I have been experimenting with gouache, and have a lot to learn. I like the opacity, am getting used to the matte finish, and am working with the quick-ish drying. This is a gouache painting of an oil painting I did a number of years ago. I like the deep darks I can achieve, and I can carve with the paint as with oil paints. I can drag dry paint over other paint, and the rapid drying on the paper is different, but interesting.
This is my 500th daily drawing. These five hundred days have passed quickly! I am enjoying looking back over the last year and almost a half. I have decided to put some of the daily drawings on my web site under a new sketchbook tab. Take a look.
As always, thank you for looking at my daily endeavors. I enjoy your feedback.
A few weeks ago, one of the art teachers at school sent out an e-mail asking for any interest in tempera paint pans that her kindergarteners couldn't use anymore because the white was gone. Woot! I was thrilled to have them for the art class I teach a couple of times each week. We don't need white, and are using the paints as transparent watercolor. In fact, the lids of the paint pans are great mixing trays. My students are always dismayed when I tell them they can't use black. "What will we do?" We had a great conversation about the color wheel, and whether you want to make a blue black, yellow black, etc. We're getting there, and I'm always interested to see what they see.
"Painting You Painting Me" is a little study I did across the table from one of my girls as she concentrated on the objects in front of her. Fun!
We continue to explore color in my oil painting class. Yesterday's lesson was about painting through colored glass. We looked at examples of the "in, on, through" of glass, and the influence of the color in single and double layers as you look through it. I encouraged my students to begin with several large shapes determined by color and value rather than by objects. Wow! Great results, including some harmonies that reminded me of Thomas Dewing's turquoise tonal paintings.
I was looking in my files for a painting that would support the lesson, and was happy to discover two versions of "Kitchen Ledge", painted in Maine alongside my friend Kelley MacDonald, in the coastal victorian house we rented with several artist friends.
I wanted the painting to give a sense of welcome, and the period of the graceful house. When I brought it home, the porch column (in the top photo) seemed incongruous with the simple pine shelf and window trim. I decided to add another column and an indication of the porch railing which I had originally added going all the way across the painting, and through the bottle. However, it created an awkward tangent with the top of the lemon, so I removed a third of the railing. My motivation was removing unintended geometry, but the result had an added bonus of implied stairs below the window where I could imagine a guest stepping up, onto the porch and into the rustic kitchen to share a cup of tea (with lemon?). Will be back in this lovely spot for a week in June. Lucky me.
