My Learning Process Part II

As I was explaining in a previous blog, when I decided to engage in art full-time after 25 years of doing it "on the side," I confronted many challenges. Some were about my own insecurities, and other were more technical. As I have not yet resolved my own fears about "coming out" with my art, I will focus on the technical challenges in the hope that my experience may be useful to a reader.

One of the first strategies I used was to search for a "friendly medium." I was aware of my difficulties with charcoal, pastels, conte crayons, and anything else involving rubbing or erasing. I sought a medium with whom I was more familiar in an effort to even the playing field, as drawing the figure or a landscape with a time limit was overwhelming enough. I gravitated towards water media because it enabled me to cover large surfaces quickly. I knew how to mix paint and water to achieve the desired values. This is not to say I discarded dry media. I used charcoal for 1 minute gestures.

I also limited myself to value studies for a while, in watercolor and acrylic. In an effort to keep things simple, I did not use any color, just black and white paint, or ink and water. As I felt I was starting to achieve enough contrast and good midtones, I gradually I introduced ochre, red, and eventually blue. I still paint the figure with a primary palette. It is true you end up having to mix all the colors that you want, but it is a good way to quickly reach the values you want without a lot of fuss, and there can be quite a range of expression with just those three colors and white.

Larger paper sizes gave me enough room to work on the nuances in value of the bone and muscle structures I was translating onto two dimensions. This is specially true of the value studies, which required more space. Smaller sizes limited the amount of detail I could render, and thus made it easier to work in color. For example, I use smaller canvases when painting landscapes in oil and acrylic. I have come to believe that the more difficult or the less time you have to complete a piece, the smaller your paper or canvas has to be.

Rites of Spring

We have continued going out to paint on Mondays. This is despite the poison oak, class-cutting teenagers, and exceedingly friendly dogs (one, named Coltrane, gave me a bear hug). Our group now has three steady people and might continue growing. We tend to meet at trailheads or parking lots, and not stray too far into the park. We actually climb up sometimes steep hills looking for views or just some cool air. It's fun, even if we sometimes have to pass our equipment to each other while we negotiate narrow, slippery cow paths.

These have all been completed on location, with minor corrections done later in the studio. There are two oils and two watercolors. Can you tell which is which? I find that my oil painting influences my watercolor painting, and that my watercolors influence my oils. Watercolor definitely helps me do very defined, quick but finished work when I feel like it, (see the purple field of vetch behind my standing colleague). Oil is fantastic for its luminosity, and you certainly don't feel like anything is "set in stone."

With these paintings, I feel like I am taking advantage of all the green I can get before the summer heat turns everything gold. Green in our Bay Area just doesn't seem to last as long. As Emily Carr so eloquently put it, "As the woods are the same, the trees standing in their places, the rocks and the earth... they are always different too, as lights and shadows and seasons and moods pass through them."

My Website Has Been Updated

I've added paintings and watercolors I've done in the last couple of years, since I've been making the rounds trying to find a venue for a solo show and curators need to see my recent work. This oil was done last summer, but I had a hard time photographing it because of its unusual size (24 x 48"). It is our driveway in San Pablo, with my beloved Toyota Tacoma.

My Learning Process

These past two years I have been participating in more events with other painters and visual artists than ever. I regularly meet with other people to draw or paint. I have also observed people in a class context. At my age and later, many folks who've held a lifelong fascination with art decide to take the plunge. It is because of my interest in how different the process is for every person that I've decided to write about my own learning process.

My background in education keeps me eternally interested in how people learn. I keep several visual and written journals because I like to see if there is an evolution in my painting, because I want to keep track of ideas, and because I like to record what I think about other people's art. I see my own learning process as "strategic, " that is, as the search for approaches compatible with my values and ideas as a painter. Notice I didn't say that I see my art as strategic. It works for me to notice the approaches I use and why. Here's an example:

When I started to engage in figure drawing weekly about two years ago, I was very unsatisfied with my drawings. I had a clear idea of what they should look and I was not even getting close to what I wanted. I was so carried away with the excitement of having a live model that I would end up with distortions and missing body parts (the time limit is short). I could say that at this time, drawing the figure was exciting to the point of being overwhelming. After all, it had been exactly 25 years since I had drawn the figure with any kind of limit. Those who study standardized test performance will tell you that time limits will bring on anxiety and a decrease in the accuracy and quality of the response.

