Big cat watercolor series

Right now I am slowly starting a big cat series of watercolors. My goal is to use a limited palette mostly of complementary colors.

First was my tiger. I used quinacridone sienna for my orange and the complement of Prussian blue. I also used quinacridone burnt orange for a few of the shadows and neutral tint for the stripes. 

My second was a lion. I used quinacridone gold for the yellow and perylene violet as my complementary color for the shadows. I discovered that when mixed together they create a wonderful brown. I also used manganese blue hue for the sky, mixed with the quinacridone gold to make my green. 

As for the paper I am using Stephen Quiller paper made by Jack Richeson.  it is a wonderful 100% cotton rag paper that has both an internal and external sizing. The external sizing makes the paper wonderful for lifting techniques however it does not stand up to scrubbing very well as it is so soft it has a tendency to pull up on you. 

Read More

My Halloween Triad.

Me and all of the other employees that worked in the Daniel Smith Stores were asked to choose a holiday theme triad, create line art for the triad and paint a version using the triad colors.  For those of you who do not know, Triads are set of three watercolors that Daniel Smith Artist Materials offers. There is the basic color primary triad and the secondary color triad. There are also special limited edition triads. The limited edition triads are often around a theme such as a Holiday or just an idea for a painting. Here are the current limited edition triads to give you an idea.

Last year I created the Frankenstein Triad, I got to choose my own colors which was a green, a purple, and a black. This year I did not get to make my own, I had to choose from triads that we had previously sold. Working part time has its benefits and downsides. This is one of the downsides. I was one of the last to choose, so I was limited to what I got to do.

I had gotten the Transylvania Triad. It offers French Ultramarine, Indigo and Organic Vermillion. Two blues and a red. A remarkably limited palette. The original featured artwork of a woman vampire wearing a Victorian era dress done in blue with red for the blood on and near her fangs. Sadly I do not have the original artwork. I knew I wanted to do something different, I choose to do Bram's Castle in Transylvania. I however was not able to get my original artwork back due to it being used to for multiple marketing purposes.

It was a challenge and I felt it came out very good. I used the vermillion for the roof and ultramarine for the castle walls. The sky was painted with a mixture of vermillion and ultramarine. Finally the trees below were done with indigo and a hint of vermillion here and there to soften the trees further back.

I do however have an image of the sets I was able to produce for the store.

Read More

Watercolor palette part two

I am a firm believer in getting to know how the pigments in my palette work together. This means mixing all the colors together to see what they do. I highly recommend that every artist do this. Wether you are a watercolorist, acrylic or oil painter. It's basic color theory. 

Since I have 14 colors drew a 15 by 15 grid. I then used masking fluid to separate the squares. The top and left column are the pure colors. Every other square is a mixture of those colors. This gives an artist an idea of how their colors mix together. Of course this is only two colors mixed together. 

See the result below. 

Read More

Watercolor palette

Senior level classes are kicking my butt. I made the decision to do more art. The easiest way for me to do so, is to do watercolor sketches.

Over the past year I have been playing with a lot of colors to define my palette. I use only Single pigment non-granulating, transparent colors because I like glazing, with a high degree of lightfastness. I am limiting my palette to only 14 colors. My palette can be separated into a basic mixing palette and a secondary convience palette. In addition I should state that I only use Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors.

Below is my travel palette of 14 colors.
 

My mixing colors consist of the basic warm / cool color theory. Which means that there is a warm and cool version of the primaries. 

Warm red = anthraquinoid scarlet (a orangey red much like cad red light or vermillion.)

Cool red = anthraquinoid red (a dark purple red, very close to the traditionally used Alizarin. Remember Alizarin is not very lightfast and permanent Alizarin is a mixture of multiple pigments)
Warm yellow = new gamboge. (very similar to Indian yellow but more lightfast and Cad yellow deep or Hansa yellow deep but more transparent.

Cool yellow = Lemon yellow (I prefer this over Hansa yellow light or Cad Yellow Light cause it is more transparent.)

Warm blue = indanthrone blue. (a great warm blue. Phthalo Blue Red shade is actually a better option but phthalo is very high staining and I prefer to use a lower staining pigment)

Cool blue = Prussian blue (a nice classic cool blue shade. Ultramarine is a semi-transparent so I did not use it and again Phthalo Blue Green Shade is very high staining.)

Neutral tint (great for mixing with other colors to darken them or to just use as a gray scale or black.)
 

My secondary colors are:

Orange = quinacridone sienna (the only transparent orange I like. It is more the color of an actual orange. Now Winsor and Newton's New limited edition Transparent Orange is very beautiful color. However after some research I discovered it is very fugitive and This I replaced it with Quin Sienna.)

Violet = perylene violet (this is just a wonderful dark purple color.)

Green = diopside genuine (the only primatec from Daniel Smith I use and it has a very low granulation rate. Most of the other greens I find are just not good enough or not transparent enough or multiple pigments, plus I find I can mix most greens.)
 

I do not like to use actual Browns for my earth tones. I have also found there are some great colors to mix together, mostly complimentary colors that make some great browns.

Quinacridone gold is a good replacement for raw sienna or yellow ochre. Especially Windsor and Newton's raw sienna.

Quinacridone burnt orange is a great earthy sienna color with yes a slight orange color to it. it works great for fall foliage, trees or just shadows in general.

Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet is a great replacement for burnt sienna. In fact it is the same pigment in winsor and Newton's brown madder. It has a nice red undertone.
 

Finally no palette is complete without cerulean blue. Since cerulean granulates I choose manganese blue hue instead. This is my one and only true convience color. I use it very sparingly as it is technically a shade of phthalo blue and thus stains a lot. I have also been playing with the idea of using winsor and newton's new limited sapphire phthalo blue but it would mean using more water to get it to be a lighter color.

I am hoping to start posting more watercolor sketches up soon. Until then happy painting. 

Read More

Sorta like Rothko

In addition to my printmaking and book making experiments, I like to paint. I took a class at AIS about Art and Design. It basically covered the Modernist period up to about the 80s. I used to think people like Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko were hacks. Once I understood the art and what they were trying to accomplish, it really spoke to me. I actually really liked the movement and it has been a major source of inspiration for me. Sadly I have not had a lot of time to do any art or anything lately. Its my Senior Year in school so I keep busy with all of that.

Anyways, I am going to speak a little bit about my color field experiments and how I go about creating them.

My latest work which I just finished and took me about 9 months to do. It only took me so long because I never had the time to work on it. The work acrylic and is 3 foot by 5 foot. It is one of my largest paintings to date.

I always stretch my own canvas for the most part. So after I made my canvas, gessoed and sanded it down I, created my first glaze. I used only 3 colors for my painting, and my first glaze is Quinacridone Gold.

To make my glazes I use Golden's Glazing Medium, it comes in either gloss or satin. I prefer the satin finish because I learned the hard way that gloss is a pain in the butt. When ever I tried to have something glossy photographed I would get lots of glare. So I stay away from glossy stuff. I mix a lot of medium to paint I do about 10 parts medium to 1 part paint. I don't really measure it out so I just eyeball it, so I may be using more medium than 10:1.

The glazing finish is sorta like regular matte medium. The difference is that the medium is a little bit more fluid (not much more) and dries much slower. It may also have some kind of flow releaser in it too. I think the glazing liquid is really just thinner medium, with lots of retarder and some flow releaser. However I have yet to find a satin medium anywhere besides this one. It even works great as a regular medium when mixed 1:1.

 

I start out with using a very thin glaze of Quinacridone Gold over the whole canvas. I then start to slowly build up certain areas with multiple glazes of Quinacridone Gold. Some areas have more depth than others.

 

My canvas sat in this state for close to 4 months. (for about 2 1/2 months it say just stretched)  would look at it everyday in my room and I was falling in love with just the Gold. It is one reason it took me so long to complete this painting. I wrestled with the idea of adding more colors as I had originally planned. I eventually got past just leaving it one color and added more.

 

I would test colors on paper and on test canvas to see how the colors would work before I went any further.

 

Here I am choosing some colors. I was planning on only using Quinacridone pigments because they are very transparent. 

Here is a test of the said colors. I kept putting glazes on top of glazes to see how they would layer on top of each other. I am glad I did this because I was planning on using Burnt Orange and Burnt Scarlet, but after seeing how they layered I was not happy with the result. I ended up using Quinacridone Sienna and Anthraquinoid red (not pictured). I actually really like the way Alizarin Crimson looked better, but since its a very fugitive color I choose some the other.

Here is my Second glaze of Quinacridone Sienna. I love how orange it looks compared to the Quinacridone Burnt Orange in the glaze. Although Rothko is a major inspiration for me, I refuse to do rectangles of colors like he did. I want to do something different something that feels a little bit more organic. I do not think too hard on where to put things, I just put them down as I feel they should go.

 

 

Here is the painting with the red added on top of the sienna.

 

I always varnish my paintings. Much like my choice in medium I like satin finishes. For acrylic paintings I use Golden's Polymer UV Satin Varnish. I use this because it cleans up with basically water. The varnish comes pretty thick and in order to use it I needed to thin it down with water. I use 1 cup water and 1/4 cup of varnish. Golden makes the varnish thick because if it were thinner the UV particles would not stay suspended in the solution. Do not let the thinned down varnish sit for more than a few days, because you will see the varnish start to separate and it is ruined at that point. The other thing is The varnish is removable with common household ammonia. Ammonia should also be used to clean out your varnish brush because if just water and soap are use it will leave the brush stiff. This still happens to me a little bit when I use ammonia to clean the brush but it is not that bad. If the brush does go stiff just rinse it out with ammonia and water and it will become soft again.

 

 

Read More

An experiment in paper marbling

Its been about a month since my last update. School got pretty hectic for me.

For a while now I wanted to try my hand at paper marbling. I picked up a paper marbling kit by Jacquard Products. I got mine at Daniel Smith of course, but by the time of this writing they no longer carry the product so you will have to look online for it someplace else. It retailed from them for about $15.00.

Supply list:

• Jacquard Kit
• Paints (red, blue, yellow, green, white, black)
• Methocel
• Alum
• Instructions
• Acrylic Paint (choose your colors)
• Masa paper
• 1 gallon Bucket with a lid.
• Water Container
• Little containers for mixing paint (I used a plastic cupcake pallet)
• Oxgall Liquid
• Sponge
• Stir stick (I used a chop stick)
• News paper
• Clothes hangers (for hanging paper to dry)
• Masterson Acrylic Pallet (any kind of large flat pan will work)
• Eye dropper
• Rake (I used a modified comb)

Steps:

 

1. I pretty much followed the Jacquard instructions. I modified them a little bit. I mixed 2 TBS of the methocel with 1/2 gallon of hot tap water from the faucet. I put this into the 1 Gallon Container. I then mixed it up using a hand-held mixer. You can use a blender or a spoon, you just want to make sure its mixed up properly. Methocel is basically food safe, so its non-toxic. You can wash it down the drain, just use plenty of water. After wards I put the methocel mixture into the fridge over night. I did this before hand just because.
   
2. I then mixed the alum with hot water from the tap. The instructions didn't tell me how much for paper, only for cloth. I sorta guessed at it. I used about 1-2 TBS per pint of water.
3. I took 1 sheet of Masa paper and tore it down into quarters. I put 2 with the textured side up and 2 with the smooth side up. I am doing this because I am unsure which site will print best.
4. I soaked a sponge with the alum solution, I then ran the sponge over top surface of the Masa paper. You only need to do the top side, if you do get some on the back its not a big deal. The alum solution is used to make the paint stick to the paper better. Its like a primer or gesso for marbling.
   
5. I then hung the Masa paper up to dry. I made sure that I hung 2 sheets of paper with the smooth side up and the smooth side down. remember I am testing the paper to see how it reacts with the surface.
   
6. I took the methocel solution from the fridge (I actually waited an hour to let it warm up a little) and poured the whole thing into the Masterson pallet. I choose this pallet cause I had one handy. If you have a butcher tray that will work or any tray that is deep enough to hold the solution it is fine. Now the methocel solution will be thicker than water, this is normal.
   
7. After I got the solution poured and my paper was dry. I shook up the bottles of the paint Jacquard provided in their kit. I gently squeezed the bottles so a drop would appear on the surface of the methocel solution. You will notice that the paint will expand and move outwards. 
   
   
   
8. The first test was dropping in different colors (I used the red first, and then added yellow and blue. I noticed that the yellow and blue did not expand like the red did) and moving a chop stick around in a pattern. I first went up and down working my way from right to left, and then I went right to left working from the top to the bottom.
   
9. I then laid the paper down on the paint starting with one corner first then gently lowering the other corner down.
   
10. After that I grabbed the edge of the paper closest to me, and pulled it towards me. The whole time I made sure to scrap the bottom of the paper against the edge of the Masterson pallet. This will get all the methocel gunk off of the paper. Do not worry, it will not hurt the design.
    
11. I would then take strips of newspaper and draw it across the top of the methocel solution. This is to clean up the residue paint and to break the surface tension. I did this a few time in between each attempt.
1. At this point I noticed that the paint was sinking into the solution. I thought it was ruined, but I told myself I would keep trying to see what happened. I ended up pouring the mixture back into the bucket mixing everything together and pouring everything back into the pallet. That is why the solution looks green. It actually didn't hurt the process.
12. I then hung the paper on clothes hangers again to let it dry.
    
13. After the first attempt I tried a few other ways.
1. I dropped the paint into the solution and then in the middle of the drop used oxgall liquid. The oxgall liquid would create little rings by pushing the paint to the outside of the ring. I then also moved a stir stick around to create a pattern.
   
2. I tried the comb this time. I moved it from the left to the right and then from the top to the bottom.
3. This time also tried the comb again, but this time I mixed my own paints. (I was a little unhappy with the Jacquard paints.) I used a little bit of heavy body acrylic paints and about 2 tsp of water and mixed it all up together. I would use a eyedropper to drop paints onto the surface, and then ran the comb through them.
   
   

My thoughts:

• The paints in the Jacquard kit sucked. They were not very good, I had better results mixing my own. I think the problem was their consistency, some were thicker than others and wouldn't spread out very well. When I made my own they spread out very well. I was unhappy with the blue I used, it became to light. I would either use more paint (which may effect how it works or use a more opaque pigment. I used Cobalt Blue from Daniel Smith. I also used their Cad Orange Hue and Cad Yellow Deep Hue.)
• I think I may try Golden's Liquid Acrylics and see how they work. Maybe even their air brush colors since the are thinner.
• The red in the Jacquard Kit was over powering and became too pink for my liking. Again this is due to the quality of the paints. I think they cheaped out on them.
• The modified comb was not the best tool to use. It was too small. I would make my own with nails and wood.
• My methocel solution turned green on me. I think this is due to me over working the Jacquard paints on my first attempt. I noticed the other colors sorta sunk into the methocel when I used the comb or chopstick, but that is probably cause I overworked it, trying to get my designs. It may also be a little bit more beneficial to add a little bit more methocel to the solution, but I doubt it. When I emptied the bucket, there was a decent amount of really thick solution that sunk to the bottom and stayed there.
• I discovered that either side of the Masa worked good. I personally like the smooth side better. everything just looks a little bit cleaner.
• I think that if this was done with Oil Paints it might be easier. Since oil and water do not mix.

My First Attempt. It turned out decent.

 

 I was really unhappy with my Second attempt using Oxgall Liquid. I really think it was cause of the paints. They didn't spread out very well.

 

My 3rd attempt, was using the comb. It worked out decent, but I was still unhappy with how much I had to work at the design. Again this is a paint issue.

 

My 4th attempt was by far my favorite. This one I mixed my own paints. I was a little unhappy with the way the blue turned out but that is I think a pigment issue. Its just the way it ended working.

 

Read More

Book review

I am going to review "Book Art Studio Handbook" by Stacie Dolin and Amy Lapidow.

First off this is a new book. A very new book. The publication date is 2013. We just recently started to carry it at Daniel Smith's Seattle SODO location.

This is the first new book binding book that I bought that I think is good. Most of the other books I have read that are recent (with in the last 10 years) are more geared towards creating what I consider crafty books.

The Book Art Studio Handbook has some really great projects in it. Such as the french box, book in a box, slip cases and travel journals. That is just a few of the projects in the book.

One of the things I dislike about this book that I feel its not good for the beginner. I feel like it is meant more for the bookbinder that knows what they are doing and is looking for some new projects, even though in the introduction it they state the book is to get people started bookbinding using the minimum equipment. It falls short in explaining how to build signatures and sew them together. Its not bad, but its just not excellent. It more or less glances over them. Plus the book calls signatures, text blocks instead of signatures. They do mention that text blocks can be called signatures but I feel that it can be confusing since they are not using what I consider a industry term.

What I do like about it, is that it explains a lot of things and makes it very easy for the beginner to understand. The explanation of the materials is great such as modifying your bone folder. They even tell you how to create a punch trough. However, like I mentioned before, I feel the part on sewing the signatures falls just a little bit flat.

Over all I would rate Book Art Studio Handbook, 4 out of 5 stars or a solid B+.

Today I got some other books from the Seattle Public Library. I plan on reviewing them too. some of them are older books and some pretty recent.

1. Bookbinding: A Step By Step Guide by Kathy Abbott (2010)
2. Bookbinding Techniques and Projects by Josep Cambras (2007)
3. Basic Bookbinding by A.W. Lewisv (1957)
4. Hand Bookbinding: A Manual of Instruction by Aldren A. Watson
5. A Pictoral Manual of Book Binding by Manly Banister (1958)

I also want to start trying to make my own marbled paper. So I got a book about it.

1. Making Your Own Marbled and Decorated Papers by Jane H. Reese

Read More