Painted Collage 11/08 #4

Painted Collage 11/08 #2

Merry Christmas

Painted Collage 11/08 #1

Painted Collage 12/23/08

The right medium, the right technique, the right size

In approaching a glacier as an art subject, medium and technique are two important considerations. They both depend on the point of the artwork - I want to convey the feeling of that first encounter.

In thinking about the glacier in last Wednesday’s post, a few thinks come to mind:

The luminous, ethereal blue of the glacier ice, contrasted with the warmer colored fog which enclosed the bay, the metallic look of the water surface with ice floating in it, but the most important is the ice.

Acrylic paint and a layered approach seem to be the best way to produce the way the ice looked/”felt” - the layers to give depth to the color, incredible light and presence of the ice. That presence also seems to require a large painting.

But , before starting on the large painting, tests on a smaller scale are needed…

Touch of Fall

The touch of fall is coming to the Willamette Valley. Colors are changing, temperatures are getting cooler, a little rain - a great time of year.

Glacier Bay

I recently saw Glacier Bay and it is as amazing as I have always heard. There was plenty of inspiration for a whole series of paintings. One of the photos from the trip is above.

Corvallis Fall Festival

A reminder from a previous post - the Corvallis Fall Festival happens this weekend, Sept 27-28. Check out this year's festival poster by Donna Beverly - on the festival home page.

Northwest Art & Air Festival

Local artists will be giving demonstrations at the Northwest Art & Air Festival (click on the Art tab) in Albany from Friday August 22nd thru Sunday, August 24. Artists include painters Billie and Michael Moore and Diane Widler Wenzel and many others. A number of artists will also have booths at the festival. Other highlights of the festival are the launch of hot air balloons and the "night glow."

Sally B. Bailey Exhibit

Hood River artist, Sally Bills Bailey, has an exhibit of her wonderful, colorful paintings at the Gorge White House thru August.

Caradon Exhibit

I saw a very enjoyable new exhibit today, one that is a collaboration between two artists... on individual paintings. Both artists, Carolee Clark and Donna Beverly, work on each painting and the resulting paintings are surprisingly cohesive as a group. Wonderful colors and design come through.
If you are in the Corvallis (Oregon) area, stop in at the Pegasus Gallery to see the exhibit which runs through August. On August 14, there is a reception at which the artists will talk about the collaborative process.
See examples of the paintings at www.caradonart.com.

New Entry for the Corvallis Fall Festival

"Tides"
Painted Collage, 40" x 30"

At the Corvallis Fall Festival - September 26 - 28, 2008

Flower Collage

Another collage made from flower petals, giving the flowers a second life. Lots of great texture and some color. In this one there are orchid, hydrangea, rose, clematis, weigelia and probably a few other types of flower petals.

Opalescence

"Opalescence"

This painting is in the Community Exhibit at the Oregon State University LaSells Stewart Center through the month of July along with works by about 130 local artists.
The painting is titled for the look of opal in some of the passages with colors shining from beneath the surface. Irridescent paint helped give it that effect. (Click on the image to see a larger view)

Happy 4th

A red, white and blue painting for the holiday.

Beware mildew

On a recent trip to Georgia, I saw what mildew had done to one of my old drawings that had been temporarily stored in a garage that was too humid. It is sad. Be careful or mildew can ruin a piece of art (brown stain above).

Flower Petal Collage

This is one of several of my recent collages whose surface is made completely of flower petals. This original collage will be part of a raffle for the Linn County (OR) Master Gardeners Garden Tour. Raffle tickets will be available at the Master Gardeners demo garden at the fairgrounds, one of the 8 stops on the tour. More info on the Garden Tour...

Summer Solstice Art Auction Preview Monmouth, OR

On May 19, at 7 pm, a preview of Partnership in Community Living's Summer Solstice Art Auction will be held at the Main Street Coffee House in Monmouth. My donated painting for the auction, Surf, is shown above.

More info on the auction, which will be held in Rickreal at Eola Hills Wine Cellars on June 21, 2008 at 5 pm (registration required).

Acrylic painting

The page needs some color.

A new acrylic painting...
And a detail area...

Other tasks

Ah, the joy of art exhibit entries. I just got one to the Post Office with 4 minutes to spare on the deadline to have it postmarked.
Now to wait for the acceptance or rejection letter....

A mid-valley call for artists

Local artist op - the deadline for entry for the Mayor's Art Exhibit at the Salem Conference Center is April 30. Prospectus

WSO Watercolor exhibit in Hood River

This Saturday, April 5, the Watercolor Society of Oregon's 43rd Annual Aqueous Media Exhibition will open in Hood River. During most of the month of April, the 80 paintings juried into the show by artist Donna Zagota, will be on display at the Columbia Art Gallery. At the end of April through September, the 20 paintings that have won awards will tour the state at five other locations in Grants Pass, Springfield, Salem, Newport, and Bandon. See the Watercolor Society of Oregon's website for details.

More experiments

A busy week... Here are a few more experiments in paint...

Experiments in Paint

At times some painting is pure experimentation, never meant as a "finished painting", to see what a medium can do. Here are some examples from experiments in acrylic paint, detailed sections of larger panels, where paint has been brushed, poured, dripped, splattered, layered, scraped, wiped, etc. Besides being just plain fun, results found during these these tests can be useful in future paintings.

First time on radio

A different topic today - musical arts.
Songs by my good friend, Dennis Fehler and his garage band, TheBadSeeds, will be featured on KPFT's "Howlin' the Blues" show at 9:00am Pacific Time (11:00am Central in Texas). You can hear the streaming broadcast (find the link on the KPFT home page) of some of their songs being played for the first time on radio.
Read about the interesting background of this garage band from McGregor, Texas on TheBadSeeds website.

James Lavadour Painting Exhibit, Salem

During an art field trip to Salem yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed an exhibit of paintings by Oregon artist, James Lavadour. The exhibit, "The Properties of Paint," is at the Hallie Ford Museum thru March 30. The colorful (sometimes glowing), creative paintings are mesmerizing to me. Photos of the paintings can be seen at the PDX Contemporary Art website (click on the "Show more images" link). The photos can give you an idea of how the paintings look, but the paintings definitely need to be seen in person.

New collages

Some 3.75"x5.5" painted collages...

Millard Sheets

The Millard Sheets Center for the Arts site has a very good and extensive series of podcasts covering the 2007 exhibit, A Tapestry of Life: The World of Millard Sheets.
The available exhibit catalog is excellent.

New opportunity

I'm looking forward to an incredible new opportunity that I was offered- a chance to work on an art exhibit for the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts at the Los Angeles County Fair. The project is being designed and produced by my artist friend, Tony Sheets.
See a description of the 2008 exhibit to be held in September, Hoof Prints, The Horse in Art, Legend, and Action.

Now

For the past few years, every time I go to the Tangent post office during the winter, I see a big, beautiful weeping willow tree across the road with its bare limbs that could be such a good painting subject. I never found the right time to go set up and paint on location and always forgot to take my camera along. So Wednesday, hopefully before the willow had started leafing out, I made a special trip to take a photo of the tree so I could at least paint from the photo.
When I got to the post office and looked across the road, I saw that the willow tree had been cut down. It was like a kick in the stomach.
...One of those "life lessons." If you really want to do something, you better go ahead and do it, or the opportunity may be gone tomorrow.

Challenge

The sketch

I started a new portrait today. Portraits in watercolor are always a challenge to me. That probably has something to do with my style when painting them, tending toward very representational. This means getting the features correct or the painting just does not look right. Actually this painting will (hopefully) replace another one that was never quite right. Another part of the challenge is the long amount of time since my last portrait and all of my recent abstract painting and collages. But challenges can be good.

Two new collages

I always enjoy making these small collages (5"x7", 13cm x 18cm), working with the color and texture and design.

Opportunities

I have been exploring the Web for what seems like a long time now (since about 1994) and the connections and opportunities for discovering art, and having your art discovered, still amaze me . A look at Google Analytics for my websites shows visitors from around the world - US, UK, Canada, Finland, India, Turkey, Australia, Austria, Syria, and others.
And I recently heard from an artist in Finland, Amalia, who had a show in New York City last month, and Jane, a photographer from the Isle of Mann, and I stay in touch with other members of the Watercolor Society of Oregon who are scattered across the state.

Rogue Photos

In case the Rogue paintings piqued your interest, here is a map photo tour of the Rogue River.

Rogue River Paintings

Today I added a group of paintings to my www.robrrobinson.com site that used different mediums - watercolor, acrylic, collage - and somewhat different styles. But hopefully they all exude a sense of place - the Rogue River in southwest Oregon. The paintings were inspired by whitewater rafting trips that I took on the Rogue with White Water Warehouse (I'm their webmaster). The river and its canyon are a beautiful place to boat, hike, take photos, sketch, and get ideas for paintings.

Everyday subjects

Riding along I-5 yesterday on the way to Eugene, several painting subjects appeared - a clump of blackberry canes, swirls of red and gray with splotches of leaves, a wintry look - oak trees on a foggy horizon - field stubble sticking up out of the silvery reflection of a mud puddle. All very everyday sights here this time of year, but interesting subjects along with many others if you look.

In Eugene, the Asian Festival had all sorts of sights of its own with the colorful market, tai chi demonstrations, belly dancing, many kinds of food and some colorful characters.

I got a chance to make paper from wheat straw and saw samples of many other types (cattail was my favorite), which made me think of all of the grasses out there that could be made into paper. An invasive plant called reed canary grass ought to be a very good candidate. My wheat straw paper below...

Driven to abstraction

It is interesting to see what appears to be a natural progression among many artists from representational artwork to the more abstract. Many masters during the past have gone that route - Picasso and Munch come immediately to mind.
You hear about the desire to paint "more loosely." To me it is more a matter of painting less tangible subjects - ideas, feelings - or focusing on the surface and medium - or working with design, color, texture, etc. I still paint more representationally when a sense of place or character is a major part of the subject.

Ideas, comments? Click on the comments link below.

Reactions to Art

Reactions to my artwork have frequently been surprising. What a person likes or sees in an artwork can be very unpredictable and comments tend to be interesting. They can range from the view on an abstract painting, "I could do that!" (made by someone who feels that she or he has no artistic talent) to the grandmother who cried when she saw the commissioned portrait of her granddaughter because she loved it so much.


One of the things that I like about abstract and non-representational paintings is that they tend to provoke thought and creativity within the viewer.

Oriental Handmade Paper Collage

A little more info on Oriental handmade papers (washi in Japan)…

The are a number of different styles, textures, thicknesses, and to some degree, color of papers available, though I tend to get white papers, or papers as neutral as possible, and add my own color using long-lasting watercolor or acrylic pigments. Very good information on the ingredients in washi and how the papers are made can be found at the site of the long-time papermaker, Awagami.

My collage below was made using very little paint and shows much of the original look and texture of the washi used to make it.

Painted Collage

Intersecting Strata

Years ago, I drove from north Georgia to Jackson, Mississippi to take a collage workshop from Gerald Brommer and it was well worth the trip. Jerry is an excellent and inspiring teacher and I have continued using his technique that he taught us to produce collages ever since.

I have come to call the resulting work “painted collage” to be more descriptive. “Mixed media” has always bothered me as being much too general (it really does not tell you what materials have been used) and there are so many kinds of collage. In this technique, paint is applied to washi, Oriental hand-made papers, either before or after gluing them in place (or both). Watercolor paints work very well and thinned acrylic paints do also. Sections of the washi, which comes in fairly large sheets, can be torn to leave more organic edges. It can be almost painful to tear the sheets since the papers are so beautifully made, but the results are worth it. Applying paint to the washi helps bring out the various textures within each type of paper. Layering the papers during the collage process can build a very rich surface, with colors and texture combining through the translucence of the paper.

Jerry Brommer continues to teach workshops on collage and on watercolor painting. I highly recommend his workshops as a means to explore design, color and texture in a way that tends to "loosen up" results for the artist. Jerry also has written many books, at least two of which are about collage. The technique mentioned above is described in a chapter of his book, Collage Techniques: A Guide for Artists and Illustrators.

Fat Tuesday

No post today.
Laissez les bon temps roulez...

02 - 04 - 08 - first post - Art and math

Composition and ratio - a place to start

Not the usual height to width ratio I use, but using the numbers in today's date (2/4) leads to something new, a little different. Wouldn 't want to try it with January 31st though. People tend to see different things in abstract art, but a painting in a wide format very easily becomes a landscape.