Watercolor on Gessoed Paper

I was lucky enough to get to take a watercolor workshop at Pratt this past weekend with my younger son.  I wasn't sure which way he would go when I suggested that I sign him up with me, but he didn't hesitate to say yes, which I thought was awesome.  He was the only male and the only youth/young adult, and the instructor said she thought he was brave (?!) to do it.  Regardless, he liked the class a lot and I thought I was the luckiest mom on earth.

The class was all about painting with watercolors on gessoed paper.  You can get some pretty intense colors out of your watercolors this way, AND you have more of a chance for do-overs since you can wipe your paint back off.  To varying degrees.

This is my first painting, which makes me nauseous. But it was a learning experience -

The smaller I make the image, the better, as far as I'm concerned (it's really ~7x11").  The photo makes more contrast in the background than there really is.  And the pink?  Not my marks - the instructor added them.  I've not had that happen before!  Ever.  Anyway, this wretched painting gave an idea for how to tackle the beautiful moonflower in a different way next time, so all is well.  I think it would have been a better one to do on regular watercolor paper.

Version #1 - The instructor pointed out that I was certainly painting like an oil painter.  But I was enjoying the brush strokes.  I tried to work "juicier" in the middle and bottom but this amazing Quinacridone Gold bunched up and looked like strong brush strokes on its own anyway.  I'm learning.  I hate the lighter colors added onto the black at the base.  That was a suggestion, and I should cover it over...  It looks like reflections/ripples in  this photo.

Version #2 - Tried to stay looser and juicier.  I also tried to make the silhouettes look less like buildings and more like the rocks that they are.

I was working from a copy of the photo below. Our instructor encouraged us to feel free to "adjust" (my word) our subject and not worry about it being exactly true to life, which is a very freeing idea for me to always keep in mind.  When I looked back at the original photo again, it just makes me want to experiment more with the colors and the glowing light in this photo - 

Maybe I shouldn't have put the photo on here, because it is so superiorly gorgeous!!  If anyone wonders why we keep going back and going back to Utah's redrock country, this is a great example of why.  This photo was taken at the Golden Stairs camping area in the Maze District of Canyonlands.

Glow-in-the-Dark Reflective House Numbers Project

Here is a funny project that I did at the end of the summer, only to somehow loose all of the photos that I took during the process. I've recreated my project a bit here and now for your amusement. You know it has to be good if it involves glow-in-the-dark paint and a material normally used by street painting crews, no?

It really started with the need to redo our house numbers on our paper/mailbox post. I have had this bag of reflective glass "beads" for many, many years just waiting for the right use to come along. These "beads" are what are sprinkled on top of wet crosswalk and fog stripe paint, for example, to make them really show up in headlights. A short while back I ran across the glow-in-the-dark paint at Home Depot, and since I have always LOVED glow-in-the-dark stuff, that had to come home with me. Those materials mashed up in my brain, and I knew what I needed to do for our numbers.

I cut our house numbers out of a scrap of fiberboard that is finished (smooth) on both sides. This is where I am missing all of my pictures, unfortunately, except for the lone one above. For the most part I used the scroll saw to cut out the numbers, filing and sanding the edges to finish them. I sprayed them with primer, and then gave them a few coats of the glow paint. After applying a final coat of the paint, I dunked the numbers into a little tray of the "beads" to coat them well. This picture shows you the size of the "beads" -

Here it is, the finished project -

I actually considered the reflective bead part of the project a bust, because when I drive up and turn into our driveway, my headlights don't reflect off the numbers like I had hoped they would. No big deal; at least we have new, legible numbers out there.

Last night I finally dragged a shop light out there to try charging up the paint to get a glowing-in-the-dark picture. I'm pretty sure that the people who drove by thought I was a crazy woman. But it worked, a bit -

The camera was influenced by the streetlight off in the distance so the shutter didn't stay open as long as I would have liked. The best thing was to see that when cars drove by, their headlights did reflect off the numbers after all. You just have to be at the right spot to catch it. Ha! See for yourself -

That was lit up by a passing car, not me!

I guess at some point I need to make a matching set for the other side....

"Collection #1 - Salmon" -- the beginning of a new string of ideas

Oh boy, my posts on here have been few and far between this summer. I will start my catching up with this particularly exciting project that was accepted into the Kenmore Art Show last month. It was actually purchased! It was all very exciting.

So here's the skinny. First of all, in June I attended another fabulous Miniature Encaustic workshop taught by Larry Calkins at Northwest Encaustic Studio. Larry is so inspiring and full of tons of knowledge that he happily shares. Thanks Larry!! I had a new idea I wanted to work on and I was ready to roll.

I bought some chunks of sheet metal for a song and a dance at a place in Ballard called OnlineMetals.com. Very nice people there. My dad graciously cut my chunks up into smaller pieces for me on a large piece of metal-cutting equipment that he has access to. The metal plates that I used for this project are about 4" by 3" and probably about 1/16" thick.

About my new idea... After doing this miniature encaustic piece a little while ago -

- I wanted to do more salmon. Why not a collection of all the salmon native to the Pacific Northwest, in their beautiful spawning colors of course. I loved fixing this first salmon painting into its little protective box, and I had just the idea for a box to hold a collection of salmon paintings...

I LOVE rock collection-type specimen boxes. The kind of organization where each item has it's own spot. In an organized grid. Even the cloud chart on my dad's workshop wall. The cubbies at preschool. That was how I would organize my salmon.

I traced the outlines of the salmon onto pieces of tissue paper that I had placed on top of a thin layer of rolled-out printer's ink. I used watered-down white glue to attach the tissue paper pieces to the metal plates. Ink-side down. Then once the glue dried, I used watercolors to paint in the backgrounds, trying to make each one a little different but using the same basic colors. Here's a shot that includes one of the fish outlines without any watercolor added yet -

I kept working the backgrounds...

I eventually used watercolor to add color to the fish bodies. In this photo I've already applied a coating of clear encaustic medium to the top three pieces -

It really tones down the color of the watercolors! The wax is a bit cloudy at first but eventually clears up. But the fish images still are a bit stifled, even when the wax clears. But that is OK, because I was only half done. Or less then half-done actually, time-wise.

The next step was to add fine detail to the salmon by adding colored wax with a wood-burning tool. To do this I dipped the end of the hot tool onto a block of pigmented encaustic wax and drew and dotted the color onto my fish. I mostly accentuated the dark details in this way, but I also added color and white to the fish, too. I didn't do anymore work on any of the backgrounds after coating the watercolor with the clear wax. This photo is a great before and after example. The two fish in the middle have been "detailed", while the other four have not -

Yep, that was just the ticket to bring the fish out. What a difference!

Here is a spur of the moment picture of my wood-burning tool and the handful of different tips that it came with. And the regulator that I use to dial down the temperature. (If you use the tool plugged straight into the wall it is too hot.) -

A few close-up shots of some of the fish when they were all done and glued into the box, with "scientific" labels -

Too bad I didn't take any pictures of the creation of the box. I treated the surface in a way that Larry C. has demonstrated in a couple of his classes - you brush wood glue onto the surface and then "cook" it with a propane torch. You keep adding layers of glue and torching them until you are happy. It's a bit like roasting a marshmallow. You decide how dark you want it. I've added paint to the finished surface before, too, to make it darker.

One last shot of the finished piece -

I seem to have had a little problem with a fish-eye effect in some of the pictures. Oops.

I entered this piece in the Kenmore Art Show last month. I helped out with some of the set up of the show, and I happened to be there on the morning that the jurying took place. I saw first hand how many entries had to be juried out due the large number of beautiful submissions. I truly felt honored to be in the show. And then I was so excited to hear at the end of the week that my piece had been purchased!

I feel like this is just the beginning of a "Collections" series. I have several more collections of miniature paintings that I would like to create and put together. Now that I've said that outloud, I'll have even more motivation!

Encaustic Painting Workshop continued - Day 2 = Sa-weet success!

The second day of this Encaustic Miniatures class rocked.  Everyone got down to business and created some amazing work.  

First, I finished my anemone - 

It is about 2.25"x2.25" on a thin piece of steel.

Next was a salmon, specifically a coho in its spawning colors - 

The painting is on a thin piece of steel, too, and it's about 3.5"x3".  The background/water is actually the watercolor underpainting on the surface of the steel and then coated with clear wax.  I didn't want to mess with it.  The salmon was over-painted on the clear wax coat by applying pigmented wax with a wood-burning tool.  This piece is in a box that is a signature thing for our instructor Larry Calkins.  He has a bunch of little, whimsical miniature encaustics that are glued into shallow boxes with lids.  He finishes the surfaces of his boxes by slathering them with a thick coat of Tite-bond wood glue and burning it with a torch!  It makes the coolest, kind of gross,  surface.  The process is like burning a marshmallow, the way the surface of the glue bubbles up and scorches.  So Larry had us all make boxes for our work, too, if we wanted.  I'd like to find some tiny hinges and attach the lid on this box to open to the side.

