Old materials, new results

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, "Painting within my means," 2013 is my year to pay off a lingering charge-card debt forever, which means I've been adhering to a strict policy of austerity. And for a former art-store shopaholic like me, that means no new art supplies until the bill is paid off (and from then on, careful consideration before a single penny is spent). I had planned on dealing with this year's restriction by working only in black and white, and re-using old stretcher bars and pieced-together canvas scraps.

That plan has worked fine for the first six months of the year, but I'm finding I'm almost finished with my latest black and white series. Being a person who only feels alive when I'm creating something new and, on top of that, a Gemini, I was beginning to wonder how to deal with the eventual day when I put the last stroke on my black and whites and then start to get antsy for the next project (not to mention a return to color).

An idea came to me this morning, when I thought of a collage I made in 2010 for the Icons + Altars show, which used to be an annual exhibit at the New Art Center in Newton, MA. That year, the deadline for creating a piece for the show was looming and I didn't have time to whip up anything new, so I recombined strips of several old paintings into this collage (below). I liked the result and the piece sold at the event, so I pocketed the proceeds and mentally filed away the technique for future reference.

"Wine Lines," acrylic on paper and fabric on board, 16" square, 2010

When I remembered that experience this morning, I thought of the piles of old paintings and drawings currently languishing in my studio, artworks which weren't bad enough to paint over or throw out, but weren't good enough to exist as finished works on their own. "Hey," I thought, "how about if I recombine them into entirely new pieces?"

So, working intuitively, I put together this collage on a 12" square cradled board I had lying around.

Not yet titled, acrylic on paper on board, 12" square, 2013

The interesting thing about this process is that these various paintings and drawings were made at completely different times (from approximately 2005 to 2012), and created without the idea of their ever coming together. So to combine them together now joins the various techniques and thought processes I've been working on over the years in new and interesting ways. Below are some possible combinations of old works I might try in upcoming collages. We'll see how this new direction unfolds!

Painting within my means

"Wing," spray-paint on canvas, 2001

Last June, I hit the half-century mark! It proved to be a fine opportunity to look back over the past 50 years and be thankful for my good fortune.

But one of the things I realized when I examined my life was the far less heart-warming fact that I had amassed more than $9,000 in debt on a charge card. I had nearly maxed out the card about five years prior and had managed to pay my balance down to 0. But like the dieter who hasn’t learned how to revise her eating patterns and regains the lost weight, I had savored the joys of freedom from debt for only a few months before I began repeating my old spending habits and found myself in the red again. Turning 50 woke me up. I realized I had better look carefully at my finances and figure out how to climb out of the hole I was in. PERMANENTLY.

One thing that was soon apparent was that I was spending far more money than I had to spare on my art career, both in the studio and in promoting my work. It wasn’t that I was going insane over art expenses, but I was definitely going beyond my means. I began to examine ways to curb these expenditures using a balanced approach, so that I was continuing to paint and to promote my work, but in a sensible and effective way.

Here are some of the methods I’ve found to do this, which I thought I would share on my blog in the spirit that few of us working artists have trust funds and likely could use some tips on how to keep art-related spending under control, without giving up entirely.

1. MANAGE YOUR WEB PRESENCE YOURSELF. One thing I did was to create my own free website, which I can maintain myself. I never really could afford to have a professionally created and maintained website in the first place, but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. So back in 2006, I hired a wonderful web designer to custom-create a site for me and then kept hiring her to completely revamp every page whenever I had a new series ready (which, because I was so prolific, was every few months). So while my website looked awesome, I was paying out far more money than I had available.

Then about a month ago, I saw that my Facebook friend, artist Alison Wells, had created her own website on Weebly.com. I thought it looked fantastic, and I decided to create my own using the same site. Weebly’s tutorial video said that a person, group or company could make their own site in a few hours, but because I’m an artist and had lots of images to upload, mine took about 6 hours to create. But I had such a blast doing it that it seemed more like 6 minutes!

