In Sickness and In Health

In Sickness and in Health

I think one of the reasons I paint and do creative things is because it is my safe place, my own world, my escape from the daily concerns of life. I feel a sense of accomplishment and freedom, provided I do not let perceived market demands influence me, and it is also therapeutic. But, what do you do when problems, be they a world-wide pandemic, or even personal issues are at the forefront of your mind. How does sickness and stress really affect the art that one does? In these stressful times, there has been many a day when I have not felt like working, not felt creative at all, and could not muster the energy to lift a pencil to paper. The lack of motivation or sense of agency in the world has been total. So what do you do?

I remember a year when I was ill with an insidious infection that would not go away. I was flat. I was interested in nothing around me. All I wanted to do was sit on the sofa and knit. Period. Eventually a combination of medications and my own immune system lifted it and I was able to create again and participate in life. I will never have the energy I had when I was a young mother chasing children around, and I have learned to (somewhat) accept that. I have slowly learned how to do what I can do, reduce my expectations and ride the waves of vacillating energy levels. I now arrange my day so that my creative hours, usually in the morning are prioritized. No other tasks or chores get done then because I know that after lunch, around 2:00 my energy and motivation will drop like a rock. So from this experience, I have observed and identified my personal patterns and developed the ability to adapt myself to them and take advantage of the good hours of the day.

This year was different. When the Coronavirus hit and the world was, and still is, in turmoil, once again I could not really work well. There was just too much running on the back burner of my consciousness to let the light, magical genie of creativity out to play. In the beginning, I made it to my studio and took up working on finely detailed floral watercolors. I would enter into the work itself and close myself off from the wider world of turmoil. So my take-away from this experience, was to use art as an escape. There is some form of art that you can practice, though it might not be what you usually do.

Now in the heat of summer, having weathered many a becalmed moment, I am again drawn to the couch to knit or sew. It seams like the heat was one more challenge too many. I had taken up working in the studio in the early morning before the temperature in my attic garret had risen to 90 degrees plus. But, honestly, it seems futile and pointless to even try. So, I am riding out the cloying molasses of summer heat, by holing up in my sewing room, which IS air-conditioned, to work on a variety of projects, some of which date to years ago. There is something soothing about excising basic skills that have a purpose of their own. I am letting go of some of my ambitions to experience being humble, to do simple tasks and to just wait it out. This is not the best solution. Discouragement can easily take over and a few days can turn into years. Don't let that happen.

I read recently that one of our giants of modern art, Chuck Close, once commented on the creative process by saying, “The the advice I like to give to young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs: the rest of us just show up and get to work.” That is something of a “tough love” stance, but it is encouraging. What it says to me personally is that I don't need to feel it to express it, or to work on it, to come up with something good. Meaning seeps out whether we want it to or not. So maybe the feeling of inspiration is not necessary. You can still get to where you want to go, but, you have to have faith in it and Chuck Close, through being the embodiment of this success, gives us that faith. He is the athletic coach who exhorts us to run one more lap around the field because he knows you can do it, even if you don't.

I once came to the realization that it is not what you paint, it is how you paint it, that is key. Can I sit in the family room (air conditioned) and doodle with the pen, add some color and call it art? Can I feel the lightness and joy in it when the world is sooooooo depressing? Or do I draw the depression? I have always been attracted to the inky blackness of etchings and rainy nights, but painting it is another issue. For now, I may not have the energy to drag my french easel out of the corner of my studio and paint rainbows, but I can lift pen to paper and reach into the stillness and make some art.

So, Chuck Close, you are my hero. I will take that extra lap around the field. I don't really want to, but I will.

Winter Gloom Mode Cont

I am still in Winter gloom mode. I suspect that as today is Groundhog Day, it will last another 6 weeks, at least. And no, I cannot see my shadow. So what's an artist to do? I have totally lost my plein aire vibe and have been migrating from window to window looking at the same trees, the same grass, and the same the same bushes totally bored. Obviously, getting out of the house should go on my to do list, but sometimes it is useful to just sit with something and let it settle in. Be with it and see what arises and whether that is deserving of expression. It's a Zen thing. This feeling of boredom may have something to teach you. You may have to dig deeper into response and memory, craft an alternate solution to the way you usually work.

