Black-throated Green Warbler...A Painting from Tom's Photo

I have been doing a lot of pencil drawings lately...our grandson, John...

from this photo...

and our granddaughter, Samantha...

from this photo...

The sketch of John turned out looking the age he was when the photo was taken but the sketch of Samantha came out looking older than she is in the photo.  The proportions of faces change as we age.  In this case, her eyes should have been drawn lower on her face. Changing the position of her eyes would then affect the positioning of all her other facial features. I decided it would be best to leave this drawing as it is. It will remind me to measure more carefully next time. 

The trick is to think in terms of comparative relationships.

I painted the Black-throated Green Warbler from a photo Tom took at Magee Marsh on May 15.

I did not draw the bird before I painted it.  Instead, I measured with my eyes as I painted it, noting the proportion of the width of the green back to the width of the wing to the width of the breast.  Length proportions are measured against one another in the same way. The following progression from the second session to the final are below.

At this point I sent a copy of the painting to an artist friend who often critiques my work for me.  She reminded me that the eye needed a spot of life.  A dot of white carefully placed adds life.  She also suggested that I define the leaves a bit more.  I didn't want them to become as important as the bird but they should be more important than what I had them at this point.

Here I have made the leaves more important but I still wasn't satisfied with them.

This is the original photo again.  I didn't like the arrangement of the leaves so I am using my imagination, my "artistic license" and that takes a bit of thinking.

This is the final painting.  I played around with the faint hint of leaves in the upper left portion.  I also made some tiny touch up on the foreground leaves.

Our Anniversary...Number Fifty-six

Our anniversary is November twenty-second.  This year the date was the day before Thanksgiving, just as it was the year we were married.  That year we didn't have Thanksgiving Day dinner to prepare for but this year we did.  It was wonderful to see all the Ohio clan except Jacquie who had to work.  ( She is a manager for a restaurant.)  Twelve of us are below.  Three more arrived later in the day.  The other six live in North Carolina and had Thanksgiving there.

Tom and I decided to celebrate our anniversary the following Wednesday.  We went to Schmidt's German Restaurant in Columbus and then to the Columbus Museum of Art.

My dinner.  Tom chose the buffet but I enjoyed having my food brought to me.

Our waiter, Dave.

Looking out the window.

First new item in twenty-five years.  We didn't try it.  We have our old favorites.  Next time I plan to try it.

Afterward we took a short walk in the village.  Normally this time of year the weather would be unpleasant but on "our" day, the sun shone and fifty degree temperatures felt like early fall.

The homes and businesses were decorated for Christmas or in the process of being decorated.  If you look closely, you will see a black and white dog behind the gate enjoying the day.

We stopped at The Book Loft and bought a Christmas CD which included Christmas songs sung in German.

Our next stop was The Columbus Museum of Art where we enjoyed comparing many Pointillist paintings. in the Post Impressionism special exhibit.  There were also prints done in a variety of techniques.  

Painting at the Little Mader Farm

Marsha arranged for our painting group to paint at the Little Mader Farm for the second time.  The weather was perfect, sunny, cool enough to need a light jacket but warm enough after a lunch snack to take the jacket off.  Jerri made  a delicious blueberry coffee cake for us.  There were five of us painting, half of the original plein air group from five or six years ago.  It was good to see everyone.

I painted and sketched, sketched and painted using the Micron pen and watercolor technique I have been playing with the last couple months.  When I looked at the painting after I came home, I realized I had painted a chair with only three legs.  I painted one in.  The rest of the painting is as it was when I laid down my brush for the final time at the farm.

Flower Sketching Experiments

I have all sorts of excuses for not losing myself in artwork recently.  Ignoring painting and drawing is not good for me.  I am happier even if I spend only a half hour a day creating.

I've been doing flower studies to get art back into my life.

I've already posted the bouquet I painted when I painted with Marsha in August.  These are three sketches I've done since then.

I like to work from a still-life set-up.  I found a few weigelia flowers still blooming.

The vase is one I bought years ago when my sister and I were shopping at a Mikasa store at an outlet mall.  I used a Micron pen which was a little low on ink.  There was enough ink for me to draw some guidelines but not enough to create firm edges.  Afterward, I laid in some watercolor washes.  The paper is bit thin so I had to be careful, not have much water in my brush.

After Labor Day Marsha and I painted at her house.  This time it was simpler to work from photographs than from a still-life.

I still used basically the same technique.  I chose to sketch only a few of the Purple Coneflowers in the photo.

I had time to do a second painting.  Marsha said she had seen an interesting painting on-line in which the artist had started with a wash of colors and then gone back and drawn shapes.  I decided to see what I could come up with.

The photo is of Ironweed.

Here is the result.  I decided I liked the sketchy lines so I didn't redraw them more precisely with a fresh Micron pen.  I think this technique could make an interesting background for a collage of some sort.  I also plan to try it on a paper that is more suitable for watercolor washes.

All of these pieces are small, about seven  inches square.

A Bouquet of Prairie Flowers, August, 2017

Earlier this month, Marsha came to paint with me.  I was pleased to see her.  I haven't been painting much for several years.  I needed a jumpstart.  Marsha, bless her, seems to have done that.

The flowers in the bouquet are from our yard...the smaller yellow ones with the graceful thin stems are Tall Coreopsis, the bigger yellow ones are Oxeye, and the orange are Butterflyweed.  The pitcher is one we bought in either Williamsburg or Jamestown, Virginia.  I remember Williamsburg.  Tom remembers Jamestown.  I received the tatted star doily in a Christmas gift exchange when I was co-oping at Landers Corporation in Toledo my senior year in high school.

This is how the painting looked after the painting session with Marsha.  I started with a rough sketch using a Micron pen, then laid in watercolors.  I was hoping to keep the painting as a sketch, an impression, not a photographic image.

I always need to make frequent stops to "think".  This was the result of my thinking.

Another day to "think".  I decided to lighten the fabric on the right side, also to redarken the leaves at the pitcher edge.  I had wiped out a lot of the color.  Then I went bolder with the watercolor.  The very last strokes I made were a few with a white gel pen to bring back some reflections on the pitcher.

Experimenting with Olympus Tough TG-850 at Charleston Falls

Yesterday about noon, I walked at the falls.  Today we are getting snow and low temperatures ranging from about 10 degrees Fahrenheit to 25 degrees Fahrenheit but yesterday the temperature was 42 degrees Fahrenheit.  Not many people were walking since it was a workday for most people.

The above photo was taken on the Automatic setting...what we once called snapshot mode.

Then I went to the Programable setting and played with the special effect settings, leaving the Exposure set at 0.  Another time I'll play with changing the Exposure as well as the Programable settings.

Here are a few of the 14 settings.

Vivid Setting

Pale and Light Setting

Grainy Film Setting

Pinhole Setting

The setting that fascinated me the most was the Reflection Setting.  I can imagine starting with the photos below and transforming them into abstract paintings.

Polymer Clay "Wood"

My eleven year old art student has been asking me to let him model with polymer clay so a few weeks ago, he looked through my polymer clay how-to books and picked out a couple projects.

"Wood" polymer clay masks were one of the projects he picked.  I told him I would experiment with making wood and we would try making a mask.

I found directions, each set different, in four how-to books.  Most of them called for using four wood-like colors but one book called for three.  Since this was a my first attempt I decided to use three colors.  One of the other books suggested using metallic colors mixed with the wood colors to give the wood a sheen.  I used that idea, too.

I used scraps of clay from other projects so I can't give you the amounts by the usual method of one block or one quarter block.  I used circle cutters from my box of cutters which I bought on-line.  I chose a large, a mid-size, and a small size because several of the books suggested using different amounts of the various colors.

It took a while to mix three appropriate colors.  Below is the first combination I chose.  I decided the colors were too contrasting and remade colors choosing colors that were a little closer in value (but still contrasting)  I also decided to mix the colors more thoroughly.

Below is the second set of colors I used. Later I premixed enough of similar colors so my art student and I could each make a wood cane.  His class is one and a half hours long, not long enough for him to mix his clays and also make a mask.

All of the sheets were rolled through the pasta maker at the second thickest setting. The largest circle was cut from the mid-value brown, the smallest circle was cut from the deepest value brown and the mid-size circle was cut from the lightest brown.  Approximate sizes of cutters in the photo.

Next I rolled each circle into a ball, and flattened them with a clay roller so I could put them through the pasta maker again.  I rolled the mid-value color first on the second thickest setting.  In order for the lightest brown to be a large enough sheet to cover the first one, I had to roll it through on the fourth thickest setting.  The dark value had to be rolled even thinner.  I stretched the second and third sheets gently to make them the size of the bottom layer.  Now I had the the various thicknesses several of the how-to books suggested.

Next came stacking.  

Cut stack in half.  Lay one on top of the other.  Do NOT lay the dark against the dark. 

 Cut again.  Note the tiny lines where I released the air trapped under the dark layer.

Stack again.  Cut on the green line for yet another stacking.

Note that the stacks are not precise.  This didn't seem to be necessary.  It is necessary to remember NOT to lay dark against dark or mid-color against mid-color.

Form the stack into a rectangular box.

Bend the box.

Bent box.

Form the clay into a rectangular box and bend again.

Repeat until you like the "wood" rectangle you have made.  It took me three times bending and reforming into a rectangular box to get what I liked.

 Final rectangular box.

Sliced box.

Slices laid so the inside cuts are visible.  These are always surprises.

I laid one slice sliced edge up and rolled it thin enough to go through the pasta maker. ( This slice was from a later rectangular box.)

After being rolled through the pasta maker.

Cut an oval that will use about half of the sheet.  The oval will become the mask.  The rest of the sheet can be used for the nose, ears and other additions to the mask.

A drinking straw can be used to cut out the eyes.  The ring in the nose is a jump ring which can be bought in a jewelry craft section of craft stores.

Cut a heart in half lengthwise to make ears.

Lay the finished mask on a sheet of clay rolled at the second thickest setting on the pasta maker.  The first time I didn't do this and the ears fell off.  The backing sheet also adds color to the eyes. Cut carefully around the mask with an Exacto Knife.  It is easier to cut off sections rather than cut around the whole mask in one cut.

Bake at 275 degrees for 25 minutes.
I baked the mask on a curved metal bowl but it could be baked flat.  Fortunately, I remembered to cut a hole at the top with a straw so I could hang the head on a keyring after it was baked.  The hole could be drilled out afterward, also.

Below is the mask my art student made.

Here is another mask, this time with two holes cut into it so it can be hung on a necklace.