Watercolor Painting for Relaxation

It’s summer here, and I don’t know that I ever feel more joyfully alive than when I’m out in my own yard & garden space.

Better yet, barefoot.

There’s all kinds of scientific evidence that describes the health benefits of grounding oneself by being outside with bare feet, especially in the early mornings. It gives our mitochondria a boost! Not that I think about that when I’m enjoying myself. It’s purely justification for messing about in the out-of-doors.

Here I am, working on a garden painting.

I am more at home with oil paints than water medium paints, so this is a bit of a deviation for me to paint plein air in something other than oils.

Truthfully, I wanted to sit down while I painted, and how well the art turns out or how saleable it is, is secondary to the pleasure of the process this time. I don’t want to sell the painting, anyway. It’s my way of enjoying the garden.

1. Watercolor does dry quickly and is better in many ways for light, high-key colors.

2. Watercolor is less fuss to set up and take down and clean up.

This is how it turned out…

Important! It is NOT finished yet! I went out this morning to sit in the chair and dab at it some more.

I was fairly unhappy with the artwork yesterday when I put it away, although I was happy with the experience of being in the garden. It was another confirmation of a reason that I paint/create things….

I paint as part of genuine inquiry. If there’s something I’m entranced by, I try to capture its essence in my humble way.

Like the next person, I am wanting to keep body and soul together as long as possible. This takes $, maybe even $$$ now that inflation is rising (LOL!). I have discovered though, that I am personally incapable of making art based on popular motifs, or “what’s selling” and keep my self-respect. Kudos to those who sincerely have art tastes that match the trends! In some ways I’m jealous.

I’m in it for inquiry’s sake. I self-soothe with art-making. I make artifacts for myself… and for you.

That being said, changing mediums is a great way to refresh.

Tips for Watercolor and Gouache Painting

• Watercolor and gouache may be used together, but since gouache is an opaque paint, you will want to begin with watercolor, switching to gouache only when you feel you need opaque and/or deeper, darker colors.

• I find it pleasant to work on gessoed watercolor paper. I like how I can add a little water and reactivate an area and move it around.

• I like to use an aesthetic set up… a real glass (not plastic), a plate, a wooden support board, a pretty rag.

• Use better brushes than I have:-)! I may spend a little money to upgrade both my brushes and gouache quality soon.

• Be sure you have a rag and paper towel handy. The rag is softer and will pull out color more delicately, while the paper towel can be twizzled to a sharp point or used when you want harder edges in what you lift from the paper.

• Think in terms of light to dark. Begin with a thin wash of color to get the overall tone started, then let it dry (a few minutes).

• I like to alternate between painting with deeper, darker color where I can in the negative space, and painting the main features, closer to the front of the picture.

• Reserve your white/lights! If you lose them, you can be very pro about it and buy Miskit (like rubber cement, it preserves a section that you can paint over and rub off later), or do what I do and scrub it out. White gouache is also useful, but know that it tends to look blue or cool unless it’s wet, straight out of the tube.

• The main thing is to enjoy yourself and RELAX. Listen to the wildlife around you! Even if you end up with a green blob, remember there are ways to artistically justify that, too! Have fun!

I stood in the shade for the first session, but no shoes!

I sat in a chair this morning to work on it a little more. I feel it’s good to show you a piece that I am not confident about. I don’t think this is amazing. For me it’s more of a mental health time and a way to enjoy the brief blooming time of my hollyhocks, which I adore. There was a fine misty rain spraying down on me and the picture. I think there are tiny droplets speckling the picture. Wonderful!!

It’s still not finished. I can’t truthfully say that it’s even attractive yet!

I quit for the day as soon as I feel tired of observing. I’ll add a photograph of it when it’s done in the near future.

I’d love to hear about your boredom busters!!!

Do you switch mediums often?

Oil Painting Surfaces - uneven or unwanted sheen and dry spots

I play with transparency in paint and try to hold to the rule of applying fat over lean paint, but sometimes if there is a wax in a medium or if I use OleoGel, I find my surface will dry with dull, repellent spots as seen in the upper portion of exhibit A and on palette in exhibit B.

If we try and apply painting medium to these patches, they bead up, the oil just sits on top and doesn’t soak in an allow us to continue working that area of the panel or canvas.

There are all sorts of solutions (including rubbing a cut, raw potato on those problem spots) but what works for me is a bit, the smallest bit possible to get the effect, of medium rubbed in with a lint-free cloth. The abrasion of the cloth and medium does the trick and saturates your surface!

No need to add retouch varnish or heavy oil (or potato). You’re welcome.

Toward the upper right corner, you can see an almost square section of dull paint that won’t accept medium.

You can see the oil beading up here on my palette, it won’t absorb.

Thoughts on the Cezanne Exhibit (Chicago 2022)

Bay of Marsaille from L’Esaque by Cezanne

I don't count Cezanne amongst my top favorite painters, but I saw a landscape-focused show in Florence, Italy years ago and was surprisingly moved by it. The memory of that exhibit made me determinded to get to this show in Chicago of a wider range of his works, including his bathers and still lifes. After attending two, I can say that the viewing experience in Italy may have added to my pleasure. It was not very busy the day I was there. I could get really close to the art and was able to really feel the lightness. I remember being moved to tears. It was wonderful that didn’t feel the breath of someone queued behind me in a hurry for their one minute maximum turn with a painting. As someone who feels guilty inconveniencing others, I felt very rushed in Chicago.

The Opening Piece of the Cezanne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago! I like his landscapes best of all so this I felt was a stunning beginning. This show was very busy!

Unless an artist violates all my sensibilities, it's hard for me not to delight in seeing a body of work together. It gives me kind of a shivery sense of another artist’s visual perceptions, their favorite places and their contemporaries. Sometimes I boldly wonder how my work would look in a show with art as well lit and as well framed as these top calibre exhibitions…. Lighting can really upgrade art! Just saying…

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paul-cezanne-bathers-les-grandes-baigneuses

As a painter myself, I watch scholarly reviews with a somewhat skeptical eye. I feel like some art historians like to look at artist's work as though everything, even technical misteps, were intentional and I don't think that's true. I watched an excellent YouTube on Cezanne's (big blue) Bathers on loan to the show from The National Gallery in London, and I find it interesting at how far experts will go in reading into pieces, suggesting it took years for Cezanne to paint it because his emotions, trail-blazing skills, and high concepts were so…. profound (pronouce in a breathy whisper, please), and not because he struggled with getting his concept to be passably pleasing. I also sort of roll my eyes at the Cezanne quote about how he felt so deeply. I would hazard a guess that most creatives feel this way. It doesn’t mean that his art come from deeper in his heart than did others’. Not trying to be mean or tout my ignorance here, it’s just that as much as I enjoy the art as human, sometimes naive, sometimes brilliant, we’re not dealing with gods, here (or are we?).

My blunt opinion is that Cezanne struggled for grace in his figures. His academic figures were laboured and stiff and as a student of a rigorous French Academic tradtion myself, I know that he would have worked on those student pieces for many hours and would have had critiques and corrections suggested. They still weren’t anything to write home about. To me, his only figure with true musicality to it, true grace in the forms is this one, “Scipio” which was in Claude Monet’s collection.

Scipio by Cezanne from my onw photo 2022 Chicago- This is by far my favorite portrait or figure of his.

It didn’t escape my notice that when Cezanne needed money, his art dealer suggested he make and sell prints of some nude male bathers. They sold well and may have encouraged him to keep going with the bathing series. Ya know, struggling artist and all that.

Bathers by Cezanne

I’ll be making a video on composition and style and I’ll talk about Cezanne’s work there, but for now let me say that after seeing the range of his work, I still prefer his landcapes to all other subjects. My second favorite of his would be the still lifes. Maybe not too shocking of a revelation.

Stoneware Pitcher by Cezanne

I enjoy the drama of his still life works. To me, it looks like he knew he was master of space and atmosphere when he approached his interior set ups, very much like a competent stage director. His use of blues and deep yellows, common in all his work, really shines in these subjects. Don’t let it pass you by that the two colors he seemed to use most were warm cyan blues, grays, yellow ochres and rosey rusts. These exact colors are widely used in movie color palettes. More on the color theories later (in the coming video).

screenshot from: https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/cinema-palettes-famous-movie-colors/

All in all, I think that Cezanne was at his best with space and atmosphere (composition), and if he was sore that his realism and sense of mass never reached the level that he might have originally hoped, he was likely pleased with the degree of fame and appreciation he earned in his lifetime. HIs work was collected by other artists (like Claude Monet) whose approval meant something as the new art, Impressionism established a path for a broader appreciation of what was meant by “good art”.

And now his work I like best…. the landscapes. His landscapes have a relaxed, airiness to them. They feel less laboured than his other pieces. As a painter always trying to loosen up, I love it when I feel the mellow calm of the artist just playing around in the colors, as it were. Maybe that is not at all how he was while painting landscapes, but that’s how I feel when I look at them. I feel like they’re a nice balance between stylization and cheerful observation. I also enjoy the fact that many are what we might call unfinished. I like to think he got to that point and didn’t have any guilt put on him by other artists or academy saying, “Make that paint thicker” and “aren’t you going to finish that corner?”

Thanks for reading! I’m sure I missed getting some nuance just right in this post. It’s hard to explain that I do really like his paintings, yet have misgivings in attributing him with the same kind of godlike technique accolades that some give him.

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watercolor by Paul Cezanne pic taken at Chicago Institute of Art

Man in a Blue Smock by Paul Cezanne

The artist’s father, reading. Hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Love Story, Love Art

Love, love, love.

In addition to painting, I love reading and growing plants.  I used to read a lot when I was young.  My backup career ideas as a teen were Library Science and English Literature.  Like some of you may have, I quit reading fiction when I got BUSY.  A few years ago, my mom gave me a hardcover copy of “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith (who also wrote the original 101 Dalmatians story and hit plays for the London stage), and I got re-hooked!

I like romantic stories and classics and some poetry, and that overflows into my painting life and always has.  One important piece of being an artist is BEING an artist; that is living life as a story.  The things I can control-doing my best to make them beautiful- and the things I can’t control- doing my best to make the most good out of them.

I’ve always loved reading artist’s biographies and journals.  I’m fascinated by the connections between what they painted with how they lived.  The more I know of their lives, the more emotion I pull from the work.  If I have a real life encounter with an exhibition of paintings by Manet or Cezanne, for example, I am powerfully moved-even if their work hadn't been of noted interest to me before.  There is something about connecting the story of their lives with their original work that I find so moving.  

I do a lot of thinking about "why buy art?  Why watch art?  Why make it?"

There is much I could say about this topic and I’m interested in what you have to say about it, and today I’ll just share this thought: Art and the making of it and the living of it is part of a story, the story of the maker and the story of the person who collects it.  At that point our stories meet and mingle.  The art expresses something of the buyer’s taste and experience that the painter shares with them.  The artist’s accomplishments become part of the collector’s personal story.  I LOVE this tapestry.  Story is so beautifully human.

High Cliff, Coast of MainebyWinslow Homer/ American Art

High Cliff, Coast of MainebyWinslow Homer/ American Art

(above link to image at the Smithsonian American Art Museum website)



I read a good article in the October 2012 issue of "The Artist's Magazine" written by Jerry N. Weiss, titled, "I cannot Do Better Than That".

The title quote is in reference to the oil painting, High Cliff, Coast of Maine,by Winslow Homer.  Apparently, he had showed this painting a lot for 9 years before it found a buyer.  It contributed to his frequent questioning of himself in his mid-life sales slump.  In his frustration he asked his gallery in Chicago, "Why do you not sell that "High Cliff" picture?  I cannot do better than that.  Why should I paint?"

The painting is very forceful and naturalistic, but beautiful.  Perhaps it wasn't a relaxing living room piece.



At any rate, I found the article interesting and can relate to Homer's struggle to equate sales of pieces that he felt were among his best with his sense of self worth.

Wet Paint June 2014

I think I'm still working on this piece.  I want to work in the foreground especially.  I'll re post an image when it's truly done.  I'd love to sell this one before I invest in the frame.  There are so many choices.  The one I like the best is a heavy, antique style gold.  It looks like a 200 year old painting in it, but that's not everyone's taste!

A plein air piece from last Friday.

Peonies with Green Glass and Apricots, 20x16 in. oil on panel, on hold

Beach Box Pastoral

May Changes

It's a good month for them.  For changes.

I decided to simplify my life and forget about a "website" for a while.  I have the worst luck building or having one built for me.  It seems too personal to have someone else do without having too many of my own opinions about the layout  And when I do it?  It

looks

like I did with all of the little technical know-how I have within me.

JUNE NOTE:  AH, DECIDED TO KEEP THE WEBSITE...IN SPITE OF ITS IMPERFECTIONS.  THE GALLERIES ARE PRETTY HANDY.

So more power to the blog and Facebook studio gallery pages!  

https://www.facebook.com/ThimganHaydenStudio

The painting below (speaking of changes) is a re-visit of a painting I did a year or two ago.  You can see the older one on the wall behind the easel and canvas.

Here's a pic of the original....will be getting a hand finished frame this year, by the way.

And now---with no website to fret over---I'm going to go paint!! or work outside in my fledgling cottage garden I'm attempting!!  Changes- hooray!!

Life on The Slow Setting

This past month, I was feeling really cheerful and thankful for the time I had to enjoy household tasks.

One morning, I was standing on a dining room chair with one foot on the table cleaning the little chandelier that hangs there.  Granted, the sun was shining bright on the snow and in

Michigan

that does wonders for the heart at this time of the year.

 Like a lot of other people, I really bond with my house and want to have the time to enjoy taking care of it.  Not that it always works out that way.

It’s those times when I’m in the moment that give me an emotional boost.

I consider myself a sensitive person (or a highly sensitive person!).  I’m often overwhelmed with the size and number of the world’s problems.  I try to live in such a way that I effect positive change and it’s these little tasks, the joy of family, and the beauty of art and nature that keep me from stumbling over the sorrows outside of my sphere of influence.

And did I mention?  Bring on the spring!!

Wallflowers and Wallpaper

I have once again fallen behind terribly at updating the blog.  There are so many things to juggle in life, not to mention actually painting!

After getting back from Italy, Joseph and I bought a little brick house that we fell in love with, our teenage daughter got Chicken Pox, and we had to have one of our dogs put to sleep.  Then of course we get to settle into the new old house and repair some things.

The big loss with moving from our former place was the big studio in-home.  Now I paint smaller pieces at home in any room I feel like using (usually the kitchen), and share AESTHETICS STUDIO with a couple of fellow artists in a local arts cooperative building for portraits and figures.

Why Wallpaper and Wallflowers? (the title of this post)

Well, the Wallpaper is obvious.

and "Wallflowers"

is the playful but woefully negative word I seized upon for my current work theme.  I think my work has a solitary sweetness to it that sort of resonates with the word "wallflower". Since I often paint portraits of flowers-it also has a bit of tongue-in-cheek mixed in there.  You can see more of the recent pieces that bloom under this theme on my website's Current Works page (obsolete link).

Living Above The Clouds In Montefiascone

1st painting of the trip, the view from the window

I am really late in blog posting....I am going to start where I left off and add a few more as I get to it.  This summer was a whirlwind of travel, house buying, Chicken Pox, and dachshund woes.  There was a lot of change in a small space of time- a lot of "living".  

My family and I went to Montefiascone in May for me to learn and enjoy a residency with Artegiro Contemporary Fine Art.  Our hosts and friends, Damien and Renata Summo-O'Connell and their dear children, were gracious to help with settling us in and supporting the project.  

Montefiascone is on a hill, a mountain.  The weather changes often and quickly.  Sometimes the clouds were far above you, and sometimes below you.  The people of Montefiascone are justifiably proud of their town.  We stayed right next to the Cathedral-the Cattedrale di Santa Margherita ( which has the 3rd largest dome in Italy) and just below the breathtaking view from the Rock of The Popes.  This tiny town had Slow Food member eateries and a wonderful enoteca called "Volo di Vino". 

Returning to Italy after a few years absence was exciting.  I'm always surprised that my Italian (such as it is) hasn't shriveled completely in the meantime.  I'm also surprised at how much pleasure I get from working on the language. I feel actually exhilarated when I am able to communicate successfully and build relationships- to understand and be understood!  I was happy to trade the initial shock of being in a different country for the slower, comfortable feeling of returning "home" in a way.  After living in Italy- part of me changed forever and not a day goes by that I don't think about it.  I think everyone who has spent a decent amount of time in another country has that same feeling.

This little painting is just under 8x10in. and is painted near the  center of town.

Outside Regula's stone studio

 One of the definite highlights of the trip were all the wonderful people I met.  The studio was out of a dream-complete with artists in and out and a talented sculptor owner-Adrianna.  She gave me roses from her garden which I painted one rainy day.

 Angelo, a photographer, 

www.artegiro.com

, took me on more than 1 memorable excursion, patiently hearing me out in Italian.  Simone and Gabriele are the owners of Volo di Vino and a talented duo of taste and writing.  Quinto gave us a book he's written about figures in a fresco in one of the ancient churches and enriched our experience.  Not to mention sculptor, Regula Zwicky,  who inspired me, Rosanna, who invited me to her home and took me landscape painting in a nut tree grove, and  Renata, my dear host, who is always an inspiration and herself an aesthete and cultural artist.

Painting Yindi in the studio

The night view from my window