Not on Purpose

Remember in the olden days when we took photos and didn’t see them until our film got developed?

We have gotten used to looking at them instantly, which is great in theory, but what happens when you are outside in the bright sun and cannot see the screen? Cameras rarely have eyeholes, and the ones that do are small, blurry, inadequate, scratched, or just dirty.

Additionally, if you cannot see the screen, you cannot see the controls on the screen. Sometimes this creates accidents.

A little over a week ago after a storm (not the snowstorm), everything was so beautiful that I laid down my paintbrushes and headed out with Trail Guy to see some natural beauty. The wildflowers!!

THEN, without knowing it, I had a camera accident.

How would I know? I couldn’t see the screen. When I put on some glasses and moved into the shade, I realized that the color was absent, so I randomly pushed the controls until color appeared again.

This flowering pear is the first to bloom in the neighborhood (mid-February) and the last to lose its color in the fall (sometimes late November). This photo might have looked okay in black and white.

It took quite a bit of button pushing when I got home to restore the normal settings. I don’t know how it switched to black and white and doubt if I could make it do that again, at least not on purpose.

Now I am going to experiment with something called “colorize” on Photoshop Junior. This is an opportunity to learn.

Odd Job Completed

As a working artist, I seem to attract odd art-related jobs. Each one is a challenge, usually quite fun to figure out. This odd job of painted stepping stones was completed for a vacation rental where I occasionally help with the yardening.

The colored stepping stones lead through the front yard around to the playset, absent in the photo above, present in the photo below.(Not magical – just unbuilt, and then built.)  And in case you are wondering, the purple blooming shrub is Germander. Looks fabulous now, looks scrappy in the summer. The shrubs in this front yard take turns looking good.

Odd Job

Sometimes I help my friend with her vacation rentals, specifically in the yards and gardens. (What is the difference? “Garden” sounds nicer, but when I do the yardwork, I think of it as “yardening”.) 

Recently we laid some fake grass (“artificial turf” is the real name) for a place to put up a children’s play set. We are figuring out how to conceal the edges, putting down weed barrier and planting all sorts of things around the “grass”. 

Next, we will add stepping stones to lead from the front of the house to the side area with the playset (remember when there were monkey-bars, swings, slides, and merry-go-rounds, all separate pieces of equipment, with asphalt beneath? How did we survive such barbarism??)

Because we want it to be enticing to kids, we want stepping stones that are inviting. After kicking around all sorts of ideas, we chose painted cement circles. This was a frugal decision, because we are careful with the home owner’s money.

Trail Guy set up a temporary table for painting the stepping stones in the sunshine.

I have many gallons of paint for a primer coat.

The paint dried fast, so I was able to put two coats on within an hour and a half.

My friend and I bought small cans of blue, red, and yellow so I can mix many colors. We learned that with small cans, the strongest brightest colors aren’t possible. All the tint needed to make the colors bright would cause a little can to overflow. So, we got the brightest primary colors that the hardware store could mix for us.

As a professed color junkie, I just dove into the colors. Our ideas were many, but thinking about the time involved, we settled on one solid step per color, and the rest could be decorated a little more elaborately.

I began with the first design, an obvious idea for February 14, the day I painted.

Then I just kept going. I painted the 6 very solidly, and messed around with blending colors on top of the other 6. It wasn’t particularly successful, but it was a fun way to experiment and get a base coat on the white primer.

This is really fun. When we figure out how to decorate the non-solids, I hope I remember to photograph them and blog about it. And if they look good leading through the “garden” to the “grass”, I might show you that too.

It might be a bit of an odd job, but I continue to. . .

make art people can understand of places and things they love for prices that won’t scare them.

P.S. Is this art??

Red Things

Recently, I noticed red things in my yard. Maybe that is just what artists do. That’s what this one does.

Proud

Pride goes before a fall. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So why am I proud? and why is it okay??

I am proud of one of my drawing students!! (I don’t think this is a sin.)

Mae began taking lessons from me over 15 years ago because she was a watercolorist who wanted her work to be more realistic. She quickly graduated from pencil to colored pencil and tried 3 different brands before settling on Faber Castell Polychromos. She meticulously plans out each piece, experimenting with color combinations and working very methodically and slowly.

Meanwhile, Mae continued painting at home and with some friends at the Arts Visalia gallery. (This is the place where I have held drawing workshops, a very well-run non-profit gallery.)

During the ShutDown, Mae and another artist friend answered a Call for Artists from Arts Visalia. They have one big fund raiser each year, an orchid sale. This year, due to The Thing, the orchid sale isn’t happening. Instead, they asked their regular artists to do some orchid paintings.  Mae and Donna quickly responded.

The very day that Mae told me about her paintings, I came home to this flyer in my email inbox.

Mae’s painting on the left is “Three Scoops”. The one on the right is “Out of the Box”. Donna’s paintings are the center ones, equally beautiful, but I don’t know the titles.

OF COURSE I bought a package of these cards.

Will you? Click or tap the link below to Arts Visalia’s orchid sale.

www.artsvisalia.org/support-us/orchid-sale

Another Odd Job, Day 2

Oh-oh, the yellow paint is picking up the blue chalk. Guess this will take many coats.
The green will also take at least 2 coats.

It was too hard to paint the bottom of the sign, so I flipped it over. But it got stuck, so I continued painting while outside. That was actually easier. (Never mind how I will get it unstuck.)

I finished the first coat of green on the bottom, leaving the “growies” for later, because I don’t know what colors I’ll use there. And I am still picking up blue chalk with the yellow paint.

I learn by doing. White paint mostly hides the yellow+blue chalk problem. Now it needs yet another coat of yellow, maybe even two.

To be continued. . .

P.S. I have guest posted again on the Mineral King Preservation Society blog.

Odd Job, Day 4

Yesterday I showed you the not-so-good green on the background of the odd job, a Coat of Arms for my customer/friend. (Remember, “odd” means “unusual” – I am NOT insulting my friend or her job here!)

Since beginning to oil paint, I have met up with two new yellows and one new blue. It is time to get a grasp on how they all interact to make greens.

My friend said, and I agree, “More Kelly than lime”. Photoshop Junior used Kelly green, but I wasn’t very careful with mixing in the first pass over the canvas.

Clearly we need the second green down in the middle row.

Better, but too wet to continue. 

Tomorrow is the end of the month listicle. 

This coat of arms will have to wait. Another odd job awaits! (How’s that for an exciting cliff-hanger?)

Wondering About Colored Pencil

A year or so ago I bought some new colored pencils. Blackwing manufactures something called “Blackwing Colors”, and I am a sucker for new pencils. With the box of 12, I did this 5×7″ drawing.

Melon, Gourd or Squash? 5×7″, colored pencil on paper.

I posted it on Instagram (if you like Instagram and want to follow my very occasional posts, I am JanaBotkinArt) and also emailed it to Pencils.com (where I bought the pencils). Someone from there emailed and asked if they could use it on their blog. I said okay, and then nothing happened.

Last week I got an email from someone at a magazine called “Colored Pencil Magazine” (How’s that for over-the-top creativity? I think they were going for easy-to-find-on-Google rather than cleverness, which is probably smarter than being cute and calling yourself something like “Cabinart” which no one can remember.)


I am writing to let you know that we are interested in using your Pumpkin piece as an example of Blackwing Colors in the June 2019 issue of COLORED PENCIL Magazine in the Spotlight section. 

Being a sensible person (in spite of making a mistake in naming my art business something that no one can remember), I said yes. Then I looked at their site and see it is both online and in print. I’ve never heard of this magazine before.

I wonder if it will be wise to show colored pencil work when I am now primarily an oil painter? I wonder if it will be wise to show colored pencil work when using colored pencils hurts my wrist? I wonder if it will be wise to show colored pencil work when it rarely sells? I wonder if it will be wise to show colored pencil work when I prefer graphite (ArtSpeak for regular pencil)?

Life is full of unanswered questions. I think this falls in the categories of It Never Hurts To Try, and We Regret More of What We Don’t Try Than What We Do Try.

As usual, more will be revealed in the fullness of time.

2019 Calendar Coming

My 2019 calendar will be A Touch of Color. 

It has pencil drawings with, you guessed it, a touch of color. Each subject is something in my life, drawn from my photos (except for one when I didn’t have my camera and a friend came to my rescue.)

Some people who buy my calendars like all the pictures to be a surprise (I’m looking at you, SD). Out of respect for that contingent, I’ll just show you the front cover. To see the back cover, go to the calendar link below.

This year I am not offering an early-bird discount. It is simply $15, which will include tax if you live in California. I will pay the mailing costs.

There will be 100 available. No, make that 99, because I will keep one for myself. Wait – 98! I gave one to my friends who feed my kitties when I am away. Better hurry and order, because there are so many helpful people in my life that I am prone to give calendars to. (Wait – isn’t this supposed to be a business??)

Get your calendars here.

Coloring Simply

When I paint, I use only the primary colors, a manner called the “double primary palette”. This is because it has 2 yellows, 2 blues, and 2 reds. (White doesn’t count and the purple at the end is a mix I always make when I begin painting.)

This is a colored pencil version of that simple collection of colors.

You may recall that I bought a box of 12 colored pencils recently and really liked the way they work. My favorite non-drawing pencils are Blackwings, so I was eager to try their colored pencils. You may also recall that I thought it was too bad the box only held 12 colors, 2 of which aren’t very useful to me – black and silver. This box does not contain the double primary palette; although there are 2 blues, there is only one red and one yellow. (2 greens don’t count because green is not a primary color.)

On the January Three Rivers First Saturday, I hung out at Anne Lang’s Emporium with coloring books and oil paintings. While I was in between visitors, I experimented with the Blackwing (weird – shouldn’t these be called “colorwing”?) colored pencils. Could I create the full range of colors as if I had one of my sets of 120 (either Polychromos or Prismacolor)? 

Here are the results. 2 of the grape clusters, part of the trunk and a few of the leaves were colored with the large set of pencils. The rest was done with only 10 colors from the box above.

Nice, eh? Layering and layering and layering. . . still lots of white paper to be covered here.

P.S. This page is from the coloring book Heart of Agriculture, and I haven’t found the hidden heart yet in spite of the fact that I am the one who drew this picture.

P.P.S. The colored pencils are available on this site: Pencils.com The wood is California cedar, the company is in Stockton, and the pencils themselves are manufactured in Japan. They are $19.95 for a set of 12, plus all the usual add-ons like exorbitant sales tax and shipping.