price wars

Limited art time again today as I spend some time in preparation for a meeting later this week.

I'm focused on one product in this particular update - Golden's Gesso in white. I called around to the local art stores and my fav on-line. I asked for a price for the 32oz size. Here are the results:

Swinton's $33.25 -10% student discount
Colors $36.40 -10% student discount
Mona Lisa $33.45 FT students get 10% off
Kensington $41.50 -10% for student discount
Inglewood $41.81 -20% which is an ongoing discount on all Golden product (even special order)
Michael's $49.99 -40% one item coupon.
Curry's $27.95

After all that calculating your best bets for gesso in Calgary are Swinton's at $30, Michael's (with coupon of course). If you have the patience for mail order, Curry's is a good price too. Retweet this

Tissue paper painting

The sky is the limit when it comes to collage paper. One of the interesting things I've done recently (again, in class) involves very thin tissue paper and it makes a really pretty, unique pattern. It's so fragile just a drop of water will dissolve it so care must be taken in preparing it. Finished paper is shown in photo to left.

To get around that problem you can use these steps:
1. Scrunch the tissue and then flatten it out onto a plastic surface but leave some interesting hills and valleys for the paint to run into/out of.

2. Mist with water lightly to help the paint to spread on the tissue.

3. I pre-blended two acrylic colors in squirt bottles - golden fluids indian yellow and quinacridone burnt sienna. I dropped this paint onto the damp paper and misted to increase the paint spread here and there (see photo). Do not move the paint around with a brush or you'll be ripping the paper. It's fragile.

4. Keep some white areas if that's what you need for your collage - don't wet the tissue quite as much and keep some higher scrunch peaks.

5. Leave it alone until completely dry. The back of the paper will be shiny in places as more medium will settle and dry against the plastic.

6. To attach to collage cut the piece to size, apply the medium/glue to the support and lightly, gently press the tissue onto the surface and smooth gently. Once dry I coated it lightly with medium so that it didn't dissolve when I over painted on it.

Enjoy!

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Last figure class

Figure drawing was a lot of fun this year! Our last class was yesterday. Wow that went by quickly! I thought I'd include a few photos of yesterday's work here with a short description of what we were trying to accomplish with each photo...

1. Warm up... using the side of a 1" piece of dry media [charcoal or conte], capture the general mass of the figure shape and add in the most important/descriptive lines - 20/30 seconds

2. Still warming up with the same method but now we're up to a minute. It's still not enough time to "see" and convert the information to paper. But it's a bit more descriptive. Sharon's reminding us to look for the musical/graceful/interesting lines. We're also supposed to be getting hands and feet onto these quick sketches - yikes, I can't move THAT fast!

3. More time now... although I can't remember exactly how long these ones were. I've switched to charcoal and I'm liking that better.

4. Still more time [I'm wishing I'd jotted it down, oops] - I think these might have been 3 minutes??? I'm having better luck with the extra time.

5. Switch to painting but using a similar method. Block in with one wash for first 10-20 seconds and then define further with a second color. I could have used less water and more pigment - these are faint. These were more difficult poses with limbs crossing, etc.

6. We switched to a heavier paper. I used some cheap watercolor paper and struggled with it from the get go. This is the only longer [10 min] pose that I did that turned even a teensy bit. I think I captured the light and shadow reasonably well. I struggled with the shape of the leg that was foreshortened [pointed directly at me]

I hope you enjoyed this little walk through a figure drawing class.

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Poncho people sketch

Today was busy. This morning I attended my workout and pool session. This afternoon I allowed myself a bit of art time.

1. I ordered some paint and a small set of caran d'ache water soluble crayons to add to my collection.
2. Called my mom to solicit a creative "sampler" for my altered book project. Got some great ideas just by talking it over from another creative angle. Always helpful and fun.
3. Then I dug through some old sewing stuff hoping to find some remnants from my previous creative activities that I might use in my altered book project. Found them.
4. Made some paper which I may use in my tulip project. Time will tell.
5. Spent 10 minutes tidying up in my art room and found this little watercolor sketch from April 30, 2008. Bonus! That day Sharon asked the students to lay down several small adjoining wet washes in various colors in our sketchbooks. Then we looked for people shapes in our "blobs" and I saw these South America figures. A few defining marks for hats, legs and poncho trim and I had this fun little watercolor sketch. It definitely demonstrated how simple marks can be figures.

All in all, a good day... I enjoyed it and I hope you had a good one too! Retweet this

New collage start

I've started a new self-portrait style collage. I learned quite a bit from Ann Baldwin's DVD "Telling Stories With Collage and Paint". One of the things she says is that it is usually best NOT to lay down your most important image first. Immediately after saying that she does exactly the opposite, as I've done here. At least she had a plan before she dove in. Me? Not so much.
I began this by covering a piece of illustration board with gesso. Once dry I drizzled ultramarine blue and quinacridone burnt orange vertically down the surface and sprayed water to join up the paint drips.

After that dried I attempted an image transfer using Golden softgel gloss. It was about 50% successful but I decided to go ahead with a further step. I coated an identical transfer and the surface again and after they were dry I carefully laid the new image atop the previous transfer. I taped it securely in place before I used my Walnut Hollow Versa-tool to melt the image onto the surface. Once cool I wet the paper backing and simply rolled the paper off the image. I've only done this a few times but every time it gives me a very good image with just enough raggedy edges to make it interesting.

I used some Golden light molding paste over a box stencil to add the texture to the right of my shoulder. Then I painted into and around the image to bring it to life a bit. I like it so far. I'm going to be working on this again in class tomorrow to see if I can get a few more steps down the path on this collage.

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday... Retweet this

Tulips...

Back to the tulips today and I'm feeling good about where this is going. I definitely like the color with the warm dominating. I like my apple better but the reflection on the vase isn't right somehow. So, I'll rest this up against the wall so my mind can mull it over for a while.
We're off to see Australia tonight. I wish it were the real thing but, alas, just the movie. Still, it'll be fun. Cheers! Retweet this

Golden Products - a few learnings

I'm shopping around for a few golden fluid acrylic colors that I've seen used in class or on a DVD recently as well as a good price on Golden's soft gel gloss medium (lots of transfers in my future ;). I've checked at a few stores: Michael's, Mona Lisa's, Opus & Curry's online and I thought I would provide the results for those of you that are interested in such things. You'll need to double click on the photo above to open it up large enough to read.

The result of the bit of study I did on this today is that Curry's prices are best overall. Obviously I didn't look everywhere but who can? It's time consuming. The one exception that I've found so far concerns the soft gel medium. It appears that Mona Lisa's price $32.45 for a 64 oz jar is the clear winner in this category (all others are quite a bit higher per ounce). Another surprise is Michael's price - $29.95 for the 16 ounce jar. With the standard 40% off coupon you come out just a few bucks more per ounce than Mona Lisa's larger jar. [By the way, shipping is free on Curry's orders over $35]

Happy shopping to my Calgary art buddies... apologies for inflicting this on the rest of you.

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