ARCHIVES: February 2010

neither large nor small
It’s medium!

Every now and then there is a painting crisis, like how to deal with finishing wooden frames to get a nice satin veneer, or how to package and ship large paintings, or varnishing, omigosh, varnishing which is not easy, nope, not if you want to do it right. And for awhile there, I was in a medium conundrum.

In art school, the first time around, I was taught to mix the classic one-third medium. This is made from equal parts linseed oil, damar varnish and turpentine. When I arrived years later at my second art school on the other coast, it was pretty much the same thing, although many students by then were turning to the pre-made medium Liquin. I know lots of people who just love Liquin. I am not one of them.

It was when I moved to New Mexico that I began that above-mentioned series of painting crises. Suddenly everything became difficult. Not the act of painting itself, or what to paint or where to show my paintings. It was all the stuff surrounding painting in the studio; all the preparation and finishing things that we have to do. I wanted to do them better than what I was taught in either art school.

Without going into all of the research I did, partially because I’m being lazy here, and a bigger partially because, I think you should do your own research since that is how you’ll find other interesting things along the way, I’ll keep it short-ish. And that is one hell of a sentence, now isn’t it?

I was looking for an all-purpose, simple, and most importantly, archival medium for oil painting. As a result of my travels through the classic books on painting such as; The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques by Ralph Mayer and Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed, among a few others, I came to the following conclusions:

• Odorless Mineral Spirits is a fine replacement for turpentine. Turpentine is very hard on your lungs.
• Stand oil is flexible, archival and will not discolor with age.
• Varnish should not be used in a medium. It is too shiny, and way too inflexible. Varnish is meant for the final protective coat on a painting, but should not be used within a painting in my opinion. If you use varnish within the painting, as part of the medium, and then you varnish the final painting, when the day comes to clean the varnish, or remove it, you will also end up removing layers of the painting itself. Not good.

I use equal parts stand oil and odorless mineral spirits for my medium; the kind that is sold in art supply stores. I add them to a small container, and then let the combination sit for at least a week, turning it over and around on its side daily. Then I’m good to go and my paintings are happy.

posted February 22, 2010

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big snow
Lots and lots and lots of snow

Earlier this afternoon I went outside to take pictures of the snow on the trees and shrubs out in the back of our huge old divided-up mansion. There’s a shared backyard and parking lot and carriage house, and for some reason it’s lower than everything else on this half of the block. The snow came up over my knees when I tried to walk through it. And that made me laugh.

After I came in and shook off the cold and snow, the weather turned to light flurries, as sort of a closing chapter to this episode. Was it a storm? It was so peaceful, it couldn’t have been a storm. Why do they call it a storm? Well, okay, it was a storm elsewhere, but from where I am it just looks like the winters I remember growing up. They say we got nearly two feet of the stuff, and this time I think they may be right. My two feet were having an interesting time of it.

Snow quiets everything but the creaks in the upstairs floor. At first it visually calms a city, but then the snow gets dirty, melts a bit, refreezes, turns to ice and becomes nasty. There is beauty, and then it gets all messed up. I remember as a young child in Flushing, it didn’t take long for the snow to accumulate black flakes of incinerator soot. City snow was spotted.

I am finishing up my last roll of film. My brother recently gave me his old digital camera, so I need to start reading the instructions and begin using this gift. As said after the last big snow, I really want to take photos of snow-covered meadows and farmlands and the edges of forests and streams and such places, but that is not to be for this year. However, I have the backyard and a few trees along with other urban flora, and they are sudsy with freshly fallen snow. They will do just fine for now. And there will be a fine batch of snow paintings in plenty of time before the start of next winter.

Snow flakes. Singular hexagrams. It's pretty cool. And very cold.

posted February 6, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
Mmmmm... Breakfast!

In honor of the meal that's wonderful any time of day...

This monthly feature on developing unlimited creativity is best referenced from the two original creative fun from almost nothing entries from the archives; September and October 2009. Read those two entries, and the entry below will be all yours. Use the commonplace everyday to inspire your art!

Abstraction
• Do an abstract piece based on the breakfast table, but have no more than a 20% recognizability factor. Use all or some of the colors of the items on the table. Do not add any other colors that are not on the table.

Citrus peels
• Collect and dry citrus peels from anytime you eat a piece of any kind of citrus fruit. When you have a bunch and they are dried, make something out of them that is at least 80% citrus peel.

Fog
• Depict a breakfast scene as viewed through the half-lidded fog of being not quite awake so early in the morning. This would, of course, be a semi-abstracted work.
• Depict one, two or three simple breakfast objects in a foggy, not-quite-awake still-life.
• As more of a challenge, create a three-dimensional breakfast object in any medium, with the same half-asleep vision as above.

Rush hour
• Do the same as in the Fog exercises above, but replace the hazy daze with the rush and zip of some modern breakfast scenes. You may also apply this sense of speed to any singular breakfast object, or a series of such objects.

Multi-coloring
• Make a batch of pancake batter and divide it into a few different bowls. Add a few drops of food coloring to each bowl, so that you now have bowls of different colored batter. Next, make multi-color pancakes with the batter. (We did this once at a youth-run youth group conference. We also colored the butter that day. Pounds and pounds of blue and green and gray butter.)

The painting above is called Lemon Nest (©2001). A lemon living the luxe life before being peeled.

Excerpted and paraphrased from the book;
Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted February 3, 2010

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin