Finding a Focus for Now in the Studio

Posted on by Sandy Webster

gessoed-board-with-watercolors-2

I have finished a second of the 8 x 10 watercolors on gessoed board. More collected dried things from the yard and studio. Someone in Australia asked me why I was always drawing or painting dead things. It is simple. They stay put for the length of time it takes to draw them. I get to really look at them. I get to hone what skill I have. I can touch them over and over while they stay the same. Their withering has already happened.

It feels good to be back at drawing. I miss it when I am doing more of the collage/assemblage/textile/stitch work….mixed media. That collection of words reminds me of something a character in my novella says when faced with having to frame mixed media work.

……..”And the results were pretty much the same. Layers of smudged papers that include pages from old books (with all but a few meaningful words exposed to reveal the artists intention), photos (old black and white ones collected at random from antique shops and flea markets), used tea bags and crumpled tissues, all of it dry brushed with gesso or in lieu of gesso, house paint would do. This recent interest in mixed media was followed quickly by workshops in encaustic so the entire piece could be covered in wax to look even more mysterious and meaningful.  …… Sue had to be careful not to frame them upside down or sideways.”

It makes me smile when I read what Sue thinks about the artworks brought into her framing shop. And it also reminds me to just get to doing something simple….draw.

Few pieces have given me the satisfaction of making something like drawings have. Here are some that were especially gratifying.

cropped-night-rose-back-lo-res

night-tides-lo-res

And always those little bits and pieces from travels.

australia-sketchbook-03

I will get out another gessoed board today and find some things to draw. It is centering me now and I really need that. Then I will build it into a frame with a mat and hang it with the others. I don’t know what to do with them after that.

My art group meeting was yesterday and it bothered me that I was so content for now to just do this. No meaning, no desire to fix a burning issue into form or a need to say something beyond putting careful marks on board…..getting down what I am looking at. The feedback from the rest of them was good. I was inspired by one members new narrative work in dry point etching. He not only does the drawing well, but has a way of creating an atmosphere around the subject that pushes our imaginations further.

When I get all my old boards meant to be used for egg tempera completely covered in watercolors, I will return to the press with renewed enthusiasm. But for now this is where I am….here in the studio working quietly on drawing and finishing up my Scrapbook of Decades.

Unsettled in the Studio

Posted on by Sandy Webster

silverpoint-forrest

About ten days ago I decided to pull out several of these poorly gessoed boards, each about 8″ x 10″. I did them in a hurry quite a while back just to use up some newly mixed gesso made from rabbit skin glue and french chalk. I was thinking I could sand them to perfection later and then use them for the intended purpose of egg tempera painting. But in all honesty they were pitiful and look more like plaster boards or scraps of drywall with the paper peeled away.

I thought of a student in Australia who made the most lovely watercolor on a plaster board. It was an image of herself as a child and would fit into a memory alter that she was making in my workshop. I will post the image I have of it below with apologies for the blurriness.

watercolor-on-plaster

Beautiful isn’t it? Anyway the first one I attempted was the busy strokes of silver point. I was just drawing out of my head…trees are always a place to start for me. Something about the woods. Then the magical door going to who knows where. Maybe secret places.

In sanding the gessoed board with 400 grit sand paper before I started making the drawing, there appeared a weak spot right in the center of the panel. And the more I drew over it the more it chipped away. Then I put it away, but only for a few days. The above beautiful image made me think about watercoloring on the next panel.

I gathered bits and pieces from the studio and laid them out on my work table.

gessoed-board-with-watercolors

Then with watercolors and caran d’ ache crayons I made this painting. It was so soothing to be back doing something botanical in feel. I wanted to frame it in an 11″ x 14″ frame and mounted in into a box shape covered in what I thought was a nice background paper.

gessoed-board-with-watercolors-and-frame

It took a day to get this all put together and then I did not like it, not at all. So cut a mat of off white that just covers over those rough edges and it looks so much better. I will do more like this one. It was too satisfying not to. You know how it is, the careful bleeding of colors that is immediately soaked up by the dry plaster like finish. I could have been a fresco painter in an earlier life.

Then I looked at the silver point forest and thought why not? I covered it in watercolors, then a bit of caran d’ ache to smooth out the color. Of course the silver all washed away but I just kept on adding and wiping. What I ended up with after painting, rubbing, painting and finally sanding is this.

losing-memory-lo-res

There is something about this. The hole in the middle of the panel went all the way down to the board with all the “rough” treatment and the water mediums just washing it out bigger and bigger. I like how it is next to the window of the magic door. But I especially like how it feels like faded memories. The things that come back to us in a vague undefinable way. Those things as we age that become less clear but there somewhere. I like the image of this better than the piece itself.

And now I will pick out another of those boards that were covered with cloth and rabbit skin glue and then copious coats of hand made gesso in such a sloppy fashion. The surface is so dry and thirsty that it sucks the paint from the brush before I have much time to think. For now that is a good thing.

A Bit More for Taking Down Under

Posted on by Sandy Webster

australian-pigments-victoria-full-page

Something a bit different here in the studio this week. I opened my Australian watercolors made from the soils of there. I selected four from a location, state, territory or specific place. Then taking a printmaking paper cut to 5″ x 7″, I taped off the margins I wanted to have a small 4.5″ x 3″ section to receive the washes of paint with a white space between each. Then in those spaces I took watercolors made from soils in my driveway, I placed three different colors in dot form to represent my travels through that area.

Originally I was going to make small collographs to superimpose on the washes but after two days of making them and then testing them, they simply did not work. Too small, not enough detail and they looked too much like stamping images. Those small collographs might become part of something bigger another time as it is hard to just toss out two days work.

But I do like using the watercolors of home plus those of different places in Australia. I also like how they look in a row. Together they have the look of long travels. Take a look here at some of them.

australian-pigments-tasmania-2australian-pigments-queenslandaustralian-pigments-tasmania-1australian-pigments-canarvan-gorgeaustralian-pigments-ntaustralian-pigments-victoria

They also remind me of my white line printmaking with that negative white space between colors. The class I am doing at Halls Gap is a masters class using the white line technique to make prints that are stitchable into books or onto cloth. I can see the students doing something like this with their watercolors and then perhaps french knots in those white spaces.

After that workshop is over, some of favorite students over the past twenty years are renting a large house for several days just to be able to work together, share meals, ideas and time. I am thinking that since I will have my carving tools and blocks with me, all I need is to take the pigments of home and there to make a book of my travels throughout the land of Australia. In the meantime I think I need to make a larger painting in this style and perhaps change up the mark making. My brain is buzzing with this and all the possibilities.

More later.

Dry Point Etchings Heading in New Directions

Posted on by Sandy Webster

owl and several emus

I reworked the owl and boat etching to get the blacks blacker and ran about six more prints. With the emu etching I stayed a bit loose and found that the one emu was enough. The smaller one in the background of the photo just added confusion. But and this is a big “but”, I cannot get rid of the edge of these plexi-glass plates. It shows in the print no matter how well I wipe it off. The saw and then the sander create a texture that just soaks up the ink and will not release it. And of course it is never evenly colored. Blotchy at best. So I was thinking this morning, “what happens if I cut off the border and use the emu another way?”

owl and emu

AND I wanted to color in his beautiful large brown eyes with watercolor paint. Once those eyes got the color it changed him into something more animated, something more lively. So I decided to take him back to Australia by way of using the paper tea bags from tea drunk down under and shifu threads I had made using the soils of Australia to color them. I like the result below.

emu stitched

This piece is signed by the colors of Australia on the left and my name and color from my driveway on the right. It is on an 11 x 14 paper and will be matted in cream with an eight by ten opening. When I finished that one, I went to the gum tree from two weeks ago and chose an artist proof done in an umber ink. I matched it with some tea bags and more shifu threads stitched into the piece. Again it is signed by Australia and myself.

gum tree stitched

They are reminiscent of the altered wood block prints that I scanned into my computer a few years back and then added the cloth and other bits from Australia. I sold out of most of those while in Australia in 2014.  Here is an image of one of those.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I like the new ones better. Something about using the limited edition of prints made with dry point etching on plexi-glass. Only so many can be printed and then the burr of the line gets pushed down and does not hold the ink as well.

It has been an interesting process getting the details using this type of printmaking technique. There is still a whole lot of daylight between Rembrandt’s etchings and mine….but I feel better about my own the more I do.

As far as the stitching into them goes, it seems a natural influence of the scrapbook pages I have also been working on. Here is the fifth decade.

Scrapbook fifth decade lo res