Getting ready to stretch a large canvas

Frame for Rhododendron Explosion - 48" x 96"

I'm preparing the frame for the largest painting I've ever done. At 4 ' tall by 9' long, it probably won't ever leave my house. The plan is to hang it in my livingroom.

Allan got stretcher frames at Utrecht on sale; a set of 48" and a set of 96". I wanted several cross braces, but they only had the one 48" center brace, and Allan said that would be strong enough. Since he's the one who has to hang it, I'll go with his recommendation. Plus, he assembled it for me because when it comes to anything carpenterish, I'm basically useless.

Then I cut my piece of cotton duck, 57" x 105", which will give me 4.5 inches to wrap around. I laid everything out on the floor, because I don't have a table large enough, and proceeded to stretch and staple.

For the life of me I couldn't figure out why staples kept shooting across the room, instead of going where I pointed them. Allan came to the rescue and pointed out that I was holding the gun backwards. Doh! He called me a retard. "Why don't you put that on your blog," he said. So I am!

Like I said, when I comes to assembling stuff, I'm challenged. I hope I don't shoot my eye out with the staple gun. But by gosh, I know how to hold a paintbrush!

~I will keep the brush happy in my hand ~

But staple guns, that's another story...

The Terra Verte Color Chart

I think I'm in love with Terra Verte!

I grabbed a tube of what I thought was Viridian, but was really Terra Verta. The color band on both tubes looked remarkably the same, and as the color name on my tubes is usually obscured by messy paint, I just assumed it was Viridian. Plus when squeezed out, Viridian looks the same as Terra Verte. But when mixed with Liquin to a thin, milky consistency, then washed onto my white canvas, it turned into the most wonderful, muted soft green I ever saw! So different than flashy Viridian. It actually resembles the earthy, gray greens we see so much in the Pacific Northwest.

The next day I made a color chart, and found out that Terra Verte is remarkably adaptable to all the other colors on my palette. It even makes a wonderful gray when mixed with Alizarin Crimson! From now on, I'm using Terra Verte for my greens, forget Viridian.

According to the green page on Pigments Through the Ages, Terra Verte is the french name for green earth.

~la bonté de remerciement pour terra verte~
thank goodness for terra verte!

Flesh Mixtures for Poseidon

Flesh mixtures and notes for the painting Poseidon

• top - actual mixtures on my palette
• second & third - flesh mixture practice from my painting journal
• fourth - Verdaccio mixture notes at top, initial flesh mixture practice at bottom
• fifth - flesh palette diagram from Gage Mace portrait painting workshop I took at the Hipbone Studio last August

Practicing these flesh mixtures was the result of me not liking the flesh mixtures I used in my first portrait of 2009 - Klimt Scarf.

Flesh palette (all are Winsor & Newton oil paints):

• Titanium White - TW
• Cadmium Yellow Light - CYL
• Cadmium Yellow Deep - CYD
• Cadmium Red - CR
• Terra Rosa - TR
• Alizarin Crimson - AC
• Burnt Sienna - BS
• Cobalt Blue - CB
• Ultramarine Blue - UB
• Viridian - V

Basic mixes:

• Yellow mixture - mix CYL + CYD to get a 'taxi-cab' yellow. Lighten this mixture with TW.
• Purple mixture - mix UB + AC to get a 'rosy purple'.
• Brown mixture - mix 'rosy purple' with 'taxi cab yellow' to get a 'baby-shit green.' That's what Gage Mace calls it! To this mixture add TR to get a 'brownish earth' color. Lighten this mixture with TW. This is the 'basic flesh tone'.

Secondary mixes:

• Red mixtures - mix one pile of TR + TW to get a 'dusty rose.' Mix one pile of TW + CR to get a 'rosy pink.' Add either of these reds to warm the 'basic flesh tone.'
• Blue mixture - mix one pile of TW + CB to get an 'ice blue.' Mix any warmed 'basic flesh tone' with small amounts of blue mixture to make grayed flesh tones (for shadows).
• Green mixture - mix V + BS to get a 'sap green'. Lighten this mixture with TW. Mix any warmed 'basic flesh' tone with small amounts of green mixture to make a grayed flesh tone (for shadows).

