Back at the Easel Again
Waiting for my newest clay pieces to dry, I was moved to work on a couple of paintings. Here it is already a third of the way through April, and I only have 2 paintings completed this year to date. This past week I was able to complete another two that I’m posting here now. If you follow me on FB you’ve already seen them.
As a point of reference, in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, I made 85 paintings. Nothing else to do, really, so I threw myself into painting and enjoyed every moment of it.
In 2021 I made 61. That summer was when I got my pottery studio up and running. It was quite distracting! In a very good way. It’s a separate building we put up years ago that was intended to be a music studio for the BLP and me, but we never really used it for that. It remained easier to just practice with our band in the living room. It still is. So when a friend of mine traded her pottery wheel for one of my paintings, we just ran with it. We scoured Craigslist for people wanting to get rid of kilns and found two. One of them is electric and I use it for all my clay firing. The other, we configured to run on propane. It sits outside the pottery studio, and we use that for “raku” firing.
But didn’t I say this post would be about painting?
See how distracted I get when it comes to clay?
Back to the topic at hand…
There’s this “thing” that happens with painting. My combination office/art studio is always set up and ready to go. The lovely and evocative aroma of oil paints and solvents is always there. I teach my classes online from that room, do all my design work for ceramics and other art activities- printmaking, drawing, video editing, and a lot more stuff for the art gallery I belong to. Eventually, the idea for a painting becomes harder and harder to put aside, and grows into an actual yearning to make it happen. It feels very much the same as each time I was expecting a child, as the delivery dates drew closer, that feeling of wanting and needing to hold that baby in my arms.
When it becomes irresistible, I make it happen.
The first image below comes from some photo references I took last July in Port Townsend, Washington. I usually have a month-long annual art show at a venue there each summer, and setting up the show requires me to be there early in the morning. The light and marine layer drew me in. Port Townsend has been an inspiration for probably over 20 paintings over the last several years. Between the waterfront and ships, the Victorian era buildings on the main street, and Fort Worden, there is always something that catches my attention.
Serene Morning, Port Townsend
Oil on board
10″ x 8″
This next image is based on many photographs I’ve taken of Sinclair Inlet and Rich Passage on the Puget Sound. I live close to these places and have many opportunities to see them at different times of the day all year round. It’s never the same twice.
Soft Sunrise
Oil on board
12″ x 24″
PS The featured image for this post, The Schooner Merrie Ellen, was painted in the summer of 2019. I included it here because it is another Port Townsend painting. One of my favorites, actually. I love the contrast between the elegant (and pink!!!) Merrie Ellen and the clunky container ship in the background, waiting for her turn to dock in Seattle.
04/11/2023 @ 9:12 am
You’re getting so good at painting water. I esp like the reflections under the boat in this new one. I’m also incredulous at your output– 85 paintings in a year! Last year, eight drawings for me, and that’s every morning in the studio. The one on the table now will come in over 150 hours. Sometime I wish I was speedier, but it is lovely stroking paper at 3 mph. There are French grape skins in it, and the bigger challenge is detouring around them, like highway roadwork.
Ceramics seems to keep things fresh for you. There’s the thing you’ve mastered and the thing where you still figure things out. I wonder what it might be like for you to paint an octopus? A 2D vs 3D experience?
04/11/2023 @ 12:54 pm
Hi Suzanne! Water is something I love to paint. It’s so alive! Every time I do a water scene, there is the ever present challenge to capture what I see, and I welcome it.
I think you’re right about how ceramics is helping me keep things fresh.
And, I’m about to embark on a new experiment in printmaking. I’ve done metal plate etching, monoprinting on Plexiglas, soft block and linoleum block printing (did a 36″ x 36″ block for a Wayzgoose festival a few years back) and now I’m going to take a class in Japanese wood block printing.
I’m really excited to learn this process!
My subject is going to be a raven. I think it will be a two-color print. Since I’m not a beginner, and I’m fast (as you noted!) and the instructor knows me, I can go at my own pace.
Wow, you. 150 + hours on a drawing! I admire your patience and persistence. Of course, the finished images are meticulous and so beautiful. I love how there is always a subtext inside your drawings- something your critters are doing or interacting with. It’s really what makes them spectacular instead of just highly detailed studies. They ain’t boring!!!
It’s funny that you mentioned a 2D octopus. I’ve been thinking about that but I’m not ready yet. Too much fun making all those wiggly tentacles and deciding how they will sit on each new piece of ceramics.
This morning I just took 6 new octo pieces out of the kiln after bisque firing, and everyone survived.
Today, I will be applying glaze and hope to fire again in a few days.
04/11/2023 @ 4:55 pm
Oooooooooo, printmaking! That was my initial discipline back in art school. Etching. Drypoint. I’ve thought about revisiting it, but let stupid reasons stop me. All that expensive paper. All those prints stuffing the flat files and jamming the drawers. Where to find an etching press. Keep us posted, here, or IG. You might inspire me to ditch the excuses.
Thank you for the lovely words about my drawings. Sometimes I think what inspires an image is too weird, and say nothing. If a viewer sees a vegetarian predator in a piece of fierce raisin bread, then they’re a friend for life.
I hear you abt the octopi. I’ve thought about putting one in a drawing, or a few tentacles at least, but am afraid they’d be too hard. All those little suckers, camouflage too. Yikes.
04/12/2023 @ 12:57 pm
Every new discipline is a brand-new opportunity to buy ART MATERIALS!!!!
All that lovely potential!
In art school, we were encouraged to use only acrylic paints, so that’s what I learned to do first. (Nowadays, OC doesn’t even allow the use of oil paints in their painting classes due to the potentially toxic nature of many of the mediums. Even with watercolor and acrylic paints, all of the water for painting and clean-up goes into a toxic-waste barrel. nothing down the sinks.)
Switching to oils in 2016 was a revelation.
Storage of my artwork is definitely an issue. It’s all over the walls of our house. Tom built me a shelving unit in an alcove in my bedroom, floor to ceiling, that holds about 100 or so paintings. There are shelves in my painting studio and walls covered with art there too. There are even a few in the pottery! I keep some at the gallery.
One of my fellow artists, in his 80s and painting all his life, actually rents a storage unit and tells me it’s full.
Yikes.
04/12/2023 @ 3:40 pm
Rose, new art supplies!!! Tempting. I’d rather go to an art supply store than anywhere. There’s a place in NYC, Talas, that sells bookbinding equipment, handmade papers, tools, archiving and conservation materials, brushes, adhesives you never knew existed, twenty different kinds of gold leaf. Whenever I go there, the whole day disappears. It’s where I discovered my grizzled French papermaker, who makes printmaking papers, as well as drawing. One of his sheets costs about 15 euros, easy to rationalize for a 100 hour drawing, harder for an edition of prints.
My college= same with oil-based paints. There’s one classroom where oils are permitted, a fifteen minute walk across campus, used by multiple majors. Students who choose to work in oil have to 1. succeed in getting into a class that’s typically waitlisted four minutes after registration opens, then 2. try to get in the room when no classes are scheduled to make their paintings. Most just give up. The college has an annual painting competition for graduating seniors, with a juicy cash award (abt $13K this year) and an oil painter almost always wins it. Because, oils.
Paper is easier to store than canvases, but still, the older I get, the more piles. Piles on piles. I’m thinking of giving away my studio couch to make more room. What do you do with space hogging ceramics? I have a two friends, a couple–both artists, so double the production–who rent a storage unit like your friend. Their unit costs the same as my first apartment!
All griping aside, I wouldn’t want to do anything else, would you? 🙂
Can’t wait to see the prints!
04/14/2023 @ 12:34 pm
Oh I know the many temptations of art supply stores for sure. Even when I had barely enough money to cover rent and food, all my spare pennies went to art supplies. I was pretty skinny in those days. Now I’ve got what the BLP sweetly calls “happy fat” and can afford to purchase all my art supplies (within reason, of course) through the funds I get selling art.
Going to an art store is heaven. I used to take the BLP but it’s really better if I go alone. He gets “antsy” after a half hour, and I’m never ready to leave that soon. 🙂
04/15/2023 @ 2:48 pm
Lol about antsy hub 🙂 I’ve taken whole drawing classes to Dick Blick on field trips. We roam around the aisles drooling as students show everyone else a favorite item, plus a brief summary why. Antsy? We avg. 3 hours and nobody leaves empty-handed.
Two beloved items that totally changed my art life (almost didn’t get because $$$$$). On left: solid aluminum Olfa knife (looks new, but is fifteen yrs old) On right: Teflon coated Japanese scissors, $42.00, but OMG OMG OMG–do I ever use any of my other regular scissors? No.
What’s a Rose fave?
04/15/2023 @ 3:10 pm
Your last comment is not letting me reply there.
My fave tool is an X-Acto knife that I only use with the gold “z” style blades. They are extra sharp and last a good long time. I use it almost every day, and have for at least a dozen years.
What I’m hoping will be my NEW fave is a clay slab roller. It cost a fekking fortune but the BLP paid for half of it (early BD present!!!) It’s a custom order and will take about 8 weeks to get to me.
Since most of what I do in clay is slab-based, I expect to get a lot of use out of it. Will let you know how it goes!
I also like decent paintbrushes but I’m pretty hard on them so I don’t get really expensive ones. I’ve tried them but they don’t last too much longer than the mid-range so the expense is not warranted. The bargain brands don’t last at all, though.
04/15/2023 @ 4:14 pm
“My fave tool is an X-Acto knife that I only use with the gold “z” style blades”
What are gold Z style blades? They sound yummy! A student in the book class had a medical scalpel, the sharpest scariest cutting tool I’ve ever used. You’d draw it along the paper or board thinking you hadn’t made a deep enough cut, go back to cut again, and the whole thing would just just fall open down to the mat. There was a special tool that you used to change the blade so that you didn’t have to touch it. My guess is if you cut yourself, you’d not feel it until you saw your finger on the floor.
What is a slab roller? Is it like an intaglio press, for clay? It sounds like a great investment for you. Expensive equipment can be so worth it. I sprang for a book press years ago, and it’s more than paid for itself, but it’s a space beast and no fun to move. Talas sells a special forty dollar dust brush to remove dust buildup. I suppose pristine dustless-ness is an important consideration for some artists, but an old house painting brush seems to work fine. A former TA sent me a photo where she’d written “no brush” in the dust on her book press, like people write on dirty cars, and I made it my desktop photo for laughs this bleak old winter.
Here’s my oldest and maybe most beloved tool, much less expensive than teflon Japanese scissors, next to my solid brass pencil sharpener, both from c1972 art school days. Pencils come and go, but old buddies remain. Note ‘improved’ contemporary version next to the original….so not the same!!
04/15/2023 @ 10:25 pm
Love love love seeing your beautiful old tools!
Here’s a pic of my favorite pencil sharpener. It makes the longest sharpest points and I just adore it. Plus it’s green!
And here are pics of the blades I like and the Blick ad for the slab roller I’m getting.
A slab roller squishes clay between two rollers and makes a nice flat compressed slab. The advantage of two rollers (rather than one) is that it compresses the clay evenly and so less chance of warping when stuff dries/is fired.
This particular model is “portable” meaning it is small enough to fit in the pottery shed and has all the features of a larger one.
04/16/2023 @ 10:20 am
Look at us with the vintage pencil sharpeners! Mine is a Panasonic Point-o-Matic, which sounds so….old.
Pencil sharpening is an art, like sharpening chisel blades. I use pencils all the way down, so after a certain point, they’re too short for the electric sharpener. Then we move to hand sharpening: point sharpened on brass sharpener and maintained as long as possible by rolling across 220 grade sandpaper. It really feeds into my control issues 🙂
Those gold exacto blades, yikes. Knife blades must wish they could get in on the tech upgrade claims, because how much new and improved can there be for a knife blade? Zirconium Nitride coating, apparently.
Also, whoa, that clay roller. Please report once you acquire on how ‘portable’ it is. My book press is a ‘table model’ and weighs almost a hundred pounds
04/16/2023 @ 10:21 am
pencils, before and after
04/12/2023 @ 2:05 pm
Picking up sticks here in Wisconsin, Lake Monona not far, along the way. Rose I’m going to spin Maynard Ferguson’s ‘Gonna fly now’ and take a walk in the sun. Skywriters paint: faith, hope charity. Nesting cardinals cautious yet insouciant. OM goodness your work {…} ROSE
04/12/2023 @ 2:47 pm
Our youngest was born and raised in Wausau, WI. I was there with the BLP in 2008, visiting his ex and then 7 y-o son, on our way to move to WA. They came to visit us in WA a couple of years later. She passed not long after that, and while I am not his bio mom, I liked her very much and that boy is mine as much as the three I bore.
I remember WI as very scenic and lovely.