I have it bad!  I know what it is, but just had to look it up to verify it was really the ailment I was suffering from.

“(n) A feeling of restlessness, excitement, or laziness brought on by the coming of spring.”

That’s it all right!  There is actually little excitement, but lots of restlessness and laziness….mostly the latter.  The eyes just want to close and the body doesn’t want to move much, so unfortunately very little creativity has taken place during the last week. 

 

Our Mt. Redoubt has decided to erupt as well, blanketing the pristine snow with a dank layer of volcanic ash.  It is quite abrasive, so it’s recommended to wear a mask (or a wet rag) over the face, and it’s not too great for airplanes, cars or electronic equipment.  The Anchorage airport closed for almost 24 hours the other day, which has left people stranded all over the country.  Some were diverted to Fairbanks today.  Fairbanks is a good 6 six hour drive from Anchorage; not a fast alternative to getting back into town. 

 

Maybe, it’s the fact of just knowing air travel has randomly been halted that the ‘spring fever’ to really set in.  It’s our only way out of here, since driving takes at least a week unless driving day and night.  That just doesn’t seem practical.  Not that there were plans of a great tropical vacation (except for my dreams), but if the chance were to come up, at least it was available. 

 

Fortunately, today was a bit productive.  I started an acrylic painting on an 18 x 24 inch canvas.  I laid down a base coat in the background and quickly painted several pink peonies very loosely.  It’s coming along, so hopefully I can post it in a few days. 

 

May your days be filled with the excitement of spring!

How many times have you heard people say, “I was not born with a creative bone in my body.” Or:  “I can’t even draw a straight line!”  As artists, I think we hear it more often than we would like.  But where does your creativity and ideas come from?  Is it inherited?  Is it a gift from God?  Or is it something that just happened to come with your kit? 

 

Do you wake up in the middle of the night with your greatest ideas?  Is there a door that opens up once in awhile to release the inspirations?  Are all of your creative ideas on the other side somewhere?  How can we tap into this exciting concept more readily and not be afraid of what it holds for us?  An idea or a new thought of creativity should be snatched up and written down as soon as possible, so you don’t forget them.  The more you focus and meditate on a tough decision or your ‘next’ painting, the mind opens up to allow the answers to come forward.

 

Once your ideas come to you, what do you do with them?  Will you follow through with your plan to create that next painting?  Even if it’s a little scary and you fear failure, take action on your new adventure and continue your journey to produce something great. 

 

Believing in yourself and your creations can be affirmed by writing down a few positive thoughts about yourself and your work.  Review those affirmations daily to reinforce the power they hold for your future. 

 

Concentrating and focusing on positive personal images connects us to great and powerful changes soon to take place in our lives.  Relax and enjoy the ride!

If you are a woman and around my age (older or younger, it doesn’t matter), you probably have a guilty conscience when you take time out of your busy schedule to do your artwork when you should be cleaning, baking, shopping, ironing, laundry…….well, you get the picture!  Do you find you are saving time for your creative juices to start flowing after dinner or once the kids are in bed, and when you yourself are too exhausted to even think? 

 

Yes, it is a problem we face in today’s busy world.  Okay, admittedly my house is a wreck from the week’s worth of company, painting for an upcoming show, and running around doing errands, but here I sit writing an article.  Well, to me writing this blog is very important!  (Actually, there is a cake in the oven and the kitchen is cleaned up.)  Trying to balance both worlds is not an easy task.

 

We all know women have been trained to be caretakers; care for the men in our lives, children, home, and in recent years, going to work outside of the home as well.  Men have been trained to take care of the family by going to work and coming home to a sweet woman, clean house, dinner on the table, clean and pressed clothes to wear the next day, and do a few ‘honey-do’ chores around the house on weekends.  They still have time to golf, play baseball or go to games, spend time with their friends or whatever their pastime interests may be.  
 

So what are your priorities?  Do you want to produce more artwork?  Are you willing to save one day a week for slaving on your housework and spending the rest of the week being creative; painting, photography, art classes, going to an art museum, getting together with other creative people, forming an art group in your community or other activities to inspire you and others having interests like you? 

