Electric Kiln Firing

I just came across an article, “An Introduction to Electric Kilns,” on the Ceramic Arts Daily site that I think may be helpful to some of my readers. If you’re interested in pottery/ceramics, you may want to explore and/or subscribe to this site. They always have loads of interesting and helpful information.

I started to try to draw him, but he noticed me looking at him and wouldn’t come close. Or maybe it wasn’t me; maybe it was the dogs. He’s been here for more than a week now. The pond is very small, but he’s a very small grebe, so maybe he’ll stay a while. He must have gotten separated from his group. The bird book says they travel in huge flocks and fly as little as possible except for their migrations. He’s so cute and fluffy. I want to cuddle him, and so does my daughter, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Since my little buddy declined to pose for me, I decided to paint trees. Trees are good, reliable models and they never complain or even need a break. So, here’s what I painted today:

It’s watercolor, 9 x 12″ rough pressed paper. I have recently been tempted by beautiful oil paintings and oil painting books, but I don’t have any oil paints. I have lots of acrylics and acrylic retarder medium, so maybe I’ll try something with that one day soon.

That said, I’ve been taking a watercolor class for the last several months along with my daughter and now, my mother as well. It’s kind of a cool class in that we do pretty much what we want and the instructor wanders around, asks and answers questions, and gives tips and advice where needed. Here are a couple of paintings I’ve recently completed:

This one is about 13 x 22, on Canson cold press watercolor paper from a photo I took last spring (2010) I’ve been wanting to paint this photo ever since, and have only just now gotten around to it. Yet another good reason to take a class; to make myself do the things I want to do.

Sylvan Lake Overflowing

This painting is smaller; about 8″ x 13″; again, on Canson cold press watercolor paper. From another photo taken on the same day as the one above. I really enjoyed making these paintings. Perhaps I’ll do more soon. I certainly have enough pictures on the computer to keep me busy, even if I never painted any other place.

To display the full-sized picture, just click on the image you’d like to see.

Thanks for stopping by!

Spring Bouquet

This little 5″ x 7″ painting began as a bit of fun with some new painting tools. I found water brushes for cheap at Dick Blick and ordered several sets of three. In the past I’ve only used a water brush to apply water to watercolor pencils or to paint outdoors (to keep from having to dip in water all the time). They tend to be expensive, so I didn’t want to buy a handful. These aren’t as good as the expensive ones, but they don’t cost $10 each, either. I squeezed a bit of watercolor paint into the water chamber (tough to do without making a mess!) and then squirted water in to not-quite-fill. Shake well until the paint is dissolved and see if the color is strong enough. You can always add more.

Anyway . . . I took my Strathmore 140 lb cold press paper and sprayed it down with clean water. I stuck it to a piece of plate glass, but any non-porous surface will work and a non breakable one would be a better idea. It’s just that glass was what I had. Sticking the paper down to the glass keeps it from buckling and you don’t have to stretch it. Brush more water over it if necessary using a wide brush — or just spread the water you do have around. There shouldn’t be any standing water, but it does need to be quite wet.

Using the water brush (or just a regular brush), drop paint here and there on the paper. It’s fun to watch the colors mix. I used lemon yellow, quinacridone rose, cadmium red medium, ultramarine blue and cerulean blue, plus hooker’s green from my pallet with a little red mixed in to dull it down. I wasn’t trying to paint flowers necessarily, at least at first, but it began to look like flowers, so then I started adding lemon yellow centers to some of them. Lemon yellow and most yellows are heavy paints and will tend to push other watercolor pigments out of the way when you drop them onto wet paper. The leaves and stems I put in last as more of an afterthought than a plan.

After the whole thing had dried a little bit, I decided it needed more color in the background, so I added the blue all around. You can’t let the paper dry on the glass or it might stick, so I peeled it off and laid it on an old acrylic painting that didn’t work out. Since I liked the way the paint looked at this point and didn’t want it to spread any more, I dried it with the hair dryer.

Now comes the fun part — well, the other fun part. I used a Faber-Castell super-fine point pen. These are waterproof when dry, which can be handy, especially if you want to take off or move some of the watercolor later on, but of course you can use any fine-point pen. From here, you simply start doodling. See a blotch that looks like a chrysanthemum? Go for it! It doesn’t have to be flowers, but I’ve been longing for flowers and not snow, so it’s not surprising that’s what I saw. The ink drawing brings order out of what was just a pretty bit of chaos, and you can do this part while watching a movie or even conversing with the family. It doesn’t take a lot of concentration and it’s non-messy!

Since you’ll have to peel the paper off the glass before it’s dry, it will curl a bit. I unbent it gently by curving the opposite direction and then when I was finished with the ink work, stacked a pile of books on it overnight. Voila`! A nice, flat painting. I hope you’ll give this a try — lots of fun and no particular talent required. If you can doodle, this is the project for you.

Indeed when we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not to strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy has been offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot understand what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

So I decided a couple of days ago that I’d like to create a collage to showcase this particular quotation. It turned out that the first text I printed off was too large for me to use as I had intended, so I reprinted it. Later someone suggested a circular arrangement for the text, so I decided to make a second collage with the larger text. I’m not sure which I like better; they’re very different from one another. Here they are — what do you think?

Shadow Land

Far Too Easily Pleased

Impish Grin

Strathmore 140 lb cold press watercolor paper 5 x 6″, 6B, 4B, 4H drawing pencils with a few touches of white charcoal pencil.