During those first weeks, my challenges were many. I had to draw a complete gesture in one or two minutes. I was expected to draw a credible figure with muscles in 5 to 20 minutes. The drawings had to resemble the model and convey the space and weight taken by the model's body and pose. During the next few days I will write about the strategies I used to assist my learning. Again, by strategies I mean the approach used to surmount a problem, more than a specific technique or material.

20 Minute Oil Figure Studies

Let's say you are painting without first making a few thumbnails (to plan your composition) and without making a preliminary drawing in black and white (to understand the values). Let's say you gave nominal thought to your palette. You probably grabbed the colors you always use. To complicate matters, your time is very limited, about as much time as a professional model can hold the pose (20 minutes) without needing a break. If you put all of these conditions together, you've got yourself a study.

Artists engage in this practice for various reasons. Since materials have always been expensive, the most commom use has been to "try out" how various combinations of the above elements will work out together in a larger painting. A study can be used because its faster, looser style can capture the subject's character or the atmosphere of a place. You can use it to train yourself to catch the essential elements of what you're painting during the first few minutes.

This last purpose is why I put myself through the pain of sketching with oil in this brief period. It can be frustrating, because the medium was not created for this purpose. Try layering oil paint that has not dried. Try wiping off mistakes you've made in a strong color. Try finishing in 20 min. using a format larger than 11 x 14. Impossible! But so many decisions are made during the first 20 minutes of a painting, that it is worthwhile to learn to make them efficiently and successfully.

It's Been A Month

But I've been busy! Karen and I continue to go plein air painting every Tuesday morning. I am still figure drawing on Wednesday nights at the Richmond Art Center. And I have three paintings at the Prescott Joseph Center until March 31. The exhibit, titled Women Band Together, is in honor of the International Women's Day.

I've actually been busy recovering from (new official name) cubital tunnel syndrome. So I've had to take it easy with the computer. I've been transferring my inventory to GYST, and so far, so good. I like the layout and how everything is well-thought out and interconnected. I've also been measuring and re-measuring my paintings, photographing them, and choosing the ones from which we will eventually make prints to sell. You can help me with that. Just go to my web site, then e-mail me (or Sarah) and tell me which ones are your favorites.

Here's a little oil painting (12 x 16) I started while I had a horrible headache, but I finished it when I was feeling better a week later. As they say, "All's well that ends well."

GYST Software

In my never-ending quest for professional improvement, I've decided to give this "artist-run company for artists" a chance. I've bought their software for $149., a filemaker database customized to the needs of professional artists. There weren't reviews on the web to help me pick this one from among four or five other contenders, so I had to choose based on minimal descriptions of the features on each website. Some companies had great screen shots to give you a sense of the interface, others, none. GYST had the most comprehensive and informative display on its web site, and what they offer seems to be geared at my needs for the moment, which are to set up and organize my art business. So stay tuned for an account of my trials and tribulations transferring my art inventory and mailing list to the program, as these are the first two tasks I will attempt.

Immigrant Portraits

I have been painting Latino immigrants for a few months now. Sometimes they bring each other, or I hire them from the neighborhood. They pick their clothes and the pose. I pay them by the hour. At the end of the day I take a photograph print it, sign it, and give it to them. They sign a release and take a copy home. Once they leave, I might finish the background, but I don't tend to work on their image much more. Each painting takes 1-2 sittings, and a total of 5-10 hrs.

I do it in part because they are underrepresented in formal portraiture. I have always done portraits of people of color in oil. But until I saw the portraits of African Americans that Beverly McIver was showing at a show in Sacramento, I did not understand what exactly was it that I was looking for. I wanted to give the sitters exactly the same choices someone with more means might have had had they commissioned a portrait from me, but I also wanted to have more emotional involvement in those portraits. I also wanted to give them the experience of sitting for a portrait in which they would not be treated as the exotic other.

This oil is the latest of seven I have completed so far, measuring 24 x 36". The 12 x 16" charcoal drawing was done as part of a figure drawing session, and not as a study for the painting.

No Cameras Were Harmed In the Making of This Piece

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
Alain de Botton

I had spent three days last winter, making sure the same morning light passed through our deck door (the setup was on the floor), in order to paint them. This watercolor went to a group show with very strict size limits. Zillions of other pieces, not bigger than 90" in perimeter shared space with these pomegranates. However, at the show many assumed I had used a reference photo. Maybe I need to start placing a comment with the title and dimensions, "no cameras were harmed in the making of this piece."

There is a time and a place for reference pictures in everyone's oeuvre. In my case, I don't use them when the subject is accessible enough, stable enough, to withstand a couple of days of scrutiny. Too much is missed. Color in all its glory, and the "air around it," to use someone else's phrase.

On the other hand, give some of us a palette and a bit of time and the lure of all that detail and sensory overload will lead to seductive tangents. The inclusion of detail where none should have existed may become a detriment for the overall impression the painting makes. The choice is ours.

Two Looks At Inspiration

Inspiration Point is a rather beautiful (and conveniently located) part of Tilden Park. A friend from figure drawing class and I went at 9:00 AM on a blustery morning, and climbed up a steep little hill next to the main and paved path. I was going to take my oils, but it was just too cold to sit there for hours. I took watercolors instead, and a Lanaquarelle pad that is 16 x 20." As it turns out, the sun played hide and seek for a while and this helped me fight the wind chill (I was wearing neophrene gloves and many layers). I don't know why I don't remember that folding chairs don't work on hills (Karen my friend was sitting comfortably on the ground). An easel is what I should have taken, as the wind kept destabilizing my pad.

The sunnier view is of Mount Diablo, and the darker one is of Tilden looking south. The straight line near the top is the actual Inspiration Point parking lot. It looks like we did a lot of walking, but we did not!

Painting Altars

I intended this painting as an homage to my uncle, who passed away recently. A middle school teacher, my dad's brother was a beloved figure of my childhood. I was the eldest grandchild, and benefitted early from our conversations. He had the ability to listen to children as if their opinion mattered, and made his contributions in ways that could be understandable to a child. All of his life he wanted to play the guitar, and took up intermittent studies whenever time allowed. I never saw him get upset at anyone, in fact, he has a very positive disposition that made others seek his company. That's how I remember him.

This is one of the windowsills in my studio, and the seven objects are placed on top of the only bookcase. The unopened bottle of rose we bought at Domaine Chandon, in Napa. I took the grapefruits and pomegranate from our fruit basket, and the candle was given to me by a colleague when I worked at Sacramento State University. The black curtains were sewn by my mom because sometimes the blue window light interferes with paintings I have started indoors. I finished it two weeks ago.

Winter Still Lives

Last year I started a tradition of painting a few still lives indoors, between December and March. Our winter is very rainy, and here on the hills between El Sobrante and El Cerrito, it gets foggy too. All of which makes working outdoors unpredictable. So I turn the focus inward and work from my imagination, from dreams, or from something I can place indoors.

I seldom have the patience to find a decent composition, a skill I need to work on. But something I've realized is that it takes me an average of two hours to paint each object in a still life. This oil is 24 x 36," a manageable size. Still lives beyond these dimentions pose other challenges and as a result take more time.

Instead of cotton duck, the support is engineered birch. I am enjoying painting on this surface, but had to switch to sable brushes so that I would not end scraping 30% of the paint surface with each stroke of the hog bristles.

The Background

Sometimes I am more interested in what's happening behind the scenes than in the foreground. I think it has to do with the need to feel some kind of release after my attention has been focused on rendering accurate depictions of a model or object. I did a series of ink drawings in our figure drawing lab (this is the best one) showing what I can see beyond the model, and they were fun.

Safer Oil Painting

Turpentine is banned from most collective painting spaces and classes, even with good ventilation. Turns out that they cause headaches, exacerbate respiratory issues in most people, and if rubbed onto your skin while cleaning brushes, you can end up with contact dermatitis. We don't even know what long-term exposure to it may cause.

Oil paints, while fume-free, should be treated as hazardous chemicals. No one wants to absorb cadmium, titanium or lead through their skin while cleaning brushes, or breathe its dust (if making your own pigments).