Now I am NO computer expert, by any means. But I’m quite proud of the way the site looks, and I love the fact that I can maintain it myself and make changes easily and immediately, at any time of day, free of charge.

Also, please note that many blog sites are free to create and maintain, such as blogspot and wordpress. Blogs, while seeming to decline in popularity these days, are still a viable way to increase exposure to your artwork.

2. FIND FREE (BUT IMPRESSIVE) VENUES FOR EXHIBITING YOUR ARTWORK. Back when I was in denial about money, I used to apply to exhibits constantly, shelling out $50+ each month for entry fees. This process resulted in some fine opportunities for me – most notably, exhibits at the Marin County Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, CA, and the beautifully appointed Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. But again, that didn’t mean that I had the income to cover my habit.

So I began to look for opportunities to show my work that were free to apply to and participate in. I searched and found a number of locations that were soliciting calls for curatorial proposals, and this process revealed a way for me to turn my love of art writing and looking at other people’s art into free opportunities to show my own work as well. Most of these curatorial openings could be applied to on line, thus eliminating not only entry fees but also the exorbitant cost of office supplies such as CDs and covers, mailing materials, printer ink, and postage. My most recent experience with this type of venue was a four-person show I curated at Mount Ida College in Newton, MA. The gallery director and her staff of student interns hung the entire show exactly to my specifications, and the college printed a full-color catalog and provided a lavish opening reception for this exhibit. Some galleries also provide honorariums for public talks or cover other related expenses for artists or curators. So not only do you save money, you can also earn some.

3. INCREASE YOUR TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE. I used to grab my charge card and shop online heedlessly whenever I ran out of paint. And sad to say, my tastes ran toward Golden Paints, the most expensive brand out there. Their colors are breathtakingly beautiful, but cost more than $50 per bottle. I was spending upwards of $500 per month on art supplies, and my income simply could not support that.

In addition to being an artist, I am a painting instructor and, ironically, one of the things I teach my students is how to start with primary colors and mix the myriad of possible combinations themselves, rather than buying secondary colors (available from mixing primaries) or earth tones (available by mixing complements). When I looked over my budget, I realized that I should be taking my own advice. Now I buy basic paint colors in less expensive brands and mix my own colors. It’s a far less opulent approach than buying whatever I want from Golden’s luxurious range, but it’s far more affordable.

I also used to spend approximately $300 (gasp) every few months on rolls of cotton canvas from the art supply store. Again, too expensive for my budget. But I’ve found a $4.99-per-yard unbleached cotton from the local fabric store. Last time I went there to buy some, the store employee unrolled the bolt of fabric to cut a length for me and I noticed a continuous stain running length-wise down the cloth. She offered me 75% off, so I ended up paying less than $1 a yard. Since I'm just going to gesso over the surface, the stain will never show.

4. EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT MONEY. I have read countless money advice books (checked out of the library, of course) in the past year, mostly ones that were published or updated since the recession, since so much has changed since 2008. Most art career books don’t discuss budgeting or finances specifically, and most financial advice books are written for people who know exactly when/where their next paycheck is coming from (something artists often can’t say for sure). I have found these two to be the most helpful, as they include chapters geared specifically for "consultants" with irregular incomes (a.k.a. artists): “Seven Money Rules for Life: How to Take Control of Your Financial Future” by Mary Hunt and “The Debt-Free Spending Plan: An Amazingly Simple Way to Take Control of Your Finances Once and For All” by JoAnneh Nagler.

These are just a few of the many ways for a cash-strapped artist to keep painting while staying in the black.

Although I am still paying off my debt, it is now more than halfway gone, and I plan to continue paying it off while maintaining a serious art practice. Every last penny owed will be paid by December 1, according to my calculations. And when that day dawns, armed with the many new solutions and techniques I have learned, I am confident that I will never find myself in debt again.

EDITED TO ADD: As of November 7, my debt is completely paid off! :-)

Ode to a staple gun

I just bought myself a fantastic present: a brand new Power Shot staple gun!

It’s luxurious to use. You barely have to press the handle to make the staples come out, and the staples shoot in all the way, so you don’t have to hammer them in the rest of the way, like I did with my old Arrow staple gun. Much easier on the hand muscles, much easier to stretch a nice tight canvas, and much faster going as well.

But this does not mean I will be disposing of my old Arrow staple gun. Believe it or not, the old gun has great sentimental value. Because it was the first present my husband (then my boy friend) bought for me, and it proved to me that he loved me.

At the time he bought it (1989), I had dropped out of art school and wasn’t painting at all. I was working at a variety of secretarial jobs, exhausted by boredom and long unfulfilled hours of sitting at a desk, frustrated that I was giving my precious time away for a paycheck that barely covered the bills from my not-at-all-extravagant lifestyle. (City living will do that to you; rent alone eats up most of your income.)

Kevin had first met me when I was taking art classes, and he saw the difference in my demeanor, my spirit, when I was engaged in creating art vs. when I was not creating art. He realized, even when I was denying it to myself, that I needed to live a creative lifestyle in order to be wholly human, to be who I was, to fulfill my destiny.

But Kevin is a gentle, non-pushy person. Even when he saw I was floundering and he knew why, he was too kind to confront me directly with the big mistake I was making. But he did want to help me. So he bought me a staple gun.

And as soon as I saw it, I realized he loved me. With this gift, he was giving me permission to be myself. In a gentle, quiet way. It wasn’t a big push; it was a kind invitation.

Up until then, I had used store-bought canvases, which meant I was limited to the store’s pre-made sizes. (There were far fewer sizes available in those days; now you can buy pre-made canvases in almost any size.) Sure, I had tried removing the staples and restretching store-bought canvases, but it was beastly hard. With my new staple gun, I could buy stretcher bars in any size I wanted. It really gave me freedom to work small, large, and in any dimension. It was a big opportunity in a small package.

The rest is history! With my staple gun in hand, I went back to school, got two degrees, and began to show and sell my paintings. That staple gun was the first step; it represented freedom for me. It was this gift, this gentle nudge from the man who loved me, that allowed me to become an artist.

So no matter how much easier and faster the new staple gun works, I will always keep the old one in my studio to remind me of how I got where I am today.

The right tool for the job

Under the category of "I wish someone had told me this, but no one did, so I'm telling you": When wrapping and/or shipping artwork, use BROWN CELLOPHANE TAPE to secure the bubble wrap around the painting. It holds the bubble wrap firmly in place, but peels off easily so you can reuse the bubble wrap. Masking tape, clear cellophane tape, and certainly duct tape stick so stickily to the bubble wrap that they only rip it up when you try to remove them. This is what professional art movers use.

Looming large

Still a few finishing touches to go, but I've mostly completed the first in a group of 56" high by 50" wide paintings. As I've mentioned in earlier blog posts, I've felt an undeniable urge lately to expand the size of my canvases, the result of increased confidence as an artist and the desire to say what I mean more clearly and boldly. I also feel as though the bigger scale will avail opportunities for display in more serious exhibition spaces. We'll see ... meanwhile, off to an exciting start!



ETA: It's interesting to note, for any of you color theorists, that the yellow-white inside the bottom row of loops and along the top of the canvas is THE SAME COLOR. I don't know yet if it's the lighting setup or an optical illusion created by the colors nearby, but they appear to be very different. The one at the top looks almost like an orangey-cream, and the one inside the loops looks like pure white.

Bridging two worlds

Somewhere along the line, in my development as an artist, I got the idea that precision was wrong.

I always had a facility for drawing tight details, which I developed throughout high school with carefully rendered fashion illustrations. I continued to work this way as I went on to earn a diploma in fashion design, creating drawings like the one below, with each fleck of the tweed a tap of the marker tip on the page. These drawings took hours and hours, even days, and I loved making them.



