Lots of Painting

I'm feeling deeply immersed in painting these days, and that's just the way I like it.  I'm continuing with Nancy Hillis's online Studio Journey class, which gives some structure to the month.  For Feb. we will be focusing on color contrast.

I also decided to participate for the first time in Leslie Saeta's Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days challenge.  I thought it would be good for me to try to finish a small painting a day since I usually am slow and ponderous with them. But I quickly realized that that's not how I work.  I need to have a bunch going at one time, then finish them as it happens, which doesn't really lend itself to a painting a day.  I decided to skip posting on Leslie's site and aim at completing 30 paintings in 30 days, rather than getting caught up in one a day.  The main objective is to try to keep moving and get things done.
My constraints for the project will be 12" square pieces, and I want to try to experiment with something a little new to me in each one.


I started working with a different palette for me.  I was taking a walk at sunset on a crisp winter's night, and was attracted to all the pastel colors in the sky.  I think I've spent my life avoiding pastels, so thought they would be fun to play with.

The first one a little heavier on marks.

Then the second one simplified a bit.

 I'll be posting more of my paintings on Instagram and am planning to do a weekly summary of how it's going here.

Shapes and Marks

Seldom do I focus on shape.  I tend to build compositions around line and mark, but I do keep returning to a loose vessel shape.  Right now I'm working on a black and white series focused on vessels. Here is a vessel piece from a while ago, still untitled.

Untitled, 11x14", acrylic on paper

 And some close ups.  It was fun to still use plenty of marks, but to make them more subtle so they didn't dominate over shape.

Recently I went to Ritsuko Ozeki's artist talk at Froelick Gallery in Portland.  She is a printmaker who uses lots of line and mark but also incorporates shape.  She is from Tokyo and has been doing series based on the aftermath of the tsunami.  She talked about being interested in all the change that has occurred, and that now, along with the destruction, there is starting to be some rebuilding of communities.  The house shapes she uses point to both the chaos and the restructuring taking place.  She prints using 4 different plates and assembles the prints in various orientations into large pieces.  The overall affect is disorienting, with the occasional house surfacing here and there.  I found them powerful and haunting.

This is one of the blocks that she then combines with others.

I forgot how much I enjoy an artist talk.  It's so illuminating to find out the inspiration behind the pieces.  I was really happy to learn that Froelick posts videos of the talks on You Tube, so now I can catch up on some I've missed.  The filming isn't great, and sometimes I'm dying for a shot of the painting while the artist is talking about it, but they are still interesting to watch.

Mark Making Blitz

This has been my week for mark making.  I wanted to freshen up my mark making vocabulary, and this week gave me plenty of new ideas.

I've been taking an online class with Dionne Swift called Drawing for Textiles.  The first week is focused on abstract drawing and the second on interpreting those drawings into textiles, which I haven't done yet.

Without giving away too much of her class, here are some of my drawings from week one.  We were instructed to choose about six items that are meaningful to us and use them for a different approach in each drawing. I chose some of my favorite jewelry to use, not that you would know it from the drawings.  We were instructed to scale everything up as large as we could, so I did all of these on big pieces of newsprint.

First came blind contour drawings switching media along the way.

Shadow drawings.

Straight line drawings using only 12 " lines.  Oh my!  I don't know that I got this assignment at all.  I found myself so unable to draw anything resembling the objects that I started paying more attention to density of placement.

Finally drawing from 4 ft. away.

I think it's fabulous practice to take the same objects and rework them so drastically.  It's a really fun way to get some fresh marks.  We will now isolate small areas to work in fiber.

Dionne's class happened to coincide with a Mark Making class I had already signed up for at Oregon College of Arts and Craft with Jason Berlin.

The day got off to a fun start.  We explored all sorts of fountain pens, bamboo pens, and quills with ink.

My favorite assignment of the day was a layered charcoal drawing in which we explored different weights of charcoal and different erasers.  I could do that all day.

Unfortunately, the afternoon exercises were more about exploring mixed media and drifted away from mark making.  Not as inspiring but it's always nice to spend the day in OCAC's beautiful drawing and painting studio.

Lesson Plan

Whether it's the former teacher in me, or the desire to be a lifelong student, I love a good assignment.  I like to give myself challenges to work through ideas and to keep myself accountable.  A while ago, I decided to do 100 small black and white studies.

I cut 100 5x7" pieces of watercolor paper and worked on 8 at a time on my table because that was the number that comfortably fit.  Some came together quickly, others took quite a bit of reworking. When I felt that one was finished, I moved it on and put a new one in its place.

I tried to stay loose and experimental with them, not doing too much judging, just taking them to a point where they felt done.   I like seeing them all in a grid together.  One of the most valuable lessons for me was that it took doing 100 to get about 10 I really like.  A good reminder that the more I paint, the better the odds I'll get some paintings I like.

I set a few parameters for my assignment.  I worked with black, white, and neutral paints.  I collaged on some.  And I used any tool I have for marks and texture, as long as it was black or white.

I've really been enjoying going back through them now because they contain all sorts of bits and ideas I can incorporate into paintings.  They also help me see my recurring marks and compositions.  Going through the pile of them, I can easily spot what works for me and what doesn't.  I may do this type of assignment again, with different parameters, to loosen up and experiment more.  It really takes the pressure off to work in bulk like this without all the focus on completing one polished painting.

2017 Daily Stitch Project

Here's how my brain works:  my 2017 stitch project was inspired by these gorgeous silk threads that I found at an estate sale.  I thought it would be fun to focus almost entirely on stitch and mark making this year for my daily project, not adding too much fabric into the mix.  

But by the time I started stitching, I forgot all about those great silk threads.  I started Jan. by stitching with black and white, adding bits of red fabric here and there.  I'm perfectly happy with that, but I am going to break out the silk threads for Feb.

 Unlike my 2016 project that was done in individual components each day, this one is one continual piece per month.  Each day's stitching will be on a linen background 2"x30", so I estimate I need to fill up roughly an inch a day, not too much.

2016 focused on the shifts in seasons.  For 2017, I want to work intuitively with how each day feels to me, still keeping it abstract.  It might be weather related, but it also might be mood based.  I can see looking back where the especially chaotic, darker moments hit and where I felt more hopeful.

I'm finding some new challenges with this project.  I have to take more of a leap of faith that it will all hold together in the end.  I'm not sure if I want to go back at the end of each month and do a little unifying to make it hold together aesthetically, or just let it remain a random joining of days.  I'm also not sure how well it will hold together as a whole year at the end.  I already want to switch to cool grays, blues, lavendars for Feb, but those seem jarring after Jan.  Do I want to try to integrate them, or not worry about it?  Right now, I'm happily stitching and will see how it evolves.