artful – Artfuel

One year later…

November 24, 2017December 5, 2017Posted in creativityTagged artful, bloggingfundamentals, creativity, pencil drawings, watercolorLeave a comment

I began my blog almost exactly a year ago with several goals in mind:

To document my efforts to be a more creative person after leaving my work life.
As a way to share my retirement journey with friends and family.
To connect with others who are figuring out their own ‘seniority’ and creativity.
To keep and improve my writing and computer skills.

Though I hit a creative block for a few months and I’ve not posted recently, I’ve made some progress toward all these goals and hope to write more frequently in the new year.

So I begin again!

I continue to struggle with watercolor. The medium confounds me most days! So I took a break from the paints for a few months to work on my basic drawing skills, which I think will eventually make me a better painter.

Over the summer and into the fall, I drew various fruits and vegetables which were at hand from my pantry. Good practice for form, composition and values.

Now, I am trying my hand at translating some pencil drawings to water color.

More to come!

Experiments in Pink

May 11, 2017March 13, 2020Posted in creativityTagged artfuel, artful, creativity, Day Lilies, gardening, Inktense pencils, Pink, Tombow pens, watercolor pencils9 Comments

Today’s WP daily prompt is PINK, so it’s a good day to share some recent sketches of a day lily I photographed in my garden last June. A few weeks ago, using a combination of Tombow pens, watercolor paint and Inktense pencils, I created a satisfying range of pinks in these two versions:

Though their name prepares us that each lily flower will last only one day, I am amazed the plant expends so much energy for such short lived beauty! When these beauties are in bloom, I try to spend time in the garden each day so I don’t miss a single blossom.

Edward Hopper: Color and Contrast

January 19, 2017March 3, 2018Posted in creativity, Influencers, RetirementTagged artfuel, artful, creativity, Edward Hopper, Richard DiebenkornLeave a comment

A great luxury and pleasure in retirement is having as much time as I want to read and think. I’m re-reading art books I’ve not touched in years and am finding new insights about why some artists resonate with me so strongly.

In addition to Richard Diebenkorn, I admire the work of American painter, Edward Hopper (1882-1967).

Two of Hopper’s most famous figurative works, Chop Suey (1929) and Nighthawks (1942), may be familiar to you.

His later works, including Rooms by the Sea (1951) and Sun in an Empty Room (1963), present strong lights and shadows in simpler, almost abstract ways which remind me of Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series. Hopper was the older of the two notable artists, and it’s more than possible that Diebenkorn was aware of and influenced by Hopper’s work. I like to think so.

Both artists are in my mind these days. I love the Diebenkorn abstracts and Hopper’s bold colors and values. As I begin to draw and paint again after many years, I struggle to make the right value contrasts and my palette is beginning to feel a bit timid. But I draw courage from Hopper’s powerful and stunning use of color, light and shadow.

In this watercolor study, I imagined Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea through a Diebenkorn ‘lens.’ In doing so, I learned that I still need to work on my values contrasts, and I need more confidence with color and form.

Artists Wolf Kahn and Josef Rafael also inspire me and I will write about them in future posts.

Who influences your work?

The color in the shadows

January 9, 2017March 7, 2018Posted in creativity, Learning WPTagged artfuel, artful, artskills, creativity, gardeningLeave a comment

It’s cold and rainy this week in Seattle and I am housebound today with a wrenched back. Perhaps I was overconfident in my yoga classes last week. The extra backbends seemed like a good idea at the time.

However, I want to put a new header image on the blog so I went back to the well of my garden photos from last May and drew/painted a a series of small calla sketches, about 1.5 inches each, to get the right proportions for the wide, narrow header.

I’m happy so see that I’m loosening up with the watercolor pencils and paints. The small scale of these sketches also forced me to simplify. Applying what I learned today I will make a larger version of each little sketch later this week as I continue to explore these fascinatingly-shaped flowers.

Though these callas are white, they reveal so many other colors in their folds and shadows.

I first saw colorful shadows in Santa Fe, where the elevation and brilliant sunlight created the most amazing purple and green shadows in the corners of adobe walls and buildings. I had never seen this where I’d grown up, in Ohio.

On sunny winter days, look for colors in snow shadows; they are never just gray. There are so many colors in the icy crystals as the sun changes throughout the day.

Have you been to other places where you’ve seen this phenomenon of color in shadow?

Who are your creative influencers?

January 7, 2017May 2, 2017Posted in creativity, InfluencersTagged artfuel, artful, artskills, creativity, Richard Diebenkorn, transparent enamels, watercolor pencils5 Comments

I’ve always admired American painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993) and today I was struck to recognize his influence on some artwork I created years ago in a totally different medium.

Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series series has long fascinated me for reasons I don’t fully understand. But one of our first purchases as a young couple was a framed Diebenkorn poster featuring his 1970 painting, Ocean Park #29. We’d just moved into our first apartment in a small college town and though money was tight, we splurged on some art for our walls.

Fortunately, the Diebenkorn poster survived many moves and currently hangs in my ‘studio.’ So it was very convenient to use as a reference for my first watercolor pencil exploration.

I hoped that by recreating #29 in a very small size and a different medium, I could quickly practice drawing, try out the pencils and understand more about why this particular painting charms me so. Why was Diebenkorn using this color next to that? What was his purpose using the diagonal while line? How does he blend his colors and lines?

Though Diebenkorn worked in oils for his OP series, I was also eager to see whether I could hold a firm edge between various watercolors while still making something painterly.

In my homage to Mr. Diebenkorn, below, my jewel tones evoke transparency and light.

I based another sketch, below, on his Ocean Park #79 (1975).

Reinterpreting the Diebenkorns does not make my qiuck sketches original art. But studying them in this way has simply helped me learn more about his work and how I might apply what I’ve learned in the future.

However, this morning, as I was dusting off and browsing through some old design sketchbooks from my jewelry making days, I could see his influence in my series of cloisonne enameled pins/brooches and pendants. These three pieces relate to his work, but I never realized that until today.

Perhaps our influencers affect us differently at various times in our lives.

Whose influence fuels your creativity?

They say it takes two…

January 5, 2017March 7, 2018Posted in creativity, InfluencersTagged artfuel, artful, Artistic license, artskills, creativity, gardening, watercolor pencils10 Comments

…Two people, that is, to create an artwork. One to bring it into existence and another to say “STOP” when it’s finished.

Have you ever taken a good drawing or painting too far and ruined it?

I’ve blown up several sketches over the past couple of days, but I DID draw or paint each day so far this year. All five days of it. And I am not ashamed to share a couple of watercolor pencil drawings/paintings.

Working from photos I took in my garden last May, these made me happy today:

Reference photo from May, 2016:

My water color version, January 4, 2017:

I liked this but went further with it. Looking at the version below, I wish I’d listened to that voice that said, Stop!

Final Calla Lily, January 4, 2017:

I am not sure the addition of the small leaf at top right adds anything to the composition, though I do like the more atmospheric areas around the flower and leaves and the darker values add drama.

I’m glad to have photos of both stages so that I did not lose what I liked about the first version.

Today, I drew from a different reference photo, also from May 2016:

My January 5 interpretation, in watercolor:

Callas are dramatic flowers and interesting to draw.

Years ago, I made jewelry and created many cloisonne enameled pendants featuring this flower. I sold them all but wish I had kept one. My original design sketches and photos of some finished pieces are tucked away somewhere. It might be time to review them and see what I can learn from them this year. I sense the need for another round of closet cleaning to find them. Oy!

However, for now, I am excited that new callas will emerge in my garden in a few months.

The days are already lengthening and I know that Spring is coming.

Ten minutes to better

January 4, 2017May 2, 2017Posted in creativityTagged artfuel, artful, artskills, creativity2 Comments

Responding to a Ten Minute Challenge to improve artskills, I roughed out six water color sketches of one object on a single sheet of paper. Timing myself, I spent no more than ten minutes a sketch, and there was no pressure to perfect each one.

Starting with the panel in the top left and ending at bottom right, I find it fascinating to see how much fresher and looser my work had become in just one hour. Encouraging.

Inspiration from my garden

December 21, 2016November 1, 2018Posted in creativityTagged artfuel, artful, Artistic license, artskills, bloggingfundamentals, creativity, gardening, watercolor pencils3 Comments

Something is always blooming in Seattle and my small garden offers a constant parade of subjects for drawing and painting. Much more fun than weeding!

This photo taken in late fall, looking down from above a large ceramic planter, shows fading heuchera and Japanese forest grass leaves above a cascade of flowering rosemary. I liked the composition enough to use as the basis for a watercolor sketch.

I’d recently found some dusty art supplies that had been tucked away for years in various parts of the house. Among them was a set of watercolor pencils that I don’t recall buying and didn’t really know how to use. The colors were not impressive to draw with, but when I brushed water over the pigments, they became more vibrant as they melted and blended together. These could be interesting.

I used a grid system to transfer the design from the photo to a larger sheet of paper. Treating each square of the grid as a small abstract on its own, lets me concentrate on each section’s shapes, values, colors and textures. The grid marks can be erased, painted over or treated as design elements, as I did in this color sketch.