Archive for March, 2011

In college I discovered that painting with watercolor on linen was not only fun but created interesting and visually appealing paintings.   I painted these paintings in the wet on wet style and noticed several potential issues.

1)    I had to literally blow the paintings dry with a hair dryer to keep the pigment in the fabric.  When I didn’t blow it dry the paint seeped through the fabric and just went directly onto my painting board.  This left puny colors and unsatisfactory results.

2)    Watercolor is notoriously sensitive to light and I’m concerned that painting watercolor onto linen fabric would make it more sensitive to light.

Pros… it looks really awesome!  I loved the feel and look of it.  And when I showed these pieces they received a ton of interest.

Despite these negatives I thought painting with watercolor on linen was super fun.  It created a very different look and with a clean bucket of water you can somewhat control your white spaces.  I have a big show coming up in August and thought I’d do a series of watercolor on linen paintings… but I thought Golden Acrylics has come out with a new line of liquid acrylics and maybe those would work with the linen paintings?

I found that they flowed fairly well but definitely less than watercolor.  I was able to create ‘lighter’ spaces dropping clear water onto the linen but am still undecided if this medium is where I want to head with wet paint on wet fabric.  I’d love your comments and reviews.

As I talked with a friend recently I was thinking about angels, wings and what they all represent.  I also was giving thought to how we lift ourselves out of trouble, angst or general unhappiness.

All of us are presented with different challenges as we grow up, and it’s up to us to determine how we react to these challenges.  Too bad we never get to pick what challenges come our way!  I believe we can each be our own angel it’s just a lot of work and really hard.  I suppose most things worth having are hard work and difficult (excluding chocolate mousse, that’s easy and really good).

In preparing for this blog I did a tiny bit of research into the definition of angels.   Apparently there are a wide range of definitions but I consistently found several similar concepts.  The first is that angels are either superior humans working for the greater good or superior beings created by God.  The second is that with a few exceptions, angels are associated with good.   Thirdly, they are regularly associated with messengers.  My question for this process is, do the wings make the angel or to visually represent an angelic thought should I go with something else.

When I think of winged beings I generally imagine something lifting up, maybe lifting me up.  Historically angels have usually been depicted as winged beings though oddly enough they are not described as winged beings in the bible.  In times of trouble I have often found the image of an angel lifting me up or wrapping me in the comfort of his/her wings very soothing.  As I grew up, I realized that no matter how soothing that image may be the responsibility is mine to raise myself out of the dark or out of a difficult situation.   I believe we are all given the tools to do so or given access to the tools do lift ourselves out of difficulty.  And this is where wings come into play.  My friend has a tattoo of some wings on her back and I thought it was such a beautiful symbol of self-saving that I had to write about it and think about art projects/paintings I could do based on wings.

My initial plan is to sketch out some wings then I intend to go to some more figure drawing sessions on Tuesday nights and work through my rustiness with human figures.  Too bad a course for figure drawing isn’t in the books!