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@cantpaint52-blog
"Week 11" - Adding the wood glue was a start. In the first picture, you can see that I only mixed one color first to see how it worked, how it dried, how the dry chalk does on it. I'm liking it. Step two will be adding glue to the other colors too and maybe come up with a picture with the five-color color scheme. ...I can see maybe a rainy day in the park or something. ...?
Week 10 - Wellll HELLLOooo! Between Spring Break tripping, birthdays celebrating, garden putting-inning, job shopping and various other sundries, I find myself WAY behind again! (...behind, but not defeated~! Week 10 and 11 are at hand!!)
Sooo.... at the bowling alley last weekend, my buddies Michael and Melissa gave me a birthday gift that came with a challenge. The gift was a package of sidewalk chalk. Michael told me about the sidewalk chalk artists they'd seen and explained how they crushed up the chalk, added it with water and then painted with it. He placed the gift in my hands and said, "This is your challenge". (Thanks M & M!)
That challenge was just the kick in the pants I needed to pick up the pace with my 52 paintings project. I started the next day crushing up the chalk into little tupperware containers (old pliers work fabulously for that, in case you were wondering...) ....then adding water, scooping it up on brushes and 'painting' with it.
My original idea was to try to do something 10K related since Levi and I had just done that for the first time on my Birthday morning. ...Working with chalk is great for ease, but not for detail! ....I found that I needed to think bigger with lots less detail. The texture was a natural for sand, so the beach scape just kind of came. Chalk is unbelievably easy to clean up, and store and work with, but the downside for me is that it dries so much lighter than when it is wet. The top picture is when it's dry, the bottom is immediately after being misted with water. Huh. Interesting.
I still have a lot of chalk, so I will be experimenting with how to keep that wet look, how to get more details out of it and hopefully still have the ease of use, storage and clean up that chalk has provided so far....
Stay tuned for week 11...where we'll add some wood glue to some chalk before spreading it around to see what happens... !
Week 9 - Since everyone seemed to like the RVa-at-night scene, I decided to try another. Fountain Lake at Byrd Park has always been one of my favorite places at night, so I thought I'd give it a try. Lighting is tricky to paint and reflections of lighting seem to be even more so...
After 4 hours of painting, as late last night was becoming 'this morning', I was beginning to walk that fine line between perfecting and ruining this piece, trying to get that darned fountain lighting right. I did the smart thing and stopped to go to bed. I will do a little more work on the lighting...but for now, I am doing the smart thing and let it sit for a while before I touch the brush to it again...! I'll post a follow up when I 'finish' it.
So far, I'm pretty happy with it, though admittedly, a tutorial in painting lighting would have been handy before taking this one on. ...!
Thanks for following my progress. ~w
Week 8 - This week I learned that painting someone with their legs crossed is quite a challenge…!
It was my intent when I started this project to not buy any new paints until I worked my way through the Acrylics I’d purchased for another project. I’ve used a lot of the darker colors over the past couple of weeks, but am getting more anxious to begin using something that’s a little more glossy at the end of the process. These acrylics seem to be a little dull. SO, this week’s painting started with me dumping both remaining bottles of pink onto each half of the paper thinking maybe I’d paint a flower shop or something.
My second step was googling “Playful Colorful Paintings” and came across this painting that had the same type dual-colored background and I really like the figure in it. (Though the painting seemed neither extraordinarily colorful, nor playful…!)
I decided to try replicating the style but changed the details. …what you see is the result. Though in real life, she’d probably be toppling that chair, I’m happy with it!
(UPDATE 2 hours later: OK, so I didn’t stay happy with it…. After I posted the first picture and kept looking at it as well as the painting, she started looking a little bit zombie having a seizure. It became clear that I needed to make some adjustments to remain happy…! The top photo is after making some changes. The bottom is the first painting that I’ve left as a comparison.)
Thanks for following and I’ll see you next week.
Wow, I am seriously late with this one! Been a crazy couple of weeks....
Without further ado: Week 7 - City Skyline
I like Richmond, so I thought I'd paint it. That really is about the depth of Week 7's painting....!
I hope to finish Week 8's tomorrow and then will be all caught up. Thanks for looking.
Week 6. This week's is a little cheesy, but I have to admit, I like it.
The full moon on Monday inspired me... as full moons often do... So, this week I knew that I wanted to paint a picture of the full moon, preferably with trees silhouetted in there somewhere. Other than that, I was open to whatever happened. I started out by placing the jar containing my brushes/water right on top of the paper I was painting in order make that moon. I then drenched all the paper left uncovered with a spray bottle and started painting the dark colored background with the same process as last week with the Blonde (making it a point to leave a horizon of sorts so I could add trees.)
When I took the jar off the paper, I liked some of the water marks it left around the edge, but decided to smear some more water on it to make the general face that I always see when I look at the moon. The trees were next, and from there a road just kind of appeared, as well as the rest of the landscape. Ever since I was little kid riding with my dad on his motorcycle, my dream has been to get a red motorcycle and helmet. ...so I gave myself one in this picture. That's me there coming over the hill, and yes... thanks for noticing, that IS a purple leather jacket....! ha!
I TRASHED the paper I was painting on because it was so wet... you can actually see some of the wet paper dander scattered throughout the night sky.... (!) Once it dries I will shake it off and spray it with a lacquer finish. I look forward to seeing it a little less dull. The stars were fun because I painted them and then decided against them and tried to rub them in. I then decided that I liked them and paint them back. Because they'd been all smudged, they look a little like they're glowing. Nice accidental outcome..!
All in all, I am happy with this one. It makes me smile. Cheese and all...!
See you next week. ~w
I am a little behind my intended schedule for the week, but here it is, none the less!
Week 5 ->Faces
Last week, on one of my Spotify radio stations, I heard a song for the first time that I really liked. When I went to "star" the song (which saves it for later so you can hear again), I saw it was from Matthew Dear's album, Beams. The thumbnail of album art caught my eye. (It is the first of the two pictures above.) Though very few of the features on the face are detailed in the painting, you still (easily) 'get' that it's a face. The rest is just interpreted. I'd been trying to think of something to paint this week and the concept of the loosely painted face was appealing. It seemed highly 'doable'. (...so highly 'doable', that honestly it seemed an easy-out for this busy week's weekly painting!)
I have to confess that ever since I was little, I have favored the art of the painters/sketchers who can pencil, pen or paint something that could be mistaken for a photograph....wow! It's no surprise then that I've come to view painting (and, drawing) faces as something I'm 'not good at' simply because I've never been able to make a face look 'just right'. The dimensions and details of the eyes, nose, mouth and ears are ALWAYS at least a little off. Most every face I've ever attempted to paint/draw has ended up looking pretty darned mutated by the time I finish up with it. No chance of mistaken identity with a photograph has ever been possible, believe me!
Seeing THIS painting changed my way of thinking about the duty of details in a portrait, if only temporarily.... I decided I liked the thought of taking dimensions and details out of the equation when attempting to paint a portrait. Starting out with 'mutated' as the desired end result kind of lowered the bar a little and made "Portrait Painting" seem achievable.
So, I pulled up the album art on Spotify and just started painting, first doing the wispy black background with a lot of water in the mix. Then I painted the first layer of hair. Next, using the album art as a reference, I started painting swatches of color. Though I was not painting clearly-defined features, I watched 'her' expressions/personalities change several times as I changed colors and directions. She went from being heavy to having a huge british-looking nose, to being who she is now. It was fun, and it didn't take very long to paint her either. I'd like to name her something, but for now, she's just The Blond. ~w
ps..now that I've looked at the album cover in larger print with more details showing, I am tempted to mess around with mine and add more...but perhaps I'll just save it for the next one. ..? We'll see.
For Week Four, I allowed myself to just continue with the fast food restaurant. Painting more and more people and details has been fun. I've noticed that for some of them, once I painted the swoosh that makes the sleeves of the outfit, and put some hair on, the rest of the person just kind of comes. Interesting process. ....I may add a few more before I get to the final step of covering it in resin and adding wire 'hanging lights' on the wire that runs across the picture above the "counter". Besides that, I believe that this one has run its course....!
For next week, I am considering aluminum as a canvas... we'll see.
Week Three. I had a lot of fun with this throughout the week (and will continue to). Over the weekend, I made a wire frame to fit a piece of paper from Levi's sketch book. ....then I tried to figure out what I wanted to paint, simply knowing that I wanted to experiment with Tedium this week. The original thought was a football stadium with lots of faces and things going on. Somehow it turned into the overhead view of a fast food restaurant...! I will continue adding people and other details on my camping trip this weekend and hope to get it 'finished' before the weekend's out.
I've learned a lot from doing this week's painting. Painting the floor/ground BEFORE painting the tables/cars was easier than trying to paint the floor/ground around the table/cars I had already painted. Perhaps measuring and squaring things up with a pencil beforehand would help me from skewing things...but I'm not really concerned with it, to be honest. I've always created things that are a little skewed...!
I've actually been looking forward to my 'art time' this week.. adding all the little details is fun. I wish I'd have finished the whole thing before I posted the pics, but I didn't want to fall too far behind schedule in blogging my 52 weeks. I feel certain that you'll see this one again. P.S. the wire frame above the counter in the picture will become the place for 3D 'above counter lights' . Fun..!
So here we are… Week 2! I’ll start with confessing that after I tore the frame off of last week’s picture I liked it a little better, but I’m still not in love with it by any stretch….nor will I ever be, most likely!
This week, on my Wednesday morning walk with my friend Michael (after not painting for 5 1/2 days!), I was sharing with him my frustration with painting. Michael has experience as a painter and listened as we walked. When we got back to his house, he showed me a painting of sea, sky and sailboats that I’ve seen 100 times before…..only this time, we looked at it up close. He showed me how the painter had tediously painted tons of teeny tiny brush strokes of a mixture of paints so that with every brush stroke, if you look closely, you’d see like 4 or 5 different colors swirled. NICE!
I could definitely do that! …tedium has always been something I enjoy. !
I couldn’t wait to try it myself. I opened up all 20 of the little jars of acrylic paint that I’m trying to use up. I then just started pouring different color combos into a lid. I scooped through them with a brush and just started making little dots. I LOVE this way of painting. I am happy with Week Two’s painting using this method. The acrylics worked okay because of the textured board, but I look forward to trying some thicker paints like the ones the painter used in the picture on Michael’s wall.
This could actually end up being fun.!
“Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.” ― Steve Martin,
Week One
I decided that the best way to trick my 3d brain into painting 1d was to prepare a surface that was already a start to a picture. I used the rest of the spackle that was left from painting my walls (the only kind of painting I've ever credited myself with being 'good at'..!) and smeared it all over two pieces of cardboard with my spackle knife, forming 'waves and clouds' on one piece and 'trees and clouds' on another.
I then got out the brushes and acrylic paint I bought last month for a project for a friend, and just started painting. I loved it! Then I kept painting and I hated it. Then I let it dry and painted some more. ....realizing that as much as I love clouds, I could not actually paint clouds. I called my friend who was the encouragement I needed to tackle 52 weeks for myself this year. "Can I send you a picture of this and get your critique?" "No, it doesn't need critiquing, just put it out there." was his answer, in short. (Thanks Michael!)
I 'finished' this picture 15 times....each time with Levi saying "I love it Mom! Now, don't mess with it anymore...!" ...each time I messed with it more. Some times to its detriment, some times to its favor.
My goal was to post my first 52 Weeks post on Thursday: exactly one week after I'd started it by smearing a bunch of spackle on a cardboard scrap. Last night as Levi and I chatted about his choice of colleges (!), I fashioned a 'frame' for it out of aluminum cans and 'sewed' it with copper wire. This morning I covered it all in the remaining resin from a project Levi was working on last week.
The end result is what you see. I love it, I hate it, I am proud of it and I am embarrassed by it all at once. ...but I did it. Phew. I am still not a painter, but I am painting. So there.( :