Assembly

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Feather and wood on stone

Feather and wood on stone

No drawing today…yet! John and I took the boat out to Warren Island State park this morning. We are trying to do more exploring and it’s fun to see all the different islands that are practically in our backyard. I found a beautiful stone as we walked on the beach, brought that home with a project in mind. Sometimes things just fall together. This morning I found a really nice feather and a pretty piece of thin wood…somehow this stone was just waiting for them. I decided to try a piece that was just assembly. It was super fun.

The other piece that I did today I am not too happy with. But, not everything works all the time.

encaustic on birch panel

encaustic on birch panel

Encaustic Experiments

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Graphite, tissue, encaustic

Graphite, tissue, encaustic

I decided to try and draw on tissue and incorporate that over the stone with encaustic. I had a failure, you just can’t overwork it. But, the first one I did actually turned out the way I wanted. I was surprised that I could do the drawing on tissue without any tearing and that the graphite didn’t smear! So, I think this will work for future pieces.

oil pastel and encaustic

oil pastel and encaustic

I am liking using the encaustic and oil pastels together. The impressionistic look is nice and it keeps me working loose. I think I might need to embrace the fact that I do best working quickly….which might make the encaustic a good fit for me. If I take to long on anything it seems to just get overworked and to tied tight!

casein, colored pencil and encaustic

casein, colored pencil and encaustic

This last piece I did as a lark, casein painting with colored pencil on stone. I actually worked on this in the vertical, but I like it best in the horizontal.

Now I need to get back to my lobster claw and mussel shell casein painting on panel.

Mixing it up

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Super Moon!

Super Moon!

All of the sudden I decided to change it up! I think that I was inspired by this photo that I took of the super moon (I think it was July 7 or 8). The photo itself didn’t turn out, but the scene in person was pretty awesome. We had gone out on the boat with friends to watch the fireworks from the water…when I turned and looked back there was all this water churning up behind the boat and this really big moon with a super reflection. So, in order to keep the memory I did take a photo…which is working as a good reference. I think I will do several of these as paintings and drawings. The encaustic painting was really fun to do. It’s not my usual style…but I found it very liberating!

Cone Flower

Cone Flower

After that I decided to try a more impressionistic approach using encaustic…and the cone flower is the result. It’s a difficult medium to work with, so this is more of learning experience. I used casein to paint the ground and then worked on top of the wax medium with a combination of oil pastels and encaustic paint. I really like working on the birch panel.

I am keeping up pretty well with my 5 minutes sketches! Good warm ups.

coneflower5min

Sketching

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Water Soluble Crayon and Colored Pencil

Water Soluble Crayon and Colored Pencil

Lately sketching is all I can manage. I feel frustrated with the lack of time, and I need to let that go. I have decided to do at least one 5 minute sketch everyday. You can’t really accomplish a whole lot in 5 minutes, but it is amazing what you can do! And, it’s kind of like 10 minutes of yoga, its better than nothing and still adds value. The other thing about sketching that is good for me is that it just gets my hand and my head moving together. I am also adding some journal entries to the sketch and that is good too. Helps me focus on the moment and I think it will be nice to reflect back on.

sketch

sketch

My goal this weekend will be to start a piece that I intend to finish…more than just a sketch. But the sketch will get me there!

5 to 7 minute sketch

5 to 7 minute sketch

Emerging Series

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Final

Final

It’s very difficult (for me) to come upon aubject-matter that I am happy to keep working on. This dandelion series seems to be keeping my attention. The good thing about this is that it’s great for my learning process and for producing some work that others seem to enjoy. You just can’t get to final results without lots of experiments and failures…there is really no way around it. The piece above is the largest encaustic I have done so far–approximately 5″ x 9″. I know this doesn’t seem large, but when you are working at 5″ x 7″ and smaller those few inches really do make a difference!

Found wood panel with ground

Found wood panel with ground

Even though there are things I will do differently in the next piece, this one pulled together a lot of things I have learned from previous attempts. I was really happy to be able to add some casein successfully at the end.

I am finding that I miss drawing when I do the photo encaustic, but I love the quick results. I think that I have to be more forgiving of myself, when I don’t have the time I need for painting or drawing, it’s okay to work with photos!