Or not. You can just clean your studio instead or catch up on paperwork. Your choice.

Pricing For the Rest of Us

Pricing For the Rest of Us

Are you in that inbetween world of keeping your prices low so you can sell to your friends and neighbors

but you need them high enough so a gallery will still look at your work? The truth is that if your prices are low enough to sell to friends, a gallery won't look at your stuff. Sigh. What to do?

Solution 1: a tiered approach. Produce printed or quasi printed pieces that you can sell more cheaply and other stuff that is more costly or high end and can be placed in a gallery. You can go the giclee route or print something on a home computer or even at the drugstore. The key is appropriate disclosure. I do pen and ink subjects that I print on artist grade papers, heat set and then add a layer of watercolor. They are in between all the usual definitions of edition numbered prints and original watercolors. They are somewhat mass producible but each one is unique. Like a monoprint. 

The two paintings below have a heat-set computer printed base done on high-end papers and then worked over with watercolor. They are each a little different, but take a little less time as the design and inking process has been repeated. I sometimes add more ink work to each one.

Solution 2: "De-ascension 2nd's and pieces of lesser artistic value. They clutter up the studio. Have a once a year sale and ditch a bunch of stuff. Rational: your friends wouldn't know a good piece of art if it fell on them. That was harsh! Philosophically, Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross aside, I'm not sure I agree with that. I believe that a good piece of art has a depth of feeling that even the most wooden (or less education or discerning) of observers can sense. There is a downside. Your reputation has value and those lesser works could come back to haunt you. So If you've been hoarding a stash of paintings on velvet done in your student days and now want to quietly sell them off, the rules of Karma demand that your local gallery manager will find out.

-insert photo of favorite work of lesser genius here-

-this space intentionally left blank as I have no works of lesser genius. They are all brilliant!-

Solution 3: Don't even try to sell to friends. They often don't buy artwork anyway so don't even go there. Period. Yes, they buy expensive shoes, but just try to get them to buy a lasting piece of art (for the same price as that pair of shoes!) that will last a hundred years and not go out of fashion after one season. It's not completely their fault. There are no million dollar ad campaigns on commercial TV shilling the value of brand Vicky when it comes to wall décor. Even the large art museums are loath to spend on TV coverage. The concept of buying art is totally foreign to most consumers and social media has not come close to changing that. VanGogh and Rembrandt are not going to go viral anytime soon.

More on pricing methods another time. The price per square inch method needs a serious redux.

Happy painting!
Vicky

Rainbows in Winter

Rainbows in Winter

2020 is here and with it snow, rain, melting, more snow, and more brown on brown landscapes peering back at me from the windows of my house. I'm thinking that I now know what Monet was really up to and it wasn't exploring the effects of light. It was pure laziness. It was the inconvenience of physically dealing with the weather (umbrella? No umbrella? Cold today? Snow? Wet? Wool suit or linen?) and dragging all that that equipment from here to there. Of course, he had servants, but still, its the mentality of it. One just gets tired. Though Monet worked on location he actually did quite of bit of his painting in his studio. So, here I am painting the scenery outside my studio window and getting bored with what I'm seeing and with the results of my efforts. They are all beginning to look alike. Oh, pooh. I need to pull a page from the Monet Manuscript and change up what I'm doing. He painting the same grain stack multiple times. Here I am painting the same darn trees multiple times.

My solutions:

1. I can slavishly slant the color palette of each painting towards a particular hue. Let's say the color of the week is red. Here we go, mixing reds into either everything or only discrete sections, exploring their tertiary and complimentary colors. Do-able and fun, but a little superficial, maybe.
2. I can focus on color combinations, going in the direction of Pierre Bonnard, exploring different hue relationships, using the specific landscape in front of me as scaffolding for this type of work. This one is even more fun. If you have a background as a decorator, you're all set.
3. I could regress totally and treat each day as a stylistic journey into the past, being an uber realist one day, cubist another. A cubist tree might be kind of interesting. But, what do you do with the finished work? It's not really your style and definitely not salable. Oops!
4. I could focus, not on color, but on design. I have a long abused and unfinished copy of “The Artistic Anatomy of Trees” by Rex Vicat Cole. It's extremely dry. You'll want to add a mixer into it. It's also in black and white, so I did some research and posted the color versions of the works that I could find on my Pinterest site. It's one of those books that you need to work your way through and do some self-designed exercises for each chapter, otherwise you'll never remember the concepts he is trying to teach.
5. And last, to return to a variation on my first solution, I can look more deeply into each window scape, and go full on impressionistic, seeing the underlying hues in that particular light on that

Or maybe I'll just rotate through these approaches or combine them all together. It is the challenges in life that bring growth. For me this winter, it is the boredom that is forcing me to grow some, by exploring more facets of the scenery around me. I am by nature, somewhat journalistic in my approach to landscapes. I tend to paint what I see. With my watercolors, I work in series and it is the second and third iterations where imagination and creativity bring sparks of insight into the finished painting. My watercolors work up faster than my oils. I can do several watercolors in a couple of days. My oils are another story. Each one is more of a commitment. Heck, being an artist is a commitment in itself. Good thing the winter is long.

Six Easy Steps to Get You Started Painting Outside

At the beginning of last summer, I decided that I would do some plein aire painting! I usually work in the studio (all the old masters had really), but I sketch and take many, many photographs of scenes and locales that interest me. Past attempts to work outside have pretty much resulted in a shameful stash of really frugly paintings. Not the brilliant oeuvres that other artists seem to produce. There are many plein aire painters who create absolutely brilliant works on location! How, I pondered? Still others do value and color sketches which they either finish in the studio or use as a form of note-taking for much larger paintings that they do later. Frankly, if any of my outside paintings rose to that level I would be delighted.

Being something of an analytical thinker (that other side of my brain), I decided to figure out what the heck the problem was. First off was my suspicion that I must be one “those” painters. You know the ones. The ones who don't like it too hot, too cold, too buggy, too windy, too much sun, not enough sun, etc. and have gear problems, to boot. And we get sneered at by the die hard outdoorsy folks who stand in 36” of snow, or up to their waist in surf, or on the edge of a cliff, or in a canoe. I love those extreme location shots. They are inspirational. But I still must suck it up and deal with the elements and the gear. I will address the gear only tangentially here, but it really has enough items in it that it will be a whole n'other post. So, yes, it was too hot, too cold, too windy, wrong gear, wrong sun and then, on top of that, I was busy with other projects, like an upcoming open studio event. Justifiable! So, like many, I have reasons, also known as "excuses", but I have been working them through and coming up with some viable solutions.

Technique #1

Schedule time to paint and work around it, or just prioritize it. No excuses. You can do the ubiquitous paper work anytime (I deflate badly after 3:00/4:00 so that's when I clean up and hit the computer. . . theoretically). I can work at cooler times of day, in the shade, and in a sheltered locations (wind/sun elements), etc. I got this. And I did get out regularly last fall and produced pictures that, if not good enough to exhibit, are at least better than previous pictures. Working outside in January is a whole 'nother unique subject! Maybe dealing with the cold will be a separate post.

Techniques #2

Work in your own front yard first. Or back yard. Or side yard. Or other side yard. Or front step even. Really. It is surprising what can be left behind accidentally. In my case it was paper towels (really?), thinner, and the “right paint” brush. I found it very convenient to run into the house and get things, even my favorite painting stool! I have not yet figured out how to take that one with me on location, as I do get tired standing for long hours. (A shooting stick is going on the Xmas list.) Painting from the home front allows you the opportunity to tweak your gear and decide which stuff and how much stuff to take with you. I'm talking about the bulk of the stuff, the sheer volume, how many arms you have and then there's the weight of the stuff and  whether you need several Sherpas to transport it all or just hire servants like Monet did.

Techniques # 3

Travel light. This is really a gear topic, but it does impact on the ease and frequency of visits to the great out-of-doors. The traditional French easel has been supplanted in recent years by a range of lighter versions, one of which I did buy (more in my gear-head posts), along with a new tripod that collapses to practically nothing. I pruned my selection of oil paint. This was hard and sad. But, you really don't need raw sienna if you have yellow ochre and my favorite shade of mauve can rest easy at home. You have more leeway if you are working within 20 feet of your car (you could cheat and take a box of your contraband colors that you leave in the car), but if you are planning on doing a trail, ax as much as you can. It's a good time to try out some of those famous limited palettes: an outdoor version of the Zorn palette, or take just one warm and one cool of each of the major hues. They all take some getting used to. Again, try it in your back yard first. My new pochade box has a much smaller palette than I am used to, so I really have no choice. My goal when selecting gear was that it all had to fit into a single backpack, which I have amended to one with additional wheels as I still do not have the weight down quite as much as I would like (its a process). The locales I have been looking into all have pretty wide pathways so I think I'm good and this backpack also has shoulder straps for more rugged terrain.

Technique #4

Check out the location first before you take a lot of gear with you. Know what local trails, conservation areas and scenic vistas are nearby. I am particularly interested in sites that have parking! Don't need a neighbor calling in to the cops about a “suspicious vehicle” parked by the road. There is one conservation area in my town that even has a port-a-potty! Yeah! I did a first round in my car only, looked up the locales and checked out the parking and how wide the trails looked. Some conservation areas now have trail maps posted online that you can download to your phone. Next step is taking a light backpack with just paper, pencils and a camera. Walk the trails. It's good exercise. Make note of the sun and the time of day. I am partial to water, so ones with ponds or streams get priority. Think about how you feel about passers by. They always want to talk to you. They sometimes have dogs. Though it does break my concentration, I try to view it as a marketing opportunity. Besides, the minute you turn on that “sales” charm, they will flee like a hornet in the rear view mirror.

Techniques #5

Work small. The materials are lighter and easier to transport. There is less of an emotional investment in the outcome. They work up faster and can be completed (sort of) in a single session. There is also a relationship between the size of a brush stroke and the size of the painting. Explore that. Small works have an intimacy to them. You can hold them in your hands and develop a certain relationship with the content. When you have more experience under your belt and a favorite spot established you can take a larger canvas with you. I use either Masonite, which is heavier, or canvas taped to foam core. I have a canvas carrier for my wet paintings that fits in my backpack next to my pochade box.

Techniques #6

Think about safety. Fellow walkers on a trail, especially if they have dogs, make me feel safer, but you gotta be aware of the vibe they give off and how isolated the area you are working in is. Always take a pocket knife, pepper spray, your cell phone (within range?), etc. with you. If you speak with other people reference another companion who is “meeting you there”, even if that's not quite true. Or take a companion along. Always take rain gear and a sweater, plus drinking water. The rules are pretty much the same as for any type of hiking, which should also include a note or text to your family or significant other letting them know where you have gone. A map on paper is nice as cell phone batteries can give out. And if you run into a bear in the Northeast, they are black bears and I have been told that they are easily scared off by shouting at them. I have not tested this out. . . And don't think I want to.

Happy painting!

-Vicky

I'm a Mean, Lean, Cleaning Machine

I'm counting today as a success! I had decided to re-open my Etsy shop, so look for it to come to a venue near you, but in preparation for that I need to take care of a number of other things first.

The first is cleaning up my office, "command central", so that I can take care of all those things I need to do and feel organized and in control. I had started this a year ago, and stalled out on the process. You have no idea! But, I'm motivated now and am moving forward. I'm also lower on cash, so re-launching my Etsy shop and my website has become more of a priority. So today, I cleaned out 1 box of random papers and one complete file drawer. I was amazed at the information that I had acquired over the years, most of which is now either out of date or available online. 

Sometimes, just starting something is the hard part, but once you get over that hump, momentum builds and the work completes itself  . . sort of. . maybe. . I can hope can't I? I'm an optimist at heart, and if I channel some latent OCD, that job, once started, will be worked on come hell or high water. 

The second major task that I'm avoiding big time is updating and renovating a range of electronics including my poor gently aging laptop, the software on my aging laptop, my website, my blog, and my online sales venues. Figuring out the electronics is a daunting task, so after nibbling around the edges of it, I am now avoiding it completely while I clean out my physical office. When I am done with that, I will have no choice but to address the cyber issues plaguing me. Let's hope I can get some wizarding mojo working in my favor.

Palette Talk - Overview

Palette Talk – an Overview

I have been working outside lately and have noticed that my choice of colors to work with is shifting, partly because of space limitations and partly out of curiosity. I have heard of many color mixing systems and naturally, I want to try them all. Below are just a few. I think to get the full educational benefit, for me and my readers, I need to sit down, use each one fully, explore and then post my experiences. I have some quickly made examples below. I purposely did not get all anal over the execution, using scraps of canvas, cardboard backing, and used the blobs of paint right on the canvas as my palette. Maybe when I get tired of re-working all those UFOs (unfinished objects) in my studio I'll swap in some more detailed color work.

The Zorn Palette, based roughly upon Rembrandt's Palette – Ivory Black, Cadmium Red Deep, and Yellow Ochre. This one is probably one of the most famous palettes to work with and well worth a try. It is better suited for work inside the studio unless you are willing to add some additional colors, which I understand that he did, depending on circumstances, especially for work outside.

Having made my sample, I can see why this palette is popular with portrait painters. There's a lot of nice skin tone possibilities and simplified blending. I was only able to get a shade of a pretend green and don't know what you do if you want a blue, so landscape painting is definitely out of the question if you're using a strict interpretation of his palette.

Warm/Cool Primary Based Palette

Cadmium Yellow Lemon and Cadmium Yellow Pale; Cadmium Red Light or Pyrrole Red and Alizarin Crimson; Cerulean or Cobalt Blue Blue and Ultramarine. You can choose to add Viridian or Thalo Green; or a brown such as a Burnt Sienna or Burnt Umber added for convenience. Some of my training was with impressionist studies of the warmth or coolness of light, time of day, indoor v outdoor lighting, so I can't imagine working without a warm and a cool of most hues, the yellows in particular.

I really liked doing this palette. The greens are spectacular. The browns take some effort but are serviceable. I added in cerulean and a teal to the right. Loved those green mixtures also. This palette choice may have a convert! It is especially good for outdoor travel work where you want to limit the amount of stuff you are toting. I did not try to get flesh tones, but judging from the orange-tones it shouldn't be a huge problem, though there will be more steps involved. (The usual go to combination for flesh tones is cadmium red light and yellow ochre, which isn't available.) You have to pick a yellow and a blue to mix with a red to get that skin color. I think that for portraits adding in some brown/reds is something of a must if only for the convenience. Like all palettes, we get proficient at what we use most often and change takes some time and adjustments. The concept of sticking to just a set list of colors is somewhat of a purists dream. The addition of even a single brown is not a crime.

The Basic Three Plus White.

Cadmium Yellow Light, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue seem to be a popular pick if you want to challenge yourself even further. Possible Additions or substitutions: Cadmium Red Light or Scarlet, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Viridian, Phthalo Green.

This one creates some controversy with impassioned adherents to particular blues or reds with much discussion of properties of light versus the chemistry of pigments.

I was not a fan of this one. I felt like I wanted there to be a brighter red, which I added (for the sake of comparison) off to the right. The blue mixed an adequate though uninspired range of greens. With the Alizarin in there you could get to some reasonable flesh tones.

Another Random Palette From A Random Artist School.

Naples Yellow Light, Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red or Terra Rosa, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Yellow Light, Pthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Ivory Black, Alizarin Crimson, Transparent Oxide Red, Flake White. Additions and substitutions: Titanium White, Permanent Red Medium, Permanent Red violet, Viridian, Cobalt Blue. I have not worked with this one yet and do not have a sample for you. This is something of a complete palette, rather than a limited one.

