Nupastels are all kinds of messy fun

Today has been quite hot here in Madrid, so instead of going to the painting table to work on watercolours I decided to relax a bit at the balcony and doodle a bit, somehow it looked like the perfect chance to try the Nupastels at last so instead of the sketchbook and pencil I've grabbed a box with some of them, a paper and an old cotton rag, and started doodling just for fun.

Can you tell I have mummies in my mind lately? ignore the weird look and unfinished look, this quick sketch has served 2 purposes: one has been overcoming the dead end I was trapped at with my concept doodles getting me closer to the body structure I was looking for (some times going back to basics is the best to take a turn and get into the right way), and second letting me learn some things about nupastels:

-They are surprisingly soft for a pastel that is called "hard" but it's indeed harder than the usual pastels, added to their thin and squared shape they allow a great control, I like that :)

-It is true that there's only an amount of pastel the paper will take but I find it easier to control the amount of pigment you use, they are very versatile, you can go from superwide strokes to thin lines made with a corner without effort, from soft touch to intense color, in just one stroke, this makes really easy to not overwork it and even let the grain of the paper show through for as long as you want to.

- They don't feel like chalk at all!

-They blend so easily and yet it's easy too to cleanly cover a previous color with a new one as if the other wasn't there, I guess that could not be so if the area were quite overworked already but I didn't get to that extent, in my mummy I found no trouble putting a clean soft pink over a couple of layers of deep gray and dark blue.

-Dust, this is the thing that you won't get rid of no matter how hard the pastel is, but that's the great thing about using them out of the house, you can just blow it away and let the wind do the rest :)

Now that I've made one test I want to try some more things with them, one is try them on a paper without grain (nupastels have beaten the panpastels without mercy this time but no grain maybe provide a more balanced battleground) but the most important one is trying different ways of lifting it so you won't get to overwork the paper unless you go too far, not knowing too much about working with pastels I want to try to lift them with some kind of brush, smudging with a cloth will get rid of some of the pigment but will mostly blend and smudge it into the paper texture (already tried that today), but maybe the bristles of a brush get more pastel off the paper, also I want to try using masking tape, the pigment should stick to it and be completely lifted right? so my bet right now is:

cloth: more blending than lifting
brush: more lifting than blending
tape: no blending at all and some lifting

I can't wait to try this theory :). So...what else can I try? sugestions? have you done any experimenting with these?

Oh, and now that the mummy is done I'm looking at the pastel fixative spray bottle in disbelief, there's no way any fixative can really seal this, is there? nah!

Christmas ramblings

When I woke up this morning I was complaining in my mind about the horrible rainy dark cold and early morning I'd have to face and how I should just rebel against the world by staying in bed warm and cozy under the duvet, then I thought that hey, christmas lottery day should have a sweet surprise for me so it wouldn't be that bad to get up and moving.

I didn't win the Christmas national lottery today. I honestly thought I should be one of the winners this year but alas, Lady Luck messed it up again and got lost somewhere in the way. Yet this morning - while it was still dark and the sky filled with stars and a fantabulous full moon hidden somewhere behind those rainy clouds - I was feeling like running, dancing and jumping to the rhythm of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" in my way to the subway. So I guess it's been a good day after all, right? That's the interesting thing about days, that they let you see how relative good and bad can be.

I've been thinking about my 2010 and pondering all that's happened and all that hasn't, trying to see things in perspective, how good has "good" been and how bad has "bad" been and how much they've mingled and changed coats or how much they've been totally apart from each other and true to themselves.

While doing all that thinking I've spent the last couple of weeks painting like crazy these little tokens of appreciation, I only have these 2 to show, the first and the last, the ones who haven't carried messages to so many special people yet, the ones that will carry it for you, I've loved to chat, laugh, rant and drool with you so far, I've had the chance to tighten bonds with dear old friends, met some new and enjoy lots of art, anecdotes and insight. I hope to be able to walk through this road with you all in the year to come, with the occasional stop for bed and breakfast?

Is this a Merry Christmas post? Yes it is, bear with me and my ramblings for this one, pretty please? And forgive me for not fixing that scanned crazy red but I wasn't in the mood, after all I haven't won the lottery today, remember? Now go and have fun!

Shaking the rust away

Have you ever got that mix of excitement and fear when someone ask you about a possible comission in the manner of "could you make it look like *insert here one of your previous works*"?

I recently have and it's kind of scary, I don't like that feeling because I know that any piece that I begin with fear won't flow, won't work at all, so I've decided to take action and just get familiar with the subject, I'm lucky enough to have several pictures of this little sweetie around so why not, right?

So I'm gonna aproach it in different ways:
a)warm up with some gesture drawings of the baby, full body.
b)sketches of her facial expressions to get familiar with the subtleties.
c)value sketches, the goal is to get so used to her correct volume and proportions that it comes natural.
d)color swatches and color sketches to see which ones suit her better and getting confident to use them boldly.

Sounds like a plan? It does to me and after drawing this first gesture I feel more confident already.

I'll share the wip of this process, for better or worse, wish me luck!

Thoughts on Daniel Smith's Genuine Lapislazuli watercolor pigment

This is a color that has been for a long time among my paints yet I haven't really used it in a painting until now, mainly because I don't use many granulating pigments.

I was ready to use it as one of the main colors for my current painting, have done so and these are some of my thoughts about Lapislazuli now that I've had the chance to experiment a bit more with it:

- It granulates beautifully, and a lot, probably it's the most granulating pigment I've tried.

- The color itself is gorgeous, a subtle muted blue.

- Surprisingly it doesn't lift too much when you remove masking fluid previously applied over it.

- It feels grainy to the brush and gummy, the gummiest paint I've ever tried, not only when you take it off the tube but even after mixing it with water, even when you put it on the paper.

- It stays where you put it, even more than other granulating colors, not an easy pigment to move around and fade to white.

- Its darker value is a mid value.

- Very easy to lift when you add another layer over it.

- Backruns easily and beautifully, nice for texture.

There are some pros and a lot of cons about this pigment in my opinion, at least when you paint the way I paint.

So after using it here and there I've decided to substitute it with a different blue for the main areas and leaving Lapis as a secodary color for extra touches.

Have you ever tried to dye your own gesso?

This week I received a portrait on gesso that my friend Rhonda painted for me, so she's guilty of having me wanting to paint something on gesso again. And since I want to use gouache for this I've decided to use colored gesso instead of plain white and maybe use it as part of the painting, I'm blaming Carla O'Connor for that.

The fact is that I only have white gesso so I did some research and found a web where someone said that he had tinted his own gesso successfully with watercolor, gouache and acrylic paints, that's more than enough to encourage me to try, so since this is the first time I try to dye my own gesso I'll share the process, and some questions that have come with it so if any of you have ever tried something like this I'd love to hear any insight you can share.


So my first step was diluting the gesso a bit, enough for it to run nicely, produce few texture from the brush strokes and provide thin coats that dry fast and without cracks. Then the color, I was planning on a green color and the paint of choice is acrylic since I'd be needing quite a bit and didn't waste that much watercolor or gouache, so Jenkins Green it is since it's my only acrylic green, pretty ugly color, I know, plus somehow I didn't think about the fact that it was a mixture with a lot of white, the resulting color wasn't what I wanted so I added some yellow too (probably should have used a blue and a yellow from the beginning but I often got carried away when I try new things and instead trying something new in a controlled way I use to keep adding "new" stuff to try to the process, too many variables if you wish).


Step 6 is the result of mixing the gesso with Jenkins Green and right before mixing the Hansa Yellow Medium, the amount of green mixed in was the same as the yellow you can see in this photo, that makes a mixture of 50% gesso 50% acrylic paint more or less, this proportion worried me a bit and is my first doubt: isn't it too much paint? I use to apply 3 coats of gesso on each side of the board/paper so maybe it's a better option to add a first coat of plain gesso and then the tinted ones over it? or maybe it's not an issue at all and there's not a problem to have so much paint in the gesso mixture?

Before applying the gesso to the board I diluted it a bit more because the added paint had thickened it.

Once the gesso was ready I started to add it to the board, a foam brush is the perfect tool for this, it's completely inexpensive, easy to clean and gives enough texture but not too much so there's no need to sand the surface at all unless you're going for something extremely smooth, I like a bit of texture so no sanding needed here. Another good thing about thinning the gesso is that the drying time is almost non existent, when you finish applying the coat the starting point is almost ready to begin the second one, and if not a couple of minutes will be more than enough. I wonder how many of these thin layers would be needed if I wanted to sand the surface.


Ok, the last step shows the finished look after 3 layers of greened gesso and a zoom that hopefully shows the final texture of the surface. BTW I had to finish yesterday morning since I run out of mixture before finishing the 3 coats, so the total amount of gesso and paint used is a bit more than the one you see in the photos.

WN Gouache Chart

I haven't painted anything with my new gouache yet but after making this colour chart yesterday I already know I'm going to love it, looks easy to use, not too problematic at first try (though it may depend on each different colour pigments), so some highlights so far:

- It gets the overworking pretty well, I came once and again with more pigment, plain water, dabbed back and forth and no damage was done to the chart at all.

- It "feels good" to the brush touch, pretty soft and with a good flow, even straight from the tube.

- After applying it to the watercolour paper and playing with the pigment on the palette I'd say it'll be a good medium to use on smooth papers: HP, bristol and illustration boards, yupo, gessoed papers and such. Every single colour could be extended evenly on the plastic palette going once and again over it with the brush without leaving brushtrokes, the only exception to this was the Ivory Black that seems to like to gather into small separated drops as soon as the brushtroke is finished (remember, on a plastic palette), probably a thicker appliance will make it behave like the rest of the colours though that's just my assumption and haven't tried it yet.

- The Phthalo Blue looks at first sight closer to my watercolor Manganese Blue than to phthalo, but since my watercolor phthalo is from Winsor&Newton and they make just green shade or red shade I guess it's just that I don't have a good referral to how a pure phthalo should look like.

- They don't lift as easily as watercolor. See how nothing changed at all when a big drop of water accidentally fell on the Raw Umber, after it dried the pigment hadn't lifted and moved a single bit even being an area where it was pretty thick, nice!

- The water bucket ended up completely dirty after using few paint, only a tip of the brush from each tube, but then when I emptied it there were no sediment at all in the bottom of the bucket, interesting.

Yupo, I'll try it in the future for sure

I've been trying to design some visit cards today, thought it would be easier but now it looks like I'm not satisfied with anything.



Then I've looked at my palette and have seen some dry used colors mingled together, that has put an idea in my mind, why not look for some patterns of paints flowing into each other? so instead of cleaning my palette I've taken a sample of yupo I had around and thrown Lamp Black and French Ultramarine Blue all around hoping to get some patterns I can use in the visit cards.


Lesson learned: Yupo is an interesting animal... worths giving it a try.

Deconstructing Daniel Smith's Moonglow

I'm in the middle of a quest to solve a pigment problem in my fourth christmas card. The choice I made yesterday doesn't seem like the best one, it was Daniel Smith's Moonglw, beautiful, BEAUTIFUL color, but not the right pigments for this card in particular.

Then today after some tests a bulb has lighted over my head, why not check all the pigments in Moonglow, see if I have them and replace the problematic one? so of course it's taken me 2 seconds to realize I didn't have all the pigments in Moonglow lol, but that's ok because it has let me go on research mode, handprint.com is fabulous for that.

So for Moonglow I need:
- Viridian (PG18) which I have (in fact it will give me the chance to try my untouched Yasutomo paints).
- Ultramarine Blue (PB29) which is the granulating color in the mix and the one I wanted to change for Indanthrene Blue since I've already used in the sky and is rich and staining.
- Anthraquinoid Red (PR177) which I don't have and after looking at the pigment it's not under another name at Winsor&Newton, so I won't be able to buy it locally, on the other hand after reading about its qualities I don't like the fact that it hasn't good lightfastness, one of the alternatives given at Handprint is Perylene Maroon which I happen to love and after reading more about the pigment it's staining, so it'll be good for darks and my mix wont granulate.


I feel so accomplished right now! LOL, so I guess I'll put here the info I wrote about both pigments, it's easier to take a photo than to rewrite it, sorry if my handwritting is a problem (one day I'll have to take all those scraps of paper I have around with info and put them together in a notebook or something).


Now after all the theory is time for making some tests and see if it does really work for my painting or I'll need to keep on looking for solutions, let the fun begin!

Another christmas card

Time for a different approach to this year cards, I didn't manage to finish this one yesterday as expected BUT I'm happy I made the decision to stop, I came to that point when you want to rush and you know it's better to stop for a while but I didn't ^_^ so I ended up with quite a mess in the upper area and lifted it right after, THEN decided to stop.

So today I think I'll play with it in Photoshop for a while and decide what I need to do up there before wetting my brushes again. Also... do I want to keep it pure watercolor or going mixed media?

Lesson learned: No matter how much you think you hate granulating paints when you're layering over them, as soon as you need to lift a messed area the love is back!



EDIT: A little tweak in photoshop, fun if not refined hehehe. My options now: going dark inside those whites, not going dark, more subtle spyral as in the sketch, using process white, saving it with masking fluid... I'm going to have fun with this one!

Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, Step 2

Probably not Rudolph

Yesterday I spent the day trying to finish some christmas cards, one ended in the paper bin and will never ever come back, this is the other one.



Somehow I managed to spend a lot of time trying different settings, designing a sleigh (or is it sledge?), adding it, removing it, redoing thumbs for value studies... just to decide that even if it didn't feel right I'd fix it while adding color.

NOTE TO SELF: if you take the time and make the effort to put up a plan just stick to said plan!

I guess it works, it could have gone really wrong, working on this paper didn't help (give me my Fabriano CP or SP anytime) I feel like it ended up pretty well other than for the shadows and definitely much better than it seemed when I started, but I'm not happy because this is not what I wanted to achieve, so it will probably be labeled as a winter landscape with an animal or something like that, most likely not a seasonal greeting for this christmas unless it grows on me this week.

Now back to the drawing table, there are loads of paintings to try yet!

white or black

I've been doing a test in one of the lower shapes of the lanterns, just to decide how I'm going to work on those blacks, hmmmmmm, after finishing with it I have more doubts, here's a step by step



1, 2 & 3.- Masked the shape and added some blue and red as a richer base, it dried lighter as often and mute but the variation was there.
4, 5.- The first layer of black/blue black/red added and dried, I wanted to keep some of the shape of the paper of the lantern and play with textures and edges.
6.- Sprayed some very diluted blue and red acrylic paints which was the main reason to mask around the print in the first place, the mixes of black run a bit, enough to make me loose the contrast and edges when it dried as seen in step 7.
8, 9.- Plan B, if spraying the acrylic don't work maybe applying the back mixed with blue and with red acrylic paint instead of watercolor would work, waited for it to dry and removed the masking. It doesn't show as much of the underpainting as I wanted at first but it's a corner so I don't mind not having it as interesting in there as in other areas of the image.
10.- The main reason of trying the spray and acrylic was to avoid the bleeding of lamp black which seem to love running around, yet I put a brushtroke over it and it still bled a bit, not to much but it's a concern, 11 and 12 are the acrylic palette and the watercolor palette, I think I mixed enough acrylic paint to make the black permanent.

So what's gone wrong? maybe the sprayed acrylic was too diluted and didn't work and what's bleeding is the color from some areas that can have remained uncovered when I applied the color in the last steps?

Right now I have 2 choices, to paint the lanterns' paper first or the symbols first, I was decided to paint the symbols first and once fixated to paint all the rest, but if those blacks still bleed I'll have problems, in the other hand I could finish all the white of the lanterns first and then the symbols but then I wouldn't be able to use the masking fluid 'cos it's already lifting the colors of the subtle washes, hmmmmmm, gotta ponder a bit more about it.

The good thing is that I'm liking the kind of variation that I'll be able to get in those black shapes and still have them black which was one of my goals for this one



Here's a gif of the step by step, just because:



Links to the whole of the WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6, step 7, step 8, step 9, step 10, step 11, step 12, step 13, step 14

Safe!

After an afternoon of painting under high temps and a peculiar mix of Katy Perry, Kat-tun and Martina McBride playing on the background I think I've regained confidence, and looking at the lanterns now I think I'm gonna be ok, go figure!

I know the photo is bad, it's night already and I don't have a better light source to take it



It stil has a long way to go but I'm already thinking on calling it yukkuri onegai shimasu because as I painted I found myself repeating in my mind "sloooow Teresa, just go slowly", now that I'm doing my thing and feel in control again I'm finding a lot of new possibilities to this big formats, it gives plenty of room to splatter, gradate, lift... mess around and play, just pay attention to big shapes and make them interesting, even a bad stroke turns itself into a chance for something special rather than an error, somehow it's easier to forget about the subject itself and focus on the shapes. Now I'm sure this is my first attempt at a big piece but won't be the last at all, I can get used to this!

Links to the whole of the WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6, step 7, step 8, step 9, step 10, step 11, step 12, step 13, step 14

First wash

I've finally started! I was going through a serious case of fear to the blank page but I've laid a first wash of colors so even if it's a little bit shy at least it's not blank anymore, I'll get bolder from now on.

The first wash has been wet on wet and with a few primary colors, it's the way I often begin my paintings so I'm feeling more confident right now, the wash looked like this



and then while taking the picture I noticed I didn't leave any white areas so I went in with a paper towel and lifted some paint in the front of the lanterns since it was still wet enough, trying to get some uneven whites and not being too careful because it's just a first wash, right now it's like this



the lessons up till now are only about materials, nothing I didn't know beforehand though:

1.- I never paint this big so my brushes are not big, this step was made with a hake that I usually use to wet the paper, it worked pretty well, easier than I thought, though I know I won't be able to work as I'm used to with it when I tighten up, so it'll give me the chance to explore different ways of painting out of my comfort zone.

2.- I don't think I'll be able to sit while painting with this one, I can't reach the top! so it'll be standing or turning the paper, will be interesting.

3.- I can't fit a whole sheet in my bath tube! shocking lol, I had to move it and twist it and turn it to get it thoroughly wet, maybe this is a good excuse to look for a house with a swimming pool?

Time to let it dry, this afternoon I'll probably work at it again, YAY for vacation days!

Links to the whole of the WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6, step 7, step 8, step 9, step 10, step 11, step 12, step 13, step 14

Note to self: FOCUS

I truly thought I wouldn't screw up until at least being in the middle of the painting process but, surprise! I forgot about the size of my reference, that I measured, decided on the size and resized it just YESTERDAY, and adjusted it to the right margin, now I have almost an inch of empty paper on the left and nothing on the right, and I don't want to loose those patterns on the right because they add balance, so I guess I'll just have to paint to the edge and crop the extra paper on the left even if that leaves me with a border too even compared to the other three.

And the kanji, I forgot to transfer one kanji! right in the middle of a lantern! FO·CUS TERESA! FOCUS!!! Now that I've taken some time from the painting table to rant I'm ready to continue, maybe I can start applying color today.

Links to the whole of the WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6, step 7, step 8, step 9, step 10, step 11, step 12, step 13, step 14

Lunch with daddy

That's it, or maybe not, for now I'll call it done but maybe I'll revisit it in the future because I'm not that happy with it right now, but since it's gone a long way already I'll let it rest for a bit.

The scanner has done something with the contrast, it screams a bit, anyway this is it


So after looking at it for quite some time the analysis comes to this:

- The center of interest: the bug, it does grab the eye so one minipoint for it BUT it grabs it and doesn't let it go anymore, yikes! I've gone too bold and that should be the thing to fix if I revisit this pic.
- Unity: After the addition of Raw Sienna and some Quin. Burn Scarlet toad and the greenery are better binded, the con is that the blue irises are not working after all, funny that I chose blue on purpose for contrast, it seemed a good choice when the greenery was going to be blue/green instead of yellow/green.
- Eye Flow : Other than the strong contrast between the bug and the rest I'm happy with the movement of the composition, is much more dynamic than the original concept. The upper part is kind of a dead area right now, I added it to give some room to the action but maybe it's cropable.
- Values : The kid, I love her in her own but she has so light values compared to the toad that she looks a bit washed out, I don't even wanna try to compare her values to the bug's 'cos they're in completely different leagues.
- Colors : I wasn't going for a realistic look at all so I chose colors that could work in a cartoonish image or rather I indulged myself using colors that I don't usually use but that make me happy (I'm looking at you Spring green ^^), then I tightened up as I usually do and ended up having to go for classic colors to "fix" the unity, a pity, but I'm still happy with the spring green :)
- Opaque white : my new best friend, I didn't need to use it at all here, yet I found myself adding extra blue in the bug's wings and sweat just to be able to put some opaque white there, note to self --- YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THAT!

It's been a long way baby :



Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6

Battle 1 : mission acomplished

It's done! I'm gonna call this Rubber ducky joy of joys when I squeeze you you make noise, I can't remember the last time I had so much fun painting.



Lessons learned about opaques: they are much more easy to use than I thought, can enhance transparents and don't look dull at all even when used as thick as possible, they are really useful to correct mistakes.

This is a close up of the ear, I didn't notice that some foam should be covering it and couldn't lift the paint to a white paper so... just used some pro white and blue to form the bubbles over the remaining orange, I think it worked pretty well:



I WANT GOUACHE!!!

Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4

War of Opaques progress

Do you know when you are in the middle of a wash and the doorbell rings and you think "damn!"? Well, DAMN!!! and right after that The Hideous Turquoise Background of Doom happened, O_o



Somehow after the swatch I thought that it wouldn't harm to use turquoise in the background, it hasn't worked as planned, hmmm... will have to think how to fix that area.





Other than that I'm having lots of fun using opaques and mingling them with transparents, so far in this first painting it's going to be cad orange, naples yellow, something turquoise light, manganese blue nova and lamp black as my opaques, I'm loving them so far, you can get nice texture, the paint flows nicely and it's easy to control, no more fear to use strokes with LOTS of pigment, surprisingly they don't overpower other colors while mixing on the paper nor they get overpowered by others, they cover anything nicely and it's easy to build up volume with lights/darks = nice!, they make the transparent next to them glow, they dry darker than I expected though but that's not necesarily a bad thing IMO.

So far I've only find 2 cons on the colors I'm using:
1.- I use to layer yellow over the oranges I have to make them glow and it's a thing that doesn't work over opaque cad orange, it was easy to imagine but I had to try anyway (always wishful thinking)
1.- The turquoise, pretty color, nasty pigment to lift, grrrrrrr.... and I've been spraying water over my pics for years getting pretty textures but it hasn't worked AT ALL with that turquoise, my fault or the pigment's? I don't know yet.

Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4

Dunk it babe!

On friday I started a doodle in my journal, the idea in my mind had nothing to do with what I've gotten so now I'll keep a blank page there to do another one.

Yet I wanted to finish the one I started first, somehow I got carried away and it ended being a figure drawing, in the most classic way, it took about 10 minutes to finish the graphite doodle and then I had to leave for work, how does that always happen when you're starting to warm up? I have no idea...

So friday's session ended like this



and then yesterday I decided to keep working at it, ink and watercolor, I have this old bottle of ink among 4 others that I've had since.... I can't even remember, before my teens for sure, and never used it mixed with other media, yet I've been keeping it even if it's almost empty because it's the only one that has printed big and clear "PERMANENT INK" on it, wel... IT IS NOT, and I learnt it the hard way, I inked the whole thing and then started to add a wash on the background and IT BLEEDS AN AWFUL LOT!!!! so the page now has ended as an ink figure drawing with a colored wash for the background and that's all, finished, it's growing on me but...

Lesson of the day: Always check your materials on a scrap of paper in the same manner of the technique you want to use them for... before working on the final piece.

The page looks like this now: