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| Sept. 18, my 44 birthday, 2010...I felt like working so I added the girl swan in red walnut oil stick...(KamaPigments) Left the fan on for 4 hours to air out the studio...(36by 48 by 2-1/4 inches on linen)(texture is M. graham walnut alkyd medium left to dry before applying colour)... |
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| Friday Sept. 17, 2010: Today I added the green Kama pigments walnut oil stick colour to the Father Swan on the top right hand side of the painting...I am trying to resolve all the lines of each swan without losing each shape but showing all four family members...The M. Graham walnut alkyd medium underneath the oil stick adds texture...Swans have very big feet, which you can see Poppa swan's large green foot underwater...The large whale tail form in the upper right is a many-faceted iconographic message- it says, that swans are endangered like whales, it says that Pappa swan is big like a whale, it says that Pappa swan swims (which people forget that swans have webbed feet & swim alot as well as fly)... |
http://www.ncagr.gov/cyber/kidswrld/plant/nutrient.htm Plants need these nutrients...So do people...Each one of these nutrients, as a mineral, has a different colour...I am doing a painting about swans...I discovered that swans like to eat whole untreated dried corn which you can get 10 kilogram bags of for around $11.49 from Wild Bird Unlimited on Dundas street in Etobicoke...(or your own local wild bird feed store)...Nitrogen shows as yellow in a diamond, also in corn...Nitric acid is what dilates your arteries when you eat a healthy meal like salmon, a baked potato & some vegetables... http://www.khulsey.com/jewelry/gemstone_color.html Here are gemstones & an explanation of why they have which colour...Additive colour theory means that if you have three circles of colour that intersect, like red blue yellow, the middle circle will be white...Subtractive colour means that the middle circle will be black...see the pictures in the link above...
http://www.amazon.com/Sari-Grove-ebook/dp/B0042JT2S6/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&s=digital-text&qid=1284644454&sr=1-14 DON'T BUY THIS BOOK!!! This is my book, an artist book, published on Amazon, for Kindle readers...read the description to understand why I don't want you to buy this book, & be sure to submit your comments & opinions in the Review portion, WITHOUT EVER BUYING THE BOOK...(Maybe then we will get colour art books on Kindles...)
A new note about new method for this work of art: Artists spend the first half of their lives trying to better their drawing skills...Then, it happens...One day, your work is technically excellent...You have achieved the ability to see a bowlful of grapes & draw those grapes onto a canvas then paint them & wow you have a bowl of grapes painting...But...Realism is boring...Once you have achieved that goal, where do you go? Many many artists out there can draw & paint a bowlful of grapes, well...
Is it really enough to portray those grapes well? No...absolutely not...You are not adding to the planet by trying to reproduce likenesses...So, how can you change your method?
Well, this is what I have done for this work...My previous painting "magnolia" was dangerously close in some aspects to verisimilitude...You may say that it is not, but there are aspects of the subjects that I know are actually very close to life...& that bothers me...
This time around, Joseph & I spent the summer buying(I have since learned that we are bad bad very evil people for feeding waterbirds bread or bagels or croissants- & have endeavoured to seek out a whole untreated corn source supply- Queensville Farm supply at left of this post, link, has huge bags for very cheap- I still don't know why frozen corn is a no-no though, anyone???) 7 or 8 bags of bread, bagels, croissants, pita, white bread, brown bread, organic bread, & went to locations on lake Ontario to feed the various wildlife birds...I developed a familiarity with these birds with my eyes, my hands, my heart...many sessions, over several months...
Then, one day, I sat at a sketchbook, & sketched some of the birds from memory...I came up with four swans & a goose...These sketches were free from literal-ness...These sketches had insight & depth...Not realistic, but didactic...My mind had formed opinions of each swan & those opinions came out in the sketches from memory...Had I sketched from life, the images might have been too literal, too real, too superficial...Working from memory allowed my hand to express an opinion...It allowed me to escape realism...here below is the beginning of the painting...(I transferred 4 of the 5 sketchbook sketches by hand to the canvas, overlapping them like a Van Diagram, which I am now resolving using oilsticks (walnut oil sticks from Kama Pigments Montreal), to define & maintain the lines...Much more interesting than another realistic swan painting, no?
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| Swan Family of Four: Pappa Mamma Daughter Son, 3 feet by four feet by two & a quarter inches deep, Kama walnut oil sticks on top of Sennelier oil pastel sketch on top of Liquitex Clear gesso (on both sides of linen) stretched on Rex Art Florida pine (I actually thought I had ordered poplar , but I got pine, so pine it is- I don't normally use pine, but why argue, if that is what The Holy Ghost decided to send me?...)wood stretcher bars, stretched with Belgian Linen 10 weight from a roll at Curry's Art Supply on Yonge street in Toronto, using black steel carpet tacks from Canadian Tire at Davenport & a hammer & rubber cane tips on my hammer to make it a mallet too...painting is in progress , Fri. Sept. 3, 2010- trying to resolve the intersects right now to retain clarity...(The four rocks in the foreground are Zeolites from Great South Minerals- they absorb odours...You can get a flat of 24 for 48 dollars...good for the studio...I also keep baking soda boxes in the studio & have a fan set on an eight hour timer for after I leave...) decision: right now am considering also tacking the edges with tacks, not just the back, to increase support for greater longevity...(notice:© this copyright symbol is NOT necessary in Canada to register or assume copyright...so , just 'cause you don't see it on or near my works doesn't mean that you can copy stuff...I am a member of CARCC, who chases after copyright infringers for me, be forewarned...) Note: the orangey stuff in drips like rain & in a blob, is M. Graham walnut alkyd medium, which makes walnut oil paints dry a little faster & adds shine- I am using the blob circle as my light source as well, & laid down the walnut medium before(most people mix it during) painting with the walnut oil sticks...(let it dry a bit before working...) |
Under-Sketch: Papa swan top right, mama swan top left, girl swan bottom right, boy swan bottom left...36 x 48 x 2-1/4" ©Sari Grove 2010
(I'm gonna go with transparent layers to show all 4 figures in the water...shimmering...)(Sketch done from memory of real life swan family)...
Thursday August 12, 2010: morning, drawing a glass bowl refresher...film...(not by me) So, my sketch has 4 overlapping figures, like a Van diagram (you know the two circles & they intersect so you get this cool intersection shape in the middle? like a hot spot? I have been trying to resolve how I am going exactly to overlap my swans, so I watched this short film about drawing glass...Which helped...start with a gray tone, add some white tones, finish with dark tones...I think I am going to do a grisaille ( a grey study) for this painting first...later maybe I will glaze some colour onto each swan to make them stick out individually more, I'm thinking gender specific colours with darker richer tones for the parents maybe, which will help them to stand out more since they are behind the kids...
How did I get the text attached directly to my photo of magnolia? From a comment http://fionapurdyart.com/ (the lady who gave the link to Gimp) on ArtBizBlog http://www.artbizblog.com, I learned about GIMP which is a free Mac download...But here is a trick, in order to use Gimp on Mac Tiger, you need X11 ...First...So, here is a site that gives you the X11 downloads you need free...
Download the X11 two files first from the above site...THEN download Gimp...(If you already downloaded Gimp first, then re-install Gimp to get it to work with X11...)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimponosx/files/GIMP%20Tiger%20universal/2.6.10/GIMP-2.6.10-Tiger.dmg/download
This is the direct download Gimp link for Mac Tiger (I have 10.4.11 version)...don't go to this page if you don't want to start downloading right away...