I have to admit, these steps are tricky, and I had to practice (and stilll am), but I think these are the best flesh tones I have used in my painting career. The colors aren't muddy, even though in some cases I am mixing up to five colors, plus white.

I applied my flesh colors over a dried Verdaccio. Here are some Verdaccio steps from a different painting. And I used the medium Neo-Megilp, which keeps the paint workable for a while, and lets me vary the transparency.

In case you are wondering how I kept track of all this, here are my notes on keeping a painting journal. I couldn't paint without it! I still look back at my notes from several years ago, to see how I mixed something, or to compare whether I'm making any progress!

~Happy painting!

A New Year and Color Charts

A fresh start to the New Year with Color Charts!

Our Christmas celebration wouldn't be complete without new art books! This year I asked for Alla Prima, Everything I Know About Painting by Richard Schmid. I must have been very good because Santa got it for me!

I love Richard Schmid's work. He always paints alla prima (from life) and his paintings have that fresh, just painted quality. His work is uncomplicated, simple and fresh. Yet that uncomplicated, simple and fresh quality is one of the most difficult painting techniques to master!

I read the book in a couple of evenings, particularly the section on color. Richard suggests making color charts to learn one's palette better, and I thought, if he does it, I will too! I spent the better part of January creating 14 color charts, one for each color on my palette, which is the same palette Schmid says he uses.

Here's how I did each chart. I taped a sheet of 9 x 12 Fredrix Canvas Pad to an 11 x 14 gessoed masonite panel. (Allan and I have lots of these laying around). Then I divided the sheet into 11 rows across by seven columns down. I split pieces of regular masking tape lengthwise into thirds and adhered it across the rows and columns. (This created a clean break between each color mixture).

Following Schmid's instructions, I mixed every color with every other color on my palette, and added white in six increments. The colors on my palette (with abbreviations) are:

• Titanium White
• Cadmium Yellow Lemon - CYL
• Cadmium Yellow Pale - CYP
• Cadmium Yellow Deep - CYD
• Yellow Ochre Pale - YOP
• Cadmium Red - CR
• Terra Rosa - TR
• Alizarin Crimson - AC
• Burnt Sienna - BS
• Cobalt Violet - CV
• Cobalt Blue - CB
• Ultramarine Blue - UB
• Viridian - V

You can see the Cadmium Yellow Pale chart above. The first column is the palette color Cadmium Yellow Pale (CYP) mixed with increasing amounts of Titanium White. The next column is CYP mixed with CL, followed by CYP and CYD, followed by CYP and YOP, followed by CYP and CR, and so on.

When the chart was finished I removed the tape and set it to dry for about a week. Each chart took about 2.5 hours. I didn't use any medium. I used a boatload of white. But I figure, if it helps me be a better painter, it's worth it!

I definitely feel I have a better grasp of color mixing, particularly those tricky grays. I hope my first painting in 2009 is better, thanks to all these color chart studies. Special thanks to Santa Claus (AKA Allan) for bringing me this book! If you want to learn how to mix colors, I definitely recommend Richard Schmid's book.

Green Wind Painting Journal

Here are some pages from my Green Wind painting journal. I started this painting last May, and finished it in late August. That's longer than a painting usually takes, but there was so much going on in my life over the summer, including my daughter's wedding! But persistence is my middle name, and I forced myself to get back to work after the wedding.

Also, there were about four other paintings, plus quite a few plein air painting outings over the summer, that took my focus off this painting. Nice summer weather, combined with the insistence of my painting partner husband, often makes me want to just chuck working in the studio!

Now fall has returned and I am spending much more time inside. Back to the studio!

