Wheel of (mis)Fortune

Does anyone else here collect color wheels?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Am I alone in this obsession?

As I stumble along trying to teach myself the many nuances of color use and theory, I have amassed a fairly sizeable collection of color wheels: The Quiller Wheel, the Artell Wheel, Nita Leland's Color Wheel, Harley Brown and Margaret Kessler's versions of the Munsell Color Wheel, Bruce MacEvoy's Handprint Color Wheel, just to name a few.

And. Every. Single. One. Is. Different.

Some slightly different.  Some majorly different.  And it initially drove me crazy.  Why wasn't there ONE darn color wheel?

When I first started this little artistic expedition, I was turning out little works that couldn't possibly be called art that even the dogs refused to look at.  I knew I needed help, and lots of it, and I wanted to find some answers.  Being impatient when it comes to these things, I wanted sinple, straightforward answers on how to improve my artwork.  I wanted to create good art NOW.   I wanted to find a book or a class that would say "Here.  Here's everything you need to know.  Here's the steps you take to create the perfect composition.  Here's the colors you should use on your palette, and how you should use them.  Here's how to create great art.  Start at Step 1, and go on from there."

Phooey.  I never did find that book, and never will, but I read many, many good ones in the interim.   It's taken a few years just to start figuring out some of the answers to some of the questions.  Just figuring out the difference between the typical triadic color wheel, and the Munsell version of the color wheel gives me a small personal thrill.  So I read, and I research, and I study, and I practice, and I busily collect the basic tools and rules, and file them away under "Things I Think I've Figgered Out".

A lot if it is about how very personal art is.  How we do it.  How we view it.  Our preference of mediums, supports, subjects, and styles.  Some painters use the three primary colors and white as their palette, some use more than fifty different colors.  Even if we all used the exact same palette in the exact same medium, our art would still be individual. It's whatever works for each artist, however they get there, whatever diverse and different paths they take. With every piece, a little bit of each artist is transformed into the physical world. Understanding this, and seeing that little bit of each artist makes the viewing that much more interesting. I always thought it would be interesting to be a traditional animation artist. Wouldn't it be fascinating to see characters you've drawn on paper actually come to life on a screen, complete with voices and personalities, lives and adventures?  It has a certain draw to it (no pun intended).

OK, I'm done waxing philosophic.  While exploring the Interwebs, I came upon two artists who use their respective palettes brilliantly. Mario Mirkovich creates incredible, classically composed landscapes with beautiful colors. Beverly Wilson also creates incredible landscapes and figures, in the style of the "California Colorists".  What fabulous stuff!  Give me a few seconds to put my eyes back in my skull and stop drooling all over my keyboard.  I would love to experiment with the "California Colorist" colors, it's a beautifully luminous palette.

Another favorite artist, Katharine Cartwright (check out her "Eggshell" series) is starting a new blog called "The Twenty Minute Challenge".  In this challenge, you start with a blank piece of paper, set a timer for twenty minutes, and draw or paint something in your surroundings.  It has to be painted from life, and when the timer goes off, it's done.  No going back.  Sounds like a great exercise for those of us who have short attention spans, and need to learn how to make every brushstroke count.  I know that doing "exercises" like these could help me tremendously, but I find myself whining and making excuses not to do them.  Time to suck it up, take twenty minutes, and maybe even learn a thing or two.

My Muse is digging through the kitchen junk drawer trying to find the timer.  To achievability, and beyond!

What? Again? Srsly, get a new subject.

Well, I wasn't able to maintain the frenzied and feverish paint-and-post-a-day pace that I kept up for TWO WHOLE DAYS, but I was able to paint enough that another post is warranted at this time.  Yes, it's another dog painting (or shall I say a painting OF one of my dogs, not that one of my dogs suddenly picked up a brush and became a Canine Caravaggio.  If that was the case, THE DOG would be the one doing the painting, and writing the blog, and I would be the one napping on the dog bed.  Of course, this little arrangement would garner national attention, and then you'd see us on the Today show or something, maybe even Oprah, and then we'd be wrangling book deals and a contract for a reality show, and maybe a line of art supplies....:sigh:...although, come to think of it, all of that adds up to nothing but a boatload of stress, and who needs that?  I'll keep the dogs away from the easel.  They would probably show me up, anyway.)  And yes, it's Hailey again.  Can I help it if she's so darn photogenic?

There were two things in particular I liked about the photo source.  One was the high point of view, which led to an unusual but workable composition. The second was the light.  And the ability to do a great complementary color scheme.  OK, three things.  And they all seemed to work together pretty well.

More layers and glazing,

and finally...

"Sun Dog"

10" X 8", acrylic on Canson paper

©2009, Lisa Walsh

The Burnt Sienna-ish/Cobalt Turquoise-ish complementary color scheme is one of my absolute favorites.  It just strikes a happy little color chord in my brain.  Sidney Carter uses it to beautiful effect in many of his paintings, which is one of the myriad of reasons he is one of my favorite artists.

My Muse is off diligently photographing new subject matter.  To diversity, and beyond!

On A Roll

Two posts in two days...if I don't watch it I might start to get downright prolific, and THEN WHAT? (cue scary music) The dust bunnies will proliferate (actually in this house they're dust hippos, with multiple dogs continually shedding every spare hair on their bodies...so I'm actually happy they're only hippo sized)...(the dust bunnies, not the dogs); the myriad of tools laying around the house because we just set them down after a job won't get organized; the pallet of landscaping bricks that didn't get used for landscaping this year won't get removed from the garage so we can actually park a vehicle inside....

::deep breath::

...but I digress. And I can live with those things for the immediate future.

So for now, I'm merrily ensconced in my studio (a.k.a. the second bedroom, the office, the room that all the superfluous household junk gets thrown into) happily splashing paint onto gessoed paper. The cell phone is off. No one is expected at the door. My Better Half is at a class. The dogs have managed to wade through the dust bunnies, and are snoozing on the couch.

Ahh...peace and quiet. On with the painting.

I think musical instruments are things of beauty in and of themselves, a fabulous marriage of form and function. Paul Jackson, who is an exceptional watercolorist, has done some incredible paintings of various instruments, definitely well worth the look. This painting was based on a photo from the Reference Image Library on Wet Canvas.

"Adagio"
7.5" X 5.5"
Acrylic on Canson paper

I'm trying to achieve a more painterly feel in the works I'm doing lately, but it didn't feel like that method would have done justice to the violin itself, so I settled for painting more loosely in the background only. The violin itself just begged for a smooth surface, so there are many, many, oh so many layers of glazing on the violin body. I wanted that sucker to shine, to glow. The highlight above the S hole was giving me fits, and I'm still not happy with it, and the chin rest leaves a bit of a black hole in the lower right corner, but I really like the overall feel of the painting. I may just do a larger version of it someday, if I ever again get the chance to blockade myself in the studio for several days.

My Muse is sliding dinner under the door. To non-accessiblilty, and beyond!

Back to the Easel

There are many talented artists out there who are productive enough to have blogs titled "Daily Paintings" or "A Painting A Day". Some seem to produce enough to have a blog called "A Painting Every Five Minutes". Given what's been going on around here lately, this blog should be titled "A Painting in between Fixing The Leaky Pipe in the Basement, Cleaning Out the Closets, Removing the Remains of the Tomato Plants That Didn't Do Well This Year, and Tending to A Sick Dog" blog, although I don't thing that would fit in the title bar. Now that the To-Do list has been mostly To-Done for now, I'm sitting myself down at the easel and kicking myself squarely in the behind (not a physically easy thing to do) so I get some painting done.

First thing is my latest entry into the Different Strokes From Different Folks blog challenge. This time the challenge was a photo taken of the rooftops in San Francisco. I have to admit, I would probably never have taken the photo in the first place, and even if I did, I would not have looked at it as something interesting to paint. That's part of what makes these challenges so fun and interesting; they make you see things with different eyes, and take you out of your comfort zone.

"Up On The Roof"
(not an original or imaginitive title, but it fits,
and my mind refuses to think of another)
8 X 10
Acrylic on Canson paper

Because the subject matter basically boils down to abstract shapes, it became more of an exercise in color experimentation. I like violet as a shadow color, but I'm not sure it works here. It may have worked better if the color in the far buildings were more saturated. Right now this piece seems to be suffering from a split personality; intense color up front, dull color in the back. They say an artist has to paint three hundred paintings before they even start to grasp all the intricacies of what they are doing. Woo-hoo, only about two hundred ninety five to go!

My Muse is prepping the next canvas. To productivity, and beyond!

Mug shot

Life has gotten in the way of blogging, so in an effort not to let this blog go completely stale, I'll post a quick study I did of my dog, Hailey. She was sitting in the living room with the window behind her, the afternoon sun lighting her up from behind, and a smile on her face. Thankfully my camera is an almost permanently attached appendage, I got a great photo of her, and based this piece on that.


No lines, no major prep...just an exercise in getting color on canvas. Looking at it now, I'd mute those front canine teeth somewhat, as she looks a bit like a vampire. Do dogs sparkle? And since I'm not a 'Twilight" fan, what the hell does that mean, anyway?

My Muse is off somewhere working on an Around-The-House-To-Do list. To responsibility, and beyond.