Santa

I am selling this pastel on suede holiday picture for $300 or buy it on Fine Art America. Work fast and you may send it out as a Christmas Card!

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/santa-2011-debra-jones.html

Second Foam Harvesters

I had the opportunity to do an In Service on Wednesday for a gang of teachers. I will say it was nice to have to not start from scratch!

I don't have progress shots, and I am working from a makeshift computer set up as the big machine is dead, dead, dead so I am pushing hard again to get business running... But I digress... I can't see clearly on the screen to be sure this is showing right.


We all attacked the watercolor under pastels in a bit of a guerrilla manner, but not only was it fun to be back in a school room, the gang seemed to enjoy the demo as much as I enjoyed demonstrating!

A demonstration for the Phoenix Art Guild

The dreaded seasonal cold hit the day before, so I found myself preparing well into the "YOU ARE LATE" time...

I did another of my beach kids.

What I love about this set of reference is how in the computer they all sort of seem lifeless - cute and lively but - the apparent monochrome of a beach is so deceptive until I get in there and add color.

I don't have a photo of the underpainting. Actually, I was lucky to get the paint ON The paper but the picture just started to blossom.

This is what walked out the door on Monday night.

I slept a near 24 hours full of nyquil and felt much better on Wednesday so I worked a bit to this point.

I LOVE the looseness of the pastels over color!

I think it will be titled "Foam Harvesters".
dj*

Another Score!

I was invited to the opening at the State Fair, but I didn't go. They had blank spots next to "place" on the acceptance card. I felt depressed, so I stayed home.
BUT a good friend sent along this photo which cheered me up!

Red Ribbons are REALLY pretty!

Success!

Not first prize, but I did get an honorable mention on the Jerry's Artarama contest! Watch the site, they should be posting soon:
http://www.jerrysartarama.com/art-contests/index.htm

Now, on to the AZ State Fair where it will be on display until November!
dj*

The Carribean Kid - alcohol for underpainting

I decided to rework a watercolor I had done a couple of years ago as a pastel for entry into a contest for a specific pastel brand.

Normally I use watercolor for my underpainting as a great way to make an over all neutral tone, but I wanted to make a piece completely with pastel, so I took a heavier 300# rough watercolor paper and some 95% rubbing alcohol (denatured will evaporate faster, but I was happy to have the slush time) and scrubbed over areas to push some color in the pits of the rough paper:

Laying in the painting areas, I continued with heavy scrubbing and breaking down so the coverage would allow the peaks of the paper to rub off color from the stick and the lower areas be a bit darker and more colorful:

As I went I would use a dry brush to scrub back some of the more broken areas and rewet spots to reinforce darks. This is the only way I have found that you can actually make mud when using pastel. If you blend with your sticks, you can keep clean and brilliant colors.

A detail shows the difference with the dissolved colors in the pits of the paper with the pure pastel on top:


I submitted this to the Mungyo competition on Jerry's Artarama site and just dropped it of to the Arizona State Fair as well.

Cross your fingers for me!

Fiddling

Normally I like to be thought of as perfect. For that reason, I like to save the mistakes and not show you... but this is a rather large landscape and it was GOING to give me fits.

First. I wanted to have a sense of the clouds in front of the thunderhead. I also liked the definate dominance of that shape. The hills in my reference actually dropped off to the right and the bushes sort of merged into a mass down in the corner. So I redrew my horizon and cut a bit off that last ranged.

And that left me with a very tricky color thing on that butte in the middle range. I am really off with it... tomorrows brain power.

Second, that landscapey part at the bottom. Don't enjoy it, not too fond of it, so I have it in my head to eliminate.... but as I did that ONE good thing happened. I widened the path of earth making the reason for all that salmon color more functional.

The bushes are still to spotty, the sense of land is there, and a bit too polka dotty. I LIKE my cactus in the middle. Problem is making it part of a sequence that makes it work. I am still working on it to see if I can keep it....
So here we are today.


As a portrait painter, I always tell people how I am trying to portray a scene with the intensity I do a face. The details kill me! I see a zillion leaves, not a tree.

I think this may be called successful enough but from a portrait painter, not really a landscape painter. I have a few more ideas, but I am learning (perhaps ONLY by the mistakes) a few thing I want to try again in the next picture...

Oh, by the way... it would be a really good time to enroll in my workshop in Prescott. After Monday there are no refunds, so risk it! Call them.

See you there!
dj*

Done. But not finished.

Or is that finished but not done???
I have accomplished the first objective I set for myself and it covers the page nicely and shows what I wanted.



I use fixative. When I see what I want, I usually mist the whole thing with workable fixative so it is more sturdy and I can work back into it. The big drawback to simple paper is that it fills pretty quickly. The pastel medium is much more toothy, but I still am used to "sinking" the piece.

PERSONAL PREJUDICE:

I believe pastellist should learn to use fixative. It is a terrible burden on your framer to hand him a pile of dust and say make it stand up and not fall off. There are geniuses who will, but especially amateurs on a budget, it is awful to get an inexpensive, art supply store novice who will either spray it themselves for lack of knowledge, ruin it with mishandling, or not know how to deal with the dust and end up with colorful white mats. Learning to use fixative is, again, working from the darkest areas up. When you fix the basic piece it WILL often darken. SO, lighten up the areas and don't fix the last layers. Still an improvement for your framer.

Back to me...
I have received some valuable input from a good pastel landscapist and I am going to ponder it now. I want to look at the piece and see what I don't like.

I will read the advice of my friend and see if it applies to my problems and get back into it and fix up the lighter values and possibly repaint some of it.... but I DO like my cloud!!!
dj*

When you have an underpainting and are too anxious.

Having had to leave for an appointment I came in and was having so much fun with my cloud, I really felt the need to make that sky very flat. The nupastels I use were not hacking it. Because I used the Medium, I decided to try another experiment and took some sanitizing alcohol (the hotshots use denatured stuff, but I am not a hotshot and it makes it look all watercolory, which is EXACTLY what I want it to look like!



These are a real pain to photograph because the early light on the sketch was perfect. As the afternoon wore on, the skylight got darker so I turned on a lamp. LOTS of color wackiness. I will try to balance the pictures, even if they are not really true representations of the painting....

After tackling the sky, I decided the foreground plants were not right either. My limited palette was discouraging, so I just added some pure viridian watercolor to juice up the bushes.


Remember I am not a landscape painter, so this is going to go on instinct for a while and when I have what I call "covered" which is something I do in oil as well (I give myself permission to live with it a while and the rest will be tweaking. Sometimes it turns out to be done, but I reserve the signing for a while.)I will hit it with some workable fixative and let it darken a bit. I am having most fun playing with the multiple colors and their value properties. The simplest combinations can make radical changes... and the photography is really going to be hard to show it... ah well, back into the dust!
dj*

Fingers crossed.

It is not that my technique is better suited to figurative, in fact, most people would think the opposite, but I have challenged myself to do the impossible: A landscape.

I have some pretty nifty reference that I have been mulling over in my mind quite a while. This is a nearby view that I think will suit my needs as far as shapes and values. And one big cloud.

For this I did something new. I used an underpaint of a pastel medium by golden.... WHY WOULD I SPLURGE? I had some sample jars and a friend gave me three more. Time to play on someone else's penny.

It has ONE good quality. The paper did most of the buckling when it was applied, but because it is a little dryer, when I made my underpaint, it shrinked down a little and stayed relatively flat. No photos, as I was sort of stuck in my brain, but here is the first stop this morning in daylight.


We will keep in touch with this one.

The Progress Shot

I wanted not to scare off the participants, so I did a couple more hours work on the demo. It is being refined for color and relationships. The photo may be updated when I re-photograph it in daylight, but for now, one can see it does actually not end up being abstract expressionistic, and can be refined quite nicely into recognizable realism:

dj*

Short Demo for Prescott Class

It was a beautiful day and apart from having the flames of a dry brush fire chase me up to Prescott Arizona, I had a great demonstration to promote my workshop on June 18, 19 and 20 at the Mountain Arts Guild, 228 North Alarcon in Prescott, Arizona.

Because I wanted to be sure to see the progress of the technique, which I have shown you here, I brought a couple of pieces to demonstrate.

This first one was underpainted and begun but put aside to work on during the main demo as the painting dried.


The main demo was a drawing only when I came in but I showed some of my work and explained the simple reasons that I used the colors and why... and then demonstrated that the more important part was instinct and artistic eye.

While the watercolors dried, I worked on the prepped piece and got to this point.


The real excitement of this process is how the negative shape reveals the larger elements.

When dry, this piece which began as a charcoal sketch, was fleshed out and left like this:


I hope the standing room audience found the speed and freedom of this technique something they can use in all of their work, not just pastels.

The workshop will involve a bit of demo on how to use a computer to help visualize improbable colors to use under your subjects, in order to produce vibrancy and energy. I tried to stress that the most important thing in my workshop is having a sense of where you are aiming the painting before you begin and a willingness to do it wrong.

I understand someone once asked Edison how it felt to be the man who figured out how to bring light to the world. He said he was more proud of the over 600 ways he learned NOT to!

Please, contact me or http://mountainartistsguild.org and click the workshops link on the header for all the information to come out and spend a nice long weekend in the hills of Arizona.

My Class in Mesa

Because I am starting to promote my class this summer in Prescott, I figured I would post a little of some of my work in a class I teach every week in Mesa Arizona. This is a great group of exceptionally talented Seniors (and just under) who have figured out how to keep their homes tidy and come out every Wednesday for a casual paint-together. I pick up after lunch with a group I call Art Coach. My only goal is to HELP IMPROVE THEIR WORK. I try hard not to teach, per se, but to understand what they want to accomplish in their own work and demonstrate for an hour some technique of mine that they can use or ignore.

This month I started with a very brief version of the Pastel Over Watermedia. Much like my demonstration will be at the Mountain Art Center at the end of May.

I used a cold pressed watercolor taped to a chunk of foam core. It was a revelation! I was taught to put a pat of newspapers under the paper for than nice bounce that makes pastels push much better than on a hard surface. Fit my easel and was nice and soft.

After sketching from my photo, I make sure the resulting drawing DEFINES THE EDGES that I need to keep track of as the painting progresses.

The less lines the better. It is going to get lost anyway! Because I am going to saturate and scrub the under-painting, I did use some workable fixative but this was in graphite. Graphite has a lot of durability that charcoal does not. It is a bane in oils and slippery but when you see what we do with it, you understand.

Next I scrub... and I LIKE to scrub... my under-painting of inexpensive acrylics. I use up the old and nasty stuff for this. I also like it, because I keep throwing out the hard and dead tubes as I prep for the demonstration. One can acquire a few too many paints.

In the class I explain the under-painting does three things: Individually or all at once, the colors you put on can support the values, by darkening areas that you want to go dark, complement colors for extra vibrancy or intensify a color using analogous hues. I have done a little of everything in this:

I ran into the ladies room (because I forgot my hair dryer) and using the hand dryer in there, made sure all the water was out of the paper. This works best when SCRUBBED into the surface. This demonstration came out much lighter than I had intended so I will have a darker general appearance, as I have to build up darks to give the appearance of lighter. (I use inexpensive NuPastels for about 85% of the piece before the light bright soft pastels, and the contrast is what makes us see light and dark.) THEN I reinforced the drawing with compressed charcoal or pastel.

Even light edges that touch other light edges but have major color changes are good to map out. My other trick is a transparent tracing paper sketch that can flip back and forth to correct from. As a solo painter, it keeps me from walking over to visit the neighbors in the middle of the night for a fresh eye!!!

Class began progressing and I talked a bit and forgot to shoot much, but the first thing I did above was limit my value range by finding the lightest part of the painting - in this case her eyes - and the darkest part near by. I make a note with a stick and DON'T ever use white or black. In this case it was a yellow butter color and green.... yes I used great for her blue eyes, because it was dark.... then I started trying to lay in my shadows and general tones.

I endeared myself to the class by admitting I goofed! The sticks I had on hand were ALL very middle values. Few strong darks and almost no light flesh tones. I got to show how to improvise.

If you don't have the right stick, you can literally mix colors. In the light areas of the skin, I used a lot of that buttery yellow OVER the darker pinks to actually make lighter colors. When the colors are too strong but you don't have the proper gray tones, or too light or even too dark, a good five or six simple gray sticks will work to lower intensity and control values. Using colored lights AND a light gray I was able to start blending up in the skin while beginning to darken the shadows with browns.

At the end of the demo, I was able to sit IN FRONT of my piece and start rethinking some of the drawing issues I had lost with the initial chalking in.

The gang went wild. I must say I was over at the sink encouraging splashing and slopping of the under-painting and that fear of losing the image was very intimidating, but it was quite well received.

Next week, I will try to finish up and show how to use fixative as a tool and when to hit the big guns (and money) with the buttery soft pastels. I could see their brains start to wrap around the idea in the students that attempted it

Back next week or next pastel!

The Frugal Pastellist Gets Some CASH!

I just found out that I have won the first place prize in Pastel at the Arizona State Fair!

My piece - Highland Major, Minimus - is 20x16" on watercolor paper with watercolor under.

I will be demonstrating the technique at the Fair for opening day Friday at 1 pm. Our artist's reception is next Tuesday and I will be hanging out with the crowd, shaking hands and chatting! Feel free to hit the Fairgrounds in Phoenix and come by and say hi!

Early Notice, I am giving a class.

For the locals (or for anyone interested in hiring me anywhere) here is a preview of my class.

I will be doing a three day workshop covering the same subject in Prescott AZ next May, but you will hear more of that! Click to see it bigger....

The Girl in the Yellow Dress - Planning

On a trip to Prescott Arizona to visit the Mountain Artist's Guild where I will be giving a workshop on my pastel techniques, I spent part of the afternoon in a historic part of town where children in period dress, played with hoops and croquet mallets! A perfect opportunity to snap a lot of marvelous reference for some nifty paintings.

My girl, with her straw hat and golden hair, was walking out of the shadow of her porch into the sun drenched day.

The first order of business is to make a basic drawing which will help me understand the areas that will stay light and go dark. The "cartoon" is what they called it in the good old days, is the most basic of basic notes to myself as the artist. This drawing of notation is not as easy as it looks.

Many artists will grid up a drawing, using squares which one super-imposes on the reference to match LARGER squares on the drawing. It is a bite size chunk approach of making something big and complex, smaller and manageable.

Others use projectors, either old fashioned slides, small opaque projectors or other fancy tools.

Still others reprint the photo is sections to the exact size they will be drawing.... the TRICK is to make useful lines.

Some of my students will outline everything they can imagine. The key is imagine! Lots of what is in the reference is not actually visible. A real problem is often an eye, that will end up outlined and pupil and tear duct all shown, when the actual photo is merely lights and darks.

A really useful sketch should help you abstract the areas of light and dark, and let you sort o short hand your soft and hard edges. AS THE ARTIST, you should always... one of my pet peeves.... always have some idea when you start, how you will end. I tend to be a bit A.D.D. in things so when I start, I often skip way ahead and dive in quickly, but I will say, my very BEST work may not ACTUALLY have a color sketch or plan, but there are hours spent on my computer playing with values and colors before I pick the aspects of the picture I want to do.

So this final drawing was done, not directly from the picture, but from tracings to ELIMINATE things. The less detail in the underdrawing, the stronger the shapes and masses, the better it functions:

The lighter drawing done in vine charcoal, is reinforced with compressed charcoal. When I have played my strategy in my head of what I am going to do next, I spray it to secure it with a fixative. And as you know, there is a reason for this.

In this piece, I will use my underpainting to get a running start at some of those darks in the shadows behind. I am also not going to get too creative in my use of complements. I am going to use yellow in yellow and splashes of local color mostly to give a lot more vitality to the yellows of the picture.

The general look of the underpainting, which began with a sludge of all over burnt sienna left some of the white of the paper for the whites in the dress and just builds darker tones to start with.

Not a very pretty sight.... Glumps of color and pretty insipid. YOU are not the only ones anxious to see me put color in...

As much as I hate to break this up upside down again, I think it is best to publish as I go. I might finish it tonight, but more fun letting you read so far!

dj*

The Girl and the Yorkie

I have been doing a dog blog, and in the middle of it, I became obsessed with pastels again. Between cute kids and dogs, one has a lot of latitude, so I did a cute kid with a dog.

Here we go again. The paper this time is a block of rough watercolor paper that was acquired for me at a yard sale by one of my minions who like to buy grab bags and drop them off!!! (He got me a great new easel and some amazing old Old Holland oils too, sigh, I love friends!!)
This is 9x14...one of the dangers of odd yard sale finds is that they are MORE non standard than the usual watercolor block!


Our goal here is a white t-shirt with a scruffy grey dog. I am going to use a lot of dark blue for the gray in the dog, so a mass of purple right there in the middle is a good choice to make the lights sing.

Like I did with the previous post, I just begin finding color matches. NORMALLY I would key the lightest light, to the deepest dark, but I had sort of lost my way here. I started dark first and it is a lot more work. Marking in the hair and colors on the very rough surface makes for a bit of a challenge.

But you can see how the pinks are beginning to define the flesh over the stripe of cool in the arm.

