More Roses

 "Golden Rose" -- oil on canvas 6x6"

 "White Rose" -- oil on canvas 6x6"

 

 "Lavender Rose" -- oil on canvas 6x6"

 

 "Hot Pink Rose" -- oil on canvas 6x6"

 

These roses were in the bunch I bought on Tuesday, when I'd ventured into the Elk Rapids grocery store in search of interesting donuts to paint.  Thank goodness all the donuts looked so blase!  

We've had tons of rain lately, so there wasn't much else to do, other than housework.  That always takes a backseat to painting.  It's still a bit too early to plant anything here in NW lower Michigan.  So painting it is!

 

Roses are hard to draw!  All those doggone petals!  I think what assisted me in being able to draw these was my experience in drawing and painting the dozens of cupcakes earlier this year.  The swirls were a puzzle!  As I painted the cupcakes, I kept thinking if you can do these, surely you can figure out how to do roses!    

To make a successful painting, a good deal hinges on your ability to control your panic.  Betty Edwards, in her book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" teaches how to ignore that part of your brain that sends out negative thoughts.  The left side of the brain likes pronouncing such negative thoughts as it looks awful!  You can't draw!  But the right side is more concerned with measurements: is it straight up and down?  Leaning a little?  How much?  Is it lighter or darker?  Bigger or smaller?  Betty believes that if you can see, you can draw.  Her book changed my life!

Although I've been doing a lot of little paintings since the first of the year, don't think I'm giving up on big still lifes -- or plein air landscapes!  There's only so much a person can crank out in a day.

Funky Monkey

"Funky Monkey" -- oil on canvas 6x6" -- Margie Guyot

Started the day with the goal of painting 3 versions of this and only managed to paint one.  Some days are like that!  From Simplycupcakes in Traverse City, Michigan, it is described as:

 

Funky Monkey : A banana cake filled with peanut butter buttercream topped with chocolate ganache and more peanut butter buttercream and a banana chip.

The swirls: always a challenge!  Once I finish a painting, I like to turn the cupcake a little to get a different swirl pattern.  Why paint multiple versions of an identical scene?  That would bore me to tears.

Years ago when I was in a landscape painting class, the instructor took a dislike to me (? why???) and said, "Obviously this comes easy to you!"  Huh????  I was shocked.  I said, "No, it's hard for me.  I always set up and look at the scene and think good grief -- this is going to be tough!  But I just keep plugging along, figuring things out as I go."

Painting, for me, is like taking an algebra test.  When the instructor hands it to me, I initially freak out.  All those problems frighten me.  I flip through all the pages until I see a problem I think I can do.  I do that one, then hunt for another problem I can handle.  One solution feeds the next solution.  And so it is with painting.  I start out with a basic outline, very rough, to figure out where to place it on the canvas.  Then I figure out what space the frosting will occupy.  The paper cup -- how much does that cover?  And so on.  I have to control my panic when figuring out the twists of the frosting.  Then I start in on the darks.  It all goes like that, working from dark to light.  For most of the painting process, it looks pretty bad!  But, like Clyde Aspevig told our class one time, while doing a demonstration painting, "This is the point at which beginners would quit.  But I know how to fix it!"

That's why I tell people, "Making a good painting involves learning how to control your panic!"

Betty Edwards, in her book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", teaches how you can learn to ignore that part of your brain that wants to tell you it looks awful! You can't draw!  Great book!  It changed my life.

"Butterflies"

"Butterflies" -- oil on canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

Some years ago while walking through a gallery out in Montana, I realized that the paintings that "grabbed" me were ones done in predominantly complementary colors.  My last post was of a painting I'd done in mostly reds and greens.  Both these paintings began as a decision about color.

In reality, both pieces of fabric were shades of red.  I used artistic license to change them to orange.  The poinsettia was really pink.  I love poinsettias by the way and always manage to kill them within a couple weeks.  I just don't have the touch for them.  One of my friends has plants she's had for years.  Go figure.

The blue butterfly glasses are of 60's vintage.  I found them in an antique store up north.  Love the blue shadows they cast!  The Lucite box with butterflies is also from a resale shop.  To get the blue to "glow", I first painted it white.  After it dried, I gave it coats of ultramarine blue mixed with Liquin.

One artist I was taking a workshop from said (rather snottily), "Obviously this comes easy to you!"  We'd been painting landscapes at the time.  I said no -- it's really tough, but I try to control my panic(!) and figure it out, bit by bit.  I'm far too impatient to take a slide and project and trace onto the canvas.  I always paint directly from life and wipe-outs are a part of it.  

The first painting class I had was out at Scottsdale Artists School.  The teacher was Clyde Aspevig.  He gave each of us a simple, cardboard cutout viewfinder.  I don't know how many people continued using theirs after the class, but I wore mine out.  Using a viewfinder really helps find the composition.  Now I use an adjustable viewfinder.  When I start a painting, I first use a yardstick to lightly draw in the "crosshairs" on the canvas.  Then I look through the viewfinder and determine what sits on the crosshairs.  I relate everything to that.  Without a viewfinder, my composition would end up running off the canvas!

Another essential thing is the principles I learned in Betty Edwards' classic, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".  During a big layoff from my job at Ford (1980), somebody loaned me a copy.  I saw how the high school students made such dramatic improvements after 3 months of her instruction.  That was enough to make me do every exercise in the book.  I hadn't drawn or painted in over 15 years.  By the time I finished the book, voila!  I could draw!

People say they just want to paint.  They say they don't care about drawing.  Well, the skills you learn in Betty's book are applicable to painting as well.  Everything boils down to measurements and comparisons.  You learn to look at something and ask: is it bigger? is it smaller?  is it at an angle? is it warmer or cooler? lighter or darker?  The exercises teach you to ignore that inner voice that wants to scream it looks horrible!

Patience, patience!  It's all just measurements and comparing.

PS -- the ice cubes!  I added those at the end, on a whim.  They were so fun!  Will have to do more with those....

Green Cabbage

"Green Cabbage" -- plein air field study -- oil on canvas  18x24" -- Margie Guyot

Sunday morning I went kayaking out on Lake Michigan with a couple friends.  I'd have gladly quit after an hour -- the sun was blazing, it was going up to 90 degrees and the waves made it rather challenging.  But nooooo -- we stayed out 3 hours!  I was pretty well tuckered-out by the time I got home.  Had to take a nap.

Ah, there's nothing like a little rest and cup of Starbucks to get me going again!  I loaded my Soltek, BestBrella, Gamsol and paints into the car and drove over to my neighbor's garden.  OK -- call me soft.  I could have carried it all over, but why suffer needlessly?  I'd had my exercise for the day.

Wearing my long bumblebee-free jeans, socks and shoes, I felt confident I would be safe from marauding insects, although I sweated like a pig.  90 degrees at 4 PM.  Did I mention I'm not a "heat person"?  But I had been wanting to paint one of the green cabbages for days.  Nothing was going to stop me.  Except rain.

How quickly the sun was sinking behind the row of trees to the west!  Brushes, don't fail me now!  I painted as fast as I possibly could.  Slap that paint around, girl!!!  It would be no good to try to paint without strong sunlight and shadows.  Notice how the sunlight seemed to make one of the leaves on the left side appear to almost glow?  It made the central vein appear a surprisingly strong yellow.

There's nothing like painting in good-old, strong sunlight!  You see colors you'd never be able to get if you were using a photograph as reference.  Depending on the angle of the leaf, some sections would be reflecting the blue of the sky; others would be reflecting the warm gold of the sun.  It's the strong shadow shapes that make an object "pop".   To me, if something doesn't "pop", it's just blah.  And why paint "blah"?

I usually do plein air in smaller sizes just because the light changes so quickly.  But I wanted to paint larger, showing the cabbage nearly life-size.  Impossible to do it proper justice on an 8x10" canvas.

The most difficult part of any painting, for me, is drawing it in.  I always use a little view-finder to help figure out the composition.  And I always use skills I learned from Betty Edward's wonderful book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".  I used my brush handle as a kind of measuring stick, basing all the drawings of the leaves on the gauge of the tight cabbage head.  Otherwise this would have been impossible for me to draw.  And yes, I always have lots of wipe-outs!  But that's the great thing about oil paint -- it dries so slowly, it's easy to wipe out what you don't like.

"Yellow Glads"

"Yellow Glads" -- oil on canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

Lately I've fallen in love with fabric folds.  As soon as I finished painting "The Blue Bowl" (see earlier post), I threw this vintage tablecloth onto the table and loved the way it landed!  The local grocery store had gladiolas on sale cheap, so I bought 2 bunches.


There are 2 young, frisky cats in the studio and I knew they would rip the glads to shreds if I left them on the table overnight.  Each afternoon I'd lock up the glads in a back room.  The tablecloth would be completely rearranged each morning.  


I knew from past experience that I'd have to paint the blooms in first.  Especially now, in summer, because I'm always getting interrupted by band rehearsals, gardening, etc.  So after struggling to draw in the basic composition (which always involves many wipe-outs), I painted the flowers. 


Some artists take a photo, then project it onto the canvas and trace.  Certainly, it's quicker and a good tool for some subjects, but I know I can draw complicated subjects -- as long as I don't go into a panic.  I think that's the difference between a beginner and an experienced artist.  The beginner freaks out at the difficulty.  The experienced artist knows it's just a big puzzle.  It's endless comparison of the objects: is this one bigger/smaller?  Is it in the middle?  Is it one-quarter of the way over?  A painting is a big puzzle, solved.  You just learn to control your panic and keep at it.  And, what the heck -- TV's lousy, the Malls are an hour's drive away, my closets are too full already.  So I may as well stay in the studio and figure it out!

A few years ago I had taken a workshop with a well-known artist and she said, "Obviously, painting (landscapes) is easy for you."  I told her NO -- it ISN'T easy for me.   It's hard.  I set up, look at it and think Good God!  This is going to be TOUGH!    The trick is I'd learned how to shut up the little voice inside that says it looks awful!  "Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards is where I learned to really SEE.  If you get her book and do the exercises, you'll learn how to shut out all the negative -- and really see.  That book changed my life.


I'd finished most of the painting and worried about what to do with the bottom.  If I left it empty, it just seemed to look so sterile, so lifeless.  I decided to paint in a portrait of my favorite cat, Elvis.  He watches me like a hawk all the time.  If I walk out to the mailbox, he follows me.  If I drive to a band rehearsal, he sits in the driveway, with a sad, worried look on his face.  He's my little pal!