hear. I could replace it with a beer but I don’t drink beer.
The blue check paper is from another still life from years ago and I saved the paper. I think blue checks would look better with the crabs than red checks.
I hung some crab claws on the plant for fun. In my mind they would make good Christmas tree ornaments but not in reality. This is why I had to sketch the crabs with pastel first and trace them to arrange them. They’d start to go bad before I had an arrangement worked out, much less paint them. Are the ornament claws in the flower good or not? So many decisions! But I want it to work out so I need to plan it.
The plant was full of flowers last week. All I need is a few to go by and I can fake them. They are bright pink and purple. Since I knocked off the dead flowers maybe it will bloom again.
I’d like to draw in plein air but the weather has been so hot and humid if I don’t get moving at the crack of dawn it’s too late. Then yesterday we had a big storm (Elsa) and I heard there was a tornado in Sandbridge. I need to turn on the news and see for sure but I think the Sandbridge Rd. was flooded today. Tomorrow looks like the best day to get out early and sketch.
I think I can keep this plant alive on my balcony. It doesn’t get full sunlight since it’s facing North. I’ll try to paint the begonia next. We could have another 8 weeks of heat and humidity with some nice days once in a while. This weather is not good for your plein air artist. Got to go to plan B. for begonia.
I tried to paint like Matisse again by taping my brushes onto yardsticks and standing way back from the paper to paint. It’s fun! I had some problems with this painting, though. Not the yardsticks, the pink.
It’s impossible to mix this color. I tried every combination of the colors I had and put the painting aside because it was dull. That’s the one drawback about oil paint. When you mix colors you lose chroma (brightness). Eventually I went to the art supply store and bought a tube of “amethyst” by Michael Harding for $24. An expensive tube of paint, but I’ll need it in the spring when I try to paint some redbud trees.
You can avoid losing as much chroma as you might if you only mix your colors on the palette with a palette knife instead of mixing colors on the canvas with a brush. You also need a brush for each color. And you can avoid losing as much chroma if you build up layers of transparent glazes and let the viewer’s eye do the mixing. But the modern art way of avoiding loss of chroma is to not mix the colors at all. Just use the paint straight out of the tube!
When I put the painting on hold for a few days and went back to it, the petals and leaves were different so I had to kind of just wing it on top of my underpainting. This close up shows some fun leaf squiggles, smears and lines and blobs.
For the art viewer who likes to look at brush strokes, you might be able to see my layers, first the thin layer of underpainting and on top of that the thicker paint of the final layer.
I realized how I’m making the veins in the paint. It’s something I do without thinking, and big round brushes are ideal for this. You load up the brush with paint then go at it from the side of the brush, rolling the brush as you draw it across the paper or canvas. I hope you know what I mean. I should get someone to video tape me doing the brush roll thing, maybe you already do that if you paint. When I realized I was rolling the yardstick I thought I’m getting the hang of this.
This is the unfinished painting on the easel with the flower. I went larger than life. Larger is easier especially when you have your brushes taped to yardsticks.
Drawing flowers is fun and easy. I’d have done two except it was too hot. Maybe I can get out earlier tomorrow and do another sketch or try to do a watercolor study.
This is a tall bushy plant and the flowers don’t last long before they start to wilt. It has some unopened buds. I saw a butterfly go to this flower when I was drawing it but he moved on before I could sketch him. Maybe next time.
Loving a rhododendron. This week it’s the rhododendron. Next week it will be a red bud tree. I’m fickle like that.
It caught my eye because the flowers seemed to float over these graceful stems. The flowers were so bright with the dark green evergreens behind them. And the branches crossed to make odd shaped window frames with lines of sunlight and shadows.
The day I found it I tried to sketch the branches in my sketchbook. My sketch didn’t work but I wanted to try to draw it larger, because I find it more difficult to draw small. When I went back with this larger piece of sanded pastel paper the next day I sketched the branches with charcoal again and it looked better. I blobbed in violet to save places for my flowers and picked some colors for my background.
I simplified the background a lot. There’s more of these bushes, more trees of different kinds, more plants on the ground, a path, etc. All I wanted to see was the dark green behind my flowers and dried leaves on the ground with shadows, and a line of lighter green grass behind my rhododendron. Even though I simplified the background, it was still time consuming because I like to build up layers of pastel until the paper won’t hold any more color. I do an underdrawing and blend it down into the paper. Then I can put heavy coats of pastel on top of that. It takes a lot of time but a pastel can have a solid look if you fill in the tooth of the paper.
I was in the garden working on this 4 times for and hour or 2 each time, but then I worked on it for hours at home on 3 or 4 different days. So, over 20 hours in it, I guess.My hand was getting tired by the end.
The reason I’m excited about this drawing is because I didn’t know if it was working till the end when I drew the branches. To me, it looks feminine and strong. ( and I didn’t have to draw a vagina! ) hahahah ( sorry for mocking feminist art )
I hope you get the feeling of fresh spring air blowing through the branches and moving the flowers.
The Plein Air Experience 