Yes, that is what this post is about. I found an amazing site if you are a science loving gal like me, and an artist, you have to be intrigued by Watching Paint Dry?
Brought to you by Sixty Symbols: Videos by Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham.
Mitchell and I happened into an exhibit the other night and the subject matter stirred discussion between us. No, it was not some wildly controversial political statement or sexually explicit subject; the subject matter was Portland’s street scenes. The exhibit bothered me, got under my skin, and I couldn’t shake it off. I guess art should bother people too? Yesh.
As we drove back to the studio I could not let go of it, under the Steel Bridge and I saw the homeless sleeping, toward the I-5 and saw the sunset beyond and through the I-5 freeway, graceful as it crosses the Willamette.
The artist was X (name changed, as potentially dissing the artist is not the point), and s/he painted Portland’s city streets — literally, the images focus on streets, rather than bridges or shops along the way or houses or flowers or any urban scene. . .
I looked at the images but was not drawn to them, though they are well executed. I wanted to find them interesting. In this exhibit (and all the work of this artist is not like this) they all looked like vast expanses of grey asphalt with a slightly different grey sky. Of them all I liked the one that could have been NW Portland in the rain at twilight, where the rain-soaked streets become a lively blue reflection; I’ve seen that street, those raindrops, and I love them. In fact, the two very wet reflective paintings moved me.
I wanted to post the artist’s statement, but you can find the artist with the statement. S/he said s/he was captivated by the streets, and strove to create a startling awareness of catching beauty in these things..
Maybe it is because I grew up part of my life with miles of grey streets, but I did not see the beauty in these scenes. I did not find the fascination with grey streets and changing grey skies. Maybe it was because the artist failed to connect me with the fascination and beauty of actual streets (not neighborhoods) in Portland. I find close up details of the urban-scape fascinating and beautiful: manhole covers, big tires, gate details, bricks, peeling paint, asphalt close-up, modern ruins. But expanses of grey undetailed asphalt with lines drawn down the middle, pastel cars on those streets, and a grey sky did not move me. So the question Mitchell and I discussed was, is the subject important or is it the artist not moving me?
I find Portland doesn’t have a lot of grey skies, which is why I like living here — the skies change so often, not like Seattle, which really is a very grey city, sky-wise. The Portland I see most days is raining HARD; or the clouds are moving moving fast as can be, puffy grey mixed with heavy grey and moving moving; or there is one side where the sky is grey and the other where it is blue and there is a rainbow in between; or it is clear blue and hot.
I kept wanting to know why, REALLY, s/he painted pale grey streets, cars, and the blandest of skies. Did she miss her home and was she trying to love Portland? My discussion with Mitchell centered on whether it was the subject or the artist that was the issue.
What do you think? Do subject’s matter when you look at a painting?
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Gina Rossi’s sprout for the week was to paint from an embroidered piece this week.
I had no embroidery in sight, though when I finished my timed sketch Mitchell
reminded me of several wonderful fabric samples we have: oops.
I have a lot of friends dealing with darkness of late: depression and loss, loneliness.
I’ve been thinking about what burdens the heart, which prompted the words.
I am about to conserve a wonderful 18th century tapestry for a client, and
thought to paint one of the edges, as the flowers are so sweet. I didn’t try to make realistic stitches, but just add lots of texture. Timed 10-minute sketch.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Happy Anniversary Loverman! Bring on the vacation!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Gwenn Seemel is a passionate artist and thinker. She was asked a year ago to speak at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her talk, below, is worth the listen.
To learn more about her art and thinking visit her website!
(Above, Liberty (French-American, Self-portrait), 2007, acrylic on linen, 42 x 19 inches.)
“As an acrylic artist I almost never used white except under other colors to pop them. But as a water-colorist I have reached for white a few times, and I am using an old Sakura Chinese white right now until it is all used up. I am still not sure I will use white; I’m not a pastel-pale kinda-gal! I have enjoyed playing with the whites as I paint spring flowers, but doubt I will continue in this vein — it is just not me.” That is what I wrote in my journal before I mixed the Chinese white with my colors.
But in the spirit of learning to mix colors on a palette, I decided to try out white with all my other colors. And I can see that I might use them in my mission paintings. I love what they do mixed with the Quinacridone Gold and Quinacridone Burnt Orange (far right bottom), and the Terre Ercolano and Venetian Red in the lower second and third places from the left. These are the Southern California Mission colors, rich even when mixed with white!
In terms of what I discovered maxing them with similar pigments as before, I can say that the Chinese White must be a solid overpowering color when mixed, because there was little variation in the colors from the first two mixes:
Anthraq Scarlet and Organic Vermillon, yummy
Quinacridone Coral and Quinacridone Red (Sennelier), yummy again
Light Yellow 578 (Sennelier) and Quinophthalo Yellow
The only real color shift you can see is in the turquoise range, where the true colors clarify the nature paint colors — see differences in “turquoise?”
On the other hand, it made for some brilliant colors tht were not really pastels. Okay, mind change, keeping white in my pallette!
*All watercolors Daniel Smith unless stated otherwise.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Building from Process: Mixing Hematite Paints, I moved into mixing two colors into each of my paints: Caput Mortem and Quinacridone Gold. The latter has been a favorite of mine for 20 years.
Caput Mortem has also been known as Mummy Brown, because originally it was made from made from ground-up mummies *ick*, discontinued in the 19th century, thankfully. It is occasionally known as Cardinal Purple or Mars Purple. I can’t believe this odd color I like so much is now made from a purple variety of hematite iron oxide (there is that hematite again.)
Of the four sets of colors (discussed in the previous post) that look very close when spread by themselves on paper, three were tested here: Anthraq Scarlet and Organic Vermillon; Quinacridone Coral and Quinacridone Red; and Light Yellow 578 and Quinophthalo Yellow. (Terre Ercolano and Venetian Red were not used as too close in color to both.) Her the shifts are interesting:
My favorite tested mixes were Opera Pink, Kyanite (both above), the Phthalos, the Saps, and omigoddess, the three extraordinary turquoise colors, below. I must do something with those!
Tomorrow, the Chinese White!
*All watercolors Daniel Smith unless stated otherwise.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
New color paints are the yummiest, and my new clean watercolors all moist from a spray call to me.
After buying mostly Golden Acrylics for 15 years (and they have watercolors coming out which I am dying to try), I learned one thing after sampling Sennelier, Utrecht, Holbien, Dick Blick, and Daniel Smith watercolors: all companies name their colors whatever they want, and frankly, this means that you might buy two almost exact colors unless you are standing in the store looking at actual samples. I now read the ingredients before buying — what a hoot — like I am at the market! I’ve come close to duplicating a few colors — or so I thought — until I began to play and compare.
Mixing colors is one of the things that watercolorists do on their palettes, which is very different than mixing acrylics in jars, ready to stir and paint predictably, exactly as you like them. There are nuances to mixing on a palette, less predictability! Over the next few days I will share what I learned about these superficially-the-same colors, as they were mixed with various other colors. First up, mixing with Genuine Hematite (BTW, I wrote about Hematite earlier this year.)
Primatek Genuine Hematite (love love love) by Daniel Smith is a deep grainy gem color, and like Golden Acrylic’s Micaceous Iron Oxide, I like the effects of it mixed with other colors.
*Above and below, four sets of colors that look very close when spread by themselves on paper:
But when mixed with Hematite they react a bit differently. Sennelier’s Venetian Red holds its own better with the Hematite, so it appears more robust with it. Sennelier’s Quinacridone Red also holds its own with the Hematite, and feels thicker and creamier. Below, the Light Yellow (Sennelier) does not appear to stay as clear and muddies when mixed.
I was careful to use approximately the same amount of paint on the brush to mix, and to move the brush in approximately the same way. This tells me that except for the Scarlet and Vermillon, these paints respond differently when mixed, which is good to know. So I proceed, thinking there is something to this mixology of watercolors. BTW, I love the way the blues mix with Hematite, and the Kyanite goes deeper!
Tomorrow, two other colors are mixed!
*All watercolors Daniel Smith unless stated otherwise.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Pia Rom’s prompt this month for her challenge grabbed me immediately, though the colors for this month are not me at all! We collect coffee mugs! Mitchell and I have names for them — Our Happy Mug (white roosters stamped on red, Italian pottery), Our Carolina Mugs (hand-made in Carolina and we enjoyed coffee watching the sun rise together on the Carolina beaches). Painting Deb Babcock’s HUGE mug allowed me name it, and so it will be the Mug of hope. Indian Ink on shellac.
So. Much. Hope. Especially today, as I have solved minor but vexing problems during journaling in the wee hours!
Why do I do challenges? I mean, I’m an artist, and have plenty to paint. But as I am learning watercolors, and am not quite into “realism” as an artist, I need to just keep playing around as I learn. Challenges connect me to other artists who are also playing around, and so it is a fun way to learn / experiment / share. I’ve made friends with other artists from all over the world through challenges!
Shortly I will announce my own challenge . . . Stay tuned!
Deb Babcock’s pottery makes it into my sketches. She is a painter-in-pottery, which is probably why Mitchell and I gift her mugs and cups and bowls for anniversaries! Tell her we sent you!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
I am so glad to be done with the A-to-Z Challenge!
Mitchell is glad I am done, because I was rushing through cooking to get to writing to get to posting . . . AACK! Thursday I pulled out all my odd pieces of organic chicken (backs) + a whole chicken, two quarts of my home-made stock, two heaping tablespoons of my homemade blackened hot pepper pesto, 2 teaspoons of cumin, a teaspoon of black pepper, a cup of chopped spring garlic greens and another quart of water (or cover the top of the chicken.) This simmered until the chicken was done (an hour and a half or until it falls easily off the bones), and the chicken was pulled out to cool. While it cooled, I chopped two large sweet onions to simmer. When it cooled, I stripped every bit of chicken off the bones and popped it back into the simmering pot. Finally, chopped carrot, corn, and black beans were added with the cooked chicken. This chicken will put hair on your chest, make you dance like a crazy woman, and knock a cold right out of you!
I painted while the cooking happened, and dinner was served, yummo!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Pia Rom is doing a Challenge called Mix-It Monthly.
Nice that it is a once a month challenge, so don’t be afraid to commit!
This month is was all about Maps!
I am showing Laguna Heart, a paper heart I made of my Home Town.
This heart has survived 25 years, and many moves, including a year-long RV tour.
Please excuse its dust and cat hair!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Okay, when I heard about this color I was shocked to find the mineral, above, doesn’t look like the color it supposedly produces, right. How is it possible that this gorgeous green grey mica-looking mineral turns into this nothing-to-write-home about brown? Now I know I need to go have a talk with Robert Gamblin, who knows all about color mixing!
Zinnwaldite is a “potassium lithium iron aluminum silicate hydroxide fluoride is a silicate mineral in the mica group.” (Wikipedia. I am okay at chemistry but not that okay.) It is not considered a valid mineral species, which, again, doesn’t make sense to me, as it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . Possibly it has to do with the fact that it always occurs within other minerals, including fluorite, topaz and tourmaline.
What is really amazing about this last post, and has been true for many posts as i worked the a-to-z challenge, is what I discovered in the research. A site called Encycolorpedia, which catalogs colors and gives you the paints and the chemical data and so much more: “Zinnwaldite brown with hexadecimal color code #2c1608 is a very dark shade of orange. In the RGB color model #2c1608 is comprised of 17.25% red, 8.63% green and 3.14% blue. In the HSL color space #2c1608 has a hue of 23.33 degrees, 69.23% saturation and 10.2% lightness. 
This color has an approximate wavelength of 605 nm.”
I am not sure how that helps you paint but I know in the conservation business matching colors is critical, and we have needed that kind of data (Munsell) to assist in a match.
I think that Daniel Smith Tourmaline looks much more like it, and would love it if they made a Zinnwaldite Primatek color!
Finally, I found another great site to leave you with as I sign off from a-to-z: Multicolr Search Lab powered by Multicolor Engine. pick a color, you color addicts, and play!
DONE with A-to-Z!!! Now back to our regular programming . . .
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Gee, can’t I just use the yellow from yesterday’s post?
No? Okay, timed stream of consciousness writing begins . . .
When I was twelve my favorite color was pure lemon yellow. I was a tanned beach girl so I could wear that shade of yellow (now, not so much) and I wanted everything in yellow. Bikinis, t-shirts, sweaters. I wanted to paint my room yellow. Then I read in some psychology article that yellow was about courage, and that it is one of those colors children like. This bothered me, I don’t know why, but I began to see yellow in a different light. Did I need courage, and was that why I liked yellow? Was it because I was considered a child? (I had kissed boys!) Was it that I was predictable, as it said that frequently preteens liked the color best. I soon switched, to hot, passionate red, maybe because I wanted to be grown up, or maybe because I fell in love shortly thereafter. Clear red and turquoise were my favorite colors for years, and also the colors I chose to use together for my business as an architectural designer. I love all the colors, but really, blues have never been my favorites except that one shade of turquoise. Oh, and the phthalos and prussian. Forget it, I’m a color whore. Now my favorite colors are quinacridone gold, which you know all about, and hematite, which I adore, such an amazing grey-brown-red, and certain greens (tending toward yellow and brown, not blue) and clear oranges. I just found out that the “new” gamboge is really a quinicridone in most instances. I know that I am a color junky. I wish I could say my palette is complete, but frankly, I am yearning for most of the rest of Daniel Smith’s Primatek watercolors. I better get painting and find a way to pay for all these paints! My color palette, below.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Xanthophyll is the yellow pigments that brings many of the images on this page together: it is responsible for the egg-yolk yellow color in leaf pigments. Their structure is similar to carotenes, as in beta-carotenes, found in carrots, and responsible for the color orange.
This yellow is one of my favorite colors, much preferred to the lighter lemon yellow. I like that hint of orange.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
Working on mastering this medium enough that
I can move away from realism and make art that moves me.
Today I finally just moved away —
playing with palm trees and deep color and texture.
I experimented with watercolor graphite, and my new paint colors.
Yummy colors, rich deep colors.
There are things I like about them, especially achieving a breakaway from realism.
Not fond of the white accent but played with Pitt pen accenting the watercolors
in the second one. In the third not even close to good,
but I like the way I moved the watercolor with a ton of water at the end
then added bright dollops of color, then sopped water blobs up and moved them around.
AND, I learned a lot more today.
Thanks to the Merri Artist in McMinnville (and online) for helping me find the watercolors I wanted! What a great store — with people who know how to paint so they can assist!
Mitchell and I played yesterday, good Mexican food in McMinnville (Los Molcajetes) and wandering in the wet GREEN Oregon countryside, dotted with yellows, pinks and purples of mustard, grape hyacinth, and flowering tulip and dogwood trees.
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
I am reblogging my post from zenkatwrites, my other blogging identity, with changes:
I am entranced by this small figurine, known as the Venus of Willendorf. I began drawing and painting her twenty years ago. I saw her in a museum in London and bought the small reproduction they had. At the time I knew little about her. I like going to museums and being with the pieces, art or antiquities, not reading about them until much later, if at all. Most of the time it is a visual experience for me, and I don’t collect that much from the bits of words written about this or that. I saw her in an exhibit with several other ancient images, some pornographic (or so I have been told, as I drew and painted them.) I was able to just sit with the mystery of why this voluptuous figurine had a bee-hive head, as I saw it. I sketched her in my hotel room at night, and carried her home in my purse.
I wanted to plant a larger statue of her in my garden, as an homage to the bees, wondering in a Tom-Robbinish way of there was a bee-goddess I did not know about, and if the bees would tell me their story if I planted her there. For a short time my small reproduction lay in the bird bath in the middle of the herb garden, and I would watch the bees land on her when they were going for water in the height of summer.
