Art Note Cards

Grape Leaves Note Card

I've been selling individual note cards printed with my paintings at art fairs and shows, and they've been quite popular. 

Boxes of assorted cards, as well as individual note cards, are now available at www.topazsun.com.

Boxed Assorted Note Cards, Set 1

I will be posting some new art and ideas about watercolor shortly.

"From The Pier"

My painting "From The Pier" is currently on exhibit at the "Pop-up” Gallery CA 101 juried art exhibition in Redondo Beach, California. 

The show runs July 27 and 28 and August 4 and 5, 2012 at 1700 Pacific Coast Highway. If you get a chance, stop by and see the wonderful art by 110 artists from 41 cities.

"From The Pier" is a view from the Manhattan Beach, California pier looking over the water and back toward the houses in town. I loved the movement and the variations in the water and tried to capture the feeling of the breezy summer day on the pier.

"The Zone" in Art

Sometimes when I paint, I somehow instinctively "know" what the painting needs, and what I should do next. Almost always when this happens, the result is both good and unexpected.  

In the painting "Bamboo and Rose", the colors and brushstrokes on the tree trunk were the product of one of those instances. Without really thinking, I knew what colors to use and how to apply them to convey the texture and form of the bamboo.

This kind of consciousness is called "being in the zone", a term used in sports, in work productivity, and in all sorts of creative endeavors. It's a highly desirable state. Sometimes, when I'm laboring mightily and not liking the results, I wonder why I'm not getting to "the zone".

In an excellent article from Lifehacker, "What is the Zone, Anyway?", Martin Rue, a software developer, suggests that focusing on what you're doing, and having sufficient energy and alertness to do your work, are essential, and that distractions should be minimized to the extent possible.  Beyond that, though, you need to have sufficient technical knowledge to bring to the task, and you need to care about what you're doing. 

I find shutting out distractions essential (and difficult).  Music can either be a distraction, or a help, to me, depending on what the music is.

What's your experience with being "in the zone"? What do you do to promote it?

5 Great Watercolor Instruction Books

There are a lot of watercolor instruction books out there.  I own way too many! I prefer books which don't try to dictate one "right way" to do things. Here are 5 books which have really helped me, and which I find myself pulling out again and again: 

1. Watercolor Essentials, by Birgit O'Connor. North Light Books, 2009.  This book, which comes with a DVD, clearly explains the basic watercolor techniques. It's great for a beginner, but is also very valuable to the more experienced artist as a refresher and a helpful reference book.  



2.  Creating Textures in Watercolor, by Cathy Johnson. North Light Books, 1992. Shows you how to depict many textures, ranging from hair to fabric to metal to glass to wood to water. I use this book frequently.



3.  Watercolor Bold and Free, by Lawrence Goldsmith. Watson Guptill, 1980. This book of experimental watercolor techniques inspires you to go beyond the same cliched subjects and paintings.




4.  The Watercolorist's Answer Book, by Gina Rath. North Light Books, 2005. Subtitled "425 Tips, Techniques and Solutions", this book is chock full of practical techniques, information on value, color, composition and design.



5. Step by Step Watercolor Painting, by the Alexander Brothers. Sterling Publishing, 1994. While I generally avoid "step by step" books, these beautiful paintings by two brothers with very different styles can't help but inspire, and the book contains lots of interesting ideas.

 
In the future I'll post about more books, that cover painting in general and aren't specific to watercolor.

Do you own any of these books? What's your opinion? Do you have other favorites?

Painting with One Color

Even for those of us who love color, every once in a while it's fun to experiment by painting with one color only.  Using just one color really helps you see your painting in terms of lights and darks. I find doing this helps me establish values when I carry what I've learned over to my usual, multicolor work.

Sepia is a great color to use for this exercise. Not only does it evoke old-time photography, it also can be used in a range from very dark, almost black, to subtle, minky shades.

Here are two small paintings I've done using only sepia.  Both are from old family photos; the one at the top is a quick sketch done without any pencil drawing.  The bottom one may not be quite finished.

Have you tried this? What do you think of using just one color?

Is It Finished??

Sometimes the hardest thing for an artist is to tell when a painting is "finished".

I dashed off this watercolor sketch the other day. I painted it quickly on a quarter sheet of watercolor paper, without doing any pencil drawing beforehand. It looks fresh, and it conveys the scene and the feeling I was going for. But it looks somehow incomplete.

Yet I'm hard pressed to figure out what to do to finish it. I'm concerned that if I fiddle with it a lot more, I will ruin the freshness and spontaneity of this little sketch. There have been way too many times where I've kind of liked a piece but couldn't resist making one more change or adding one more thing, and then regretted it.

Right now I'm inclined to leave this painting alone. Maybe I'll do a second version of this idea, with more pre-planning, careful drawing, and more detail.

How about you? How do you know when something is finished? Have you ever been sorry you added "one more thing" to a completed painting?

Knowing Your Paint Colors- The ASTM Numbering System

Why does Anthraquinone Blue look so much like Indanthrone Blue? And what's in Undersea Green? 

Paint manufacturers offer a bewildering selection of colors, all with different names. This makes it difficult to compare colors between manufacturers, or to identify what colors are contained in a mixture. 

 If you look closely on your tubes of artist quality paints, you'll see an alpha-numeric designation, usually two letters (and usually beginning with "P"), and two or three numbers. This refers to a system developed by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) for identifying the basic colors. Knowing a little about this system helps solve some of the mysteries surrounding paint colors. 

Each color family is designated by a 2 or 3 letter abbreviation. For example, blues all carry the designation "PB" (Pigment Blue); yellows, "PY" (Pigment Yellow), and so on. 

That Indanthrone Blue, for example, is PB60. If you look on a tube of Maimeri Blu's Faience Blue, you will see it described as "Anthraquinone Blue", with the designation PB60. So Indanthrone Blue, Anthraquinone Blue, and Faience Blue are essentially all the same color. Of course, some variation between manufacturers is always to be expected. 

Undersea Green, a popular mixed dark green from Daniel Smith, turns out to be a mixture of Ultramarine Blue (PB29) and Quinacridone Deep Gold (PO49). So if you were so inclined you could mix this color up yourself. 

 Checking the ASTM designation on your paints will help you understand what's really in that paint tube with the exciting name. 

A complete listing of the color designations is contained in The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques: Fifth Edition, Revised and Updated (Reference), an indispensable volume for all artists.