My studio palette is somewhat broad so I have tried many of these colors, like Transparent Oxide Red which I use as a Burnt Sienna substitute. I also use Terra Rosa occassionally, mostly when doing portraits, winter shrubbery, or chimneys. Venetian Red is something of a luxury and one can get positively carried away splashing it on to give an added pop of color somewhere (mostly in watercolor) It is cool and purple-y. You might also want to play with adding English Red if you are exploring the plethora of red/brown hues available. Or a Mars Red. I also have a fondness for “mauve” (not one her list, but I was thinking of guilty pleasures and this qualifies) as it makes a dynamite ambiguous warm grey color when mixed with yellow ochre. It's a convenience and if working outside and carrying a lot of stuff you can skip it. I have never understood the attraction to Naples Yellows, mix it yourself. I always use Titanium white, though maybe I should try some other whites. Zinc white has some interesting properties. For many years I had banished Alizarin Crimson from my palette due to permanency issues, but they now manufacture a permanent version, quinacridone based, so I've been adding it back in. Some of these colors are particularly useful when doing portraits, like having a warm and cool red/brown hue on hand depending on your methodology.

Advantages of a Limited Palette - if you choose to go that route.

Simplifies decision making, useful especially for beginners who many be overwhelmed or confused by the choices.

They reduce weight and are ideal for travel.

They are cost effective. Fewer purchases of tubes of paint you rarely use.

The necessity of mixing all the colors together to get many hues creates greater unity within the painting. Its the old rube about putting a little of your main color into every mixture.

Forces you to expand your color mixing repertoire and break out of habits that might not be bad per se, just binding.

My Palettes

As you can see below I use everything but the kitchen sink in my studio, but really only use particular colors in any given painting, depending on the subject matter. For florals I use a wider range of greens and reds, adding in Permanent Rose and other hues. If I'm doing a painting of a seashell I use more of the earth tones and particular blues. If I'm doing a landscape from a digital file photo on my laptop, I will use other hues dependent on season whether it is woodsy or seashore. The travel palette is always landscape based, so I use fewer of the reds. I keep some travel gear prepacked in my studio and depending on which easel I take, I could end up with slightly different hues, probably because I was running out of something when I packed. I am eager to tryout the warm/cool palette above as a travel option, if only because of the green mixtures. I have stopped adding black to my palette, though there is a tube in the studio if I should feel a need for it. I don't remember what I was painting when I took this picture, but it is a typical arrangement for me. Note the inclusion of that bright, light blue that I seldom use. Ditto for the bright, light green-yellow. It also has raw sienna on it, which I have skipped adding of late.

Vicky's Palette for the Studio – Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Cadmium Lemon (its cool in tone, lemony)

Cadmium Yellow Pale (warm like butter)

Cadmium Yellow Medium, Deep, Deeper, Deepest

Cadmium Orange (convenient and useful for Autumn landscapes)

Cadmium Red Light

Cadmium Red Medium

Quinacridone Red, Rose, Coral

Permanent Rose (I usually skip as it is somewhat chemically/synthetic looking)

Alizarin Crimson (recently added back in)

Mauve (my guilty pleasure)

Yellow Ochre

Raw Sienna

Transparent Oxide Brown (Schminke) (Burnt Sienna substitute)

Burnt Umber

Raw Umber

Greenish Umber (love this shade)

Terra Rosa

Venetian Red, English Red, Mars Red (occassional)

Cadmium Yellow-Green Pale-ish (surprisingly useful)

Permanent Green (you will want to dull this down)

Chromium Oxide Green (olivey in color and very useful)

Viridian

Thalo Green

Cerulean Blue (a bright light tropical color usually found in student grade paints)

Sevres (occassional, by Rembrandt)

Cobalt Blue

Ultramarine Blue

Thalo Blue

Prussian Blue (occassional)

Indigo (a really nice dark cool rich blue)

Titanium White (Richeson)

Vicky's Travel Palette

Cadmium Lemon

Cadmium Yellow Pale

Cadmium Red Light

Cadmium Red (sometimes, but I never use it)

Permanent Rose (I should add this in, but don't)

Alizarin Crimson (sometimes)

Yellow Ochre

Transparent Oxide Brown (Burnt Sienna substitute)

Burnt Umber or Raw Umber

Chromium Oxide Green (olive-y in color)

Thalo Green or Viridian

Cobalt Blue

Ultramarine Blue

Titanium White