Struggling with my own issues of “fat,” she was a memory of how other eras honored women who were zaftig. I have always fought weight, but at thirty-five was working on being happy with my own body, at a time when my former husband was telling me he was unhappy with my body, despite the response from his penis; penises don’t lie.
I began drawing and painting her, and soon had a collection of other goddesses with pendulous breasts and large hips and buttocks. Living with her in drawings and smaller painting culminated in the large painting above, which I call Conch Woman. She is dark of night, mysterious, of water and land, a comfort. She waxes and wanes, on her own rhythm. I love her!
I finally read a bit about her discovery, and thought about her covered in red ochre. Blood, fertility, seemed likely, when women held the secret to procreation. She was found on an archeological dig near the city of Krems, Austria, near the rivers Krems and Danube.
I also began collecting pendants, and when I made my jewelry line she was a prominent figure. Sadly, not one of her images had ever sold; I assume that women do not value her fat body shape, as they see it. Some of the pieces are below.
The lovely bronze image of her (left) is my favorite, hung on vintage Italian whitehearts with African bronze “clubs” flanking each side. I bought her first and only bought two, and could never find the vendor again. The earthy autumn colors of unakite, a type of jasper, sets off the Jane Iris version of her top left, a bit tame and petite but lovely nonetheless. I wanted to create a necklace as beautiful as I found her to be! These and others can be found in my shop on zibbet!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
The image of the ancient goddess is from Wikipedia.
We have a guy that is our beloved pal, and he is getting old. He is driving us nuts, because he somehow thinks that he has earned the right to boss us, and have everything the way he wants it. He wails when we leave, and at night, he demands his center of the bed. This is all fine, except that in his new demando stage he also thinks he can be completely impolite in the night. He woke me this blood moon night at 2am, schlurping his you-know-what so loudly, and batting my hand when I tried to stop him! Since I am an insomniac, I keep Cocoiro pens and Neocolor II next to the bed in order to sketch (Mitchell sleeps through everything.) After getting me up, he curled down to look like the sweetest-cuddly-kitty-so-cute, NOT!
My lack of sleep would not have been terrible except the next day at 6am we were driving five hours south to Southern Oregon to deliver the original lampshade and the new reproduction to the Oregon Caves National Monument.
That night I also drew my own imaginary version of the blood moon . . .
Oregon in April is amazing. I’ve not been to Ireland, but our April colors rival the greens I’ve seen in pictures. My new brilliant watercolors had arrived: Phthalo Light Green, Amethyst, Green Gold, Opera Pink, New Gamboge, Quinophthalo Yellow! I was able to capture amazing fields of green, patches of wild grape hyacinth, fields of mustard, chinkapins in bud, and the very beginning of the dogwoods. In Portland, the Hawthorns were also in bloom on the streets in NW.
When I was a kid in lalaland we had Hawthorn Boulevard. I always assumed it was a man, because if we had hawthorns, I never saw them in bloom in San Fernando Valley. Then I moved to Oregon, and the deep red of the hawthorn blossoms, which look a bit like a wild rose, made me fall in love with the tree. I wait every year for the trees to burst forth with their lovely pink-red blossoms.
ORIGIN Old English hagathorn, probably meaning literally ‘hedge thorn’; related to Dutch haagdoorn, German Hagedorn .
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
I love it when I find writers who paint and draw, because I am both writer and artist. Kenneth Patchen, Natalie Goldberg, and Henry Miller are some of my favorites.
I enjoyed these drawings of Vonnegut’s and was surprised as I had no idea he painted! From HyperAllergic (a great online magazine which I follow):
Drawings by Kurt Vonnegut long kept in storage are getting the monograph treatment with a new publication of his playful, line-driven art. Kurt Vonnegut Drawings, coming next month from the Monacelli Press, features 145 selections of his work. . . Continue to read the review of his book by HyperAllergic!
I am now agreeing to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which you can learn more about by visiting the site, or, visit my web page for a more user-friendly summary on my terms. My images/blog posts can be reposted; please link back to dkatiepowellart.
D.Katie Powell Art 