Metamorphas of dragon paintings

The viewer might see the dragon

Before adding a few cues

 

Favorite dragon painting
 of me embracing my dragon

"Sunshine" is a vase dragon that sold

This is a painting that might morph

The elation from overcoming a struggle to paint

Only covered the  painting with a few colors
 before I tired from the effort and the weather changed.



Finished in my studio
"Struggling and Overcoming"
watercolor with acrylic medium and acrylic white
on canvas board covered with absorbent gesso.
14" x 11"

I set myself up to struggle a little. I like to feel the excitement of doing something the first time like the excitement of solving a puzzle. I love setting myself up to have ah ha moments. What do I have to loose or hurt?  It is only paint and inanimate materials, I can take big chances. On my self-imposed obstacle course I will encounter problems that I can cover with white Golden Absorbent Ground to reestablish the brilliant white ground. With my no fail net I am brave. The pay off is partly the feeling of elation of arriving at a resolution and partly from new insights to carry on to the next painting. Most importantly I select obstacles that will further my ability to develop my own voice. Currently I want to paint with out interruption of framing watercolors under glass. The more painting I do the better the flow and all the more reason to feel elated.

I start painting "Struggling and Overcoming" without a complete plan. I didn't know when I started  if my first outdoor painting using dilute acrylic medium in watercolors could be the sixth in my series about my process. I was sad at first that this painting wasn't going to be happy like the others. My mood was agitation by the difficulty of managing a large palette on a small easel table. But when I thought about my predicament, I knew that having struggled, I was all the more gratified when the painting started working with the addition of the title, "Struggling and Overcoming".

 Two days after starting I named it "Struggling and Overcoming', I saw the cloudy sky and our Stars and Stripes as being symbolic of struggling.  The stars could be symbolic of unity of the parts of the painting as well as uniting it with the theme of  the other paintings in the series. The brushes and buds of the rhododendron repeat the symbols of the first one in the series, "Promising Blossoming".

When I started it was warm and beautiful outside but I knew from the sky that a storm was coming.  Besides being rushed, I was experimenting to see if I could use a rather large palette with many colors, palette knives with watercolor, a Fleet's enema bottle containing dilute medium, a jar of acrylic white paint, 4 brushes, water in a Cool Whip container and a water spray bottle and a rag all managed on a make shift floppy table which was an adaption of a oil or acrylic painting easel. I felt very tied up by these limitations. Just filling the surface all over resulted in needing a break.


 

 Monday was warm and sunny again, perfect for my second outdoor painting. On the last canvas board that I have prepared I started a wet into wet painting and used up the colors and medium I have been keeping over a week on a round palette balanced on a wet sponge in zip lock plastic bag.

After setting up my easel.  I first put water all over the surface and used the colors in the round palette allowing the paint to spread and drip. As it dried more precision was attainable by painting around the mermaid  steel cutout by the window.

 I felt considerably freer than my first attempt outdoors. However, I am not satisfied with the smaller palette because too much of the medium overflowed into a plastic bag. I was OK with the limit of colors and later  indoors added acrylics to the flowering bush.




As I was painting I was happily excited watching somewhat  planned accidental flows of pigment into the indentations of the brushed texture of  thick absorbent ground.
The puzzle was set for me to resolve and a title to discover. Maybe  "Controlled Accidents"!
My elation melted into expectations as my mind filled with future challenging plans.
Maybe I have a complete series about my process.

  

When is a painting finished?

A painting is never complete. I never set aside a painting  until I can look at it for a long time without it telling me it needs changes.  I never stop painting until it resonates emotionally with the mood of the beholder. Also for story illustrative paintings, they are never satisfying me until they communicate to others.

A neighbor brought back a painting I had originally finished eleven years ago and I had given the neighbors as a wedding gift about ten years ago.  It had darkened hills as though a rain storm was coming. The image of it on their wedding announcement had lighter hills. Apparently I had darkened them to make the yellows stand out  as happy perky survivors. After all this time I could see my last minute changes gave the painting an overall feeling of foreboding.

This is how the painting looks after taking a few minutes to paint over the the mountains and green up the valley. Now the neighbor says the painting is after the rain instead of before the rain.

 

 

The original of the Greenwell beach cabin that I thought was finished in Hawaii seemed incomplete when I looked at it hanging at home.

 

With white lines suggesting back lighting, I popped out the plumeria tree, added definition to child gate on porch,  added some fallen flowers.

The white on the plumeria's branches did not help so I removed most of the white lining and now it is like the original with very small changes.

 

 

 

Of all the on location paintings I did in Hawaii in February the wedding painting was by far the most painted over and over. I had no fear of overworking it. At first I had an uneasy feeling about the wedding but as time went by my feeling was for weddings in general so the painting took on the dreamy atmosphere of hope.

When the  wedding painting was almost complete, but I was not sure, I shared it with the Tuesday Critic Group at the Old World Delhi  in Corvallis.

 I like to hear critics of my new story paintings to make sure people see my story. I received good feed back. The log and sand was ambiguous. The painting had a hole in back of the log - a difficult problem for painters.  To my fellow artists the log looks like ground.  So at home I made the sand lighter to define where the log ended.

 

Before critic

After

 

 Another painting hanging up on trial is of fan coral. I thought it was finished in January, but it is still in question hanging up in our kitchen/ dining area. Living with it for awhile, I may decide but another way to decide is to put it in a closet for a few months until I can look with a fresh critical eye.
 

 This is how the painting looks now.

This painting was started years ago of an entirely different subject.  North Albany Autumn has become a poetic interpretation of Belize fan coral and fish.

 

My belief is never be afraid to overwork a painting. Working on an exercise is nonsense and an easy excuse for abandoning the work that could transform itself many times.  Paintings are not suppose to be perfect. Paintings do not need to be finished; they are part of an ongoing learning experience.

Painting a wedding at Waiailea Beach in Hapuna Park, Big Island Hawaii

At the West Hawaii Plein Air Painters event, 9:30 AM, Friday, February 3, Cindy had been painting for almost two hours. Cindy is not in the painting just on my left on the other side of the log from me.  I was also a little early and just starting this painting and Richard had just arrived and was set up to paint. Then the mother of the groom appeared. She wanted us to all move because her son was getting married there in half an hour.

Richard who facilitates the group said there are no reservations on the site and we would not move. 

To make the lady happier, I offered to paint the wedding and give the painting to her. She said she had photographers and never came to look at my painting luckily because it was in a very dull state after three hours. I have put in many hours on it since.

If she changes her mind and finds me, and demonstrates real appreciation, the wedding painting would still be a gift to her.

The 12 x 16 inch painting is over an acrylic painting on canvas that I covered with absorbent ground that accepts watercolor and mixed media. Then I sprayed it with gloss UVprotective Krylon before making changes with acrylics. With the Krylon protection I could remove the acrylic and preserve the under-painting.

The old recycled surface was intended as a warm up painting before the real effort of the day. When the wedding happened, I decided that the iron wood trees made an excellent symbolic frame for the ceremony of joining of two family trees of life.

 My most memorable paintings outdoors are when I am moved by what happens while I am painting. Most paintings include more than one period of time. This painting depicts the father walking the bride and then he was consoling the sister. The bride was painted twice.

The wedding painting is not finished yet. I am working on the expressiveness of the gestures and relationships between the members of the wedding party and how the eye is directed to the wedding.

Three weeks mixed media painting stuff in a carry-on suitcase

Setting up painting stuff

I spent three weeks assembling  mixed media in preparation for a new painting process for me to play with for three weeks in Hawaii. Almost all of my art stuff fit in a carry-on size suitcase with most of my personal clothing, snorkel,  trekking poles, personal care products, two hats, sandals, spare pair of athletic shoes, and book.
 Also above are the paintings that I started in February in Kailua Kona , the big island, Hawaii. The two white boards made a table and painting support. The bag for carrying stuff from our Jeep to a location also worked as a weight to stabalize the easel.  The painting of a light house is by another artist but it might have influenced my more realistic painting this time..

When I packed, I wasn’t sure the pocket sized Winsor Newton watercolors would be enough, so I took a set of tube watercolors and gouache white. I only supplemented the pocket palette with the tube of white gouache and a tube of Winsor yellow. The heavy cardboard packing for Acquarello hot press paper is unnecessary weight.  The extra clamps were not necessary because the easel was strong enough to hold the table. Also not needed was accordion folded watercolor paper books.  I didn’t carry them on tours or walks because in Hawaii roots and sharp lava require all of my attention to be safe.

In Kailua Kona there is a very complete art store. At Akiani Art Supply I purchased Absorbent Ground White 8 ozs.,  Gloss Varnish UV archival, and Saw Tooth Hanger Adhesive, opening up the possibility of finishing the work to give away.  I gave away the absorbent ground and the spray can of varnish to an artist friend who lives in Hawaii.

Coming home my suitcase weighed 34 pounds. Next time I can reduce the weight. No snorkel unless I have snorkeling companions!  I will reduce the amount of paper and leave home most tube paints. Planning ahead my brushes, mixed media supplies and paper are stored in my suitcase so packing for the next trip will be faster. I became too attached to a painting I thought I would give away. Maybe later after I live with it for awhile.

Rethinking acrylic painting after inspirations from snorkeling at Turneffe Flats Atoll

Before my trip to Turneffe Flats my first  plan was to paint a sky with great depth. Then I thought an abstract direction. Taking on a completely new direction because I loved the texture of a hand prepared canvas.the painting would be about paint and fabric. Then I thought this could be an underwater scene with a ray swimming.

After returning and seeing a number of rays swimming gracefully, This jagged swim line for the ray is wrong. I thought of Duchamp's nude descending a stircase. I then rejected the angularity of cubism. In Belize I was more fascinated by bubbles rising from snorkels and how they wiggled and reflected a calidascope of the surrounding colors.

Photographs do not show the movement over time like my perception.

When I painted the bubbles rising to the surface. The surface is darker in this painting. If I am going to be accurate about my memory of the surface plane, it would be lighter and more broken up reflecting colors of the sandy bottom. It occured to me that I could turn the painting upside down. Or I could  put more swaths of sky blue and smaller swaths of the warm tones at the sandy floor.