Portrait Painting

Every week before my watercolor class, I draw my subject from a photo. I draw each area of varying shades. What really carries the day with a picture is the values (although color gets all the credit.) Just like painting ship sails, painting a face is all about painting shadows. I start off with a wash of burnt sienna. Everybody starts off as a light skin tone, and I find burnt sienna applies to everybody, regardless of race. I then paint the shadows, layer after layer. Going gradually darker over about two hours. (Of course the eyes and teeth are left white until I get the skin completely done.)







 

When I've gone as far as I can with the hills and valleys of the cheek bones, chin, neck, etc., I go for the detail work of the eyes, lips and hair. Then I shade the whites of the eyes. If at this point I see that I've gone overboard on the skin tones for the shading, I can remove a layer of the shading by "painting" the shadow with water, maybe giving it a little scrub with a clean brush, and patting it with a paper towel. If I need to take the whole area off, I can do that with a slightly damp Magic Eraser. This really is magic. If I want to put in a highlight where one doesn't currently exist, I can take the Magic Eraser and rub out a circle where I want the cheekbone or forehead to come forward to the viewer.

See if you can name all the famous people in the paintings!

Stained Glass: Fascinating Color and Light

Stained glass is much easier than it looks. I first want to dispel some of the misconceptions:

1. The artist does not make or color the glass.

2. There is no "firing in a kiln". The glass is bought in premade 12" x 12" sheets of colored glass. You select the texture and color you want.

3. You can cut you fingers, but it's not frequent if you handle the glass correctly.

4. Glass is not glued together; it is soldered.

5. Glass can be cheap or it can be kind of pricey.

This is not hard to get good at, but it is one of those things that you have to probably learn in a class to get immediate feedback. The best places to go are either a community college or a private studio with a shop. My teacher is David Riffkind at Kittrell Riffkind in Dallas, http://www.kittrellriffkind.com/ I learned not only how to make cool stuff but how to do it as easily as possible. I also learned how to fix things, because glass isn't always user friendly and you don't want to waste it. Let's go through the process:

SELECT YOUR DESIGN:
A design is basically a jigsaw puzzle of colored pieces of glass that YOU cut out to fit together! So you have to find a design you like, and if you are a beginner, you want to pick a design with less than twenty pieces. I would also suggest no feathers or grapes. Big pieces without excessive curves are good. You could make your own design, but until you know what shapes are doable, I'd go with one already created. Here's a good website for that: http://chantalstainedglass.50megs.com/ I can spend hours or days just trying to narrow down the item I want to make.

SELECT YOUR GLASS:

You can get glass at Hobby Lobby, the internet, and a studio you take lessons from. I like Hobby Lobby's selection and it's reasonable; $5.00 - $10.00 per sheet. If you are just starting out, you will find that certain types of glass are harder to cut (score) than others. Thick is bad. It will likely break away from your cut and you'll wind up having to redo it, throwing away the first piece that wound up cut wrong. I've wound up recutting TONS of pieces that were either thick or heavily textured. Secondly, if you fall in love with an opaque piece and want to use it in your artwork, make all the other pieces you are using opaque. If you want a transparent piece to be your main one, make them all transparent. When there is a light shining through it, the opaque pieces will come across as very dark compared to the transparent pieces.

CUT YOUR PIECES:

You will learn this technique in a class, but basically you have a scorer which is a little tool with a wheel on the end that cuts a line however you guide it, and then you use running pliers to break the glass apart along your cut. After one or two projects, this will be a cinch. You will not cut your fingers as long as you handle the edges with the flat of your finger and watch for slivers. To get rid of the slivers and to shape your pieces a little more exactly so that they fit well, you will use a grinder. This is actually the only thing that costs a little bit of money, maybe $100 at Hobby Lobby. Here's a website for tools: http://store.allstainedglass.com/index.html If you go to a class, the teacher will give you a list of tools to pick up.

FOIL THE PIECES:

Each of your "puzzle pieces" have an edge. What you do at this point to put 3/8" strips of foil tape right on the edge and slightly over the edge onto each side of the piece. Imagine wrapping Scotch tape around the outside edge of a CD case and 1/8 of an inch over the sides. This is just what you do with foil tape and your glass pieces.

SOLDER THE GLASS:

After placing the pieces together as closely as they will fit into the design, you'll wipe flux on the foiled edge that is face up, and then use a soldering iron and solder to attach the pieces to each other. Then you'll flip the project over (it will hold together) and solder the other side. Soldering can be a little bit dangerous, but after the first few projects you will learn to do the following:

(1) Protect your table by using a flat thin piece of plywood to do your work.

(2) Wear jeans when soldering. One blob of dropped solder will burn like heck and you want it to hit your jeans, not your leg.

(3) I've forgotten what I was holding before and tried to guide the soldering iron with my left hand, touching the tip of the iron. Holy Moly. Here's the thing to grab if you get burned (from the People's Pharmacy): soy sauce. I don't know why it works, but by the next day your pain will be minimized.

I hope this gets you excited about trying something new. If you don't see yourself as artistically gifted, it doesn't matter! This falls more into the category of a craft, and within one easy project, you will have enough experience to start beautifying your windows and eventually making cool lamp shades. Glass work takes many hours, especially in the beginning. Your first project might take a couple of weekends. Like I say, pick out something under twenty parts so you can finish it and get some success under your belt.

Watercolor: Watching Paint Dry

Like anything else, watercolor is a discipline that requires practice and patience. Practice, because in the beginning people get frustrated and quit when this is nothing like oil or acrylic. Patience because it's all about timing the layers of paint, not using too much or too little water, and letting the picture paint itself. There's a lot of technique involved, but the thing that makes watercolor look fresh and natural is the fact that the artist is not controlling the medium. For example, once I learned to sit back and let a sky paint itself, my skies took off. Once I learned to not "paint" clouds, waves, leaves, hair, but to let them happen on their own through the drying process of a few well placed strokes, things got looser and much less deliberate.

Watercolor is about timing. For example, before I can go to the next layer of paint, or paint an area adjacent to the one I just worked on, I need to dry that original area. Watercolor on a recently painted area will have a "blooming" effect that you may or may not want. In other words, it waters down the paint you just put down rather than layering. I use a blow dryer and a paper towel all the time. I can finish just about any painting I work on in three hours.

I go to Richland College in Richardson Texas every Wednesday night to Wallace Hughes's class. Wallace is a local artist, and most of what I have learned about painting I learned from him. What I like about his class is we don't learn the "Wallace Hughes Method of Watercolor", we learn our own method. Everybody in the class has a very distinctive style. I can tell by looking at a painting whose it is. One of my classmates and I attended a meeting of the Southwest Watercolor Society a year ago, and I asked him to pick out my painting in the monthly contest. These were paintings of about thirty watercolorists (not our classmates) with their signatures covered with sticky notes. Without the slightest hint he guessed mine on the first try.

I love to enter contests. Sometimes I place, sometimes I don't, but just getting my items on display and listening to the comments while remaining incognito in the crowd is fun. I've been in a few art sales, but have found the Texas heat to be prohibitive. Since I have a day job, I don't think I'm hungry enough to sacrifice my weekends for what might not result in a profitable pastime. For the better known and publicized art shows, you have to have a booth with walls to hang your work. If this is a three day gig, you are looking at booth installation, taking your pieces down at night in case of rain, having a place to store them at night, and a hefty enrollment fee in the $350+ range. Some shows require that you be approved by a committee that will look at your work on slides including a slide of your work up in your booth. So you have to buy a booth, set it up, and take a picture of your work hanging in it just to be vetted. Don't think you want to build your own? $525 starting price. Need help installing (you are an artist after all)? That's another $100. So for $1,000, I might get to be in a show where I can sell a few nice paintings for $200 each. Contests are great. $15 entry fee, drop it off at the library conference room, and show up at the award ceremony to eat really nice party food and maybe wine and cheese!

The key is to keep this as a hobby. I do give away prints of some of my artwork as corporate gifts. This doesn't require a lot of fancy print work (although you always could go that route if you wanted.) I take my paintings to FedEx Kinko's, slap it on the color copier, reduce it to 75%, and print up as many as I want. I get my mats online at http://www.stu-artsupplies.com/ and clear envelopes at http://www.clearenvelopes.com/. So far, these have been well received. Way better than company pens or slick brochures.

Playing in the Clay

I probably have more hobbies than anybody I know. This blog will be part "how to", part experiencing my hobbies with me vicariously, and part pep talk to get people excited about getting out there and picking up my hobbies. This is my first time to blog. I've never even read a blog before. I spend ALL of extra time playing with my hobbies, and we will start with "playing in the clay".

The most common questions I get asked are "Do you own a kiln?" NO way! "Do you own a potter's wheel?" NO! I go down to the local community college and take a continuing education course. I've been taking the same course for four years. For the cost of the tuition, $120 per semester, I get the use of the kiln, the glazes, the wheels, and any input from the instructor I might want. All I buy is the clay and my hand tools.

How did I get started? I started in a high school art class when I was fourteen, but most of my peers started later in life. I quit after college, but picked it up again in my forties. It was like riding a bike. I picked up right where I left off with all my bad habits. "Throwing pots" on a wheel can be the most frustrating hobby in the world. One has to be able to center the clay and keep it that way. But I'm not a perfectionist. I would say 80% of my pots are a little bit off. I've learned to work around it. Nobody is going to get out their ruler and check to see that the rim of your pot is 1/16 of an inch wider on one side than the other side. If you hate throwing after trying it for two months, try handbuilding. Most colleges start you out with handbuilding anyway.

This year has been the year of the casserole dish. Most of my lids are fitting well, and now I am adding all kinds of textures such as sodium silicate (looks like scales) and circular stamps. I thought using them together would be too "busy" but actually it looks great! I'm using stains under the glazes to bring out the textures as much as possible. All of my toys (tools) I find at http://www.sheffield-pottery.com/ or Trinity Ceramic Supply. Last year was the year of the teapot, the year before that spice jar and lamp base, the year before that was the year of the coffee cup and the bowl. It's not that I don't throw other stuff, but I concentrate on that one item more than the others. In October I start taking an overglaze class (China painting.) I will cover it on the blog when I get there.

You can make a little money at this. What kind of prices do I charge? I'd say $35 for a nice casserole dish, $10 - $15 for a coffee cup, $20 for a spice jar. I sold a chess set for $100 once. Basically whatever the market will bear. But here's where I really get a kick: giving them away as gifts. If somebody is having a house warming party, I grab a bowl and throw it in a gift bag and head out the door. Corporate presents? (Yes, I'm a corporate slave.) Nothing goes over better than a homemade gift. Every time that client pours coffee she sees YOUR cup. Need to buy some love from that co-worker that can make or break you? Try a teapot. No more passive aggression. I keep my favorite stuff for myself. Every surface in my house is covered with pottery. The soup and coffee we drink is served in something I made. I never get bored with it.

Pottery started out as my greatest therapy and is still my greatest therapy. When I was fourteen, my sister (17) had ulcerative colitis. She was in the hospital week after week going through surgery, and my parents had to, of course, be with her. Fortunately, my freshman art teacher was a caring person and wanted to be there for me. She'd pick me up at the house on Saturdays and drive me to the high school where we would spend the day on the potters wheel. Through her example, I learned that hobbies can be a wonderful creative outlet for my emotions.

Next week we get into my next hobby: Piano.

Hobby Lady