Back from work travel and I found a few hours in my studio and at the computer working with my photo images of what I am willing to share in this conversation today.

First, the one below is one of the original tri-colored backgrounds I posted last week compared to the painting that emerged from it last weekend. The cat found its way into this painting; but, that was not where I was headed with it. I like the colors remaining from the background. I am not sure I like the buff face. Maybe that color is too warm for this painting. I think you can see what I used from the original where I'd carved lines in the wet paint that I emphasized in the painting.

Next, you can see I found a face in this original background and maybe only the mouth remains in the translation to the woman with the wild and wonderfully colorful hair. Neither of these looks finished to me and I've decided to let them sit for awhile.

While I wait for the two pieces above to find better resolutions, I created the next one yesterday after applying mixtures of magenta, aqua, white, and black tube acrylic randomly to gessoed paper. I used a stencil to get the circles at the bottom. I tend to avoid stencils because they look too predictable. But, this application brought stray pieces of color that maybe give it a more handmade look. 

I will let this one sit, too, since I am tempted to do something to tone down the horizontal lines in the lower right side and I'm not sure it is necessary. It's also very pastel, more like the horizontal bands piece I created a few weeks ago and posted to this blog; but, it might take further muting of the aqua and magenta colors. I do like the strong gray-black shapes...a different approach for me.  I think it is different. Helga, you always seem to find patterns in my work that I don't pick up on. Do you see anything familiar with this abstract painting? Where does this painting take your eye? Anyone want to comment on that? Maybe the vertical blue block in the upper left should be toned down a few notches. My eye keeps drifting over there and there is nothing to look at. Thoughts on that? Or...should I paint over the whole thing and start over? By the way, this is on 8" x 8" watercolor paper.

Any thoughts on whether my abstract work is something to keep working on or should I stick with work that is a bit more representational? I am NOT a fan of photo-realism for my work, though I have made very tight botanical watercolor paintings that are framed and hanging in my house and friends' houses. I feel a need to loosen up now and let my paintings be more expressive (and 'fun' not funny). 

-Eileen

last week i received a newsletter from Craft&Vision, announcing a new ebook by Henry Fernando about mastering the everyday practice of seeing by way of simple, repetitive photograph prompts.
hhe book covers a whole year, so a total of 365 exercises......
I looked up the next day's number, 148, photograph texture, and took that suggestion with me through the whole day. what a great way to practice contemplation! i perceived textures everywhere i went.....

here is my favourite shot from that day, sooc

a week before i had taken some intriguing shots of statues, exhibited in the old town center
this one felt like it would blend well with the texture

here's the texture after a couple rounds through the Glaze app

and here's the final image, with one of my manikin's added

striking up a conversation

Helga, thanks for adding a Subscribe option for our visitors. I like the new look, too.

Visitors, we'd love to hear from you. Please join our art-making conversation.

 -Eileen

ok, here's a project i've been working on for a while.

when on holiday, i took 4 small square canvas panels, laid them out in a rectangle and painted a kind of colorful curvy panorama, using a harmonious colorpalette borrowed from Cozen & Pritchard.

though the canvas was tough to work on, even with fluid acrylics, i really liked the sense of flow i got when looking at the result

after taking shots of the individual panels and using them as background for my photo collages, i started playing around with the squares, creating different quadrants. at one point a shape manifested itself so i outlined the contours in white.

i started filling up the shape with shreds of tissue paper that i first drenched in a glaze of iridescent bright gold, then crumpled and stuck to the panels with gel medium and finally covered with some extra glazes of bright gold.
i let it dry, then decided to cut through the shape that now held the four panels together, thus dividing the quadrant in individual shapes again, which i shuffled around until i discovered a new shape that i could work with.

i had to let it rest fore a while, got caught up in other stuff, but the idea of a map, the outline of some fantasy continent had already surfaced and settled in my creative synapses....

so i created a high contrast B&W copy of the quadrant, made another version with MobileMonet, where i desaturated all the color except for the gold, leaving a grey border all around to strengthen the effect of cartographic relief depiction, then blended these two with a shot of the remains of a fire i found in the marshes two days ago. finally i added a Miracam filter to give it a more vintage look.

uncharted territory

Good morning, Helga. Maybe it is afternoon for you already.
I am waiting for paint to dry; so, I thought I'd post some work I've done so far this morning to take me through the weekend. All of these are starters; although, two are work in my art journal. The art journal work started with paint spread on two adjacent pages I leave open while i work on something else. I use the left over paint because I don't want to "waste" it. I go back into some of the pages later and attempt to make something "more" out of them.

Here is an example of a page where I slapped it with left-over paint, drew over it left-handed with a graphite pencil using a post-card image of a linen frock hanging on a sewing form. The right side of the image is a photo I shot just a few minutes ago after i took artist crayons to color in the forms. I merged the two photos in PhotoShop Elements so the comparison is easier to make.

I am ok with these images staying medium size because i like to look it as if "from afar". I use that perspective to help me better see the composition and color blocks. Photographing the progression helps make that process easier. Blogging about it - now that we are doing this - forces me to take a good look at what I am doing, knowing that you will have something pithy to say or playful to do with the images.

I decided this morning that I've been getting too tight with my paintings. Here is what happened to the one we talked about this week. I realized yesterday that I was agonizing over it instead of letting myself "go" with more fun, free style. I'm including it here so I can rationalize to you why I took the turn I did this morning. It may have to rest for months before I go back. I'm wrecking it!!

Don't even talk about it today. let's move into the next three on watercolor paper (x2) and wood panel (x1). For these three, I lined up the substrates, each having a painting on them already, in a row at my counter, selected three analogous harmony colors on the color wheel along with a graphite gray color and let my 2" wide synthetic paintbrush work along with the music playing on my iPod. Again, these are starters for something this weekend after the paint dries.

Finally, the next is the other side of the open art journal where I was doing nothing but adding color swaths then made slightly more deliberate attempts to bring out the dark shape. Hmmm...where could this one go? Maybe to a larger canvas to see if I can intentionally reproduce the composition, colors, and wonderful application of paint.

Can you see why I needed to step back to a playful approach? Crank the music and let it guide my hands without thinking so much about it...

OK, Helga. Show me what you've done these past few days. Talk us through your thoughts and processes.

Eileen

about 'messing up' your work......

here' s a photo of a painting i created a couple of weeks ago

i first created a bronze textured background, then added some blue and yellow glazes, mixing and blending them into two horizontal greenish rectangles. i went on with different shades of blue, creating some elliptical shapes and letting some of the lighter paint drip down toward the bottom of the painting.
finally, i poured bright red-orange on the blue shapes, then put the paper upright, to let the paint drip down all the way to the bottom edge. to add some more texture and relief i drenched tissues in the red  paint,  crumpled them and stuck them inside the red pools of paint.
this shot i took of the painting shows the sunflower-covered plastic table cloth  and part of the foam brush i used to paint the bronze background.

here's what i came up with after the first 'round'....

love lies bleeding

like you said: deliciously gross, this....:-)
but i wanted to try something different, so i decided to completely deconstruct and reconstruct my image, by putting it through the hyperDroste app

very interesting, a bit like descending a vortex.... love the way the sunflowers and the foam brush add to the effect.

here is the final image

love's bloody labyrinth

Here is how I moved or messed up paintings yesterday morning.

First is the Cozen-inspired leaf painting drawn left-handed (non-dominant hand) with black and red inks and painted with transparent acrylic fluid paints over a background collage painting washed over with thinned opaque paint film to make it hazy. I like it turned clockwise but this orientation isn't bad either. I need to add some color to the hazy-blue leaf in the bottom third. I like the textural painting coming through parts of the leaves and I don't mind the hot pink 'berries' mixed with the deep red ink. Maybe near done? Not sure if I should continue along this vein since it hasn't been my style, except for the left-handed sketching which I still like.

The next series shows how I morphed the blue and green painting starting with an application of thinned titan buff layers that I sprayed with watery mists to let the dripping begin. 

Next, I turn the wood panel around because I liked the 'windows' or doors i created along one edge using my palette knife to scrap back to the wonderfully textured paint I'd covered up. I used one of my favorite tree sticks to mark lines in the wet paint to connect layers. Things are getting pretty hazy now and I am torn up about the loss of bright - but dark - colors and textures. You can see that I was also trying to find strong lines and shapes and I was very caught up with the wavy horizontal lines that were strong in the original.

So, I stopped fighting it and let go of my fear of covering 'precious' areas. I applied more thin layers of acrylic paint and things started getting sticky. I began smoothing the surface with the flat part of my knife, burnishing the top coat and discovering that the heat of the burnishing action seemed to be fusing the colors from below with the buff-green color of the top color. I felt the painting begin to take on the texture and look of an encaustic painting. So, that process drove me onward until the whole thing had been handled with burnished surfaces in horizontal bands (reminiscent of the original bands I made for the mosaic painting) and completely lost everything that was there - EXCEPT for the orange-pink rectangle that used to be on the bottom. Zoom in on this image and you will see that texture is all over this painting and I love it. Don't you love some of the subtle lines i made with my little stick? BUT, it needs contrast. OR does it need a more even color across the majority of the painting with peeks at the colors underneath through lines carved into a new top layer to suggest some shape that holds a viewer's eye and releases it back to the texture and subtle color. It is not done, this one. I may have to sit with it for awhile though.

Here are my favorite marking tools used in the painting above - and most other paintings. I use them to draw with inks, too. I placed them with familiar objects to put their size into context. You can see their tips are permanently covered with inks and acrylic sheaths. 

That's it for today. I won't have time to get into my studio to work until the weekend. Please post some of your work, Helga, so we can talk about what you are doing. -Eileen

hi eileen,

today i went to a shopping center near the beach and took a shot of a manikin wearing a net dress. i liked the way the colored waves divide the dress in three parts.
later, when i looked at your improved painting i immediately saw the connection between the two: your painting is also divided horizontally by the different colored glazes you added.

so after some erasing and blending i designed a new dress based on your painting. wow! much better and more interesting and fashionable than the original, don't you think?

the second painting reminds me of the series of portraits you made, based on blind-contour drawing. would love to see you create a face out of this one :-)

and here's what i did with the fern.....

saved it to my iphone and pulled it through enlight (an iphone-only app) a couple of times 

then i squared it and added a buddha cut out of another shot i took at the beach this morning

and voila......

the secret life of plants

so now both you and i know how i came up with this title :-)

Thanks, Helga, for playing with the photo image of my first painting and coming up with such a fun alteration. I will try working with paint to achieve what you had in mind.

The second painting got a makeover yesterday during my studio session in the afternoon. Here is what I came up with for that one and I have some ideas for taking it to the next place. I needed to let the paint dry over night.

I think there are fish in the bottom third, right side of this painting. I am going to lighten it up a bit, darken the upper third. Play around with it more. I put the painted panel on top of some rubber tile on the roof of our back porch, i.e. the black and white rectangles around the edge.

I obviously borrowed from Chris Cozen with this painting that I put on top of a background I painted yesterday, which was already painted on top of another background. I see it turned counter-clockwise for the best view. What do you think?

Look what my camera lens found when I was sitting outside for dinner

eileen, read your blogpost and looked at the images. love them!
i saved a copy of the first image to my ipad and tried to figure out what i thought it needed.
this is what takes up most of my time while working on my own art, i manipulate a photograph until i come up with an interesting image, and then i think, something needs to be added in the right hand corner, or: i need a way to boost these colors, or: this is okay, but what would make it perfect?
after pondering your image with its great colors and shapes and textures (though some of the texture fades away in the photograph, get flattened, i think the real thing must me even better!) i brought it into the art studio app and started adding some black to elevate those awesome shapes from the background. i then sprayed some yellow and white paint over the black, because i wanted to make it lighter and create some kind of dark contour. then i also drew some black lines around some of the other shapes within the larger shape i just elevated out of the blue. finally i decided to add some white, following the lines you had already scratched inside the paint, then expanded them somewhat.
the result was a bit too bright and opaque for my taste so i covered the white lines with some semi-transparent black ones.

tadaa!!!

i loved playing around with your image and it helped me realize what was missing, hope this will help you decide what to do next.
in short: i think you need to decide on what your main shape is and then do something to make it pop out, so the viewer follows your lead. and i think you should add some contrasting colors inside the shapes, find a way to accentuate some shapes and fade some of the others, everything is still a bit 'flat' now, despite the texturing.
you know what the weirdest thing is....? after i finished playing around with your art i realized that i had subconsciously recreated a shape i had been using in my own work just a few hours before..... here is the image i had just finished, titled:
the poet's bitter legacy

just look at that head, cut off above the nose...... and at the downward curve made by the lining of her shirt..... ain't that amazing?

helga

Two of my paintings have me stymied. A few days ago I mixed up some glaze formulas suggested by Chris Cozen and Julie Prichard in their book Acrylic Solutions Exploring mixed media layer by layer. I liked the resulting colors and used them in the two paintings below.

I like the texture in these. The compositions are not working, though. Maybe these need to be backgrounds to something else.

The blue and green painting with geometric shapes started out as a grid painting. I now looks like a building or a bird in abstract. At one time during the transition, it had a nice shadow-like shape to the left of the light blue box above the center line that helped bring the box forward and the yellow-green shape back. But, I added more glaze and it was gone. I may have to put this one aside for awhile.

This next one started out as background color and texture and adding the Cozen-Prichard gritty color in watery green with drips made it more interesting to me. Still, I can't 'see' where to take it now.

What do you think, Helga? Should I start over with both of them? Carve out new shapes with negative spaces?

Eileen