So,

the cool boxes got me thinking in a new direction.  Anyone who knows about my goofing around with slumping insulin bottles in the kiln is not going to be surprised that I took a couple slumped bottles along with me to the class, just in case...  And I really loved the look of the shiny, smooth bottle in this slightly wicked looking, texture-covered box.  I just happened to paint a tiny little pancreas on the front of the insulin bottle in this one -  

This little beauty is about 3.5"x3.75".

I was thinking about painting an ominous skull on the back side of that bottle to loom through behind the pancreas, but I decided it probably wouldn't be visible/obvious enough.  So I decided to do the skull on my second slumped bottle instead. 

For the skull bottle I was going to prepare another box with the funky burned-glue texture, but then I watched another woman in the class darkening her box by scorching it a bit with the torch before doing the glue slathering and burning.  I just decided to take that a little farther and thoroughly burned my third box.  Yep, art aided by fire.  I worked outside, don't worry!  Then I coated the burned box with clear beeswax and melted it in with a heat gun.  I was SO excited, and here it is - 

This guy is about 3.25"x4.25"

And the most exciting part is that instructor and the studio manager want these two bottle pieces in an upcoming show!!  WAHOO!

And finally, a piece to finish at home, since the class ended before I could finish it - 

I've always loved this blue sky with a fluffy cloud image.  

I saw a show once where a whole wall was covered with dozens of paintings that the artist did recording the sky conditions once a day for many days.  I think it was his warm-up exercise before painting every day.  They were probably all less that 12" square.  It was the coolest thing.  

Miniature Encaustic Painting Workshop - day 1

This weekend I completely recharged my painting batteries by attending a class at Northwest Encaustic taught by Larry Calkin.  He is an amazing encaustic painter and all-around artistic explorer who shows locally and in New York.  And he's a wonderful person who believes in freely sharing all of his knowledge and the how-to of all of his creative discoveries, which I hugely admire and strive to do also.  His website is www.calkinsart.com, in case you are curious...

This class was specifically "Miniature" encaustic painting, so we were learning how to use woodburning tools to apply pigmented beeswax onto small pieces of plexiglass or sand-blasted steel.  And glass, as it turns out - hee hee hee - but that will be in my next post.

So for lack of a better idea, for my first experiment with this technique I decided to work on the image stuck in my head of the huge, red crane that looms up through the trees at the massive construction site a couple of blocks from our house.  This site is a major component of the expansion of our regional sewer conveyance system.  The bright red crane is a surreal image to me and crazy looking both night and day, since work is happening 24/7 there.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, in my mind's eye the crane wasn't quite the right dimensions, so it looks like a cross in my pictures, which is interesting but not what I was going for.

 

Here are my crane pieces at the very beginning.  I had drawn the trees on with a sharpie pen and painted the crane with watercolor.  Plexiglass on right, steel on left.  Then I coated both with a thin layer of clear beeswax.  These are about 2.5"x3.5" -

Then I could add the encaustic paint to the trees with the woodburning tool.  I also painted the back side of the plexi with green acrylic paint which gives it a really cool depth and glow if you see it in person - 

I was going to do something with all of the negative spaces around the trees and crane, but I was ready to leave them and move on.  I will pursue this image again, with a crane of proper dimensions and more realistic trees, because I'm not done with that idea yet. 

This shot was just to show the depth -

I whipped through my sketchbook and found the watercolor of an anemone that I did back in '01 when I was determined to do something in my sketchbood every day.  That lasted 3 days.  But this was handy.  So here is the beginning of a little anemone painting - 

It is about 2.25"x2.25", on steel.  I painted red watercolor on the steel before putting a clear coat of wax on top and then adding the flower using the woodburning tool.  You'll see the finished piece in my next post.

Here was my work area during class - 

 There are little blocks of the pigmented beeswax, and the woodburning tool with a spade-shaped tip.  You can see the bottom of a soldering station on the upper right, which you have to run the woodburning tool through in order to be able to regulate (lower) the temperature of the tool.

 This shot shows what the set-up looks like when you do larger encaustic work using brushes to apply the wax that stays melted on a hot plate/griddle -  

When you apply the wax that way you have to fuse it with a heat gun or torch.  With the woodburning tool, you are fusing the new wax in as you apply it. 

Encaustic Painting Workshop

I really like to make my own stuff.  I think it's in my genes.  

Back in college I made seriously heavy-duty canvases to paint on with scrap lumber and quarter-round from my dad's basement shop (thanks, Dad!).  When I learned that I could make my own egg tempera paint by mixing diluted egg yolk and powdered pigments I was in heaven. Encaustic painting sounded like another DIY painting media that I really wanted to try, but I wasn't getting to it on my own.  Encaustic painting is basically mixing powdered pigment into melted beeswax and applying that to a rigid surface.  It is an ancient painting technique, actually.  

