My Oh My, Butterflies

What do you do with paintings gone bad? I am an advocate of cutting things up, and in this case, I think the project is so much fun that you might be inspired to make a painting TO cut up!
My painting started out on 90 pound cold press watercolor paper. It was a painting of poppies. I was so terribly disappointed in the painting I decided to just have a bit of fun with it. I added more watercolor and acrylic in bright colors. I painted swirls,  dots, and stamped small images across the surface making sure everything was covered. Don't forget paints like Lumiere or other beautiful metallics to add rich layering and a light catching elements.  I turned the painting over and cut it into squares about 3 x3" with my straight edge. I always do this from the back to ensure the randomness of my final image.

 I flipped all of my images over. I think you can see a few of the poppies. I was still thinking I might reassemble this painting into a collage however, I'd been thinking about butterflies.

I drew only half of a great butterfly, and cut it from fairly stiff card stock. Although I like to work from the back so that I am surprised by my results and I can see my pencil lines better, I've done this from the front to help you see the method. One side of the butterfly is outlined. Flip it over lining up the end points from the first drawing and outline the other half of the butterfly. Cut your butterfly out. Bend the wings up along the length of each side of the body.
Don't throw the scraps away because there is always a new perfect something to use them for!

I've popped stacks of butterflies and glue dots into envelopes and mailed them to friends for celebrations. I've covered gift boxes with them. I pasted them all over the walls in my studio to help think of Spring. And I would love to see  your butterflies.

• Discovery:
• No painting is a waste. And no art supply is a waste.
• Tiny images in mass can be really beautiful art
• "Everything looks better with Lumiere. "quote from fiber artist, Nancy Shriber

Keep two, and pass one on.

Diane and I co-taught a session of SMALL Art to a group of fellow artists from the Arvada Fine Arts Guild on Mar 10^th.  This was a fun way to introduce friends to our challenge. Each artist worked on 3 pieces of paper together. Our objective was to allow all 3 paintings develope together without choosing any painting to work on exclusively from the others. 

Diane rollered yellow and peach over the surface of the work. When she lifted the paper strips she had preserved a number of white horizontal or vertical spaces on each painting.

She then added more strips of paper in the opposite direction and used her brayer to roll over a complimentry color - deep purple.

Diane brought an assortment of materials to use as stamping and mark making tools. In these 3 she used pine needles and scattered them over the surface of the paintings.

She used crushed aluminum foil to creat textured patterns over the surface of her paintings.

At this point Diane has made a decision to find floral patterns in her paintings. She is now working on one of them independently of the other.

Diane’s second painting is on the left. She selected one of the three paintings, the one she found least successful and passed it to me. I drew a bouquet on it with chalk after I found an image that appealed to me. I created a base and added a few shadows.

When we  instructed each student to select the painting they liked least that was not too difficult for them to do. When we asked them to hand it to the person on their right they were a little less enthusiastic. But in the spirit of the project they all did so. Then the task of finding a new painting in someone else' work became the most important objective, and a great deal of thought and care went into completion of the project. Below are the results.

Discoveries:

·         It’s easy to choose favorites until you must give one up.

·         When you are completing another person’s painting you have a greater appreciation of what your neighbor is doing with your work.

·         Experimenting and playing with painting is fun, so give yourself permission to be open to new possibilities.  

Social Networking, Put a Bird On It, series

Sometimes we need to find challenges to keep our art fresh. I have been painting so many women in my series,  Women I Might Have Known I thought I needed to take a small break and play with another subject, birds. I filmed in the right hand and painted with the left- so much for my film credentials.

This is a good example of creating a random painterly base with a variety of colors and stamping techniques. Although I did not set out with bird placement in mind, I had been painting birds and found myself looking for bird shapes and patterns. I also intended this to be large - something I never do. I used a similar method as in the Peach demo, of carving the bird shapes from the underpainting when applying the background.

Susan's discoveries:

• It's good to change up your subjects and methods. In this case birds and new sizes.
• If you plan in advance, the surface paint should be a compliment to the underpainting. In this case a rich wash of Quinnacridone Burnt Orange made a great surface to show through my sky. I mixed Quinnacridone gold with white and lots of matte medium for transparency, blending into  Liquitex blue-violet, white and matte medium.
• I used a stamp I carved on some of the surfaces and birds, discovering it made great abstract bark markings.

Happy painting.



Peach Love

All small art projects begin with 5x7 inch sheets of paper. Three 5 x 7 papers were painted in this project.

Tape the sides of your paper to protect a white border around the painting. The amount of image and white paper you want is determined by you but keep it consistent to make a cohesive body of work. Always work on 3 – 6 papers at one time. This allows you to move from one painting to the next while  trying a variety of options to resolve the problems, and prevent you from becoming overly committed to any one while you work.

The primary tools used in this series are a brush, brayer, pallet knife, rubber stamp and a roller from adding machine tape or other paper rolls. I use mat medium to provide transparency and fluidity to my acrylic paints. I always start with thin layers. I chose a secondary triad, orange, green and purple for my pallet. Orange is the dominant color.

Begin by coating the papers with paint to create a light orange base. The mat medium will help this dry quickly.  Drop a few drops of acrylic ink or fluid acrylic paint in a deeper orange or red orange.

Use a brayer to roll over the deep color to spread out the paint marks. Allow the beautiful textures and uneven color that occurs to remain.

 I’ve used two stamps for these painting. Generally I like found objects and stamps I carve myself, but in this instance a store bought stamp was used. Note that I am careful not to ink or expose the entire stamp, preferring to fracture it slightly.  Test the stamp with your paint or ink to determine what the right consistency will be. Randomly stamp the papers.

When stamping is dry, use a chalk or other removable tool to sketch peaches on papers. 

I use a hard light gray pastel.  

With a paper roller I stamp a rich deep purple randomly into my design and over the surface the papers. The stamping will create some raised surfaces that will show through the added layers.

I added small details to some parts of the peach to define highlights and shadows.

I’ve added leaves to my peaches and a pit to the sliced peach. Build your browns from the existing colors on your pallet.

My last detail is to paint a softer lavender around the peaches and leaves.  I’ve scratched into the wet paint to lift some of the color while wet. The painting on the far right has reverse stamping – dry stamping on wet paint lifts the paint to reveal the under painting. I added a few more color stamps to one, and then painted shadows under the peaches to ground them.

Finally - remove the tape and reveal the paintings.

Peach Love

Discoveries

• Stamping can be applied in a variety of ways. This was an exercise in stamping heavy, creating raised surfaces that add texture and are exposed through the second layer.
• Reverse stamping to lift the paint off the surface and expose the color underneath.
• Building browns from the colors already on the pallet creates a unity of your colors.

Have fun with your SMALL Art Project.

Launching a blog to share art with friends

I have been painting with my good friend Diane Calkins on Friday afternoons for years now. Diane and I have always liked the concept of creating a challenge to make our work more interesting, and to see what our different interpretations of the same subject would be. We have set up still life arrangements to paint. We experimented with Diane’s clever splatter techniques. We resolved our composition problems together and we always found that our work was better than if we had worked alone. 

  Diane and I decided to work in a smaller format as a challenge. After a couple of sessions of making smaller versions of what I ordinarily painted, I was dissatisfied with the results.  They all just looked like little watercolor paintings.  I looked at what Diane was making and decided there and then that she was ahead of my thinking in how we should be approaching the project. She had fluid acrylics, brayers, stamps, hard plastic elements, bubble wrap, and all sorts of found things on the table. Wow we were going to have fun! Have I said I love making art with Diane? We quickly established parameters of how we would work and the Small Art Project was launched.

•  ·         Everything would be 5 x 7 inches. It would easily fit in a standard frame and it could be used as a greeting card for gift giving.

• ·         Everything needed a taped border to protect white space around the painting. We wanted the paintings to look nice in a display rack, a greeting card spinner, or a frame when purchased.

• ·         We would work on multiples to ensure that we were not becoming committed to one single piece. 4 to 6 pieces is about what we could think of and be successful with at the same time.

• ·         All the work would be completed in the session.

• ·         We would use materials left over from other projects; old papers, paints, crayons, and pastels that had been abandoned in our art materials stash.  (I know you have a stash)

• ·         We would agree to experiment and always try new techniques we had not used in the past. This was about us taking risks and learning something new. A small piece of paper is a small risk.

• ·         No technique would be used at the table that you were not willing to share. If you didn’t want someone to see how you skillfully made something happen on paper then you would not use that technique at the table. The project had to be about sharing.

• ·         We would not paint the same thing over and over again, but change each week.

 At the end of our painting session we would critique our works, discuss what we had learned and evaluate how we could have improved. We kept a big trash can on the floor and threw away the failed papers because having painted 5 or 6, we were not really committed to any one of them and it was easily done. Well, easier for me than Diane. The pieces we thought successful were backed with a 5 x 7 mat board, (scraps from Diane’s custom framing) and sealed in a clear bag. We put those in a display called Small Art and sold them for $10. We had invested not one penny to make them. If we thought they were exceptional then we decided they were not Small Art, they were ART. Those we would take home and hang in our studio or paste in our sketch book for inspiration when making our bigger paintings. Some of the absolutely fabulous ones we have framed, entered in juried competitions, and sold in galleries.

Small Art in a gallery display

 As a result, our painting styles changed, and our larger framed artworks are selling more often now that we have started to incorporate our new discoveries in our paintings.  The Small Art Project is about learning to MAKE BETTER ART. Its setting defined parameters to work inside of and  finding a way to resolve the problems that occur in a painting. It is the challenge we are interested in. We do not set out to make paintings, but some of our challenges end up as very good paintings.  These little paintings are your learning tools.  

Two of Diane's abstract landscapes

 We gradually invited some of our friends to participate in our Small Art Fridays. They have had a lot of fun with the challenge. Some have continued to work inside the challenge format, learning new techniques that become a starting point for the next series of work they want to make, and others have interpreted the challenge to mean something else. We are happy for all the successes and failures because we learn from all of it. I can’t speak for the other participants in the Small Art Project, only myself. My painting style has changed and l love the materials and techniques I have found. I have developed a style that is my own, although I have willing shared it with all at the table. I certainly make art when I am alone, but I am always ready to share my table when anyone calls and says they would like to come to the gallery and paint with me.

a series of 3 keepers from abstract experiment of circles and squares

 This project has brought about a real change in what my creativity is about. My focus is not really about making art as much as it is about sharing what I do. I really like to work with other people when I paint. Everyone learns more about themselves as artists when we come together to create. There are instantly suggestions available if I stop and say “should I fill this corner with yellow to make a better composition?” Everything from, “NO!” to, “I have a better yellow than yours. Use mine.” will come out. And suddenly there is community. If I painted alone, without ever sounding off an idea, asking for critique, or applying someone else' method to my work, I doubt that my paintings would be as successful as they have become for me. It is through the engagement of other people that I have found my own voice. And even though my painting has my signature on the bottom, I assure you I am not flying solo.  

I invite you to follow along with Diane and I as we experiment and share the things we have learned. Ask questions, share with your painting and art journal friends, and most of all share with us. Welcome to The SMALL Art Project.