Just 5 little cm - a scatterbrain at work

Note to self: Dear scatterbrain. Next time you go out and travel all across town to the art supply shop to buy a frame, and end up buying more art supplies that you can carry really, both weight and dimension wise, and have to get them back all across and outside town using public transport, including running like an idiot to catch that tram which closes its door at exactly the moment when you get there and press the button, and it won't open them anymore but drives off right in front of your nose (and I'm 100 % convincend that that tram driver saw you both running and pressing the button in his back mirrors!!!!), leaving you there almost breaking down on the platform with frame, canvas and heavy plastic bag in your hands, and an even heavier rucksack on your back, and a dripping umbrella in your hand, that refuses to close without a wrestle, because it's broken and you really should have bought a new one long ago, because of course that day it is pouring down with rain.... Well, next time you go to buy a frame for a picture, before you leave the house, just check what size the painting you want the frame for really is. Even if you're absolutely sure what size it is. Just take it down and double check those two little numbers on the back. Just do it.

Because if you don't, there is just a tiny little chance that, despite being absolutely certain about the size, you might just be a little bit WRONG, and even if it's just 5 little cm on each size, it still means that the flipping frame will acutally NOT fit the picture!!!

*Sigh*. I really was so sure the picture was 50x70cm. Unfortunately, it isn't. It's 60x80cm. Really, how can one be so stupid???

Paint Party Friday 47*5 ~ when is it finished?

My "lollipop" trees are finished. Or so I think. At least for the moment. (And I promise this is the last time I'll post them here).

While I liked the patterns and colours, I just wasn't 100% happy with it. It didn't feel right yet. So I added a layer of white over it, but it was still not right. At the end, I used some oil sticks and generously went over it all, adding a creamy layer while allowing some of the patterns of the layers of acrylics underneath to show through.

It's hanging in the living room at the moment, and I keep looking at it, adding/adjusting a little bit here and there, and thinking about whether to add some shadows or not. It's not always easy to know when a painting is finished.

I went to see the documentary film "Gerhard Richter Painting" at the cinema (watch a extract here) in my Christmas break. Richter often lets his paintings hang for some time between each step, before deciding what to do next, letting them evolve, and often changing them completely in the process. At one point, the film maker asked ihm to explain when /how exactly a picture was finished. He tried very hard to give her a satisfying answer. She wanted a straight, logic explanation, and he simply couldn't give it.

I could understand his struggle. When is a picture finished? In my opinion, or rather personal experience, there are two possible ways to finish a painting:

1. You paint until you come to the point when it simply doesn't need even one single brushstroke anywhere anymore. It simply is just finished, and you know it. You hold it up, look at it from a little distance, satisfied, smiling, and you say to yourself "yes, it's finished".
2. You simply don't know what to do next. You pick up some paint, you are about to put the brush on to the canvas, then you hesitate. No, not there. Maybe here? No. Maybe with another colour? No. After a while, you just put down your brush, look at your painting long and hard, shake your head, and mutter to yourself, "well, I think it's finished then".

Sometimes, the second can result in the first, after some re-working or over-painting after some time. But at the end, you can't really explain when a painting is finished. It's a process, which sometimes can take weeks, months, until you come to the point when you just know, one way or another, that it's finished.

How do you know when a painting is finished?

Happy Paint Party Friday!

On my palette ~ hands-on creaminess

There isn't so much an actual physical palette this week, instead, the palette consists of three oil)paint sticks. They can be applied directly on to the canvas, and then worked and moved around with one's fingers, so  they don't have to be mixed on a palette, or taken up with a brush from a palette. Although they can be used with brushes as well, just like paint out of a tube or pot (although I haven't tried that yet, painting with one's fingers with them is just too much fun).

The colours I used are: Alizarine Crimson, Meadow Green and Antique White.

I mixed them with acrylics, or rather, I applied them over the acrylics (from last week's palette) on the canvas.

Here's a little sneak peek of the finished (?) painting. I'll be posting the whole thing tomorrow, for the Paint Party.

Have a look at what others have on their palette over at  
Palette & Paint!

Letting it flow

I love how sometimes things just seem to grow and develop by themselves, into something you didn't expect at all. Last week, after I got back from my trip to England, I wanted to try out some of the thingsI  had bought in my favourite shops in London. I had seen an image on Pinterest that inspired me. An airy dainty little watercolour. It was the pose that attracted me. The face of a woman, head bowed,  eyes closed, with the hair covering half of the face. I knew it wasn't going to be airy and dainty at all, as I wanted to try out the new shades of oil paint sticks I had bought (more about those delicious oil sticks later, in a separate post). In fact, the result doesn't have anything in common with the painting that inspired me, apart from the closed eye and the half hidden face.

I had always wanted to try out oil painting, but somehow had never quite gotten round to it. It always seemed to be too complicated somehow. So much stuff you needed, and then the long drying time. Acrylics are just so much easier to handle. The oil sticks, however, seemed to be a perfect compromise to try it out at last. And I just love their creamy richness. You can paint with them directly on to the paper, like a crayon, and use your fingers to spread and blend the colours over the surface and to paint your picture. You can also use them with a brush, but I didn't have any special brush cleaner for oil paints, so I haven't tried that out yet. Here I just painted with my fingers entirely. I love doing this anyway. You really get the feeling for your materials this way. Just you, the paint, and the paper, so to speak.

I didn't pay any attention to proportions or real life likeness etc. The nose especially, I didn't really bother about. It was the expression of the face - the eye and the mouth - I was interested in. And most of all the colours, the soft pinks, the rich reds, the deep purples - Muave, Dusty Rose, Dioxazine Purple, Cadmium Deep Red, Alizarine Crimson, Grape. Oh, don't you just LOVE the wonderful, promising names of colours?

I absolutely loved doing this art journaling page. It just seemed to pour out of my fingers on to the page, the image emerging, layer by layer, in front of my eyes without me really knowing where it was going  and how it would turn out. I also didn't have any intention of adding text, but at one point, I looked at it, and the word "strength" just came into my mind, and I just had to add it. And this is the final result:

The whole picture felt like something I just had to. Something inside me that wanted to get out, and on to the page. And I have a feeling that this is a painting I will turn to again and again, whenever I'm in need of some calm and strength. To remind me to close my eyes for a moment, to take a deep breath, to collect myself, to find some calm, ease and strenght somewhere deep inside me, before opening my eyes again and facing the world.