Back in September I finally had a chance to try encaustic painting.  I was so excited to see the class offered at Pratt Art Center.  Taking that class was an amazing experience.  And doing art full-time four days in a row was awesome!  The following are pictures of what I did.  I'm happy to finally get the pictures taken and on here.

About encaustic painting - The wax is beeswax and damar varnish crystals.  The damar raises the melting point of the wax and makes it harder.  For the most part I applied the melted wax with brushes.  The great set-up at our class for keeping the wax melted but not smoking hot was a sheet of 1/4"+ steel with long bolts at each corner placed over tw0-burner hot plates.  Different colors of wax were in different tins on the metal plate, and adjusting the height of that steel plate would fine-tune the temperature of the wax.  At home I've put my wax in tuna cans in an electric frying pan.  After painting a layer of wax on your surface you have to "fuse" the wax by heating it up with a torch or a heat gun.  I love an excuse to use a torch.  We worked on tables with drywall placed on top - great fire-resistant surface.  The other way to apply color is to use wood-burning tools, but you need a regulator to adjust the temperature down.  I am now the proud owner of a Weller soldering station so I can do just that.  Wahoo - I love tools!

Black sand beach, encaustic/pebbles, 1.5x4"

This is a little tiny piece.  Unfortunately the color on the top is washed out, but it looks like foam at the water's edge or cloudy sky.  This is a handful of pebbles from my favorite beach in the world, which is north of Kalaloch on the Washington coast (see my first blog post for a painting of the beach).

encaustic with knitted copper wire, 4x5"

I just had to try putting copper knitting into wax.  (see my fused glass/knitted wire pieces in an earlier post...)  There is a layer of white wax underneath and enough layers of un-pigmented beeswax on top to bury the wire.

encaustic, 5.5x4"

This was actually my first go at encaustic.  I was experimenting with an image transfer technique, so there is actually tissue paper under the wax - you can see air bubbles trapped under the tissue paper...

Peace (at what cost?), 4x5.5"

This is an image idea that has been stuck in my head for a while...

Skull for Ben, encaustic, 4x5.5"

This image is something that Ben would draw, so I did it for him.  The golden color is shellac.  You can paint shellac on the wax, let it dry and then hit it with the torch flame.  It shrinks up in a cool way...

Salmon, encaustic, 6x12"

This is still not done.  This was my first serious attempt at painting an image in encaustic, and I have worked it and worked it.  I want to lighten up the background.  Right now it has a scraped texture that is driving me nuts. 

Jemima (RIP) , encaustic, 3.5x5"

This was my most satisfying painting.  I became totally mesmerized/entranced/in my zone when doing this piece.  That is the best feeling, and one that I've missed.  I used the woodburning tool for this piece.  You dip the hot tip into blocks of pigmented wax (it's room-temperature, not melted yet) and "paint" that small amout of wax/color onto your surface.

Bones, encaustic/collage, 5x6.75"

This is my favorite piece.  There are a couple of layers of color underneath the black.  I placed the bones on top and covered them with clear wax.  I had to switch to a heat gun to fuse the wax on the bones rather than use a torch because the bones started to burn from the torch flame.  The piece of copper is tacked on top.

 I collect bones on our camping trips down in the Canyonlands/Colorado Plateau area, and I love these tiny rodent bones that I found at the base of a rock wall that was a nesting area for something.  Luckily Ben came upon my stash in an Altoids tin in the glove box of the truck right before my class.  

A New Pancreas for Nick, encaustic/collage, 8.5x11"

Since Nick was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes almost 2 years ago, I have wanted to do some sort of art involving a pancreas.  Especially since the pancreas went from something we had no reason to think about at all to something that dominated our lives.  Here's my first pancreatic art.  I  think it was strangely theraputic for me to become so familiar with what a pancreas looks like.  The painted pancreas in this piece has a 3-D texture that was fun to build up.  There is a copper "bad" pancreas at the bottom left and a shiny new copper leaf one on the bottom right.  

Type-1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease that causes the body to kill the beta-cells of the islets of Langerhans in its pancreas.  These beta cells normally produce insulin, and insulin allows sugars to enter cells and be used as energy.  Type 1 diabetics are "insulin dependant", meaning they have to give themselves insulin shots or be on an insulin pump.  

New Teacher, encaustic/collage, 8.5"x7

This was an experiment using a photo transfer technique.  I made a xerox copy of an old picture that is my grandpa's first class after he became a teacher.  I transfered that image onto tissue paper using acetone.  I fused that tissue paper onto a board with wax under and over it, rubbed india ink on the surface and put some copper foil on the top.