Perhaps the trouble started when I decided I wanted to study fine art. I still remember the horrified look on the admissions counselor’s face at the Art Institute of Boston when she saw my fashion drawings. (That was what I included in the application for my interview, since I had just graduated from fashion school and had worked very hard on my portfolio.) I think she thought I was drawing in that style because I didn’t know how to draw realistic figures, rather than the truth, which was that I had been intentionally aiming for a stylized “fashion figure.”

“You won’t be able to transfer any credits,” she said gravely as she continued to flip through my portfolio and shake her head.

Being young and impressionable, I absorbed her opinion that there must be something non-artistic, not valid about these drawings. Rather than question her, I decided that this program was just what I needed, and threw myself into my fine art studies.

As I went through art school, I tried very hard never to work tightly and with detail in my artwork. I figured that had to be “wrong.” What was “right” was working loosely, intuitively, with flowing gestures and generalized shapes. And since working this way seemed to come as naturally to me as working in tight detail had, I just went with it.

I was further steered in the “fine art and illustration don’t mix” direction when I had this interview after graduate school.

But I had an epiphany when I was making a demonstration painting a few weeks ago for one of my watercolor classes. I had been teaching watercolor for years, and always approached it with my art school “loose is good” training. I got frustrated when doing demonstrations for my students because my watercolors always lacked finesse; in fact, they just looked like a mess. I figured I just wasn’t a good watercolorist.

For this recent class, though, I wanted my students to learn to follow intricate nooks and crannies, so I had each of them paint a closeup of a spinach leaf. Since it was a new project idea and I didn’t have an example to show the students, I worked on the project along with them during class.

I instinctively grabbed a tiny pointed brush -- the kind I would have avoided like the plague in art school -- and proceeded to go back in time to reconnect with that ability to describe fine detail that had been my forte since high school. And I came up with this wonderful painting, the best watercolor I’d ever done.



I am happy to say that this acceptance of detail has spilled over into my “real” painting in my studio. I have been able to combine the loose, flowing quality I’ve been working with since graduate school, with the tiny brush details I’ve recently rediscovered. The contrast of loose and tight has made for a new and exciting direction for me, as evidenced in my newest artworks (like the one below, just completed).



I have to say, growing older is turning out to be a wonderful experience for me. As each day and month and year passes, I throw away more and more of the assumptions of my youth, the misconceptions I gleaned from others, either their wrong-thinking or my misinterpretation of what they meant. Either way, it’s very freeing, and is revealing the true me, what I honestly believe and what I am capable of.

Spray on

Switching gears from the bright works on paper of Friday night, I turned my garage into a spray booth today, and made the spray-painted painting, below (acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 30" H x 20" W".



I haven't used spray-paint in my paintings in a while, years in fact, because the fumes are so noxious in my studio, even wearing a respirator, running two box fans, and with the door to the outside opened. But I can't get these terrific flat patterns any other way!

So today I opened the two garage windows, backed the car into the driveway, and started spraying! It seems to work out fine, fume-wise. Obviously the whole process would be easier if I could just wait until a sunny spring day and work outdoors, but I'm way too impatient to wait three months for that.

Also I spray-painted designs onto sheer white fabric today, and my next step is to cut them up and collage them onto canvas.

Starting tomorrow I'll be teaching five days a week for the next 14 weeks, so I probably won't be able to continue to be this prolific. I think it was anticipation of this new schedule that I was so determined to get a lot done this weekend!

Going green with Fruit of the Loom

For reasons of pride (and, as my grandmother always said, "What if there was a fire and the firemen had to carry you out?"), I guess we all have regular purges of our old well-worn underpants.

I just bought a raft of new undies at Target and, in the spirit of "going green," decided I could use the old ones as painting rags. It makes you feel like you're really doing something for the environment! Since, let's face it, that's one contribution of "old clothes" that the Salvation Army isn't going to thank you for.

Meeting a new color

I've been going on the theory that it's better to understand a color by working with it on its own first, THEN seeing how it interacts with others. I created this piece yesterday, using green, a color which I seldom use. I'm starting to get a feel for the possible values with this particular green, how dark and light it can get before it starts to suggest depth. When I feel like I'm getting the hang of it, I can expand its three-dimensionality with other colors.



