Leafing Out

The shoreline trees are now beginning to leaf out. Most are still with some flower and only small young leaves.

May 6

May 10

May 16

The trees are waking

The trees are waking! Well, at least that's how it seems. There must have been all kinds of chemical reactions taking place as the trees sensed their environmental brightening and warming that led to swelling buds with flowers and first leaves.

It was a trying winter in these parts, and the change in scenery here is most welcome!

Sassafras Flowers

Maple Samaras

White Birch Catkins

Cinnamon Fern

The Coming of Spring

"Every year we find new cause for happiness in the growing buds, unfolding leaves, and the shaping of blossom. We add to our pleasure in these things by tracing their development. We cannot but wonder at the manifestation of the perfect mechanism that enables a small bud to contain during the winter a complete set of leaves, stems and flowers, and to unpack them in regular order at the coming of Spring."

The Artistic Anatomy of Trees

Their Structure & Treatment in Painting

Rex Vicat Cole

Red Oak

Red Oak

Fiddleheads
Unknown species

Wild Cherry

Mosses
Unknown species

The Artistic Anatomy of Trees is a wonderfully inspirational book. Available inexpensively from Dover via Amazon, read extensive previews on Google Books, or see the original volume on the Internet Archive.

I saw a bee!

There at my doorstep on Sunday morning, I saw my first bee of the season. It was the buzz of that little honey bee that got me flashing back to steamy hot summer days when my yard is alive with bumbles and honeys and other bee species unknown to me.

And it was then I remembered last year's intent to start up some bee beneficial plants. I had my seeds. Alas, I failed to carry through.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not merciless. I do have quite a few bee friendly species. Flowering crabapple, flowering quince, butterfly bush, lemon balm, holly, sweet pepperbush, goldenrod and jewel weed come to mind.

But it's actions that count, right? Ya, right! :-)

Lavender, Thyme and Rosemary seeds
from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion,  Maine.

A small flat, seeded with the above.

There are lots of seeds left over, so I may start up another flat soon. And if something goes wrong, come Spring there's always a trip to the local nursery where I can stock up with ready to plant herbs.

This post is dedicated to my good friend Val Littlewood.

Do spend a bit of time on her Pencil and Leaf blog. At the very least, you have to read this recent post. When you do, I can guarantee with certainty that the next time you see a bee, you will think of Val. And when you do, drop her a line and let her know. She loves a good bee story!

Good Enough Panel Making

What's a panel? To an oil or acrylic painter, it's an alternative to a canvas support. It could be of solid wood, plywood, MDF (medium density fiberboard), copper or even one of the new composites like Dibond. Sometimes canvas is secured to a panel.

A panel, like a canvas, needs a primer base and then a ground to be considered complete. Examples of primers are rabbit skin glue and acrylic dispersion primers (like Golden's GAC 100.) Examples of grounds are gesso, lead paint and acrylic dispersion grounds (like Golden's Gesso.)

Just those two little paragraphs above open to a world full of knowledge, opinions and outright nonsense. I try to wade through it all with the likes of forums within Natural Pigments and AMIEN. I keep up to date with products and research from the web sites of Golden and Gamblin. Museum sites can be tremendous sources of information for art conservation. (See here and here for starters on these stunning resources.)

I've tried linen panels but prefer a smoother surface. I'm not painting on very large supports, the biggest at this time being 16 x 24 inches. These are my surface and size requirements.

Over the past couple of years, I've tried 1/4" "Birch" plywood from the local building supplier, Home Depot. Splits in the veneer surface and localized warping plagued me.

Home Depot also offers MDF and I've been, until recently, working with their 1/8" MDF. I did find slight warping apparent in sizes over 12 inches.

I have settled on 1/4" MDF. No warping over a span of two feet.

To prepare my panels, I first cut to size on my table saw. Then over the course of a week or so, I will apply two coats of Golden GAC 100 to all sides. Then it's a coat or two of Golden's Gesso all around with a couple more layers for the front. I then let the panels sit for a week or so to dry more completely.

This little process is built upon the product information on Golden's site. It can possibly change over time so I visit regularly. My requests for technical support with Golden's products are always well answered. I like 'em!

You see, my goal here has been to establish a process that I'm comfortable working through and that I feel provides good protection for a painting's future. My standardized process feels "good enough" for me. I like that!

I do as some point want to explore MDFs. Are they all the same? Do some fit better with GAC 100? Perhaps I should scuff up the panel first?

I might want to explore grounds as well. Do I want to use a lead ground instead of acrylic? Will rolling acrylic gesso provide a smoother surface than a brush?

One could easily become lost in the technical abyss and never come out. I do have experience with that phenomenon. I think that's why my "good enough" statement is key here. I may be able to make incremental improvements in my panels but certainly don't need to delay painting. It's good enough!

(See my earlier posts on panel making here and here.)

Another gift painting

Here's another little painting I recently gave to a friend. It was my first try at a Luis Melendez copy, just a little bit and rather incomplete at that.

A small piece of a Melendez
MDF panel
8 x 10 inches

I have a second copy that's more complete and a third just getting underway that's a full size version. We'll take  peeks at those later in the contexts of panel making and Old Master copying.

Meet Junior

In December I began this painting of a friend's cat, Junior. At that time, all I had was a picture in that pose on a windowsill. I kind of made up the rest as I went along! So naturally, lots of changes that led to lots of changes. :-)

Junior taught me that planning is important. I've some new work that I'm trying to hold in step by step fashion. It's hard. I want to dwell on the details here, and then there! And then...

So more on that later. For now, here's Junior! He's a very sweet cat! :-)

Junior
Linen on panel
8 x 10 inches

Note: This image is somewhat oversaturated and reading too contrasty. Since this photo, I've stopped using my iPhone 5 and gone back to the Canon with raw files for art work photos. But the iPhone was so handy...

Bird Art Books

My current bird art books, for instruction and inspiration. Between these books and my art work I'm developing a greater awareness of birds. I'm now more likely to hear their songs and notice movement in trees.

Does one really need to know anatomy to draw birds? All three books cover basic anatomy--a featherless body, feather groups, beak and eye position, and feet details. Feather groups work for me and I'll present them once I get my "coverts" in order.

Birds with ink

I had an introduction to the dip pen during one of my Cornell courses. At the time, I found no pleasure with that out of control little springy thing. Nib stuck in paper. Nib stuck in floor. Nib stuck in hand. Never mind the ink blotches and spills.

I recently had a real urge to give it another go. I'm using a Hunt 108 crowquill with Higgins Black India ink. It's amazing the range of line width allowed by this nib. The paper is Strathmore Drawing Medium.

My thought was to develop an expressive line, one that could describe a real live bird and hopefully have the sense of not just a bird, but this bird.

Well, it will take practice to modulate the line width and ink flow! What I found so very cool was that I could develop a beak top in a single stroke. The possibilities...

I love this pose taken from a recent photo. There will be more of this little one.

White Breasted Nuthatch

Another favorite! They have the biggest blackest eyes! And that tuft, forever in motion.

Tufted Titmouse

Bird Art

Seemingly out of nowhere came an interest in drawing birds! Here are a few days of my first sketches. Many are from direct observation at my feeders. A few are copy work from b/w printouts of photos. I like using photos to capture interesting poses and help me practice accuracy.

Cleaning brushes

Some days I paint a little, break a little, and repeat. I get used to leaving my brushes out. And then I forget to clean them.

I've put off cleaning the most recent oversight for some time. I tried a soak in Gamsol but nothing doing. Spike oil would cut the dried paint but it's expensive stuff for cleaning brushes.

I heard that Murphy's would work so I put it up against the mighty turpentine, two brushes for each. The turpentine--fast, powerful, and full of toxic warnings--cleared up two brushes in 30 minutes or so. Murphy's took a few hours with its two but achieved the same results as turpentine! I can't find a warning of any kind on this product and its smell reminds me of lemon balm. Its MSDS doesn't seem to show any out of the ordinary cautions.

So unless I'm in a real hurry, and I can't imagine why, it's Murphy's for me! :-)

Inspired by an onion

In a painting from a few months back I found joy and frustration. I liked what I was doing with the light but felt some things were wrong. After repeated deconstructions, it became clear that I failed to show enough details, enough clues, to properly identify the sphere as an onion. Now, I didn't want to take this to photorealism or high botanical accuracy but I did want it to read as a vegetable. (I do have other issues to get to with this painting. We'll just take them one by one.)

I realized that if I couldn't properly draw an onion with good detail, how could I model one in paint with a slightly loose style? I don't think "loose" is about painting quickly and willy-nilly but actually a very controlled effect by an artist who know the details and knows how much detail can be left out.

I'm reading "Drawing From Observation" by Brian Curtis. It's bringing me to ponder what I see versus what I think I see. I think this is a fascinating subject and I'll get into more details in upcoming posts as I work further into the book's exercises.

For now, here are a couple of quotes from Chapter 3, Mechanics, that I find intriguing:

"Fluctuating line is the single most crucial element for establishing the overall level of sensitivity in a drawing."

"Every mark that you make needs to be in constant flux to embody the restless energy and tension that underlie the functioning of our biological organism and, more specifically, our perceptual experience."

So for now I am going to freely play with line. And onions. This won't get my onion properly painted today or even next week. But that's okay. There's no rush.

Here's one with a blunted 2B.  Where is my sandpaper...

"A line is a dot that went for a walk." 

                 Paul Klee  1879-1940