Adding Grass…and Happy Trees!

I’m using too much water…which can’t be helped as my gauge and watercolor paints are all dried up and need water in order to loosen the pigment up again. And I seem to be having a problem in getting the shades and highlights right. It all just looks…muddy. I don’t like it looking muddy. It makes me think of my classmate’s project, back in my Painting for Illustrators class. He decided to do a collage of character faces from the Star Trek Series. I think mostly from the Next Generation more so than the rest of the shows. And his faces, especially the ones for the Klingons were…muddy. Ugh! There was no definition of high lights and shades in their faces…they looked bland and flat…and I’m afraid my plains are going to look the same way!

And using too much water isn’t helping any at all, because it makes it all look shiny before it dries, which means I have to wait until it dries up a bit before I can see how muddy it’s turned out. I know…a sign of impatience, and I’m sure there’s a lesson of patience to be learned here…which only makes me grumble and piss and moan to myself and random people who might happen to be online while I’m working on this. Breathe in…breathe out. All. Will. Be. Well.

If anything, I had to remind myself how to go back to dry brushing. It’s not all that hard to go back into, and I think that’s what I was trying to do before hand. Dry brushing is a very good way of making the grassy texture I was going for. However…it is a horrible waste of paint. If though you end up using small dabs of it, over a large amount of space…you end up using more and more and more and more…which can be very expensive if you’re not careful. So…for the most part, I’m trying to be careful, so I don’t wind up using more paint than I intended to. I think I’ll be mixing my base green up another five times before this project is through, though.

The more I look at this in comparison to the pictures of the original layout, the more I’m not liking how the mountains are turning out. They’re too brown…and not grey enough. I might just end up adding more white…more snow to them, as was seen in the original image I was using as a reference for them. References are key to making a good…plausible landscape setting. As it would with a cityscape and ocean view as well. It just…looks more real, more believable. I should definitely be fixing the mountains before I add in the trees.








And adding more snow doesn’t seem to be satisfying my dislike for the mountains. I had this problem when working on my dad’s submarine painting. I couldn’t get over something I didn’t like, that I thought wasn’t working out…and eventually gave up on fixing it only to find that…well…when you step back, it made the painting come together. So I’m putting my dislike for the mountains aside, and heading forth into painting the trees. Paint the trees, Cere…and you’ll see that it will turn out better. Trust yourself in this.

Heh…guess it only goes to show that I don’t have much trust in myself, huh? I should. I really should. I’ve got several other people, family and friends telling me how wonderful a person I am…how open and free spirited, not a drown of the ‘fashion/style/what’s new and wonderful and have to be a part of it like everyone else’ world…that I’m uniquely my own person and am more talented than I give myself credit for. And I’m overjoyed and amazed when someone values my skills more so than I believe them to be worth. Amazed…considering that most of the time I can’t get much recognition for my work. I’m not entirely sure why, though it might be do with my anti-social tendencies. I’m tired of the conventions…dealing with mass amounts of people…it’s the noise, honestly. I like peace and quiet.

And it might be why I’ve done better when I’ve picked up a commission during a primarily one on one conversation. Or a three way conversation…but either way…the crowd is smaller, and it is then that I get excited about the piece. My enthusiasm shines through more so in a quiet setting than it does in a noisy one. So…now…upon thinking about it and comparing personal experiences, I figured out now that though I might not be able to gain the recognition I might crave, or think that I want…but if I continue with just those personal conversations…one person at a time…then at least I’ve made a small step forward closer to being recognized. Heh…besides…aren’t the smaller things in life more precious and worthwhile?

Haven’t I always said that writing your thoughts out helped? Is anyone out there enjoying the chance to see how I make my revelations and help to bring peace to my scrambled mind again?

I did add trees, as you can see. But I didn’t get to type in my problems with them. My roommate had decided to occupy my computer by showing me Bob Ross’ ‘Happy Tree’ video footage…which made me laugh and reminded me of my high school friend that I had mentioned earlier a week or two ago. However, as appreciative I am of my roommate’s want to help me through my frustrations, he disrupted my routine, which made me more agitated than I normally get when I’m painting. Though…just looking at the thumbnails before I transfer the pictures from my camera to the computer…the trees kind of give a sense of depth to the painting…I think…

I try too hard to work on crap.

