From Inside the Studio, Acrylics Day

Painting with acrylics does not require a silver brush, but do be sure you don’t go el cheapo when you buy brushes. You don’t want to forever be picking hairs out of your wet acrylic masterpiece in the less than 10 minutes you have to work on it before that paint stroke dries. You can buy all sorts of shapes for your brushes if you want to, but you’ll always be looking for that perfect little square to pull down a stripe with one stroke or make a squarish something, to slide the wonderful straight edge straight along an edge for a perfect straight line. All who are resistant to painting always quote that old adage, “I can’t draw a straight line.” Don’t mess with me, they are saying. I’m not gifted like you, they actually tell you. Oh? Put out paints. Dip squared off brush into some paint color, Place on canvas, drag straight across with the edge. It worked, didn’t it? So sorry to prove you can paint a line. One further tip on that is to push up to the line, never float over it, which roughs it with additional color. Just keep all the color underneath the edge, and it can’t hop up there to mess it up.

Plant, or mash, as we Southerners say, your square-edged brush upon the edge and drag.

Again. Don’t hold it up in the air this time; we’re not looking for a pencil line, we’re looking for a straight edge under which is paint in a random shape. From this point on, just lather it on below and up to the wet random paint (but never all the way back up to the edge where you will likely mess up what you already had perfect) until you get to the next edge or the end of your passage. You can use just the square edge for a very small point, if you need it, but for the straight edge, match brush edge to edge to be painted. I am being tedious only because I have had to continue in this exact fashion with my students. It isn’t that we are dumb, it is that we have been taught that painting is hard, and we miss the obvious, sometimes.

You can use the same motions (for ladies) that you use for putting on your makeup, soft curving strokes (once you have the edge), some lightly feathered over the thicker ones to connect newer, different colors together seamlessly. Work as long as the paint will let you and you feel you need to. Don’t mindlessly dab. Dabs aren’t strokes, and what are you doing? Do you know the goal for all that dabbing? What was wrong with it the way it was first laid down? You don’t know? Well, then, stop. Another cautionary. Don’t keep pulling paint into new, dry areas from where you put the wet paint down. You are thinning it, and making it worse, not better. Do the logical brushing for the amount of paint you have, stop, and dip your brush in more paint. Feather the add-on into the old lightly, because by now it is drying and has lost its ability to give. Let the old part rest and dry, continue with the wet. If, heaven forbid, you go back over it with watered acrylic, you might lift up a hole, a whole patch of paint that leaves a hole. That is the number one worst error to make, I’m telling you. Can’t correct it, it will leave a bumpy edge all around the hole.

Did we say acrylic is dimensional paint? That means the paint itself builds up and has thickness to it. Oh, Well. You can sand it down and start again.

There are those who like to trip along the bumps of the canvas and spread a little paint here, a little paint there, leaving dry patches in-between. This strategy is not a good one. How do you ever find all those little squares you missed to patch over them? You have to, you know, because unlike watercolor, where bits of paper showing through is considered beautiful, bits of patterned canvas are considered ugly. Now I know some exception will raise it’s beautiful head to prove me wrong. That’s okay. But skipping along with a dry brush has just made your work needlessly more tedious. Just like making a tedious drawing akin to paint-by-numbers drawings with the eyelashes drawn in. And you’re supposed to paint between the eyelashes? I’m sorry, but you must use your noggin, here, and paint in large areas, colors, and surfaces, first. You can’t work from detail down, even if it does anchor you. You have to subtract detail and work with big shapes up.

Check around. Everybody’s saying it.

Now, if you didn’t do this to begin with, try it with your next one. Plan your layout of your canvas, your composition as it’s called, ahead of time. See if you can’t divide it into seven basic shapes. Now you’re cooking with gas. Allrightee, then. Into or onto those seven sections, if you will, you can further subdivide after you’ve painted the main color. All this, and we haven’t even come to modeling. Modeling is a real pain in acrylic. I’ll just say it exactly like it is. Acrylic lends itself to bold contrasts better than slight changes from dark green to lighter, for instance, being as how the paint dries so fast, and you will go back and forth like I’ve seen all my students do, thereby flattening the passage of paint instead of modeling it. You can try slight increments in color, increase of dark (darker color added), or increase of white added into it, lighter, pick one, don’t try both, and feather the edge over the older, drying color.

The toll-painting method of striation of color or variegating it is actually a good strategy. This is called double or triple-loading your brush with 2 or 3 different colors of paint. Don’t glob it all together, space the colors out as you pick them up off your palette. Then apply in short strokes for hair or grass, for instance, re-load, repeat. If you make your strokes too long, the grass will turn to weeds and the horses’ hair to a shaggy, strange breed. Think how hair is actually done on your head, in overhanging layers.

Now, then, I’ve taken you way beyond your limits for today, telling tales and jokes to lighten the seriousness of doing acrylic painting. No matter how serious our intents are, we won’t get there without funnies and breathers and laughing at ourselves and our teachers a little bit. That’s right, you can laugh at me, too. I can help because I’ve made all these mistakes at least once. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, or too sensitive about it. That slows you up so much and makes you hard to get along with. It’s not that big a deal. You can paint over what you did, too. When I say that, you don’t have to paint over everything. Just the things you think are bad wrong. It’s better to leave some paint alone and go from where you were. New starts make new mistakes. When layering in acrylic, make sure your under layer is bone dry first.

Thank you for reading my eBook, Acrylic Painting Techniques Easy(ier). link I try to break it down to its simplest components for easy access. I can complicate anything, so if you have questions to help me complicate the matter, just ask!

Personality and Nature

Knowing the nature of watercolor ahead of time would help the would-be painter in his quest. When you are starting out, you really would profit from overview about the nature of the watercolor beast. First of all, watercolor has been around since the cave men, in ancient Chinese dynasties where artisans painted on silk. It is not a new phenomena or a craft craze, but a time honored type of fine art, like oils.

Watercolor has fallen in and out of favor, however, and its current renewal has found some resist and kickback from the establishment. In this regard, it is relevant to know that watercolors painted on archival (acid-free) paper with light-fast watercolor paints is one of the hardiest of the visual arts media. It has known its number of top-notch, museum quality artists over the years, one being J.M. W. Turner, the famous English watercolorist who strapped himself to the prow of a ship during a storm to render the effects afterwards in paint.

Painting watercolors is fun and productive, and easy to begin if you have an overview that includes the following seven peculiarities of it, or said, another way, if you know seven ways it is different from the other media.

The Seven Differences of Watercolor

1. Wet. All paint is wet, but in this medium, you supply the water, its carrier, whether you add it to dry or semi-moist cakes of color, or to wet paints from tubes. Watercolor tubes are smaller due to the high tinting strength of the pigment in the tube. You need to add water to the paint to give it its luster, its glow, to awaken its transparency. Watercolor paint plus water is called a wash, and washes can vary from 1 % pigment all the way up to 100 %. This is more than just a technical fact, it is what gives the medium life. You could say watercolor is born once the paint hits water. Water is the vehicle without which you can do very little. In spite of this, every year I encounter students who try to add water stingily, by the drop. Fear of lack of control puts a stranglehold on watercolor painting. In fact, you could say the only bad watercolor is a dry-looking one (but there’s probably one more). That’s what my Polish instructor, Leon Jonczyk, from Munich, Germany taught about watercolor.

Another implication of the wetness of watercolor as a separate medium is that water is probably more responsible for carrying your paint than even your brush is. You can’t say that about the paint in any other medium. More watercolors are ruined by over-stroking the paper with the brush, than by doing nothing once wet paint is applied. Back and forth fidgeting will even scrape holes in the paper.

Most of the names of the strokes include the word wet. ‘Wet-next-to-wet,’ ‘wet-next-to-dry,’ ‘wet-into-wet,’ ‘splatter,’ ‘backwash,’ and its opposite, dry-brush.

2. Losing Control. I don’t think any other painting medium addresses the matter of control in the same way as watercolors. Rarely does a skill require ‘losing’ control. However, this one does. The best analogy would be riding a runaway horse–you have to let the horse start to run away from you, before you can learn what to do with him at each phase along the way. Fortunately in watercolor, although you might lose a sheet or two of paper, you’re not going to get hurt, learning.

Oh, but how new students act as though it will. The overview to this is that you must learn what to do as the watercolor dries. There are appropriate things to do all along the way. This is not a science, so you must learn it intuitively. One good example is that if the watercolor passage on the paper is almost dry but still moist, you can’t put a loaded brush next to it, or into it. It will explode and ruin the nice set to the color laid down.

However, again, ‘ruin’ in watercolor is really temporary. The ruin of one moment is the success of the next, another outworking of less control.

Now it’s time to tell you the other type of ‘bad’ watercolor–that’s the one that is too dry. That means you’ve been working your little bit of water to death and worn out the paper and the color. Overworked watercolor crystals stop sparkling.

The type of control one needs in this medium is analogous to the reins on a horse, knowing when to pull him in, turn him left, right, when to talk to him, when to be quiet. This is why sketches, fun, and a sense of play are truly helpful with watercolors.

3.Non-dimensional. Watercolor paint used in the traditional way is non-dimensional; it won’t stand up on the paper or any surface. No bumps, no bulges, no texture per se. It is a thin, surface medium, and that is not a detraction. It works best that way. You can paint the effect of texture with stippling, dry-brush, and other things, but it is trompe l’oeuil, or fool the eye. Really, if you clump watercolor paint onto your paper, the end result will be a deadening of the color.

This is because the system is designed to allow for the white of the paper to show through. The light reverberates through the applied color and gives a jeweled effect. It is as though light were turned on from behind.

This explains why you should gently caress the paper with your paint infusions and not solely rely on the tip of the brush, but on its side to deliver paint to the painting. This explains why classical watercolor as was taught me in Europe requires that you use only round-ferrule brushes. These brushes hold a lot of water but gently sweep over paper’s surface with its teardrop shape loaded with wash, the tip used primarily to get close to a line, not to make one.

4.Movable Medium. Again, the image of horseback riding applies. As the weight of the different colors varies, so does the movement of the color you have laid down. It means you can add other colors while it is running (wet). You can infuse small or large amounts at the edge or in the middle. You can develop a whole style based on using water aggressively to move paint, as in Charles Reid ‘s drip paintings. An internationally acclaimed watercolorist, he has successfully rendered flowers, interiors, and portraits with his aggressive runs, splats, and drips. I was lucky enough to have hims select one of my watercolor paintings for a Watercolor Society of North Carolina annual exhibit. He works with a huge, round brush and a bucket of water, H2O flying everywhere.

That is why some paint on an easel, instead of flat, to allow the drips to move downward.

5. Transparent paint. Transparent watercolor painting is one type of painting which has no need of white or black paint. Now this is so interesting, because supply houses do dearly love to play to ignorance by offering a Chinese white to watercolor kits. This color does not work the same way acrylic does, or oil. The only way to get a beautiful white in watercolor is to leave the white of the paper showing, as mentioned in another section. All the whites do not need to be solid, they can be intermittent, or soft, light colors. Add more water to your wash, and you come closer to white. If you try to buck the system and add white, three things might happen. You weaken the strength of the pigment. You alter the color that you are using. You turn the white into a blue cast white, because anything lighter painted over something darker is blued.

The transparent versions of these colors are so much more beautiful than the opaque version. Watercolors should sparkle and shine. If you do a full-fledged, multi-layered finished watercolor, you must leave some layers that go all the way to the paper, some with only a wash, some two, and on, to maintain the painting’s luminosity and sense of transparency.

6. Not wysiwyg. All of the other media are more or less additive, and so, they are wysiwyg, or, what you see is what you get. Not watercolor. It changes minutely, hourly. You will never get what you think in your mind’s eye, or if you do, you will have over-controlled your paint. Over-controlled watercolors are just like that type of children–joyless, rigid, not spontaneous, murky, sullen.

7. Moody. All six of the foregoing lead to the last conclusion about the idiosyncrasies of transparent watercolor. Watercolor is like a mood ring that changes colors with you and your mood. If you are feeling frisky, you probably will have a good product that day. If you are anxious, insecure, leave it alone and come back. You will notice the mood by reading the watercolor. Three quarters of the painting might work and that last fourth? It runs counter to all of the rest. You will have already read my eBook, Watercolor Painting Techniques Easy(ier). If not, make sure you do, it is free to download.

This will hopefully provide a base for you as you delve into painting successful watercolors.

STRETCHING COLOR IN OIL MEDIUM

What is an artist’s stock in trade? Why, color, of course.

Color is so important major conferrences are held annually on the colors used in high-end trade markets. Colors are so important that studies are made on their psychological effects on a person’s well-being. Hospitals pick their paints based on them. I have even heard of 6-figure jobs whose primary duty was naming colors, and I’m sure paint stores pay someone to name their colors, big time. What is color, but the separated emissions of white light into a rainbow prism, which in part, depends on the color that is blocked out of your vision range.

That’s why I am so big on both the range and order of my palette of colors and value the tone or tint way over the longevity or archival nature. I try not to do this, but darn. It’s such a big deal that even in my Old Masters’ paintings of darkest darks, I try to bring in a wide range of hues on the dark side as well as the light. I cannot go with one neutral and let it dirty up all the colors. When you go to the light side, I’m especially keen on a kaleidoscopic dose of color, and I specialize in making sure I know the additives to clean up the chroma of a color, while still leaving it toned. (Toned means there exists some grey in the mix.) Today I got an A-plus on a test naming the colors in famous Old Masters paintings. That was fun.

Rainbow emissions of colors have wonderful names like ‘magenta,’ ‘cobalt blue,’ ‘alizarin crimson,’ and ‘phthalocyanine blue.’ In oil painting, these colors come from a pigment base of one of earth’s natural substances or a man-made chemical. The worth of the color is rated on this and the topic of hot discussion in my oil painting circles. This knowledge is invaluable, and yet is only part of the help I give those who follow my trail of color crumbs.

Have you ever wondered why some people’s paintings work like magic, why people rave over the color? Or why some paintings look to you like random spitup? Well, of course there is the subjective element, which could be the reason early reviews on Wyeth’s works were called out by a major critic as a palette using “mud and baby poop,” an opinion that echoed almost all the major art critics used to abstract expressionism and pop-op art that models high school and college teaching on art. They put down not only Wyeth’s realism, but his morality and austerity. Association is a factor in a human’s reaction to color. Taste testers have proven this in non-blind tasting events: when the water is colored orange, people taste orange juice without a drop of orange in it.

Funny, I never had a bad reaction to Wyeth’s subdued colors. I look at them and think, earth, earthy, spare, awesome composition, about this wonderful American artist.

Participation in artists’ discussions for any amount of time will eventually turn to talk of getting the colors all ‘muddy.’ Many courses claim to teach how to avoid making mud in their color mixing. Muddy is best described as the reaction felt when colors are observed as ‘yuck’ colors. The ‘yuck’ reaction happens when the color seen resembles no known color on earth, and not in a good way. In my experience, mud develops from over-mixing colors indiscriminately. One version of mud comes from not perceiving the difference between what are called ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ colors. Just teaching the eye that one distinction could fast-track a student to more radiant and consistent colors. It is then that they begin to clean up all those nondescript paintings they display to sell unsuspecting, well-intentioned, and potential art-loving owners who come with a prospect to buy.

Let’s talk about warm colors. What would you immediately designate as hot? Sunshine, fire, sun-lit grass, molten lava spewed by volcanoes, red peppers. Now you can find a whole group of them by name–they are the cadmium oranges and yellows, the fire engine reds and the neon greens. Color theory teaches that the warmth factor can change simply by who yellow sits next to on the bench. So if alizarin crimson, a cooler red, sat next to ultramarine blue, a cold blue, it would be warm by comparison. Complexity will grow on the foundation of the basics. Think, concentrate for now on what colors pull the object close up, painting with those colors that draw an object forward. They would be warm. Warm red is associated with hearts, love, and also anger.

Then imagine colors pushing a cloud or a mountain back into the distance, like blue and purple, and you have a cool color that helps the illusion of perspective and distance. These colors include blues and lavenders and blue-greens to push an object back. That is why mountains seen in the distance are blue, purple or lavender. Blues are synonyms for depression in some circles, but to me blues are peaceful and restful.

The emotive power of color in conjuring up a feeling or a taste on our tongue should not be discredited. You can memorize colors on tube labels, but that does not order them in terms of warmth. That doesn’t even tell you where or on which color scale it falls.

Back to the very beginning. Not many people know how many colors make up the set called primary. Or secondary. For that, it’s three guesses and the first two don’t count. There are three primary colors–red, blue, and yellow–on one color system, the one most of us use. But is every red primary? There are hundreds of them. Phthalocyanine blue has been re-marketed with an ‘RS’ and a ‘GS’ on the call number to further identify the blue as to the red side or to the green side. Visual images of colors are so important. Call a color by the name that conjures that color up to your mind’s eye, like orange sherbet, or raspberry, so you can navigate more easily among all the foreign oil colors with strange-sounding names, as I’ve mentioned in my eBook, Oil Painting Techniques Easy(ier). link

I personally use a primary palette and a secondary palette, the terms primary and secondary not directly related to the primary and secondary colors at all. On the primary palette are all the colors to the blue side, which would be a lemon yellow, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, veridian green, and some neutrals. Eventually experiential knowledge can be coordinated with book knowledge to ground you in the wonderful world of color.

• colors range from light to dark
• colors conjure up things like tangerine, pineapple, or raspberry
• there are warm and cool colors
• learn your primary, secondary, and complementary colors
• ‘read’ a color for its content, what other colors are in it (it’s a journey)

Once you begin to recognize what hidden colors you ‘see’ in another color, THEN you can begin to stretch your mix toward that color. This will give your color an unexpected excitement. Once you learn complementaries, you can begin to experiment by stretching those to new and exciting combos. Stretching your colors leads to a whole new room in your color house. As does devising your own color wheel.

Start with your own personal favorites and make a journal with samples of these colors. Soon you will be mixing up a storm, and your efforts will no doubt please the eye—and another eye as well as your own. Now you can begin to follow the Hansel and Gretel color trail home to easier and easy oil color recognition, mixing, using, and stretching. And you won’t let anyone talk you into shading every color with black or brown ever again (more in an advanced installment, later).

Settling into Acrylics

One of the newest paints on the market, acrylics have yet to pass the 100-year mark for longevity. So we have no proof that they will last, although all indications are in that direction. We do not know yet what the restoration problems will be.Yet they are the number one preferred paint for free time/professional painting artists. The speed of modern life is is probably one reason they are so popular. Also, the desire to commit to an unknown process is fine, as long as it doesn’t take too much time.

The main difference between oils and acrylics is drying time. Acrylics are the fastest of all paints. However, one can buy a medium to add to the tube paints to slow down the drying time. Tubes are the best form the paint comes in, as the acrylics in bottles are thinner and more mixed with other, unknown colors. Tubes are far superior. Most of the strokes one uses depend on the thicker paint which does not run. The fast drying time of acrylics cuts the time for blending and working wet to a minimum, and is therefore best used by fast painters. The other difference is that this paint requires water for thinning and cleanup. Acrylic paints may be thinned with water and used as washes similar to watercolor paints, but washes won’t reconstitute once they are dry. Nor does the paint itself re-constitute. You can peel it off your palette as a thick, slick clump. So while some of the techniques you would use with acrylic as a wash may be similar to watercolors, acrylics do not lend themselves to the color lifting techniques of gum-arabic-based watercolor paints. That swings the painting to the acrylic system, which is an additive system. In that system, you add and cover up, whereas in watercolor, you lift and subtract to regain luminosity. Otherwise, acrylics are a nice, rich and creamy medium meant to be spread thickly.

Acrylic Paint: Wet or Dry

There are matching issues to be aware of, so that you paint the best sorts of strokes for adding onto. For instance, you can’t match a wet patch to a dry patch perfectly. The paint dries lighter than when it is wet. Using striated colors or grades of color, or the toll painter’s trick in trade of double and triple loading colors onto your brush is your best guard against disappointment here. One really good tip is to use a very small amount of white to add to your colors to decrease the transparency they have, and to increase the covering power of the paint. Then you won’t have to layer as much for correction as you would just to add a nuance, a detail, a color you just noticed.

One caution in addition to the quickness of drying time is that some have erroneously been told that you can use acrylic as an underpainting for oils. Don’t use acrylic paint under oils. It dries to a slick finish, and the chemical bonding is not similar, so adherence of layers is more than likely a precursor to delamination. That means basically that your painting falls off. Oops. Layer similar paint films. You can make an acrylic wash and cover your canvas with it so that the drawing you made shows through. The good news is that you needn’t wait long to start painting your thicker layer of acrylics. You can block colors in, you can have separate color piles mixed to work fast. Just remember, little piles dry fast; larger piles stay wet longer.

Softening edges can be tricky, modeling, likewise. I found in my studio that using dry brushing techniques help for that, as well as dry blending techniques, spreading the last bit of the wet edge further in a feathering action.

All in all, acrylic is a very beginner-friendly paint to jump in and start mixing colors. The color names are not quite as difficult as those for oil and watercolor, since they are synthetic products and it is a new medium using readily understandable names. That may change, however, from time to time.

Get you a pie tin and a zippered plastic bag to close it airtight after each session and some of their drying time can actually be saved. I would blow it up and drip a few fingertips of water in it to keep it moistened and ready for use. I’ll have to warn you, however, it’s kind of stinky when you open it back up. That, too, dies down fairly quickly. If it bothers you too much, you can always throw it away.

If you haven’t done it yet:

Download My Free eBook, Acrylic Painting Techniques Easy(ier).

Last year I introduced Allison Coleman, a returning adult art student of mine, to the wonders of the Portrait Society of America’s annual conference. She said later, “It changed my life.”

Now we both have just returned from her second, and my eighth, this one located in Reston, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The first night of the 18th Annual Portrait and Figurative Artist Conference of the Portrait Society of America, we wandered around the circle made in a humongous conference room, sitting in the chairs behind a segment of 3 painters actively painting one model. We rotated around a circle of 5 models and 15 painters. Seeing the rich variety of viewpoints and media used was enlightening, as the Society painters showed us the superior merits of painting from life, and in this case, a la prima, or, all at one sitting.

Getting the Likeness

On Friday, we cased the art materials’ room, buying what we had determined we would beforehand, in some cases more or different. This year, I found an awesome frame with birch panel insert for the painting that I substituted for my usual auction sale, an event which is so much fun, I went to the Mystery Art Sale and decided what I would have purchased, since last year I bought one painted by my very favorite portraitist, Bart Lindstrom. (https://joriginals.net/portraitists-a-glow/).

This year, there were fewer freebies to be had, but we lucked into a few, plus some very good deals.
We did all our scouting on Friday, since Allison had to help in the book selling section this year. They have awesome books. I did buy the book, 100 Masterpieces, the National Galleries of Scotland, by Sir John Leighton, our keynote speaker. Of course, I got his autograph.

This year and last, the products from the Thursday night paint-out were sold in a silent auction, punctuated by a loud ending to aid the bidding process. Two years ago, I bought one of those. Last year I bought a painting from the mystery sale, a fixed-price, blind auction of 6 x 9’s painted by famous artists here and abroad. I always pick one board which has several I like, because if two of you want one painting, there’s a drawing of names from a hat, and you lose time.

Adrienne Stein Poses as Her Model

Adrienne Stein Poses as Her Model

For four days, we raced from celebrity demonstration to illustrated lectures to sight-size stage demonstrations by the best artists, seeing their creations emerge in mirrors right next to the models’ faces.

In between, we looked at fellow artists’ portfolios, learned new presentation methods, and I competed in same.

In stolen moments from a charged program, we viewed the International Portrait Competition finalists’ works, went to a mix-and-talk party with them,

and I got so many wonderful interchanges and pictures I hate I can only share a few. But I talked to artists from Canada, Scotland, the U.S. and many other countries.

I particularly enjoyed my interchanges with Adrienne Stein from Pennsylvania, whose winning painting was done of her sister, and Katie O’Hagan, listed as from New York, but I’m sure she talked about living in Scotland. In any case, she told me how the birds would really fly at you as seen in this painting, a very bold white on white sort of background with white birds.

On one of my break-out sessions, I got to draw several models and be critiqued by veteran master Max Ginsburg. When you are around so much art in the making, your fingers literally itch to perform your own versions of the models, which I did happily for a couple of hours. We had amazing models in this session, and got to switch out models during the time.

Katie O’Hagan, “Deflection”

Allison got to mix with a different set of us, working in the book-selling setup of the Society. Together, we will share notes and impressions. All of the input we got here should help us to strategize better for entering their phenomenal shows, or any big shows, for that matter. We received crucial tips directly and by viewing the paintings selected for awards and for sale in the auctions.

RIDING CARAVAN to HOT-LANTA

Conference, April 30-May 3, 2015

Allison and I are getting all hepped up about the upcoming conference being held at the Grand Hyatt in Atlanta in Buckhead. The Portrait Society of America is putting on its 17th annual Portrait and Figurative Artist Conference, along with 800 artists from around the globe. For four days we will experience a “diverse array of demonstrations, illustrated lectures, portfolio reviews, 6×9” Mystery Art Sale, Art Material’s Room, the International Portrait Competition finalist’s.”

PSA is tops in furthering portraiture and figurative art in America. We are in with 3,200 other members.

This year, I’ve reached a milestone I’ve only dreamed of in my teaching career, even though I’ve been teaching over 30 years! What is that? I’m taking one of my students with me (figuratively speaking, of course)! Allison Coleman, a practicing artist in Raleigh–who, by the way, came to me first as a young student, and returned as an adult artist past art college–will be working to help PSA this year and attending the rest of the time. Together, we should be able to strategize better for entering their phenomenal shows and sharing crucial tips when we attend different events in the choose-your-emphasis sessions.

We don’t want to miss opening night where 15 artists paint together in one room from live models, in groupings of three to a model. They are centered, and we mull around the wider circle, watching awhile at one station, and then onto the next. In front of each section is a wedge of chairs from which to view the artists in action. Here are some pictures of last year’s Thursday night favorite event of mine, the paint out.

The next day we will need training shoes with wheels to make it to the many other demonstrations, panel discussions, workshops and breakout sessions. As professional full time artists, Allison and I want to take our art to the next level, so we can’t wait to see artists demonstrating, discussing techniques and methods, and to network with fellow artists from all over the world. Two years ago, I sat next to an Estonian (Estonia is the setting for Veiled in White) who attended art school in St. Petersburg, Russia. Fun!

Where else can you have individual artist-to-artist exchanges and your portfolio critiqued?

From there, it’s demonstration after demonstration from the best artists in the world sitting on stage with their model and mirrors which show the model’s face beside the in-progress work as the artist paints it. We will hear lectures about varying phases of the professional life of an artist or progress within a painting. What I love is that in one place, I get expert oil painters in still life’s and portraits, expert watercolor portraitist demos, how-to’s, professional art supplies being sold, books you die for–autographed–and you get to study portfolios for different presentation techniques.

I’ve also bought paintings from these artists each year in the paint-out’s silent auction.

Just for joining PSA, you get a full color The Art of the Portrait Journal, the International Artist, member tuition rates, become part of the mentoring program, can receive signature status. Winners receive over $60,000 in cash and prizes. The Draper Grand Prize includes cash and prizes totaling over $10,000 and a feature article in International Artist magazine.

Unforgettable moments. Our dream, where we network with artists and agents, travel to area museums and visit with friends, new and old…and maybe next year, get in the show.

Last year I introduced Allison Coleman, a returning adult art student of mine, to the wonders of the Portrait Society of America’s annual conference. She said later, “It changed my life.”

Now we both have just returned from her second, and my eighth or ninth, this one located in Reston, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.

The first night of the 18th Annual Portrait and Figurative Artist Conference of the Portrait Society of America, we wandered around the circle made in a humongous conference room, sitting in the chairs behind a segment of 3 painters actively painting one model. I believe there were 5 models and 15 painters. Seeing the rich variety of viewpoints and media used was part of the education, as the Society continued to educate us through the experience alone, on the superior merits of painting from life, and in this case, a la prima, or, all at one sitting.

On Friday, we cased the art materials’ room, buying what we had determined we would beforehand, in some cases more or different. This year, I found an awesome frame with birch panel insert for the painting that I substituted for my usual auction sale, an event which is so much fun, I went to the Mystery Art Sale and decided what I would have purchased, since last year I bought one painted by my very favorite portraitist, Bart Lindstrom. (link to last year’s article) This year, there were fewer freebies to be had, but we lucked into a few, plus some very good deals.
We did all our scouting on Friday, since Allison had to help in the book selling section this year. They have awesome books. I did buy the book, 100 Masterpieces, the National Galleries of Scotland, by Sir John Leighton, our keynote speaker at the Saturday night Banquet (pix Allison & me). Of course, I got his autograph.

This year, like last, products from Thursday night’s paint-out were sold in silent auction, punctuated by loud ending to aid the bidding process. Two years ago, I bought one of those. Last year I bought a painting from the mystery sale, a fixed-price, blind auction of 6 x 9’s painted by famous artists here and abroad. I always pick one board which hangs several I like, because if two want one painting, drawing names from a hat steals time. 

For four days, we raced from celebrity demonstration to illustrated lectures to sight-size stage demonstrations by the best artists, seeing their creations emerge in mirrors right next to the models’ faces.

In between, we looked at fellow artists’ portfolios, learned new presentation methods, and I competed in same, viewed the International Portrait Competition finalists works, went to a mix-and-talk party with them, and I got so many wonderful interchanges and pictures of them I can only share a few. But I talked to artists from Canada, Scotland, the U.S., and many other countries. One of my break-out sessions, I got to draw several models and be critiqued by

Together, we should be able to strategize better for entering their phenomenal shows and sharing crucial tips, both for painting and for entering their shows.

TA room full of winning paintings (xx out of xxxxx entries), was phenomenal, and included sculpture, relief, drawing, and painting.(Link)  Among the winners was the Estonian who attended art school in St. Petersburg, Russia(Estonia is the setting for my novel, Veiled in White) that I sat with last year. Each year I agree to help a new conference-goer, and I finally got to meet her at the end of the event. She said she found me by my pink hair strands.

Such a fun conference. I’m vetting two more Art on Broad Atelier/j’Originals’ art students to join the circuit.

The Old Home Place

From painting pictures OF windows, for the past year or so I have painted in the new fashion of painting BEHIND windows. I didn’t want to do it. My lovely client, Tresa Wheeler, was in her quiet way, insistent. She knew I could do it, she loved my work, and no, she didn’t prefer a watercolor of her house on paper, but her house painted on the backside of these wonderful, framed glass windows from a friend’s house. She wanted to look out on it as if she were looking out a window and seeing her old home place.  (link #1, window painting with Tresa) And she wanted my work. I couldn’t even give her to another client.

She brought me all kinds of material–photos of how it used to look, write-ups in journals, before, after, in-between, in different seasons of the year; before and after the swing was added.

This is a funny journey. My doctor’s gal Friday had asked me about painting on glass a year or two before my assignment came. I didn’t know what to tell her. I knew acrylic stuck to anything. Oil did, but it was slippery. I’d done an assignment before, painting on a china pitcher and had bought those paints for it, paints in awful colors that you really couldn’t mix, that cost an arm and a leg. I probably commiserated with her over several months. She laughed her head off when she found out I was doing not one, but two of these paintings. None of the above worked. I knew that acrylic would come off in one slippery plastic piece, if it did delaminate. So I picked oils. I’m not going to bore you with all the details of how I worked each detail out–and there were quite a few of those details–but, over the next year, I did.

Did I say a year? Yes, I did. My client did not complain, although she must have been tempted. I would make a little progress, hate what was happening and stop. A little more, stop. My students laughed at me, and wondered why their master teacher could make something so hard. Well, in my defense, hundreds of strokes for windows, a swing, chain, shutters, roof, yard, road, things I could see in the pictures provided and things that had been added later I couldn’t were all things I had to pull together into that one image. Reverse perspective for a dyslexic. I had to get transparencies of the house, so I could turn them over. Hundreds of times turning it over, seeing back to front, front to back. Some days I had to scrape it off and start over. No fun.

But finally, and eventually, I began to make progress in the right brush, paint, brushstroke, paint markers, when to wipe off, scrape, and even when to add a touch or two on the front side, and we had the first one of the two ready for Christmas. Tresa had us set up a Christmas arrangement with the picture at its center. (link #2, window painted, with Christmas decorations) We photographed it, and she made her Christmas card out of it, giving me, the artist, due recognition on the card. Well, but, the card was delayed by a fall, an operation, a husband in the hospital and daily trips to Chapel Hill even in sleet with a newly operated on shoulder.

Meanwhile, I finished the second painting behind a glass window for the friend she gifted the painting to, the one who had given her the windows. Ice and snow, more trips to Chapel Hill with a healing, freshly-operated on, shoulder. Yes, people’s life stories continue in and around art work, and actually, I think, make the whole process more precious. Make the outcomes more stunning. The second painting was of bales of hay, a hay field, a tall tree, and a Carolina sky. (link #3, window painting with hay bales) Now it was my turn to wait. Tresa couldn’t come because of the hospital commute and no one to help her carry the finished work in and out her car.

Finally, the day came and the delivery was made, and I am waiting to call the friend for permission to share her picture abroad with her name. Until then, I will just share the picture with thanks to one of the loveliest clients of all times, Tresa Wheeling, who has sent me numerous cards of thank you’s and praised my work to the skies, and made me feel like one of the luckiest artists alive today. May every artist friend of mine be so lucky. She not only valued art for herself, but as a way of giving to others and blessed me in doing so, and my ability to keep my doors open.

To the woman, the veteran school teacher, and one who has become a lifelong friend, thanks for turning the trial of painting on glass into a learning experience, a long-term relationship, and a total delight!

Heroine of My Novel Is Real-Life Model

Now this painting has story written all over it, starting with the last person who asked me about the novel I was writing and asked me, “Are you doing the cover for it?” To which I responded that I needed a professional in book covers for that. However, that’s when I was introduced to a real, live cover artist who painted the dreamiest romance covers I had ever seen. I was painting on my Lady and the Falcon, or Self-Portrait with a Falcon, so I decided to try my hand at making my current painting look like the cover for a book, and based on my success or not with that, I might try it. I studied my social media friend’s work and extracted some good pointers. They were not copycat observations, but they were stylistic touches which pulled the eye always toward the center.

So, I am in the middle of a sea-change. I am creating a series look, usually involving a castle or stately home. My books, being Gothic in nature, have a whole different suspense look than romances. Still, all the questions emerge, face or figure, woman or couple, closeup or far back…things the genre more or less dictates. I have had good cover artists, all of whom deal with clip-art art. They prefer it, since they are able to pick and give the twist they prefer to it. I set my sights on original cover art from the beginning, but thought I would have to get rich first. I mean I love Agatha Christie, and I devour her books, but I do not necessarily love her cover art. So I preferred it from at least three different angles–originality or custom work which no one else would see on anybody else’s book like they do the clip-art covers, the mood and ability to have an original painting connected to the book for different branding and advertising purposes, plus the excitement of staging a model and setting. I will just add to that, the excitement of pushing my vision with words as well as images.

One of my books, A Deadly Provenance, is the result of a photo shoot with a model from a photographer-artist friend who sold me her copyright. I had to override one of my cover artist’s opinions to use it, but it is my and many others absolute favorites so far. I hope that means it was a good market choice. Dark, fearful, an exotic setting–the setting itself is considered a character in Gothics, so it should be about right.

Meanwhile, my work with oils increased and one of my paintings landed in a large show, Woman Painters of the Southeast (WPSE),

Colby in the Morning

so now I had two goals to fulfill simultaneously. It had to be original as well, so I had to take pictures as well as the photographers who were helping me by setting up and showing me theirs. So now I was in to choosing the model, helping set up the scene, choosing the setting, and finally, making sure the pose, composition, and model were all mine. So the painting for my novel and forthcoming book, Stone of Her Destiny, has been proceeding for quite some time with a beautiful Scottish redhead who I almost rejected the first time through due to the prevailing model look not being in line with my expectations for a Scottish lass.

Combining her with a castle appropriate to the story from my photographs from our trip to Scotland was the next order of the day. Giving her my ancestry was another. Then I added layer after layer of oil paints to drench the colors, recede the time of day to sunset, incorporate the Stone of Destiny, Scotland and earlier Ireland’s coronation stone, another. Expanding the Paul Green amphitheater in Chapel Hill to a full blown castle and grounds setting was another. Then came the colors, ramped up and running gold plus orange.

The day of the photo shoot was wonderful and started with a trip to the drugstore for fake eyelashes, full hair salon visit to make the model’s hair very curly, and try-on of several dresses from the wardrobe of the photographer who does this sort of thing all the time for her art photography. We finally agreed on a beautiful teal green dress with wonderful blue undercurrents that set off her red hair picture book fashion. I thought I would re-work the dress, but it’s simplicity actually added to the beauty, and the accidental split in the dress gave rise to the provocative bit of underpants showing. I love it because it is not deliberately provocative, but just an unguarded moment, a look which to me is classier than the all-out frontal attack.

I loved doing the jewelry and working up to just enough accent to complete the impression. It’s so easy to ruin a face by just a little too much, so I have had to add slowly. I have shared it in stages and been told how much people loved the expression on her face.

All of these changes to the composite picture are both realistic and atmospheric, lending a whole different look and feel in the almost finished work   from the absolutely dazzling covers my mentor produces, a result which pleases me even more. This way, the end result is a piece of artwork peculiar to me, indicative of my style of realism, one I want and have some degree of say-so in, one which I am hoping anchors the story in the readers’ minds.

Kenna’s Castle: Cover of Stone of Her Destiny Coming Soon