Showing posts with label Painting a day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Painting a day. Show all posts

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Making A Living and Fixing Mistakes


I dunno how I could lose 6 weeks to raising a puppy and taking care of family and making a living without turning out a new canvas. I have managed to paint the edges on all my canvases that were literally hanging around so that they can be hung without a frame, which is my minimalist preference, so at least I got to practice mixing. I also finally learned that I absolutely MUST wear my nifty "painting shirt" or I WILL get paint on my good shirts and possibly my jeans as well, no matter how careful I think I am! I honestly don't think it's a lack of motor skills on my part, but more the confined area in which I work. I place most of the blame on my brush caddy, which mounts precariously onto my small box easel. It wants to position my long handled brushes across the air space in front of my small canvases, because the work space is so narrow that the brush handles hit the side of a bookcase. Many of the brushes I favor for their quality and paint handling are long handled oil brushes, made for standing back from the canvas, not so much for sitting closer to a small sized study. I sometimes leave color on them when I am working different colors or textures at one time. (Note that the photo of my shirt includes three of my favorite makes and models of brushes mentioned in my previous posts on bushes below.) I didn't have so much trouble with wayward paint when I had a bigger studio, though I'm honestly quite grateful for the space I do have now.

Thus recently I have gone back to practicing my old trick of taking the stained "good" shirt and touching up the stain with even more paint (after cleaning it up as much as possible with turps and laundering it), in effect practicing my skills by painting out the marks of my carelessness. I did that years ago in my youth in college when finances dictated that I wear my clothes completely out, and then later on when I was doing my own paintings and commissioned portraits in acrylics, and didn't really think anything about it. A few months ago I came across a thread on Wet Canvas! on the actual subject of painting out accidents on one's clothing, so it seems fairly common.

My own advice if you are using oils (as I am currently), is to mix the exact color with just a tiny touch of a quick flash point thinner if necessary for discreet handling (oil of spike is good, or English turps), and to put your dabs of perfectly matched mixed paint on a paper towel or paper plate first to take out as much oil as possible. This is because the carrier oil in your pigments can spread the paint beyond where you want it through the fabric's absorption, and may leave a yellow halo around the colored area. Then do the touch up with a fine pointed brush or toothpick or q-tip, whatever gives you the most control. Keep the paint rich but the application thin, you don't want blobs. Let it dry in a safe place, then wash. If you are using acrylics, remember that they dry DARKER! So compensate by mixing a bit lighter color, and mix under good bright light if possible. This is actually an extremely good practice in training your eye to mix color accurately, so consider it time well spent in studying your craft and improving your skills. BUT, it's better to keep paint off of your person wherever possible, especially your skin, as many pigments and thinners and mediums contain toxic elements, and you do NOT want that stuff on your skin, where it can be absorbed into your system.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

"Small Pan, Big Egg" now for sale




SOLD

I really like this little 4"x6" oil on gallery profile canvas! I had a lot of fun with it, and it's a vibrant little painting. It was one of my "keepers", as I'm trying to get a small body of work together that will be available for exhibition, but the Poodle puppy in the posts below is all mouth and teeth at this age (5 months Tuesday) and he is at the vet's for eating Lord knows what along with the dirt and kitchen rug fibers already found in his leavings. We think he got some fertilizer, but will probably never know. SO I am having an emergency fund raiser for puppy vet bills, which are over $1,000 so far. Even though I am not a daily painter, and I put in hours over days and many layers on my canvases rather than popping one out in a couple of hours, I am putting them on at the standard daily painter's price of $100. to start. Now would be a good time to invest! I will be painting full time again in August and I hope part of September. This piece has the image continued around the sides, is wired and ready to hang. Click on the title above to go to the auction page. Good art, good price, good cause!