Here's what I mean: I started with just an orange, as in this piece ...



Then felt comfortable enough to integrate it with variations:



Along with this step-by-step process comes an understanding of the emotional impact of the various colors, a non-verbal sensing that, once felt, is never forgotten.

Next, I'm going to try working with a different green (I have Golden's Green/Gold waiting in the wings).

Acrylic paint comparisons

I am about to start a new series in red, a color I don’t use much, so I thought I would take an inventory of the red paints I have already in the studio before I start making any definite color decisions or purchases.

This swatch-painting exercise caused me to evaluate the qualities of the various brands I have on hand, and I thought my findings might prove interesting to other acrylic painters.

Please keep in mind that these observations reflect my personal preferences; your mileage may vary.

First of all, Golden’s brand, the best you can buy. BUT they are so damned expensive, one purchase can max out your credit card. I use them sparingly, for top-most layers. But they have power-packed pigment quality and an exquisite palette to choose from. They also come in a range of consistencies, the cream-like fluid variety being my favorite as I am a squeeze-bottle aficionado.

Utrecht’s acrylics are terrible. They are super thick (even when not specified as “heavy body”) and can’t be diluted evenly. No matter how carefully you try to water them down, you still get watery patches alternating with undiluted blobs. They also have very poor pigment quality; it would take at least a few layers to get a truly opaque surface (and I was using reds, one of the most opaque paint colors, so cool colors would take even more coats).

That said, I adore Utrecht’s acrylic additives (matte medium, gel medium, and modeling paste); they are versatile, archival and inexpensive.

“Blickrylic” paints, sold as a student-grade acrylic by Dick Blick, have a marvelous texture – just soft enough to spread easily, not watery at all. Plus they dilute evenly if that’s what you want. Their pigments are strong – not as strong as Golden’s, but strong enough for initial layers on the canvas. The colors aren’t anywhere near as beautiful as Golden’s – in fact, they’re fairly flat and generic – but once you start layering with them, your own personal vocabulary will take over and you can come up with some lovely and unique results.

On the other hand, my experiences with Dick Blick’s acrylic mediums have varied. They are great for image transfers (read also my blog entry on this subject, here), but they are terrible mixers with colored paints and they don’t work at all as adhesives.

Those are the three brands I have on hand, and I learned a lot, just from a few minutes of testing the jars on my shelf.

Steps of a Painting: Part 1

I thought I would document the steps I take when creating a painting.

This particular series has an unusual genesis, in that I envisioned my direction right from the beginning, and I pictured the colors right from the beginning. I tend to be one of those "throw a bunch of stuff at the painting and see what happens" type of painters, but with the last few series I've made, I knew exactly where I wanted to go before I began.

I knew from the start that I wanted to continue with the steps I used to make the painting to the left ("Desert 3," acrylic on canvas, 44" H x 30" W), which is the last one I made. But this time, I wanted to use ice cream types of colors like vanilla, pistachio, strawberry and black raspberry. Perhaps this is influenced by my recent dieting habits, which have involved cutting out sugar! A craving coming out in paint form, perhaps?! ;-) Maybe an expression of the season, or maybe nothing that complex.

In painting terms, this means variations of turquoise, alizarin crimson, quinacridone violet, nickel azo yellow (Golden's fluid acrylics), and of course white.

So here are the first layers. I toned 2 canvases (50" x 30") in a combination of white and red (I use Blickrylic acrylics for the toning layer for reasons of economy. (The half-gallon containers are comparatively inexpensive.) When the surfaces had dried, I applied rows of watered-down (but still dark) turquoise and quinacridone violet in varying placements and widths.

