Category: Still life

Day 716 – While digging 

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For collage papers I also found my citrasolve altered papers. I have a two inch stack of them.

Multimedia collage with citrasolv papers, ginkgo leaves, tissue paper and tuna fish pak cardboard from Krogers. 
It’s a great way to make altered “antique” photos for framing or for collage or any thing else you can dream up. Art on a Budget.  

 

So I am posting some of my favorites I made 3-4 years ago. 

They are made from old National Geographics the only magazine that can be used for this.  

Use the straight UNDILUTED citrasolv CONCENTRATE.  Also rubber gloves and a sunny NOT WINDY day is required. More detailed directions are here. 

Mine is from Jerrysartarama. I have quart. Let me know if u need some if u live in the Augusta area. 

Put some citrasolv in a shaker container like a pill bottle with holes punched in the lid. 

Flipping thru the National Geographic sprinkle some citrasolv on all the pages but the ads. It doesn’t work well on them. The papers different. 

Close the book and let the citrasolv sit til the ink starts moving. 

Maybe ten – twenty minutes. Yes you can peek. 

When the ink is moving open the book. 

Start ripping the pages out one at a time and lay them out flat and separately. No stacking no overlapping. The spine will come apart easily. 

Lay them on the grass to dry in the sun. You will have a lot of pages.  Don’t let them blow away. 

They take a while to loose the citrasolv smell. 

This is a copy of one I liked a lot. 

You can make copies so that you can keep your favorites. 

Then you can use them over and over. 

Bytw you can buy National Geographics for .50 at our Salvation Army of you don’t have a friend that will give you stacks of their old ones. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx 

 

Day 712 – It’s Saturday 

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 Been a while since I posted one of these. Been out of town I think for the last two months or sick so haven’t been going to life modeling. 

And did I say rusty?! What happens when you don’t paint regularly. She looked good when I painted her. Not so sure now. Oh well there’s always gesso!! 


Or maybe she needs a good crop?! That’s one good thing about painting on hardboard you can crop it with a table saw. 

Thought I would share some of the other paintings done today. All but the watercolor are at least 24×30. 

This is Drew Murphy’s acrylic, my favorite one today I think. Really like his colors. Drew recently won a blue ribbon for best Abstract at the Aiken Art Guild juried show. 


Al Beyers’ oil hard to top Al but I think Drew did today. Al is a professor at USC Aiken and currently part of a faculty show at Aiken Center for the Arts. 

Tom Needhams watercolor. Tom teaches watercolor at the Gertrude Herbeet Institute of Art in Augusta. 


Fred’s acrylic. His Mondigliani. Love the orange background. He was just to my left 4 feet. And what a difference that made in the view. 

Interesting how different Ilania looks from different angles. 
Thanks for reading. 
Margaret xxx

Day?! (640) It’s Saturday

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So once again I posted this on the wrong blog.  I really have to delete the other one. Sigh. Hurrah!! It’s deleted. No more posting on it accidentally. 

😃When I am home that means I have been sketching and painting at the life modeling session that Prof Al Beyer had at USC Aiken. Pleased with my sketch today. 
    

Ilenia 20×30″. Acrylic
I will probably add some more purple to her left side. I had more but painted it out. In the rush of an hour and a half of drawing and painting sometimes u just run out of time.  
Probably change the red on her cheeks. I think it’s a bit much. But better than the purple I had on her cheeks to start with. I left it in Aiken so I would get a fresh look at it Monday and not be able to torture her all weekend painting her at home. 
The background could use some work too. It’s just some ultramarine blue that I scrubbed on with a paper towel when it spilled in my paint box. I finally just let it dry instead of cleaning it up. What a mess that was. 
Colors used titanium white, nickel Azo gold, pyrrole red and dioxzine purple. Burnt umber for hair. Cad yellow yellow ochre and a bit of Green gold in the drapery. 
   Thanks for reading!
Margaret 

Day 628 – Costco Love! 

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Urban sketching at Costco. And NO I did not eat a hotdog when I drew this. I usually do though. Probably good snacks this day whxib everybody knows are calorie free right?! 

I did hide in the corner behind my purse which is of course big enough to carry my sketchbook and pants. 

Tip: when you take the grandchildren to the zoo you don’t want your bevy purse loaded with sketching stuff when you pick up a 45 lb kid to look at the snakes Be sure to take your over the shoulder sketch purse with sketching stuff and the other important thing MONEY for the gift shop train and carousel!! 😋

  

These people were drawn as we all stood in the return line. I love to buy stuff and bring it back to Costco. They ALWAYS take stuff bought there back no questions other than can I Have your members card please. I do LOVE Costco!! 

Off to class. Need to go by Costco and fill up. Gas is always 20-25 cents cheaper!! And Booking a trip to Paris and maybe Lindon and Dublin via Iceland. No time to list colors but I did use the usual ones.

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 611 – Stick fun!

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 I have been playing with my stick bamboo stick all week. Done a sketch everyday. The Carbon Black ink from Gouletpens works best with my stick. Not the India ink. It seems to load on the stick better. 

Anyway after I tried to shade the ibis in the back grey since he’s in the shadow I decided to do negative painting in the background letting the ink puddles bleed into the brush water to make various shades of grey. 

It seems impossible to get control of that ink flow. It leaves a lot of hard edges which are great for Key West underbrush but not on a bird. 

After the grey puddles dried a little I went back in and drew ink lines in for sticks on the ground. 

  
If I could change this I would get rid of the grey on the farthest back ibis. 

  
This is yesterday’s ibis. I actually like them except for all the black. These are young ibis and have a lot of mottled grey on their necks. 

Maybe I will redraw them and add some background? I think they are funny. The Ibis at the Key West Wildlife Center are beggars and wait for snacks aka dog food that was fed to them. 