Underpainting with encaustic

Underpainting with encaustic

 

New Substrate

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photo encaustic: image printed on light pink tissue

photo encaustic: image printed on light pink tissue

While looking for something to work on for encaustic that would be easy to deal with in terms of finishing and ready to hang I came across cradled birch panel. This seems like it might be perfect for a range of work. Today I worked on some photo encaustic and that turned out pretty well. I think that these will also work for casein and even colored pencil with the right ground. The dandelions seem to be popular–so I am going to work on a bunch of these. I have had several friends respond well to these, so I will be giving some away. This will help me perfect techniques and motivate me to feel good about doing some “repeats”. The nice thing about the encaustic is that each one turns out a little different, so they are all unique.

photo encaustic on stone

photo encaustic on stone

Last weekend we took the boat to Isle Au Haut. It was a beautiful day for a hike and such a great spot to visit. I collected stones (some small, some large enough for encaustic) and a few shells. I found one shell that was absolutely fabulous! A rare find up on the cliffs overlooking the water.  I will post that soon.

crabclawred

Looking forward to some time off the day job to pursue art projects.

 

All over the place!

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Rooster warm-up

Rooster warm-up

A sketch here, encaustic there, painting, drawing, waxing….a chaotic week with no discipline! No excuses for any of that other than I guess I haven’t dedicated the “time” to work on finished material. The Art Shed did get electric this week! That took me out of the studio and left me with the dining room table (which is fine). I am on my 4th Derwent Art Academy lesson–drawing a rooster with colored pencil. This seems like it will be a challenge, so I started with a warm up drawing of the rooster and then decided that I should do a warm up using colored pencil only. I should be warmed up by now, and now I am just procrastinating! I am not going to do one more drawing until I finish the rooster!

colored pencil warm up

colored pencil warm up

Because I got electric, I felt obligated to do a little encaustic. I am happy with the two dandelions. The photo was printed on tissue paper and then adhered to a found wood block, encaustic paint and medium over the image. I also did a piece on stone–round shell in casine, colored pencil and encaustic. Not as pleased with this one. I think that the stone needs to be smoother–and the color ran, which I would prefer didn’t happen.

photo-encaustic

photo-encaustic

On to the rooster!

Quick Sketch

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lupinesketch

Most successful piece of the day was just a quick sketch of my one and only Lupine! We planted these years ago, and finally one has surfaced. It’s a beautiful fuchsia color. I sat down to do a warm up sketch mid day….I like it! Maybe I will turn in into a casein painting on stone next.

Learning

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Stippling

Stippling

I am really enjoying taking the Derwent Art Academy free class. Not only am I super excited to get through the lessons in order to get my choice of 18 pencils, I am actually learning from each lesson! They seem so basic in some ways, but unless you go through a course you forget some of the basics that are really the backbone of successful work. The stippling course was not my favorite though. The lesson is good, its the production that is was difficult for me. I have done stippling with ink and I think that with paint i would like it. Pencil stippling is a long and tedious process! Even with such a tiny little drawing I found myself wishing that it was all over! It was all I could do to stick with it. But, it did teach me to slow down and the slowing down helped me really look very carefully at my subject.

Onto something a little more fun. Lobster claw study in color. Maybe I will add some controlled stippling as a tribute to my lesson!

Lobster claw study

Lobster claw study

Finishing

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threemussels

This morning I decided that rather than start something new I should finish something I have already started. So, back to the mussel drawing. This piece was really the inspiration for the encaustic I did yesterday, and now that has inspired me to return to the original piece. I am really happy with the strength of the colors and the composition. I like the way the water soluble crayon handles–which is interesting because when I first tried these I really struggled. I am making a kind of light colored wash to do the outline of the composition/drawing and then laying down washes over top. I have discovered that this medium mixes perfectly right on the paper you are using–so you need to have the same type of paper available for mixing. No graphite for this, just colored pencil over top for the details. I think this is working out alright.

I am taking the free art class at the Derwent Art Academy website. It is super fun and the way it is set up keeps you looking forward to the next lesson and project. Here are my sketches from the perspective lesson.

pear3

pear2

pear1