If your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to spend most of the week doing the things you love, how about spending an hour or two a day (before you are exhausted, of course).  Each day before you get out of bed, write a mental list  of what you would REALLY love to accomplish that day.  Better yet, grab a pen and paper and jot down what you want to get done.  Try to forget about all the menial chores that can wait for another day. (They won’t go away, you know!)  You will find if you start out small and do something artistic every day, your creativity will increase, your desire to paint (or whatever you create) will become more important, and the end results will be amazing.  Besides, you will become happier and more content, and everyone will notice the change in you.  It’s not that difficult to commit to embracing your talents and showing the world what you can accomplish.  

My best wishes to you and your new endeavors.  Write to me to let me know your successes.  Thanks!

 

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.”

Did you ever have trouble naming your painting?  Your upcoming show?  It is sometimes quite difficult to come up with a good name which doesn't sound too flat or boring.  How do you accomplish this when your mind seems to be blank?  This is an easy trick I have found to work almost every time.  Take a magazine and find the editorial page or a catalog and thumb through the pages.  Make note of all the interesting words by listing them on a piece of paper.  For example, these are from a recent Watercolor magazine:  visual, delicate, gilded, display, shadow, inspiration, vision, surprises, passion, mingle, right, steady, pattern, elements, light, balance, and edge.  Now, how can they help with coming up with a name. Try mixing a couple of them together, such as: "Delicate Light", "Shadows and Surprises", "Gilded Elements", "Mingling Patterns" or "Passion and Inspiration". 

Sometimes, names of paintings come to mind before the painting is even done or started.  This happened when I woke up in the middle of the night, and thought of painting the Jaguar.  Hmmmm, "Jaguar and Tigers" was soon the name of the painting.....but not literally 'tigers', but rather 'Tiger Lilies".  See this painting in a previous blog entry.  Another one was "Long Past Prime" which came to me while driving.  Of course, the name is rather self-explanatory....it had to be something old.  I painted a very old building (or barn) with the door hanging off it's hinges during early spring, so the trees were not yet leafed out and the grass was peaking out from under the snow.  I have a new one that came to me today; "Dandi-Lions".  Can't you just picture a (dandy) lion laying in a bed of dandelions?  

Capturing the painting by the name and expressing a feeling of your objective is your main goal.  May your dreams and visions help you with countless visions and inspirations to develop a score of names for your work.   

Work on this painting progressed very well today.  Maybe, it helped to have a beautiful and bright sunny, cold day to inspire and hope one day spring will be here. 

This painting is all about color.  When starting this morning, all the flowers were still white, but some of the stems and buds had the first glaze of color.  Another glaze was added to the buds, darkening them and adding a bit more detail.  The stems also needed more work, with some shadows added and a couple of them were too thick, so the background was worked in around them.  A light glaze of pale green was brushed lightly over some of the leaves to either push them back and give a couple of them a little more form. 

A lot of contemplation went into what color or colors the poppies were going to be.  First I thought all white, but it was too boring.  Yellow?  Red?  Last night, I was working on this at a painting group night.  I stood the painting up to see the progress, and a couple of the ladies were making comments.  One said to make the poppies blue, but I made a remark; "They wouldn't look real."  She quipped back with, "What's real about this painting?"  We all had a laugh, because at that point, nothing did look real.  Even now, there are many abstract qualities.

What a difference it made by painting the flowers with a very pale glaze of yellow and adding the centers.  They were beginning to look like poppies!  All of the poppies being yellow wasn't going to do it, so finally I came across a picture of some Iceland Poppies in my garden. They were yellow, orange and white.  So, the process of glazing started again.  I wanted to leave the one poppy on the right side about 1/4 of the way from the edge to be the main focus, so white was the best choice.  The deepest part of the shadows were also underneath this one, which helped in the decision making process. 

Once the flowers were painted, some of the 'splash' in the background needed some additional paint. Areas were deepened next to the light of the flower, and some white areas were glazed with a nearby color.  This really made the flowers pop out more.

There may be some 'tweaking' still to do on the poppies, but I will let it 'gel' for a few days before any further work is done.   This has been a very exciting process.  Throwing and splashing paint brings about unexpected results.  I hope you give it a try.

I would love to hear your comments about this painting process, and if you would care to share your paintings with me, that would even be better.  Thank you.

Even with snow and cold weather in the air, I wish you all a garden of joy! 