One of the nice things about creating your own color base is that you can make a dark surface against which to play your lights. I was not doing well (I will admit, this started with no real plan. IT MAKES A LOT OF DIFFERENCE WHEN YOU PLAN!!) for fear my flesh would go way too dark, and I didn't like how the face was starting.... so I did magic!

When you are using two mediums to get your effects you can do even more magic: I used a fine brush and diluted the pastels to cut a sharp dark edge on her profile. My reference had a light face in shadow against a dark background figure and I liked that face....


Literally I was painting with my pastels... some dark blended here and there. NO MORE PAINT but using the pastels a bit like watercolor pencils. So then I started playing into the dark background. As you see, the pastels are clunky and clumpy which is random, but makes for a lot of interesting variety in surface and line. I also wanted to deal with a lot of halo and backlighting for them both, so the background had to show more contrast... note the strong light on top of her arm, wisps of hair and the top of the dogs head. All of these twinkle of color reflected the strong daylight from behind.

The final result has a bit of changing in the background, and the loose stroke, I think suits the cute little terrier in her arms.

The big finish!

dj*

FRUGAL NOTE

Just because I started the blog to brag how cheap I am....
This is over at the framer now. I have a great guy who does back flips for me. One of the best ways to save money is on your framing.
1. LET THE CLIENT FRAME IT!
the very best way when doing commissions. I never estimate a piece, no matter what, to include the frame. I will hand deliver it to the framer and let him take it from there, adding the cost after payment is received. NOT MY JOB

2. Work in a standard size.
If you are going to have to hang it on a wall for a while visiting, it really is hard to make a choice between a lot of money for very good show, and generic to let the piece show. Standard sized frames on sale, load up, have handy and work TO a size. Framing is always a sticker shock.

3. Establish a rapport with a framer and see what the scrap pile looks like.
My guy often goes through his molding ends and puts little standard frames together which he sells at a real discount. I still cover the glass and matting, but even if I pulled down my mat cutter, a PRO is going to be worth the money.

4. Slide 'em in, slide'em out.
I have this getting framed for a show on Tuesday. I asked the framer not to seal the back like he usually does, so I can remove this, as the odds of selling are pretty low, and recycle the show frame for other shows.

Frugal note done.
dj*

Finish of Lucy and Milo

Sometimes I feel I get a bit wordy, so sometimes it is just time for a picture.
This is the whole thing done:


with some close ups:

You can see all the underlying colors both in paint and pastel and how they blend optically to make a rich flesh.



My intention was to make a stylistic and thematic interpretation of Mary Cassatt. I am so close. My strokes are nowhere near approaching the confidence I had hoped for, but subject and color use, I feel much closer.


Next demo is a generic ME... sorry, I am trying NOT to be too compulsive and post when I feel like it - not turn it into a chore.

So, I will try to do the next one all at one time.
THANK YOU FOR LOOKING!!

dj*

The Lucy Series

I have been covered in furry friends for a year now. I paint in the shade on the bench at the Scottsdale Off-Leash Dog Park when the weather is more favorable, and have worked on my blog documenting that since Thanksgiving.

Recently a few friends have helped me refresh some creative juices by volunteering to charge up my portrait (human) portfolio. The first group I want to post start with my friend Lucy and her marvelous kids, Kate and Milo.

I have observed that most portrait painters have a few glowing white-clad babes in their book. I love kids, but they are much like dogs. You do them a disservice by having them stiff and posed. They need energy and personality. Milo is a perpetual motion machine and Kate is a movie star.

I have plans to do a large oil of Kate, but the photo shoot and enthusiasm kept bringing me back to their images.

My first demo is not the first picture, but I want to show the short version of my watercolor paper technique.

The frugal part is the use of NuPastel. I am somewhat admired by people for my ability to squeeze out a monster range of color from these easy to buy, easy to use, relatively inexpensive hard pastel sticks. I like to blend color over color and use a lot of gray sticks to expand the range of the 48 or 92(?) colors in the box.

The second frugal part is the box of paints. I have a bucket of old acryics and watercolors that are drying up, taking up space, ready for the dumpster... but NOOO! I use them to make an underpainting for the pastel to follow to stretch the impact of the pastels.

The unfrugal part is my addiction to 300# watercolor paper. MOSTLY donated or scraps or the back of bad pictures, but I just love the stuff....

Above is a finish of Milo and Kate that was done in the technique. I THOUGHT I had my progress shots, but apparently not... so this is only what it ends up looking like.  Demos to follow!

dj*