By the way, I like to work on several paintings at once. This way, no one piece ever gets overworked, and I can practice slight variations and see how they look at the same time. I also tend to create triptychs these days, frankly for reasons of sales (groupings tend to be easier and more lucrative for the art consultants I work with to sell). Plus you can TRIPLE YOUR PAINTING FUN this way, without much additional elbow grease! (It only takes a few minutes more to stretch 2 or 3 canvases at a time than to stretch 1.)

Once this set of colors has dried, it will be time to apply the next layer, this time tinted versions of the colors I've just laid down.

Vermeer would sneer

There's a lot of stuff in my studio to paint with, but very little of it could be considered "real" art supplies.

My "palettes" are the bottom halves of a bunch of cut-up old gallon spring water containers.

The supports for my paintings to keep them off the tables (allowing for more even drying) are old cardboard Laughing Cow cheese containers.

My "brushes" are plastic ketchup bottles (11 for $2.99), as well as bottles that used to contain my contact lens cleaning solution (Aquify brand is best). I also apply and erase paint with cut-up old T-shirts, paper towels and sand paper.

Mixed paints are stored in former yogurt and cottage cheese containers.

Sometimes it looks more like a recycling center than an art studio!

The view above was taken by my husband from outside the studio. I was oblivious to the beautiful sunset in the backyard, much more intent on adding another layer to a new painting!

Please pass the catsup

My favorite trick, drawing with fluid paint squeezed through contact-lens-cleaning-solution bottles, has hit a snag. They're clogging up too easily! A nice smooth line comes running out, then suddenly, nothing ... a tiny line ... nothing ... a big blob ... nothing ... a few dots ... definitely NOT the control I'm looking for.

No amount of cleaning the caps or poking the holes seems to help.

So I thought I'd try using commercial squeeze bottles, and the type sold to restaurants to dispense ketchup seems to be the cheapest. So I placed an order today!

I have a feeling I'll be hankering for some French fries once I start working with them.

More work on series

Worked some more today on this latest series of 30 inch squares, which has gotten a boost from the new Golden colors I just bought, including Quinacridone Violet and Violet Oxide. The QV sweetened up the reddish painting, and the VO burnished the yellow painting. Golden's rocks!







Here's a detail of that last painting, with less surface reflection:

Saving money on acrylics

As a followup to an earlier post, I wanted to report that I've had a lot of luck, and saved a good deal of money, by using Dick Blick acrylic paint ("Blickrylic") instead of Golden's. Of course, the colors aren't luscious like Golden's. But for "no-show" or covered areas, like toning backgrounds and my initial applications of white lines, it works great.

Nothing can replace Golden's Nickel Azo Yellow, though! It comes out a rich golden brown and dilutes into a sizzling hot yellow. Not a tacky, screaming yellow like hansa yellow or certain cadmiums can sometimes be. But Blickrylic's brown and yellow mixed together can make a series of lovely forest greens.

I've also had luck with diluting the Blickrylic into Golden's "fluid acrylic" consistency by mixing in water and letting the mixture settle overnight. By adjusting the amount of water I add, I can get thinner or fatter lines, as detailed in this older post.

Intense studio day yields some answers

Last week was my first full week of the semester, and I didn't have a second of extra time to paint between Monday and Thursday, so I had it carefully planned that on Friday (yesterday), I would do NOTHING but paint.

I created the painting here, which is 40 inches square on stretched canvas. I enjoyed working on this piece very much, and the process made me decide that I'm going to revisit two techniques I developed in graduate school (12 years ago!) to enhance acrylic applications -- namely, oil sticks and tissue paper.

The oil sticks, to me, MUST be R&F pigment sticks. Unfortunately, because they are an extremely expensive brand, but fortunately, because they smell HEAVENLY and they interact well with acrylic -- i.e., they sit on top of acrylic if you want them to, but can be obscured with additional layers if you want them to be. (They must be R&F because no other brand is so creamy or offers such unique colors.)

With the tissue paper, I used to tear it and place it (fairly) randomly on a fresh canvas, and that would determine how I would compose the painting. It must be a dark color -- brown, black, navy, wine -- so that this layer will hold its place as a background, and it must be the kind of tissue paper that loses color when it's wet, or it will remain too solid and dull. (Beautiful colors result when the dyes run, colors that you couldn't mix on purpose.)

I think these techniques will work well with the direction I now seem to be taking -- curving lines on a square surface -- because I am trying to create some degree of depth, and the all-over lines I usually use threaten to be too flat. (While I'm sometimes going for flat, in this case, I think implied depth could be intriguing.)

So we'll see. I just drove to three stores before I found the right tissue paper, and I'll have to order the pigment sticks, so it will be a while before I can put this plan into motion. But for now, I'm happy to be starting in a new direction (still influenced by the old).

Another benefit to the D.I.Y. approach

In making some works on paper (started yesterday, continued this morning), I've come across a great discovery.

Now that I'm diluting my acrylic paint myself instead of buying it as already "fluid" (this blog entry describes that decision), I just realized that my latest batch of diluted white was a bit more watery than usual. I pouted when I first realized how "soft" looking, almost translucent my layers were when I first rolled them out with the brayer.

Then I realized, "Wait -- translucent layers! That's a GOOD thing!"

So it occurs to me that now that I'm making my own concoctions, I can intentionally vary the paint-to-water ratio, depending on how opaque or transparent I want the layers. This hadn't come up when I was just using the manufacturer-prepared paints. Yay!

Varieties of blue

I've taken another step in developing this blue series. It's all about shifting varieties of blue, floating in layers of gel medium.

Today I got paid for the college course I taught in July, so I've made a purchase of some new Golden blues (while planning to use cheap Dick Blick acrylics for larger coverable layers like toning the canvas, as part of my money saving scheme). These new (to me) colors are cobalt turquoise, cerulean blue deep, cerulean blue chromium, and anthraquinone blue.

So I'll throw them into the mix (i.e. the old faithfuls, ultramarine blue and phthalo blue/green shade) and see what happens!

Cost cutting measure

Unforeseen circumstances can sometimes force us to break an old routine or re-examine our habits. Taking a new look can lead to better ways of doing things … or saving money.

I first discovered Golden’s fluid acrylic paints in 2006, and they changed the way I make art forever. I love drawing lines, and previously I had been making them with layered stencils and spray-paint. But when I moved my studio from a warehouse to my basement in 2005, it soon became apparent that the spray-paint smell couldn’t be sufficiently removed from the house enough to live with on a daily basis.

I began exploring other forms of line-making, but none felt right. I tried wide markers, but they didn’t move evenly across canvas (even with initial coats of gel medium). I tried oil sticks, but they were used up in five minutes and I couldn’t afford that at $30 a pop.

At last I spoke with a line-loving colleague who used squeeze bottles. I tried them with diluted acrylic paint, but the paint turned into uneven blobs and wouldn’t extrude evenly. Then I tried house paint, which was the right consistency but quickly clogged up the bottle tips.

At last I was flipping through an art supply catalog and noticed that Golden’s fluid acrylic paint was described as having the consistency of “heavy cream.” Perfect! I had had trouble with getting heavy-body acrylic into a smooth consistency, and this seemed the perfect solution.

As soon as I began working with Golden’s fluid acrylics, I fell in love with the strong pigments, the gorgeous range of colors, and what indeed turned out to be a flowing, cream-like quality. I quickly turned into a loyal customer, and have been for years … until last week.

It was time to replenish my inventory of fluid acrylics, and I found with horror as I was shopping on line that titanium white was back-ordered until July 25.

JULY 25? Are you kidding me? That was two weeks away (plus delivery time). There was NO WAY I could stop painting for two weeks.

But I HAD to have white. The nature of my process is that I paint white lines over a dark background and then layer them with colors, so that the lines appear to have been made with the actual colors, but they glow in a way that they wouldn’t if they had been laid directly on a dark surface.