The splashing and throwing of watercolor technique is a great way to loosen up if you tend to paint too tightly.  First, take a half sheet of 140# Arches watercolor paper, staple and tapethe edges down onto gator board, plywood or hardboard.  This is a very important step, because the paper will get very wet and will buckle quite a lot, so you need to have it secured. 

I drew the design onto tracing paper and then transferred it to the watercolor paper using graphite paper.  Then, I used maskoid to mask out all the flowers, buds and leaves.  There is no way to avoid this step and still be able to maintain your drawing.  I know it's tedious!  Once the masking is dry, mix up puddles of some warm colors; yellow, red and a small amount of burnt sienna.  My mixtures were the consistancy of milk.  Take a large round brush (I used a #12 Kalinsky sable that holds a lot of paint) and throw the yellow towards the top of the painting.  Next, take the red and do the same thing as you overlap some of the yellow creating orange.  Be careful not to cover the entire background, but to leave areas of white spaces in the paper.  Spray water onto your thrown paint to create softer edges, with a windex type sprayer.  While this is drying, salt may be added to create some texture.  Dry completely!

The next step is to mix puddles of deep blue (ultramarine blue), diazonin purple, cerelean blue and whatever shade you would like.  Throw these colors into the lower section of the painting (near the leaves) to 'ground' the painting.  I threw a bit of this above some of the orange also to make it appear there were some tall flowers in the background.  Spray again with your water bottle.  I tilted the board back and forth to move the paint around and to really soak the paper.  As you can see the colors in this painting are quite deep and bright.  It's all right if the colors are more muted if you try this yourself.  Anything goes with this type of painting.  You may notice I threw some paint in the direction of the bottom of the paper to make it appear the paint was falling off the page.  Some of the paint did drip down off the edge.  Be sure to take a paper towel to soak up the edges once you are happy with the color results.  If the puddles are left behind, they will create 'blossoms'.  Salt may again be used, but the salt works better if put on when the shine of the paint is still on, but there are no longer any puddles.  It's a little tricky sometimes to know exactly when to apply the salt.

This now has to completely dry before removing the masking.  Mine took quite a long time, even though a hair dryer was used.   Once the maskoid is removed, all of your flowers and leaves are left white and will be ready to paint.  Tomorrow, you will see a more progress on the "Poppy Blast"

When painting a garden, leave room for fairies to dance............

Today's work on this painting included painting lots of leaves, and trying to vary the hue of greens to not get too boring.  Painting greens can be challenging.  Of course, everyone knows mixing blue and yellow produces green, but to get different shades involves some practice.  The best tool I have found is to make a green chart, writing all the different combinations down on a piece of watercolor paper along with a swipe of the color.  This chart can be used over and over again.  Daniel Smith has many paints in all different greens.  I hate to venture a guess as to how many colors of green can be purchased.  This is an easy way to accomplish the same as above , but saves time (not money) and sometimes frustration.  Either way, it's wise to keep changing the color on your brush to make your painting interesting. 

The wild blueberries were scrubbed out some with a scrubber brush and then blotted with a tissue to make them appear round. Some of the flowers featured in this painting actually grow wild in Alaska, but you may notice some of the flowers are vague and imaginary.  I guess they could grow somewhere in the world.  Mostly, it was a fun practice of making the rock garden interesting with a variety of shapes, textures and color, along with the featured plant, the phlox.  The roots growing here and there were faintly painted with a light grey or light tan, and the branch was dry brushed to create a weathered look.

The foliage at the top of the rocks are starting to take form now.  Some negative painting was done, but this area still needs a bit of work.  The painting probably has about 2 more hours to finish.  When it is complete, it will be posted on my main website page. 

Here's hoping you have flowers growing in your part of the world or at least in your imagination.  May some sunny weather shine on your bouquet!

What an interesting day this has been.  I have two teenage boys staying here for a few days, and they decided to go snowmachine riding on the lake this morning.  I didn't see much activity out there, so I assumed they were having fun....until I got the phone call.  One machine had stalled, and it was stuck out in the middle of the lake.  Of course, there was no choice but to assist them in their dilemna.  There was no problem starting up the other machine, but once on the lake I soon realized there was a LOT of deep snow out there!  After gunning the machine to the hilt so I wouldn't get stuck, it was time to break a trail for them.  To make a long story short, we had an exhausting two hours of stuck, unstuck, stuck again until finally making it back home.

Oh, if you want to see larger images of these pictures, go to the main web page, and click on the painting in the portfolio of work.  Then, you can click on a larger image, so you can see it better. I hope this helps! 

The painting progress was stalled, but not all was lost.  After unwinding and getting my breath back and the shaking stopped, it was time to get back to work.  In the first painting you can see the rocks were emphasized further by deepening the crevices, some calligraphy strokes put in here and there, more spattering with a very wet #10 brush using orange, blue and burnt sienna.  A little bit more color was added to some distant background near the top of the painting.  Salt was added for more texture.  The greenery starts taking shape for the phlox too.  Take a look at picture #1 to see this step.  The maskoid is still on.

Picture #2, the maskoid was removed, so now the white of the paper is showing through.  It's time to start painting the phlox, blueberries and the other flowers.  

Picture #3 shows some of the foliage starting to take shape.  There is still more detail on leaves, etc. and also much more work to do near the top of the rocks.  I'm still wondering what to do with this area, so hopefully the inspiration will come before too long, so the painting can get completed.  The next two days will be very busy for me, so be patient; I will be back with more daily painting to come.  

Thank you for checking on the blog.  I hope you are inspired and may your days be filled with sunshine and creativity!  As always, I would love to hear your comments. 

This morning, I sketched out a pile of rocks on a 15 x 22 inch sheet of heavy rough watercolor paper.  I proceeded to sketch some phlox among the rocks, and then added additional rock garden flowers along with a few blueberries, roots and sticks.  After yesterday, when I said I would use masking ONLY when I needed to, I definitely needed to use it today.  The first picture shows a rough drawing and the masking applied onto the flowers, leaves, sticks and grass.  It took me about three hours to apply all the masking using mostly a toothpick.
I use Windsor & Newton maskoid fluid, which comes off very nicely. (Well, as long as you don't leave it on too long.)

After this application dried, I applied a very loose wash using Quinocradrone Gold, Q. Burnt Orange, Burnt Sienna and mixed Burnt Sienna with some Ultramarine Blue to get some darks started.  The area above the rocks was splashed with the Q. Gold and then squirted liberally with water to fade it into the background.  You may see some large crystals of salt in this area to add some interest and texture into the background.

After this was all dry, I started applying some of the greenery around the phlox and deepened the colors on the rocks.  The third picture shows the change in the shadows and the rocks starting to take form.  Hopefully, work will progress a little more tomorrow on this area, so then I can remove the maskoid and start working on the greens and other flowers. 

I would love to hear your comments or questions.  Please go the home page and click on "contact the artist".  I promise I will answer.  Thank you for checking on my site.

Today I went back to a painting I started last Monday evening.  The initial wash was done very quickly and wet in a multiply color pattern, being careful not to paint the white violets.  (I didn't put masking on them, since it's not one of my favorite things to do.  I think it's better to practice control, especially when it's possible.  I only use masking when I absolutely have to.)   As soon as the paint was applied, I laid down two crumpled sheets of plastic cellophane on the painting and covered it with a book and a heavy object.  After about an hour, I checked to see if the design was working, but it was still too wet to remove.  I did remove the weight and the book, so it would dry faster.  After another hour, it was time to remove the cellophane, but the painting was still quite damp.  Once it had dried overnight, I started seeing somewhat of a pattern and design in the background, so I started doing some negative painting.  The lower portion sort of looked like roots, so I enhanced that area with some darker paint.  Some of the background forms looked like leaves or I felt it needed something in the space, so I added more leaves.  The flowers are pretty tiny, so it was not too important to get precise detail, but more of a suggestion, and I pushed some of the top left ones back into the painting, by painting them with a blue or greenish wash.  Many of the areas in the background needed to be glazed with several layers of paint, so it took me most of the day to finish this small painting.  It was a very fun exercise of some more negative painting and of course, my favorite thing to paint.....the waterdrops. 

As you can see, there have been a few changes made on the Jaguar and Tiger painting.  Some of the Jaguar was brightened up and the foreground and background was darkened, as well as darkening parts of the Tiger Lilies to set the bottom of the flower back a bit.  I'm going to let the painting sit for a few days as I look at it occasionally to see if it needs any more work.  If I can't think of one more thing to do, I will consider this watercolor painting finished.  This picture is somewhat larger than the first couple.  The painting is much larger than what I'm showing you.  I'm planning on having it in my First Friday watermedia show in May at the Artic Rose Gallery on L Street in Anchorage, so I don't want to give everything away at this time. 

I didn't get to paint at all yesterday, and I feel no day is really complete without some painting.  There was a lot going on though.  I left the house at 6:30 a.m. to drive 75 miles in freezing rain with temperatures at 22 degrees.  It was a real 'white knuckle' drive!  I can't remember when I've been so stressed out.  Needless to say, after a full day in Anchorage, I was pretty wiped out by the time I got home.  The rain had turned to snow by the afternoon, so road conditions didn't improve during the day.  I was happy to arrive home safely.  May your driving days be pleasant and safe and after this winter, I think we are looking forward to spring.

I would love to hear comments....please feel free to contact me. 

I spent most of my time today doing negative painting on the background and foreground of the Jaguar and Tiger painting.  It's a difficult for me to think negatively, since most of the artwork I do is done by painting objects.  However, since I had a background color already established, it only seemed logical to darken the background area and leave leaf and grass forms.  I didn't draw the leaves in, but rather tried to imagine what they would look like by envisioning dark areas in between each leaf.  I also found an area where a very distant lily could be painted on the left side.  The same process was done for the foreground, but here the background was much darker.  It was a very tedious process.  Once I had all the negative painting completed, I realized the leaves were much too bright, so I applied two green washes right over the top of everything darkening the lower portion   which keeps the eye into the painting. 

The weather was pretty grey today, and it was snowing, so I couldn't take the painting outside to capture it on the camera.  It's suppose to continue snowing for the rest of the week, but I will try to get a picture of the completed painting on here as soon as possible.

I started working on the painting of the Jaguar and Tiger Lilies early this morning.  It's very hard to break away from it to even eat lunch, because I'm having so much fun with it.  As I promised yesterday, I took a picture of it before I started.  If you check back from the other day, you should be able to see how different it looks.  For sure, you can see the changes from today.  I started by doing some negative painting in the background to make it look more like a lot of greenery and leaves back there.  Also, the tedious job of painting the purple dots on the lilies was accomplished.  Whew!  I worked some on the eyes, ears and whiskers of the cat too. 

I didn't get around to working on the other two paintings today since I had some other errands to run around town.  I hope to be able to do some work on them tomorrow.  Until then, enjoy your day.

I'm sorry I don't have a progress picture today, but it got dark on me.  Pictures of artwork really don't turn out very well when I take them with a flash or with house lights.  The best method for taking pictures of artwork is to do it on a bright, but cloudy day.  If it's sunny outside, the sun washes everything out the same as a flash does.  I have taken successful pictures in the shade during a very sunny day, and that seems to work pretty well too.  So, I will take a picture of the Jaguar painting before I start working on it tomorrow; then take another one later. 

Let me tell you what I did today first.  I worked on more of the spots and deepened the color in the shadow areas.  I also brightened him up overall, and took out many of the little white spots left behind from the other day.  I also worked on shading and deepened the color of the orange Tiger Lilies.  The are getting some form now and beginning to look more realistic. 

Besides working on the cat and flower painting, I started a painting of tiny white violets and while the background was drying, I started a painting of Turnagain Arm.  So no dust collected on my paints today!

Wow, what a gorgeous day!  The sun was shining onto the new fallen snow and the 100 or so red polls were feeding on black sunflower seeds.  It's a job just to keep the feeders filled up.

This is the second day of painting the "Jaguar & Tigers".  This morning, I took a 'snippet' picture before I started painting again so you could see the progress.  First of all, I started glazing with very thin watercolor on the Tiger Lilies and then here and there on the Jaguar.  I started working on the spots of the cat, until I could not focus any longer.  I also worked on the eyes a little, because I wanted to be able to start seeing the personality.  I still have more work to do on them.  I took another picture at the end of the day.  It should give you an idea of what transpired.  So far, this has been a lot of fun.  I hope you enjoy it!