Check out the finished painting! Let me know if my fields, mountains and sky resemble Van Gogh's in his painting Mountainous Landscape - View from St. Paul's Hospital, the original inspiration for this painting.

Power of the Wind

This is my new magazine. Click it to view. I hope you like it! Marie

Palette Scrapings

These are the scrapings left on my palette after my last painting. I think they are more interesting than the painting itself!

My New Art Studio

My youngest daughter left the nest recently, and I inherited her large and spacious bedroom for my art studio. I have so much room! It makes painting so much easier.

Here is the painting I blogged about when I was drawing it out with charcoal on the canvas. It's almost finished now. I only have a little more work to do on the sky. It took a lot longer than I expected, because of an unwelcome flu bug, and the job of moving my studio.

But now that I've gotten through all that, I guess there is a silver lining in the empty nest!


Click here to read the whole story about this painting.

New Technique - Charcoal on Canvas

Bats, Butterflies & the Wind - 48 x 60
I am drawing directly on the white canvas with vine charcoal, and it is a really intuitive way to work. If I make a mistake, I can just wipe it off with a little square of shop towel (I buy the blue shop towels from Home Depot). This way, even though I have done a rough sketch in my sketchbook, I can transfer the idea to my canvas without any grids or mathematical formulas. I hate doing that. And, I can alter or change anything that isn't working.

This is the first time I've drawn directly on a canvas. It's been coated with about five coats of gesso, and sanded once, but the surface is still rough, but not so rough that it eats up the charcoal.


Here you can see the whole painting, and the charcoal up close.
This is some of the reference material for this painting: Bats, Butterflies and the Wind, the fourth in my Power of the Wind series. You can see another painting in this series here.

This is a view into my studio, with this painting on my easel.

Neo Megilp

I just started using a new medium called Neo Megilp by Robert Gamblin. It's a required supply for the class I am taking from Gage Mace; Painting the Figure in Oils, at the Hipbone Studio (read more about this class on my Zen blog).

I like Neo Megilp so far, in fact I used it for a large sunflower painting (that's still drying). It makes the paint flow off the brush onto the canvas in a smooth way. Of course, if you use too much it sort of makes a slime. The downside is dry time. I'm used to Liquin, which dries overnight. But Neo Megilp won't dry for a couple of days.

Neo Megilp is a clear amber, thick, goeey substance that doesn't want to come out of the bottle when you turn it upside down (like ketchup). The label says it's a 21st century formulation of one of the Old Master's true secrets. I read somewhere that its "ecofriendly." I don't really know what that means because the label also says it contains petroleum distillate. If swallowed do not induce vomiting. Call physician immediately. Like anyone would drink the stuff?! But if you can imagine what the Old Master's formulas contained, stuff like black oil, mastic varnish, damar, linseed and other mysterious ingredients. There's a good description of these formulations in the book How to Paint Like the Old Masters, by Joseph Sheppard.

To use it I pour a little dab in a small wide dish. Then I dip my brush into it before I pick up some paint. So it mixes with the paint on my brush when I stroke it on the canvas.

I continue to be interested in painting techniques. Using Neo Megilp is another experience for me. You can read about some of the other mediums I've used in this post.

If anyone knows more about Neo Megilp feel free to post a comment.

The Eyes of Van Gogh

I recently came across a website for the film "The Eyes of Van Gogh." It is the story , never told before, of the twelve nightmarish months Vincent van Gogh spent in the insane asylum at St. Remy.

The film explores the theme of an artistic mind in torment, a creative soul in despair, an exquisitely sensitive being ravaged and destroyed by cruelty, wracked by indifference and loneliness, yet desperately seeking to live, to hope, to finish his work, to find a path other than those leading to madness or death.

I would love to see this film, however; the website does not give any information about how to view it.

Does anyone know how to see it? Is it on video?

Marie and Katie in April

Katie and I shared a featured artist show at the Broadway Gallery in April 2007.

Here's our show. Our work complimented each other well. Even our outfits matched!

April Featured Artist

Here is my show at the Broadway Gallery during April 2007.

I shared the wall space with my art friend Katie. Our works complimented each other well. All the ladies at the gallery helped organize an opening reception. It was a good show.

Rotary Auction Painting

Water Lilies at Lake Sacajawea - oil painting

auctioned at the Rotary Fund Raiser

This painting was donated to the Rotary Fund Raiser.

Funds raised will be used for local scholarships.

Fond Brun

My painting, Multi-colored Garden, in progress. You can see the pinkish purple background color "fond brun." Painting on this toned canvas was very soothing.

What is "fond brun?" Karina gave me a lovely book for Christmas, Van Gogh's Gardens. In it there were beautiful pictures of gardens recreated from the descriptions of gardens in Vincent Van Gogh's letters.

I've always been curious about the paints and techniques of van Gogh, and I found a great website, Vincent van Gogh Paintings Project, that describes his techniques very well. I never knew this, but he favored the standard, machine-made, finely woven linen canvases (portrait linen) that were toned with "fond brun violet" (normal in those days), consisting of white, carmine and traces of light-yellow.

To recreate the effect, I gessoed my canvas with a mixture of acrylic gesso tinted with alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow acrylics. I've been lucky enough to see a few original van Gogh paintings in museums, and I've always wondered how his canvases got that pinkish orange tone. (You can see it in places where his brush strokes didn't completely cover the canvas.) Now I know!

The finished painting.

A detail.

How I paint

Late last summer another daily painter artist asked me how I paint. I promised her I'd post the information to my blog. Diligently, I did, posting how I prepare canvases and the types of mediums and mixtures I use. By the time I got around to posting how I paint--five months later--the actual process of how I paint changed, not that unusual for me. Painting is like navigating a bumpy road. Sometimes you go slow, sometime you go fast, sometimes you change course altogether. The best techniques often go awry and I vow to paint in an altogether different fashion, which then runs it's course and I start over again. Best to just explain how I was painting then, and go on to how I want to paint now.

Then, ie: last summer, after mentoring with an Old Master's accomplished artist--a truly amazing lady--I learned how to apply a Verdaccio, followed by several layers of thinned flesh or background colors, building up a transulent and glossy surface. The finished paintings are truly amazing, replete with detail and translucence. I look at them with awe. Did I really paint them? Yes. Could I do it again? Maybe. One of them took me from July to December--five months. In the process I became bored, impatient, frustrated, unfocused and elated. I've discovered I'm a narcisistic painter. When I'm painting it's all about me. How I feel about the painting and how it looks at that very moment. If I don't get gratified, I find it hard to keep going. And granted, there was plenty of gratification when I got to the fifth month. But getting there? It takes a lot out of me. Here's one example. And one more.

Then came the holidays and my typical goal setting, mental house-cleaning New Year's mentality. I vowed to paint faster, freer and with more emotion and less technical perfection. Coupled with a chance to read a couple of good books about Georgia O'Keeffe and Vincent Van Gogh. Did either of them spend more than a day on a painting? I think not! They painted immediately, sensorily and from the emotion of color. That is what I want to do.

Thus, two paintings emerged. One came with plenty of frustration. The other with ease. Don't ask me why. But they emerged into either simplification of form or direct application of color.

I found a wonderful website called the Vincent Van Gogh Painting Project that describes the "fond brun" (rose/violet tinted) canvas surface that was typical in Van Gogh's time. I tinted my canvas in a similar fashion, using gesso mixed with a rose and cad. yellow acrylic. It was both calming and stimulating to paint on a surface that is beautiful even before I stroke the brush. Small areas left uncovered show through with the wonderful pink/orange tint that I've so often wondered about in his paintings. Now I know!

Simply stated, I mixed up a whole bunch of colors with abandon, stroked them onto the fond brun tinted surface without much blending, kept my brushes and mixtures clean, didn't use any medium, and stopped before I could mess it all up! Viola, that's how I paint now, or at least how I want to keep painting until I change course again. Results? I'll let you decide. . . .

Displaying Daily Paintings in the Bank

My local bank has very generously decided to support local artists by featuring their work on a couple of walls. They created a special hanging system with wires suspended from a bar along the ceiling.

They invite me to showcase my paintings a couple of times a year. I just hung a new show this month and this time I was able to incorporate my daily paintings. This is how I did it.

At first I wasn't sure how I could show my daily paintings without framing them all, but after seeing another artist with a similar system I came up with a "hanging ribbon" that can showcase about nine 5 x 7 paintings at a time.

This is how I did it. I bought five yards of black, two-inch wide grosgrain ribbon, the same amount of black, sticky-back velcro and a two-inch wide macrame hoop. I anchored the ribbon through the hoop at the top with a few stiches, and hemmed the bottom. I applied the velcro down the entire length of the ribbon, and stick a small square to the back of the painting. Then I just velcro the paintings onto the ribbon and hang it up. It looks quite nice, colorful and professional.

Each ribbon costs me about $10, that's mostly the cost of the velcro. I haven't figured out how to buy it in bulk. But that is definitely cheaper than framing each piece.

Oil Painting Mediums

Recently I learned how to mix my own painting medium based on a recipe from the Old Masters. I love using this mixture. It has several advantages: 1) I can vary the percentage of fat/lean. 2) It doesn't smell. 3) It doesn't dry out in the container. 4) I mix up just what I need.

In the picture you can see the ingredients. They are all Winsor & Newton products.


(l-r) Linseed Stand oil, English Distilled Turpentine, Dammar Varnish, my container.

The recipe is as follows:

For the underpainting (Verdaccio or Grisaille):

• 1 part Linseed Stand Oil


• 1 part Dammar Varnish


• 5 parts Distilled Turpentine

I call this mixture 1-1-5

For the middle layer:

• 1 part Linseed Stand Oil


• 1 part Dammar varnish
  
• 4 parts Distilled Turpentine

I call this mixture 1-1-4

For the top or final layers:

• 1 part Linseed Stand Oil


• 1 part Dammar varnish


• 3 parts Distilled Turpentine

I call this mixture 1-1-3.

I measure out the ingredients into small baby food jars and label them with 1-1-5, 1-1-4, and 1-1-3. You can see that 1-1-5 is the leanest because it has the most turpentine, and 1-1-3 is the fattest because it has the least turpentine. This allows you to follow the rule of "fat over lean."

When I was learning about this medium, I asked the question, "can you substitute regular Turpentine?" The answer is yes, but it will smell. English Turpentine has little to no odor. Regular Turpentine stinks to high heaven, if you ask me. I'd prefer to pay more for the English turpentine just to avoid the odor.

When using the medium, I use a small eye dropper to drop a few drops into my paint mixture before mixing it up with a painting knife.

As long as I'm painting in the style of the Old Masters, I'll continue to use this recipe because it is certainly better than any of the other mediums I've tried. Here's a few comments about those.
Liquin - a Winsor and Newton product designed to thin oil paints and helps them dry quickly. I used to use it exclusively. However, it has a very strong smell and tends to dry in the bottle before I can use it all up. I don't use it anymore. The smell bothers me. Plus my bottle dried all up.

Galkyd and Galkyd Lite - Gamblin products. After I stopped using Liquin I started experimenting with the Gamblin mediums and found that the Galkyds create a glossy painting surface that I like. Galkyds also don't smell much and you can use them as a varnish when your painting dries. But like Liquin, if you don't use them up fast enough they dry in the bottle. I quit using them when I learned how to mix my own medium based on the recipe from the Old Masters.

Daniel Smith Classic Painting Medium. I think I read that Richard Schmid used a formula similar to this one. It's a combination of Turpentine, Stand Oil and Damar Varnish, very similar to the Old Masters. However, it must contain regular turpentine because it smells really strong. In spite of the smell it thins the paint wonderfully, stays glossy, and doesn't dry up the container. I use it for my daily oil paintings because they don't take that long and I'm not doing any layers. But for longer paintings I can't stand the smell. You can only buy it at Daniel Smith Art Supply in Seattle.


Now, here's a picture of me working on a painting in the Old Master's style! Note: I'm in the final layers, using the 1-1-3 mixture.
Yup, that's me!

Keeping a Painting Journal

Recently, an artist showed me how important it is to keep a painting journal. The concept is so simple, I can't believe I worked without one for years. I mean, I've kept writing journals since I was 13, why not a painting journal?

I think what stymied me was the notion that you can't put oil paint on paper. Wrong. You can. Just a little dab of a paint mixture in my journal dries quickly, and I can jot down notes about the colors used and other stuff. This is really useful when I have five or six paintings going at one time, and I can't remember when I worked on each one, what medium I used last, or even the color mixtures.

For example, look at the right-hand side of my journal above. You can see the date 9-26-06 and the name of the painting I was working on, White Iris. Below it you can see all the paint mixtures I used that day. Below each mixture is my note on how I mixed the color.

For example, the first dab is a pale, creamy yellow, one of the main tones in the petals. My note says this mixture was made from TW (Titanium White) and CY (Cadmium Yellow).

Now look at the next dab, it is a smoky pale blue, used for shadow areas in the petals. My note says this was mixed from TW (Titanium White), CB (Cobalt Blue) and CR (Cadmium Red).

And so on, recording every mixture I used that day. When I return to a painting after a week or so and I need to re-mix the exact same colors, I just look them up in my painting journal.

If you look at the bottom of the left-hand side of the journal, you can see the date 9-21-06 and the name of the painting I was working on, Power and Grace. Again, the mixtures I used that day were noted.

If you scroll around in the journal image, you can also see my notes from daily paintings. That way I have a record of when I did them!
Here's another page. Top left-hand side is another entry on 9-24-06 when I worked on Power and Grace. On the right is an entry on 9-26-06 when I worked on Release. This is a hands painting, and I had a lot of flesh mixtures. Since I'm learning how to mix flesh, I like to be able to go back and see what mixtures I used in a particular painting. Plus, whenever I come up with an absolutely fantastic mixture, I can always replicate it later.

If you look closely at this journal page, you can see that my work on Release went on for several days.

Note, this journal is just a little cheapy Jack Richeson Sketch book, with pages that measure 5-1/2" x 8-1/2". I can make notes on both sides of each page, and the dabs of oil paint don't bleed through. They dry in about 20 minutes, so I can easily flip pages during a painting session.

Another helpful tip is to get used to abbreviations for the colors you use, for example CYP is always Cadmium Yellow Pale, AC is always Aliziran Crimson, CSc is always Cadmium Scarlet, COG is always Chromium Oxide Green, and so on.

With this journal, I can measure my success. Often I look back a couple of months and see how much I've learned and grown. It's a great tool and one I couldn't work without.

Have fun keeping a painting journal!

Preparing Canvases

My husband taught school for 30 years and he always told me how much he loved to teach, but he never liked getting ready to teach. I think the same applies to painting. I love to paint, but I'm not crazy about getting ready to paint. But it's a necessary part of the painting process.

Like building a house; you have to have a good, strong foundation. If you don't, it doesn't matter how nice the carpet is or what color the walls are. And when it comes to walls, it won't matter what color paint you use if the taping and texturing underneath wasn't done correctly.

Liken this to a canvas. It's your painting's foundation. And depending on your style, like the color of the walls in your house, it needs a certain texture. This method certainly isn't for everyone, but it works for me. I have a background in drawing and I like smooth surfaces.

Because of my background in drawing I'm a detail painter. I use many coats of paint in my larger works; applied thinly. I use fine sable brushes for applying the paint and blending it in. If I don't have the right texture on my canvas, I'll tear up those brushes in a hurry. And they are expensive. Plus, I love being able to draw on the canvas when I start the painting. It's hard to draw if there's a lot of texture, almost like fingernails on a blackboard, if you ask me.

So creating the right texture is a chore, and always a workout. I wish I had an apprentice to do all the preparatory work! What I really want to do is just paint! Warning, this is not for anyone with a weak back! I work out with weights and it's still a big job. Back to what I said originally, I love to paint, but I'm not that fond of getting ready to paint. But because someone has to do it, it might as well be me.

Also, I learned how to prepare canvases like this from an established artist whom I really admire (Pamela Green). She paints in the Old Master's style that I continue to learn about. Many of the early painters worked on boards that were satiny smooth. As I continue to learn from Pamela and practice the techniques myself, I understand how every step is part of the whole. This first step.

Now - on to the specifics. I use both store bought canvases, and canvases I stretch myself. Here's what I do/use when I prepare a store bought canvas. Note: this technique can also be used to prepare wooden panels. In fact, I use it to prepare my small daily-painting panels The picture above shows me sanding two of these.

Supplies

• store bought cotton canvas, any size (I use gallery wrap style and prefer Masterpiece or Art Alternatives brands), or wooden panels
  
• acrylic gesso (I use Golden brand)
  
• 1 or 2 inch flat housepainting brush


• glass jar full of water for cleaning brush


• shop towels (I buy in bulk at Home Depot)
• latex gloves (I buy in 100-pack at hardware store)
• baby powder (for keeping the gloves from sticking)


• 320 grit wet/dry sandpaper


• 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper


• 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper


• Spray bottle full of water
  

1. Pub on the gloves. If they stick dust your hands with baby powder. Using the flat housepainting brush, apply three coats of gesso to front of the canvas. Don't need to go around the gallery wrap. Let each coat dry a minimum of 4 hours. Stroke in a different direction on each coat.


2. After the third coat is dry, spray the canvas with water from the spray bottle. Tear 320 grit wet/dry sandpaper into little squares. Sand the canvas using circular motions. Sand the entire surface several times. After each time, wipe dry with a shop towel and examine for smoothness. The canvas will get smoother each time, but some of the cotton texture and gesso strokes will still be visible in good light. It usually takes 3 sandings in this stage. If the sandpaper drags, spray more water. It should be really wet while sanding. This is a messy process. I wear old clothes and protect the floor.


3. Apply 2 more coats of gesso, stroking in different directions each time.
   
4. After the second coat is dry, spray the canvas with water from the spray bottle. Tear 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper into little squares. Sand the canvas using circular motions, as in step 2. By the time I've gone over the whole canvas several times, it should be really smooth, with all texture and gesso strokes removed.


5. I usually stop at this point because the canvas is smooth enough. But sometimes I apply another 2 coats of gesso and sand using the 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper if desired. This will give a satin smooth canvas with no texture, almost like paper.
   
6. If I apply two coats of gesso in one day, I don't clean my brush each time. I just plop it into the jar of water until the next coat. If it's an overnight dry, I wash the brush clean with water and dish soap.
   

If I'm doing a large canvas, like the 36" x 48" canvas I used for White Iris, I have to divide the canvas into quarters and sand one section at a time. I break this up over a week's time so my back and shoulders don't give out!

You may wonder why I go to all this trouble when most artists just walk into an art supply store, buy a canvas and begin painting on it immediately. Or why I go to all the trouble of removing the texture that many artists prefer. I guess it's just a matter of preference, and a continued interest in the Old Master's style and the effects I can get with a smooth canvas. When I explain my painting process (in a future post) you will see why the smoothness is beneficial.