Yeah, even I don’t know what I’m doing or talking about at times, but I know I try too hard on an idea only to end up ruining it. A sales representative came by the shop a week or so ago to get my boss to buy their product. Nothing new, she’s got some sales reps she likes (especially those who are awesome enough to buy everyone at the shop lunch when he’s lunching with a teacher down the street), but like all sales reps, this guy was giving us free samples to try out. So naturally, I got to play with some products that I had never used before. The main thing he was trying to sell were water soluble stuff, like watercolor pencils. Things you can draw with and then add water to make it look like a painting of sorts. I don’t know, I’ve tried the watercolor pencils and aren’t all that thrilled with them…or the water soluble pastels he was pushing. They’re ok, but I couldn’t really get a feel for them. Below is a mixture of the water soluble pastels, plus some oil pastels by the same company. I’m not too thrilled about it, but I guess it’s the purist in me. If I want to draw, I’ll using drawing supplies. If I want to paint, I’ll use painting supplies. I guess I don’t like combining the two into one product.



It just feels so forced in my hands. So I decided to play with some regular chalk pastels again. However…I have a problem. I stick my face too close to the picture, and see everything that’s wrong with it instead of stepping back to see that it has some good qualities. So in a sense, I’ll never really like my own work, because I try too hard to fix the problems that make it look…ok? Does that make sense?

The perfect example can be seen in a painting I did for my dad. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photograph of it to show, but that really wouldn’t help. You simply have to see it in person. I found a picture of the Seawolf submarine my dad was involved in making earlier in his career, and thus I painted it using gouache…an opaque watercolor over a black board. I worked on it for two weeks, keeping up close to it while I tried to get the colors right. I was so sick of it by the time of the first critique, that when our teacher gave us an extra week to fix any problems, I simply left it behind. When we returned for our final critique, he explained how I was the only one who didn’t take my piece and how it sat in his office. He also said that it didn’t need any fixing up, that as loose and incomplete it looked up close didn’t matter when you stepped back; when you step back, it tightens up and makes the picture. To top it off, when I showed it to my dad from across the room, he thought it was a photograph I had cut out of a magazine. I got hounded by a couple of my other teachers for not producing the same quality work after the fact.

So for those who are wondering what to get me as a gift…a really nice gouache set. Not acryla gouache, as I really can’t stand that stuff…as I mentioned before in my post with the train.

That, or firearms replicas. A friend of mine has a project for me, and looking for pictures with the right angle of a gun is really hard to find. And since I don’t really want a gun in my house until I’m in my 50’s and can start on my dream of being ‘that crazy cat lady who smokes a pipe and sits on her porch holding her shotgun to keep the hoodlums off of her lawn’…not to mention the fact that I don’t own a gun license, I figure collecting replicas would be the next best solution to my reference needs.

Oh! But I got off track again! Right, because I was really talking about these drawings below! You know, the ones with the pastel chalk! So…where did these come from…? The cemetery. I live down the street and around a couple corners from one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the country. So when I had a couple of friends come down to visit me, I had to take them there to enjoy Nature’s Cathedral…and naturally take some pictures! Duh! If I have pictures that I take myself, then I can draw it up and sell it myself! Weeeeee!




The café that we normally order breakfast from during the week actually offered to let me put my work up on display…and maybe to sell. They’ve got someone else’s work up at the moment, but she seems to have left town without taking it with her. Either way, it’s a good way to get some exposure. So, I’m working on some pieces to actually hang up. Just need to figure out a way of hanging them without framing them. Framing…get’s really expensive after a while, and since it’s summer I don’t have the extra cash flow to pay for something like that. Plus, I’ll be putting one up in the window at the shop, as I used products that we sell at the shop, and my main goal is to help my boss sell the supplies. I figure if I can help her make some money first, then I’ll have a better chance to make money for myself later down the road.

It’s a karma thing.