All of this has led me to adopt safer ways to paint with oil. I have an exhaust fan in my studio, but I seldom use anymore because I clean my brushes with linseed oil (surprisingly, it takes about the same time it takes with turps). An added advantage has been the cutdown on ferrule corrosion. I save the used linseed oil in cans and dispose of it as hazardous waste. I wear latex gloves throughout the entire process, until I wash the oil off the brushes with soap.

If I want diluted pigment, I use stand oil. In fact, I've been experimenting with a very oily and color saturated first layer. Subsequent layers are less fat and influenced by the fast-drying stand oil on that underpainting. I can usually paint over this first layer the following day. Here is a painting I did over two days in this manner. As with most of my models, this was all the time I had, about six hours.

David Rourke has excellent advice and many more ideas on safer oil painting techniques.

More Figures

These are more figure studies from last year. A group of us, six to be exact, is meeting at each other's studios while the Richmond Art Center is renovated. Our lab will start again February 6. These are watercolors, but in a much smaller format, about 16 x 20". I've reduced my palette to three colors: Burnt sienna, cerulean blue and yellow ochre. I've been making a line drawing first with walnut ink and a bamboo pen. These are 20 minute scketches.

At Last

HP "fixed" my laptop, or so they say. The truth is, I am tired of sending it out for repair (yes, I fell for their extended warranties). I keep getting it back in the same state, minus my software, which I have to re-install. The screen went black sometime in November, almost two years after I bought it. So, for more than three months I've had to do without it while HP pretends to restore its original brightness. I can see the screen now, but the light is still dim, and the brightness controls have been disabled.

Oh well, enough complaining. I just felt I had to explain why had I not posted in such a long time. I can post from anywhere really, but my laptop is the one with Photoshop. Here's a couple of life drawings I did around that same time (November 07). I have been rotating between watercolor, ink, acrylic and charcoal, and I am now using a relatively small format, although it does take me the same time to complete a drawing.

Figure Drawing Notebook

Pardon the quality of my images. To make a long story short, my laptop quit and my scanner broke down last month. I've had to edit images on a primitive image editor. We've been doing some short poses, and I've been stitching media to keep it all fresh. The color piece is acrylic, and the black and white piece was done in ink and grey watercolor. These are also smaller than what I've been doing previously, they are from a notebook I've been taking to my figure drawing sessions.

At The Richmond Art Center

I took my partner and parents to an exhibit at the Richmond Art Center, where one of my paintings was featured in the members' only show. I had made this portrait of my mother about two years ago during the winter. She had posed for about eight or nine two hour sessions. The members' show is staged in one of the center's hallways, so we saw the other exhibits first before we got to my mom's portrait. There was the Neighborhood Public Art show in collaboration with the city of Richmond, a photography retrospective celebrating the California College of Arts Centennial, a member's showcase room featuring five artists chosen from last year's members only show, and finally the member's only show. The event was very well attended and diverse, in fact, we could barely squeeze in through the crowd!

With No Preconceived Notions

I have been working with the expression of energy through line and brushstroke on canvas, board, and paper. This is the opposite of what I do with my other work, where content, color, and form take precedence over movement. When you are working towards creating the illusion of distance, texture or an environment, it is an extra challenge to convey the stored energy of the brushstroke. I picture the work of expressionists Robert Motherwell and Emily Carr when I think of the preservation of this energy, whether the work is abstract or representational. In these pieces, I abandon the narrative of representation and embark on the joy of movement for its own sake.

Painting Flowers

Here is a painting done in two afternoons. My neighbor brought these hydrangeas she had picked that same day. In Spanish, they are called hortensias. They were sitting in front of one of my studio windows. I was fascinated that they had not wilted or fallen apart the day after, so I painted them. Here I must explain that two years before I had had a conversation with a florist who told me she would "never do a wedding where hydrangeas where involved," because of their fragility. I wanted to drive over to her flower shop and tell her these hydrangeas had lasted a whole week.

I confess I am not a fan of painting flower arrangements. There is something about the subject that will make viewers smirk inside. Some people have told me I can paint flowers "so well" because I'm female. Ugh!

Should I then move on to disturbing, undecypherable subjects? "Only if you want to sell to collectors," advised a colleague, the assumption being that regular folks (those who don't care whether their art is "serious" or not) like the soothing, the familiar, the kitschy, or beauty for beauty's sake and nothing else mixed in with their art.