As I logged out of my online shopping session, I tried not to panic. I tried to push from my mind the realization that I was dangerously out of paint. (Paint IS a drug, isn’t it?) Over the next few days, it slowly dawned on me …

A 16-ounce jar of Golden’s fluid acrylics costs $20 for the cheapest colors, and up to $30 each for the more exotic colors (which of course are my favorites). Yet gallon jugs of cheap heavy-body acrylics are under $10. Problem was, I had always hated the uneven textures that resulted from diluting regular acrylics into pourable solutions; that’s why I prized Golden’s fluids so highly.

But what if I tried carefully mixing the right consistency and letting it sit overnight, I wondered. Maybe it was possible to get and keep a smooth mixture, now that I knew what I was looking for. So I tried it the other day, stirring up a batch using the cheap white Blick paint I had sitting around, diluting it carefully and letting the mixture sit overnight in a closed container.

The result was a nice smooth line that flowed evenly out of the bottle! In the image shown above, the original lines (now light blue) were made with Golden's, and the second set of (white) lines were made with the cheap stuff. I frankly can't tell the difference.

So while I will still use Golden’s for my favorite colors (especially Nickel Azo Yellow), I’m going to try the cost-cutting measure of mixing my own pourable acrylic from the cheapo brands I already have lying around. I’ll miss just grabbing the Golden’s and GOING, but I won’t miss the ongoing staggering expense every time I run out of paints.

By the way, I discovered that the best plastic “squeeze bottles” aren’t the ones you buy for that purpose. Aquify brand contact lens cleaner has the perfect (most grippable sized) bottles with plastic tips that can easily be pulled out, cleaned and changed.

Mounting works on paper

I've had a lot of luck mounting works on paper onto stretched canvas. A number of students and other artists who have seen my work on display have asked me how I do it, so I thought I would explain my process.

(I used this technique to finish the painting "Cranberry Lines," shown at left, which is acrylic on paper on canvas, 30" H x 20" W.)

I believe there is a general perception of work on paper as less "important" than work on canvas. Also, if you're selling your work, a buyer may be hesitant to invest in an unframed page, or they might not like your taste in frames, yet want to buy something they can put right on the wall as soon as they get home. And once the paper is mounted, you can charge the same price that you would for a work done directly on canvas, because now it is a "real" painting.

This is a neat-looking method of displaying paper without having to place the work under glass, which to me separates it from the viewer (literally and emotionally). It also "seals" the paper in and protects it from abrasion or anything that might mar the surface.

I should point out that I've had a lot of luck doing this with paper that is 30" x 22". Any larger than that, I'm not sure how well it would work.

Start with a stretched canvas. If the paper is white, I paint the sides of the canvas white. If the color of unbleached canvas looks better with the image, I just leave it unpainted. When I mounted the red painting shown above, and I painted the sides the same color red as the work on paper. (I paint the edge and an inch or so onto the front surface; there's no need to paint the whole canvas.)

I apply a layer of Utrecht gel medium (the consistency of mayonnaise) over the entire surface of the canvas, about 1/8" thick or so. The strokes don't have to be perfectly uniform, but there shouldn't be any areas left uncovered.

Then I lay the work on paper against the canvas, and paint over it with a light but complete covering layer of Utrecht matte medium (which is somewhat thinner than gel medium). You could use gloss medium for this step instead if you wanted a shinier finish.

Then just let it sit horizontally and dry. I check it after about half an hour/an hour to see if there are any air bubbles, which I just press lightly down on and/or brush over again so the area sticks back onto the canvas.

This works best if the paper is slightly bigger than the canvas. Then, once everything is dry, you can trim off the edge of the paper to perfectly match the size of the stretcher bars.

The process leaves professional-looking sides, so you don't even have to frame the work if you don't want to.

I have only done this with Utrecht-brand products; I don't know how well it would work with another brand.

I should also add that this technique wouldn't work well on a piece that had a lot of pastel, charcoal or smudgable medium involved, although I have done it successfully with a small amount of pastel in the picture. In this case, you just brush the medium on very carefully.

Hope you too have luck with this method!