ARCHIVES: December 2010

hot press
Painting on watercolor paper

No photos yet, but I just completed my first three landscape paintings on paper. These are similar to the other semi-abstracted landscapes I've been doing, only I am able to get a little looser on the paper paintings. Or maybe I'm just getting looser at painting in general. I am planning to do at least a dozen of these before posting them on my website.

No photos yet, but I am planning to update my painting site before winter is over. Not that winter has started quite yet. I will probably restructure the site, while possibly keeping some elements of the current design. The photo thing is bugging me. I have pretty much resigned myself to the fact that my cute little secondhand digital camera, while great for resource photos and snapshots, is not so great for the photography of fine art, and nothing in Photoshop will change that. Not when I want as accurate a photo as possible, one that reflects exactly what I see with my eyes.

A larger scanner would be divine. It's another thing to try to save up for. A larger scanner would solve this problem beautifully. A larger scanner would cover just about anything else I've been painting these past few years.

I have a block of hot press watercolor paper, given to me by a watercolor painter friend who prefers cold press. I prefer hot press. It's smoother. I don't like built-in textures on my surfaces. So, here's what you do:

• Carefully remove the paper from the block with the side of a palette knife.
• Position the paper on the birch square sitting on your easel.
• Tape all four sides with masking tape, evenly all around.
• Gesso twice with a foam brush, letting the gesso dry between coats.
• Tone the gessoed paper with thinned oil paint.
• Paint the painting.
• After the painting has dried, carefully remove the masking tape.
• Oooh and aaah.

This whole process will take at least a few weeks. Plan accordingly.

posted December 15, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
States of being - Confusion

Being confused is when your mind is in a twist. Make that a double or triple twist. You are bewildered and perplexed, and any sense of clarity has up and left. When you are in a state of confusion, your particles of thought are well-scattered. There they go.

To express confusion visually, you can make a combination of too many things at once. Create something in at least a few mediums, using as many materials as you can, and make it in as small a space as possible. If you already work in mixed-media, then collage as many layers as the support will hold. If you work two-dimensionally, then use an outrageous amount of colors at once. Go past colorful. Use so many colors that it almost looks gray from a distance, but not quite. Go for enough clutter that it is a mess, but not so much that it becomes a pattern or a muddy mess.

You can also have visually clarity, but express confusion in meaning. Depict too many things going on at once, with too many meanings. This is also a good use for old unresolved pictorial work. Take what you have done so far, and add stuff that has little to do with the original picture. Do not obscure the picture too much. Add another element that barely relates with what you have depicted so far. You are not aiming for absurdity, but confusion, to have some truly vague sense of meaning, but then again, not quite. It shouldn’t really mean anything, but does hint slightly at having some meaning. Just for confusion’s sake.

Being afflicted by confusion is like having an active eggbeater inside your head. It’s all a big tangled knot, spaghetti on the rampage. Express this mental mess by creating work that is all scribbly and incongruent. Do you work in fiber? Make the biggest, most impossible knot that you possibly can. Woodworkers can create something out of knots of wood.

All of the above is active confusion in some way or another. You can depict the lack of clarity in another way. Make layers of things obscuring other things. Portray fogginess. Use semi-transparent veils in two or three-dimensions to confuse what may or may not be there.

Portraying Confusion exercises and guidelines:

• Regular portrait:
The person is not looking at the viewer, and their outfit, hat or glasses are not on quite right. There is a cluttered room or landscape in the background.

• Challenge portrait:
The person is looking directly at the viewer, and there is a plain background. The background and person’s clothing are limited to two colors.

• Regular abstract:
Make a mess of perspective, with lots of random lines and masses, kind of like Pollock meets Escher.Have no visual cohesion. (Hint: Pollock’s work was cohesive, with an all-over pattern.) Use a ton of different colors. Weigh them.

• Challenge abstract:
Do an abstract that is geometric; mostly right angles and simple shapes. Use a maximum of three colors, plus black and white if you choose.

• Craftwork:
Mix at least five different materials and at least seven different colors (including black and white). Have the piece clash visually with itself. Make it appear to have a function, but have that function not be the least bit functional.

Every month a new creativity lesson is posted. See the archives for the full series. See September and October 2009 for further explanation on how to use the exercises.

Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted December 5, 2010

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin