When I painted this picture, I remembered that Mary Whyte, in a workshop, told us to name our paintings before we made our first washes of color. I couldn’t for the life of me remember this girl’s name (the daughter of a cousin-in-law, she’s a delightful girl, but I only met her once), so I just called her princess. I don’t mean princess in a bad way—all diva and finer-than-thou—but princess in a good way, a fairytale Cinderella-sorting-ashes or brave-and-loading-bullets sort of way.

As readers of fairy tales and fantasy-fiction know, names have power. So I let the word princess guide my brush. When I was stuck for a color choice, I whispered the word: princess. The taste of the word on my tongue gave me the flavor of the color I needed to use in that passage.

My favorite part of the painting, and the whole reason I wanted to paint this, is the shadow that curls under the sunlit eye. I love the way the curve describes the roundness of the cheek. There’s something delicate and fragile in that shadow, a sweetness and hope particular to young women.

Kate Detail
Watercolor 23″ X 19″ 300# Arches hot press
Copyright 2012 by Margaret Sloan

Then suddenly, as I approached the end of the painting, I recalled that her name is, or might be, Kate. If it’s not, it’s still the name of this painted princess-girl.

It’s an odd, drifty feeling to paint without a teacher at my shoulder. It’s like being dandelion fluff caught on the surface of a pond, stuck to the water film but still blown about hither and thither (that thither-zone is an uncomfortable place!).

While I painted this picture, I anchored myself in the painter-pond by studying painters I liked. I kept those painters’ images on my computer, and every so often would take a break from my painting and run over to study how they handled a similar passage. I didn’t feel as if I were copying a master, but rather, as if I were asking a master a question.

I also talked incessantly to myself. I’m sure I sound like a muttering madwoman escalating into a full-blown fit: What color should go here? Should I use a warm red or a cool red? Can I get away with a purple or a green? How can I get this form to turn? Is the value dark enough yet? It’s too dark! Oh no, that’s Alizaron Crimson, it won’t lift off the paper! What am I going to do now? Gah! What am I thinking?!!!

At this point there is much wailing and whining, stamping of feet and tearing of hair. Then I do what Rose Frantzen recommends: I take a paper towel and clean my palette. She’s right. It’s calming. It resets my clock.

I’m stuck on the background of this painting right now. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit, and will probably have to think about it a bit more. Turning and churning it in my head while I float about uninstructed.

Looking forward (Detail)
Watercolor on Arches 300# hot press
Copyright 2011 by Margaret Sloan

So I embarked on my own personal quest. Imagine the young (at least, younger than I am now) heroine setting off along a charcoal-dusty road.

I enrolled in the Atelier School of Classical Realism to study anatomy under Rob Anderson (4 years, every other Saturday). Along the way, I absorbed as much as I could from the school’s founder, David Hardy. I spent nearly every Tuesday night for 5 years working in watercolor with Steve Curl. I took workshops from Christian Fagerlund, Mary White, and Ted Nuttall. I studied color with Linda Lum. Most recently, I’ve been learning oil painting from Felicia Forte. They are all wonderful painters and teachers.

But recently during a workshop, as the teacher gave a short lecture on facial features, I realized that, because of the time constraints of a workshop, the instructor was pointing at a signpost on a road I’d already been traveling for half a decade.

A teacher is a good thing. They can stand at your shoulder and whisper directions into your ear, direct your hand, push you up the hill when you get stuck. But eventually the student has to do the work herself and synthesize all that she’s learned to create a thing that belongs to her.

I think that time has come for me. I need to hop off the classroom cart and travel on my own for a while. I need to take the paint-craft skills and ideas my teachers have given me and start a new quest in my studio.

I know that someday (probably soon) I’ll need to again join up with a teacher, but for now, I need to figure out some stuff on my own.

I need to spend some time walking down that painting road alone, on my own feet. Make solitary camp, live rough, and paint until my fingers bleed.

Some New Year resolutions never change.

Page out of sketchbook. Unfortunately, the dog and the caravan are a fantasy…

Moffett Hanger 1: Still with Skin
Oil on panel
Copyright 2011 Margaret Sloan

This fall I had the good fortune to be invited to a paint-out at Moffett Field. I chose to paint Hangar One, the gigantic house for the USS Macon, an airship so huge that even now, in this age of miracles, that it boggles my mind to imagine how big it was.

Hangar One loomed over my childhood landscape, although only from afar, as we weren’t  a military family, and in those days it was forbidden for non-military to visit the base. But it was a landmark that we always remarked on when coming home from vacations in the Sierra, and my dad, who’d actually done some work in the hangar always exclaimed, “that thing is so big, they’ve got their own weather in there!” It is big; see the little door at the bottom right of the painting? That little door is about 10 feet tall.

These days it’s possible for civilians to visit the base and get up close to the hangar. This painting is on view (along with other paintings and drawings) at the Moffet Field Historic Society Museum as part of an exhibit honoring the 70th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The exhibit lasts until January 7th, so there’s still some time to see it if you’re in the Bay Area. It’s a very interesting museum; make sure you leave time to get a tour from one of the docents!

Image via Wikipedia USS Macon docked inside Hangar One

Image via Wikipedia USS Macon docked inside Hangar One

It was a bright, hazy day yesterday, another spare-the-air day, so we couldn’t see through the smog to the mountains across the bay. But we knew they were there.

Today looks like this:

It’s a foggy, muzzy morning, and I’m taking a good rest before the Wren Boy madness that tonight will bring.

Happy holidays to all, and may you have a good winter rest sparked with late night music and dancing!

I met this young boy at Hidden Villa one late afternoon. He was with his family, looking at the chickens. Suddenly he scooped up one of the hens and cradled her in his arms. She didn’t seem to mind.  I asked if I might take a photo of him. He nodded silently, so I snapped a few photos. I wish I knew who he was so I could give him and his folks a copy of this.

I made this painting after taking Ted Nuttall’s watercolor workshop. If you compare it to the painting of the fiddler that I finished before the workshop, I think you’ll see a lot changes and improvements. At least, I can see them.

In past paintings, I’ve worried the paint to death. I’ve tried to make every transition smooth, and ended up making everything is bland, and even, and lifeless. Ted’s workshop made me finally see that what was missing were edges (although other art teachers have preached edges to me, I evidently wasn’t ready to hear that painting gospel). When I did paint edges, they were too abrupt, unsubtle, unsophisticated.

Edges are important. They give a painting movement and life, tell the story, sing the song. Hard edges can describe a fold, a crease, or the boundary of a cast shadow. Soft edges show a rounded structure, a form shadow, or a distant horizon. Between the nounage of hard and soft edges, there is a whole visual dialect—a spectrum—of edges that make a painting speak with nuance and grace.

When I think about edges in a painting, I’m always reminded that in nature, the edges of eco-systems are the places where life is most abundant. And now, when I paint, I’ve been trying to remember that edges are ok; they are, in fact, necessary to the life of the painting. Edges are where things happen.

Face—Detail of Boy with Chicken

Feathers—Detail of Boy with Chicken

This portrait is on Arches print paper. I inherited this beautiful paper from a friend whose father was an artist. He’d passed a long time ago, and when they finally cleared out his workshop, they found a stack of this lovely paper that probably dates back to the 60′s. Isn’t that an artist’s fantasy—to find beautiful, antique paper from a time when craftsmanship still ruled the day?

I love to draw on this paper, and small sizes worked okay with watercolor. But this painting is big—a full sheet of paper, 22X30—and there were some issues.

Paper for letterpress printing has less sizing than watercolor paper, which makes the press paper lovely and soft, but without the sizing to protect it, the paper sucks up the paint. Plus,  even though I stretched it and stapled it firmly onto a board, when the paper got wet, it got all floppy like a wet cotton sheet. But it dries nice and flat. The painting is still on it’s stretcher board, and I may rework it a bit.

This was painted before I took the Ted Nuttall workshop. I now refer to this as my BT (before Ted) style. Next post, I”ll show you my AT (after Ted) style. Very different.

More about sizing

http://www.arts-in-company.com/paper/additives/sizing.html

http://www.trueart.info/sizing.htm

More about paper

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/paper1.html

Playing for Set Dancers
Graphite

My band has been preparing for a gig. We recorded a tune, and when I listened to it, I was horrified to hear a tempo as ragged and floppy as an old stuffed bunny.

I play Irish flute, specifically dance music. I love the rolling beat, the pulse of the tune lifting and driving dancers through the set. The beat needs to be crisp and perfect to move the dancers.

But that what wasn’t what I was hearing in our recording.

So I’ve spent the last week practicing with a metronome, first lilting the tune in time with the flashing red LED, then trying to match my flute playing to that maddening strobe.

It’s amazing how that little pulsing light seems to slow down and speed up as I play a tune. At first I thought there was something wrong with the metronome, but of course, there’s nothing wrong with the electronics; it’s my playing that’s uneven. But gradually I’ve managed to tame my out-of-control tempo, and the tunes sound all the better for it.

Painting isn’t like playing a flute, but visual arts don’t exist outside of tempo. I think that paintings have their own internal tunes. My favorite paintings are those that make my brain feel like I’m seeing music. Sorolla paintings play tunes to me. Zorns are full of music. Sargent is something like a symphony. Surprisingly (because I prefer realistic work) Paul Klee paintings are like small pipes and fiddles.

I find that external noise while I paint influences a painting’s tempo. My most successful paintings are done in silence, when I really listen to the painting and pay close attention to the pulse that each passage requires. I listen carefully to hear fast strokes that are well conceived; slow shapes of color placed just exactly where they need to be; staccato or slurred edges; the pacing of high and low values. I’m always asking myself, how do I encourage the viewer to dance through a painting?

When I paint, there’s no steady tick-tock of a metronome, other than the drum of my blood and the deep sound a painting makes when it’s making my heart dance. Only if my heart is shouting “house Maggie, mind the dresser!” will I have a chance to let others hear that internal music.

Before the Big Adventure
Watercolor from Ted Nuttall Workshop
Copyright 2011 by Margaret Sloan

In early fall I took a week long watercolor workshop with Ted Nuttall, one of my favorite watercolor painters. Ted is a marvelous painting coach, and I feel like the workshop changed some important circuitry in my painting mind. Ted said that one of the things he hoped to accomplish in this workshop was changing the way we think about painting. I was looking for a change and I was an easy mark; he succeeded.

The most important thing I learned? Do not be afraid. Go ahead and make mistakes. In fact, Ted says he often purposely paints unexpected colors, streaks, daubs, dribble, and of course, his famous “sloppy dots” in order to give himself problems to solve.

Watching him paint is like taking a roller-coaster ride. (Yeah, I know, painters are easily thrilled). Some strokes made me gasp in fear—I’d never make that kind of mark deliberately—but Ted deftly tied it in to the rest of the painting as he moved along.

I’m not quite brave enough to deliberately make mistakes. I make enough accidental problems to solve in the course of a painting. But I think the answer to that is to make more paintings, and learn from all those accidental mistakes.

More painting? That’s never a bad pursuit.

Box player at the Abby

A visit to Chicago would have been incomplete without attending an Irish session. The Chicago Irish music scene is legendary. My fiddler said this was the one thing he really, really, really wanted to do. I, of course, was not against this idea.

We found the Abby, where, when we walked through the door,  we were astounded by the most amazing whistle playing.

It was Laurence Nugent, a top Irish whistle and flute player. Pretty cool.

At the Abby

If I’m shy about drawing in public, sometimes I’m even more shy about playing music.  I couldn’t see taking my whistle out and squawking  around on it like a wounded ostrich when there were musicians who were roaring like lions. Instead, I sat at a table, had a beer, and listened to ripping reels, jigs, and hornpipes while I painted. Listeners are an important part of a session too!

I leave you with this video.

Sláinte!

Laurence Nugent