If by chance you are really adventurous, you can always stretch your own canvas. I often do and use a 10 lb. unprimed cotton duck and heavy duty stretcher bars from Art Media. Once I stretch it, I apply 3 coats of gesso, sand according to step 2, apply 3 more coats of gesso and sand again according to step 2. Then I proceed to step 3. You can see that preparing an unprimed canvas is a little more work. If you stretch with primed canvas, you can skip that extra step, But I don't like to stretch primed canvas. It's too stiff and hard to work with and I can't get it as tight as when I use unprimed cotton.

Although you can buy portrait canvases that are fairly smooth, I haven't found any canvas manufacturer that produces a canvas as smooth as this method. Most people don't want to go to all the trouble of gessoing and sanding. My thought is that the canvas becomes part of the painting, and because I've invested my heart, soul and a good deal of muscle into it, once the painting is finished it's a part of me. Like if I built my own house. Good luck!

PS: if you're not sure about this whole process, try a small canvas, maybe 8 x 10. It will give you a feel for how it works, and you can decide for yourself whether you want to invest all the time and energy it takes.

Preparing Wooden Panels

I've painted on wooden panels for a while, but the daily painting project inspired me to refine how I prepare them, and to share that process with you.

If you're an art supply junkie like me, I'm sure you've plopped down five to ten dollars--or even more--for Ampersand gessobords, unfinished hardboard or other rigid painting surfaces. Last time I checked, a 5 x 7 inch gessoboard was running around $2.50 and if you do 30 small paintings a month, that comes to $75!

I found a better alternative. I go to Home Depot and buy a 2 by 4 foot 1/8 inch thick piece of hardboard for $2.58, plus tax. I've built a relationship with the millwork department, and they cut it into 5 by 7 inch pieces, very cleanly, because they know I'm an artist and the boards have to be almost exact. Home Depot is the only store I've found that will make these custom cuts. Kudos to their customer service philosophy. I went to every small and large lumber store where I live, and none of them would cut for me.

When I get home I sand the edges smooth with 220 grit sandpaper. If they've made clean cuts with a table saw I won't have to sand much. Once they scored and cracked them, and these boards were useless. The edges were all ragged. Home Depot recut them for me, no charge.

Then I lay them out on a table and start gessoing. I buy a gallon of Golden gesso for about $35; it lasts me up to eight months, and I use it on large canvases too. I apply three coats to each board, and once around the edges to seal it off.

Hardboard has little fibers in it that show up when you gesso. So after the third coat is dry I wet sand with 320 wet/dry sandpaper in circular motions and this really smooths out the surface. I wipe them dry with shop towels (again from Home Depot), and apply another two coats of gesso. That's five coats total. They are really smooth and absolutely beautiful to paint on. I'm a detail painter so I like a really smooth surface.

The first time I prepared panels I left them white. The second time I applied a final coat of buff titanium acrylic. You can see these in the picture above. Daily paintings are direct painted so sometimes you're left with tiny places where the white board shows through. I don't like this. It looks unfinished to me. The buff titanium gives a nice golden glow that I think gives my paintings more depth.

That's it. Even with the gallon of gesso at $35, a couple packets of sandpaper and a 9-pack of shop towels I'm still under $50. I have most of the gallon of gesso, plenty of sandpaper and the shop towels left for other canvases. One 2 by 4 foot piece of hardboard nets 24 5 x 7 panels. I also have Home Depot cut the end pieces into odd sizes for me, like 3 x 4 and 2 x 3.5. I gesso these and use them for tiny odd shaped paintings.

It's a hands-on process that I enjoy. It's almost becoming a routine; putting on a coat of gesso every day. What I like is that the final painting is really a product from my own hands, right down to the board I'm painting on.

Welcome to My Art Journey 2

I created this blog so I can share how I paint, what I paint, why I paint, what I'm learning and just about anything else that is important in my artistic journey.

There's so much I want to share, but for now I'm trying to coordinate all my blogging, website updates, ebaying and emailing into a cohesive process that takes a minimal amount of time each day.

Thank you to all the artists who have commented or supported my work thus far.