Happy landscape

Jazz picnic.
Jamie took me to see The Bad Plus, a jazz trio, two nights ago. Great show.
I feel like drawing musicians and people in canoes, cats flying, and spirited mountains.

The mini vans of the future will just run on photon energy, emitting rainbows.

It would be fun to design solar powered free flying space-mini-vans for the futuristic families of tomorrow. The painting with the turquoise sky is "Roswell Mini Van Robot Family." The other one is more nighttime, and the van has a kind of faux wood paneling... it's called "Dark Journey." Both are 2011 watercolors and 11 inches high x 14 inches wide. Just listed them on etsy http://kellynewcomer.etsy.com


I would like a smooth-riding mini van with that button that opens the doors for you, but I don't want to cause more and more environmental destruction.

The mini vans of the future will just run on photon energy, emitting rainbows.

Anyway, I'll be happy driving the old Hyundai Elantra for a while longer.

Earth-Like Planet show at Irvine Fine Arts Center

What we did today

Bagel breakfast
puzzle
Battleship
Sorry
Lotto
lately they want me to play boardgames. Guess that's better than them wanting to watch tv
Potstickers for lunch
Jeff came over around 12, they were watching Madagascar
Hang out with Jeff, set up Darda racetrack which was in basement
Do laundry, change sheets on kids bed, they help do laundry -- take it down there and fold it
Jamie home at 2, kids and Jamie eat Mac and Chz for snack.
Kids come with me to Lunds. They pick out cereal with toy inside Kung Fu Panda -- they saw the commercials at the North Shore on Satellite TV in the cabin.
We talk about Memorial Day, what it means. Remembering those who died in service to our country. Ev says that's a stupid holiday, we shouldn't remember the wars! So we talked about remembering war, and compared it to Passover, which he celebrated at Temple Israel. Now he thinks it's kind of a good holiday.
BBQ tonight. Ribs, coleslaw, bread...

I'm reading John Holt, Teach Your Own
and thinking I want to do something like unschooling, but I want the kids to have routines and things to help them know what's coming up each day. So meal times would be routine also.

This week:

Tuesday Rocket speech at Lyndale 10-11, Meet homeschoolers at Lyndale Farmstead Park 2-4
Wednesday Rocket preschool 9-1:30. Take Ev to Science Museum from 10-1
Thursday Rocket speech Lyndale 10-11, Meet Tonya here 1-3?
Friday Rocket preschool 9-1:30. Do something with Everett

Intro to Watercolor - Week 2

This week: Hue/Color Mixing - Texture - Masks/Frisket - Matisse Cut outs forms - Birch Trees

Tonight the first thing we did was we masked off an area with liquid mask/frisket in the shape of a Matisse cut out sea plant. Before dipping our brush in the frisket we rubbed the bristles with a little dab of liquid soap. We also dabbed on frisket with the end of the brush to make dots. (Then we let the liquid mask dry for about ten minutes while we started the next project – color mixing). After the liquid mask was dry, we painted a wash over it, (we added texture to that wash with Qtips - to remove a bit of paint, and toothpicks, to create a scratch like grass or just abstract texture). We let the watercolor wash completely dry, then we peeled the mask away with a ball of squished up masking tape (or a rubber cement pickup eraser) to reveal the white of the paper.

Then we did some color mixing to get comfortable with the idea of "hue" (Hue is pure color from the tube) and color temperature. For example we made orange with lemon yellow and cadmium red, then we made orange with lemon yellow and alizarin crimson - and so on, making colors with our suggested paints. For color temperature, we can say that lemon yellow is cooler than cadmium yellow. We actually made a grid on our paper, wrote the name of the color combination at the top, then made a mixture of that color. We worked on dry paper. See below for a list of the color combinations we used. We also discussed how "sap green" may be phthalo green yellow-shade... This is a great exercise you can start to see how to make purple, how to make a rich black. How cool yellow and warm yellow change your mixtures/ how cool tones can muddy warm tones. Cadmium yellow (warm yellow) mixed with Ultramarine blue (cool blue) make an earthy/muddy green.

Colors we mixed:

Make a grid on paper and in each square, mix these colors. Write the color combination at the top.

Lemon Yellow + Cadmium Red

Lem Ylw + Alizarin Crimson

Cadmium Ylw + Cadmium Red

Cad Ylw + Cad Red

Lem Ylw + Ultramarine Blue

Cad Ylw + U Blue

Lem Ylw + Phthalocyanine Green

Cad Ylw + Phthalo Green

Phthalo Green + Ultramarine Blue

Ultramarine Blue + Cad Red

U. Blue + Aliz Crimson

Dynamic Duo Neutral:

U Blue + Burnt Sienna

More Interesting Black:

Aliz Crimson + Phthalo Green

There was some discussion about watercolor in Western art history, feminism, the more "elevated" role of oil painting, frescoes, and tempera. Watercolor was a popular pursuit for educated American and European ladies with the advent of cake watercolors sets in the mid-1800s. Watercolor was a way for "serious" oil painters to make quick studies and sketches, prior to working on more expensive canvas support. Winslow Homer embraced watercolor, made some nice big "serious" ones, and with his being already famous for his innovative work as an illustrator for Harper's Weekly and he had exhibited some oils in Paris, so he asked an unusually high amount $100 for his early watercolors, (according to my research at the National Museum of Art website) and that was a lot of money in the late 1800s. He was using his name recognition to brand or market his watercolors as high art. Today, watercolors can be considered very important artworks and are seen in contemporary museum settings.

We next used masking tape to make birch trees in snow. Keeping the birch trees masked off, we applied a sky wash with texture for the background (using sponge and paper towel to lift off some of the sky wash) right over the tape. We left the bottom third of our work white for the snow.

We removed the tape and used the interesting neutral: ultramarine blue and burnt sienna to make the warm grey for the dark parts of the bark. We got the tree area wet, made the sides of the tree dark, and kept the middle light. We saw how to use a plastic credit card to scrape the dark paint into the tree, getting texture. We blotted color off with paper towel to lighten the center of the tree. We did a warm yellow/grey wash -kind of stripe - over the tree at the end. We discussed using a thin brush (round #2, or even a rigger which has longer bristles) and quick flicking motions to get the dark branches and twigs, holding the brush lightly at the end to get more flicking action.

Below are a couple images (screen shots) of the birch tree painting idea, and a nice use of masking fluid to show highlights on a boat and water.

Next week, we'll be learning more about paper and sizing, thoroughly immersing and wetting a sheet and taping it down on our boards for wet into wet painting... And also we will do some practice with painterly brush strokes. We'll be in the art room on the first floor next week.

Intro to Watercolor - Week 1

I started teaching Intro to Watercolor at Lake Harriet Community Education, 4912 Vincent Avenue South. Here are my notes and some images I wanted to share with the class from week 1.

--

To review, tonight we talked about value. The lightness or darkness of a color. We made four squares on our paper and practiced flat wash, gradient wash, dry brush, and wet into wet. We made five squares further down on that piece of paper and made the first one pure hue then each next square gradually lighter in value. We did this by dipping our brush into paint for the first square, then once into water for next square, dip it twice for 3^rd square, dip it three times… and so on, each square lighter in value due to less of the original pigment remaining on the brush.

Then we did a painting based on Georgia O'Keefe's abstract sunset using wet into wet for the bottom third - and two colors in the rainbow arc of the sunset. We planned our copy of her painting to leave some white paper. Leaving white of the paper is a very important watercolor technique.

Okeefe image here: http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2009/07/09/1247187476_3472/539w.jpg

We also talked about making a grid of your colors and seeing how they look as gradient washes. For each color from your set of tubes or pans, make a square on a grid on paper to refer to in your studio.

Here is that list of materials...

Materials

Pencil

Kneaded eraser

Masking tape

2 wide mouth water containers (12 oz or so)

Large board for mounting wet paper 16x20 inches

Masking tape

Watercolor paper 140# Strathmore cold press 11x14 (or Arches, Lana Aquarelle, or Fabriano Artistico)

Watercolor brushes #8 round, #2 round, 1 inch flat

White plastic palette with lid

Tube watercolors (Winsor Newton, M. Graham & Co., Utrecht)

Permanent Alizarine Crimson

Cadmium Red or Scarlet Lake or Napthol Red

Ultramarine Blue (or French Ultramarine Blue)

Thalo Green or Winsor Green

Lemon Yellow or Hansa Yellow

Cadmium Yellow Medium

Burnt Sienna

Burnt Umber

why tweet

Connecting With Twitter
Visual artist Krystyna81's story of success as a result of her presence on Twitter. Read Kristina's story and her tips on using this cool (and quick) networking tool on the Etsy Blog. http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/etsy-success-connecting-with-twitter-7322/

I'm making this blog entry so I'll remember it, myself! It's her story of how one of her twitter followers got her a contract to do a book cover for an Italian book of poetry.