  
My favorite still are the chickens. I don’t know why but I LOVE chickens. 

Did I say writing with a stick does not produce the most graceful writing?  

 
 Here’s another chicken sketch done earlier.  I can’t imagine dong this on location. I would have an inky mess everywhere.  Not good when it’s permanent and very black!! 

I also had a paper problem. I used my beloved 93 # Aquabee first but the ink is so thick from the stick that I got out my #98 Canson mixed media sketchbook and used it. No more ink soaking they the paper. At least not yet. 
And here’s Livia again.  One of the first sketches withy the stick  from last Sunday. I don’t know why I didn’t notice one of her legs is smaller than the other. But that’s an easy fix. Sketching frequently had a lot of surprises like a too skinny leg. 
Enjoy your day. Happy stick sketching. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 610 – The Home Stretch is ON!!

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30×40″ acrylic 

Major Dad is making progress. In case u missed passed posts will add some of the process.  

 

  • Original photo. Major Dad at 93!  Did not want to paint all those chickens!! 

   
The block in. 

 
Playing with the photo in Waterlogue 

 
 Washing in the foundation colors. Recent reading about acrylics told me NOT to do this with just water. If you use more than 25% water with your acrylics it breaks down the polymer binders. I used polymer gel to thin it. 

Read about more than you ever wanted to know about acrylic paint  and mediums here on liquitex.com. 120 plus pages of anything and everything about acrylic paints. I read the whole book and it’s actually very interesting. 

Bytw I use both Golden and Liquitex. I still have a few older paintings that are painted with liquitex which was the first acrylic and they are still in great shape. I buy whichever is on sale with a coupon. 👍🏻

 

Layering in color. Did you know u can use the cheap paints for this later and finish with the expensive stuff?! Sounds like a lot of work, right?! 

  
I added back in a lot of the lines I had painted over trying to tie the painting together. I also lost some of the lines on the face. Probably need to loose a few more on his hands. 

When he’s done he’s getting a coat of acrylic varnish as soon as I get the kind the book lists.  Evidently there is one that liquitex makes that is removeable with ammonia. Who knew. The book also said all acrylics should be sealed because otherwise. they remain porous. 

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 605 Another Saturday

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Ilania Acrylic 24 x 30ish”

Really liking today’s painting. This one is officially FOR SALE if she needs to come live at your house. 

  

This was painted almost entirely by the world’s cheapest brushes. They shed.  I had to  remove several bristles off the painting.  🙄 And they don’t hold an edge. They are raggedy but they make some great bold lines in the paint.   

Conversely I used some of the most expensive paint. All golden acrylic. Reason I say expensive is that I used Goldens Quin Nickel Azo Gold which was selling for $27.99 at Michaels the other day when I loaded up on white paint during their 40% off sale. Ouch!!  Glad I have had a new bottle of it waiting for the old bottle to be empty. 

Other colors it was painted with were ultramarine blue, pyrrole red, Zinc white and a smidge of burnt umber.  The only resin I used Zinc white was because it was the first tube of white picked up but it could just as well have been titanium white. 

White, pyrrole red and Quin nickel Azo gold make a great flesh color. 

    

Here she is at second break after about an hour of painting. Those brushes cover a lot of ground FAST!!  If I hadnt decided her face was a smidge to narrow she would have been done. I also didn’t like the shadow on the left arm. 
 

Forty minutes of painting.  Almost blocked in. Of course I had blocked her in four times at this point. 

First time I had the canvas vertical. I couldn’t see her calves or feet so that was not going to work. I turned the board and started over. 

Second time I decided I wanted her leg along the bottom of the canvas. Had to start over. 😁

Third time I didn’t quite get her to fill up the canvas.  😂

Fourth time I think I could have blocked her in with my eyes closed!! 

That’s about it for today. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 604 – Another Bond or two

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    I did say I have twenty two of these right?!! This is one of my favorites.  I like Sacred Heart as the background. As a deconsecrated CatholicChurch it’s a great background. 


One of my favorites of the Bond girls.  She had a flowing black negligee on with sheer sleeves.  That was a challenge to paint.  I first painted the arm. Let it dry and then over painted it with a watery black as I painted the whole negligee. 

 I really wanted to put a bubble for two quote but couldn’t figure out how to do that. Like the red hair against the cobalt background and of course the splatters. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 603 – another Dr Sketchys 

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 The Pirate Pose.  The last pose of the night. Thirty minutes I think and what great costumes.  

I used tombow markers and water colors for this painting when I did not have the correct tombow color. 

 
The Vamp

Is In the box now. I think this is a thirty minute sketch. I think. Interesting pose but proportions are off. 

  

The hmm third pose of the evening. I changed to my Noodler Creaper Ahab. I rather like this sketch. Bytw the guns were fake. 

 
First sketch of the evening. Five minute pose. Sometimes you have to warm up. Done with a Kuretake brush marker. Really like his feet.   

 
The second pose.  Another five minute pose. Kuretake brush marker. Not bad. I was doing get great with the guys shoes. Hmm?!! 

Colors used Tombow markers. Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 601 – a few more sketches 

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  What else?!There are only 22 of them. 

  I actually finished this one yesterday. I started it when he was flipping thru poses and abandoned it for a clean page. I finally gave up and begged him to hold the pose till I finished.  And he did a super job doing just that!! Thanks James!! 

Love the energy in the orange gouache do lines in the background.  

  

Loved his 70s leisure suit look with his mint green shoes. The lady in black could hold a rock solid interesting pose. Neither of them moved which made for great sketching. 

 

The golden girl could hold the most interesting poses. She’s actually painted  with my beloved gold wink of Stella glitter pen and yellow ochre but sadly it does not show without bright lights.  

And u know what that ledger paper means. The ink smeared. 😁

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx