Jumpstart Jam Jar List - by Skylark

Have you ever needed a quick break to paint something fun and fast? Perhaps you are working on a larger painting and need a break, or you are thinking of working on a painting, or you are just plain procrastinating. Since I am guilty of thinking more about painting than actually picking up the brush, I would like to share some techniques that have worked for me. Today I will talk about the Jumpstart Jam Jar List. 

The basic idea is to create a virtual “Jam Jar” full of suggestions to jumpstart your work. Each idea should be fun with just enough structure to complete the project fairly painlessly.
 

I approached Danielle about asking you guys to contribute fun ideas for the collective Jam Jar. The goal is to get 30 suggestions, enough for a new idea every day for one month.
 

Here are a few ideas from me to start you off. Danielle has jumped in and contributed a few suggestions as well!  

• From me (Skylark): This is an idea that one of my early teachers assigned to participants. Her instructions were to first wet a sheet of paper and then drop in, wet on wet, colors of our choice, watching the colors spread and flow. Do not use a hair dryer to stop the process. Let the page dry completely. Then after the sheet has dried, create a design on it using only straight and curved lines, letting one kind dominate. You will be surprised what you come up with!  Here is an example entitled "The Hurried Kitchen" and illustrates the technique of wet on wet and then straight and curved lines".   This was done really fast and illustrates my kitchen in the mornings before work.   Everything is rushed and swirling round and round.  You can see a banana, perhaps a hot stove, and a fish --- your imagination can take over!

• (Skylark): Do a fractured painting. Take a simple composition, say a vase. Now draw curved lines and break it up into segments. Then fill each little segment with lovely, pure jewel colors. Later, I have found that Dory Kanter, author of the lovely book “Art Escapes” has demonstrated something similar on YouTube that she calls “prismatic painting.   Here is an example I created a while ago. Can you spot the camel and the vase?

• (Skylark): A third idea from me is to create a variation of a stained glass painting. This was inspired by one of Picasso’s paintings. Divide up the page into segments by drawing intersecting flowing lines. Then in each segment draw part of an object. Say part of a violin peeks out in one segment. In another segment there could be part of the music sheet. It could all relate to one theme, or be several items jumbled together. Make sure you paint each segment fully. Then go back and darken the flowing dividing lines, with a darker color. If your segments are all dark, you can use a lighter color for contrast.  
• (Skylark): The fourth idea is a home-made variation inspired by Betsy Dillard Stroud’s creative book “The Artist’s Muse: Unlock the Door to Your Creativity”. Get a stack of 2 different colored index cards, say white and yellow. On each white card, write a noun. Avoid proper nouns. So say, you have made 20 cards with “book”, “cake”, “bridge” and so on. Then on each yellow card, write an emotion. Then choose one card from each pile and paint what it says even though it might sound ridiculous! Draw a “frustrated cake” or “wise dog”. Have a laugh! Or you can have a third set of cards with a color on each. Now you can draw a “red wise dog”. Of course you can have cards with your own rules that might suit your personality more. But you must draw the combination you pick! .
• (Skylark): The fifth and last idea from me is to cut up watercolor paper into trading card sizes or a bit larger. Then on each card, make an abstract design based on a particular color scheme. Nita Leland’s book “Confident Color” is wonderful as are many other books by great artists. You can explore many different kinds of complementary, split complementary, triads, tetrads and so on. You will have fun and build up an awesome personal reference of color which will be practical and handy in the future.

Now here are Danielle’s ideas.

There is no need to look very far for ideas. Paint something next to you such as your bushes or tubes of paint;

• Force yourself to paint a small (4” X 6”) sketch in 10-15 minutes using one colour every day for a week.
• Paint three fruits from three different angles.

And now it is you -- the reader – who is invited to contribute! Please post your ideas below in comment section. As you give us ideas, the list will expand. If even 10 of us contribute 3 ideas each, that will give us a month of fun! If the response is good, Danielle may even keep the “Jumpstart Jam Jar” on a separate page for you to refer to! 

Skylark

Thanks Dragongirl for providing us with a visual of a frustrated cake.

Skylark is offering the following two additional ideas - February 1, 2015

• Another technique consists of taking an object or simple painting and reducing it to an overall flat design.    The third picture illustrates this with a painting of a bottle and egg.  I show the original black and white painting and then the design.    

• I believe you will really have fun with this.   Last night, I stumbled on a 6 minute video on youtube showing a postcard sized painting of a starry sky (link below).   That is when I realized that you can make really fun and lovely paintings by exploring the Astronomy Picture of the Day at apod.nasa.gov.   Once you go there and see the archives, apart from the wondrous pictures of our galaxy, the youtube video made me realize I could have a lot of fun painting from them, not exact copies, but just using those as inspiration.  Because there is a snow storm today, I took about 10 minutes and painted this.   It is not a "real" painting but think of this as something to do for fun!   My inspiration was the APOD for Jan 31st 2015 and it is called "Yellow Balls in W33".   Have fun.  Be imperfect and post your little pieces of the galaxy here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ebVULQPc-s
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html    gives you today's picture.  You can go to the index and look at the archives.  Gorgeous!

From Ptolomy on February 2, 2015:  I bought a ipad a few years ago, it's a great way to carry a  lot of photos  around in compact form. I am married to a photographer and have many photographer friends who have  given me permission to use their photos for my art. What I do is I spend a few minutes a day checking out their latest photos and archived photos on Facebook and Flickr. I save them to my iPad for future use. 

Every morning and whenever I can snatch a few minutes I will sketch something, usually from these photos. It doesn’t matter what I use, ink, charcoal, graphite, watercolours  etc..it's just a sketch and it can be as loose or as detailed as I please. Sometimes I will sketch the same photo several times in different media. Each type has its own merits and helps me see the photo and the composition. These photos I usually upload to the sketching thread and they are  my second reference for my finished paintings.

When I feel at a loss for something to paint...as a proper painting, not a sketch, I revisit some of my old sketches  and think, I should do this in pastel, or I should do this in watercolour or CPs...or I wonder if I can combine them?  And sometimes I have even completed a proper painting of the same thing in two different media, just because.

I guess for me, a finished piece is the end product of a long process. I don't feel a need to sit and create a masterpiece all the time, in fact for me it's rare that I  feel a need to do that. I know that most of my sketches will probably never develop beyond the sketch phase, but if the need is there, they always have potential to be something more.

 I really believe strongly that doing something every day makes us better at it. Nothing is too small. Even lining up a few objects and sketching them is good, I tend to sketch things at restaurants while waiting for our food. You train the hand, you train the eye and you train yourself to see more. 

Note: if there is sufficient comments and ideas posted, a separate page could be created for ease of reference

Here is Danielle's art find of the week. This artist is Fernando Artal Martinez and you can find much of his work on FaceBook.

Do It Yourself - Painting Stuff - Watercolor Palettes and Brushes - from Jaka

After having been at it a while and going through the mill as regards painting in watercolor I have been tinkering inspired by the needs I've felt whilst enjoying this medium.  Thought I'd share a few things I came up with that could save some of you some bucks.

Palettes are items integral to painting and so are brushes, needs however can vary.  Over the years one thing that I discovered was that an enamel surface was close to ideal to be used on a palette, making spontaneous marks was the driving factor for buying brushes of all sorts
I like tinkering and some ideas came to mind, so here are 2 palettes that I made using 2 enameled metal plates, the type that are likely to be used on camping trips.  I bought them from "Aussie Disposal" a store selling outdoor gear.  And some left-over PVC (Pralon) tubing. A tube of "Power Glue" (cyanoacrylate) and sealant.

The illustrations are self explanatory.

I sliced/cut the 1 inch diameter PVC tubing in 0.5 cm sections then cut the resulting rings in half. Sanded the rough edges and glued them on the plate. Managed to fit 18 half rings on one plate.  They function as 18 color/paint wells.

Fill the wells with paint and paint a color swatch opposite the well as identification.  The half rings should be glued flush level with the plates surface. Any gaps can be sealed with some sealant.

Some may want a larger amount of paint in the paint wells and this resulted in the second version of this palette.

Here the PVC tubing was cut at a slant, so one end would be 0,5 cm and the other 2 cm.  This allows them to be glued on the slanted "wall" of the plate and have a bigger paint holding capacity.

It should be noted that it provides one large centrally located mixing area and NO mixing wells.  It lends itself well for stronger less fluid mixes.  I  mix on paper when weak watery mixes are required.  The paint does not "bead" on this surface, beading is more likely to happen on plastic.  It also does not stain.

Next are 2 type of brushes that make interesting marks when painting foliage, branches, reeds, tall grasses, bushes etc.
The material I used was bamboo chopsticks that usually go with take-away noodles or sushi and chicken feathers but any fowl, bird will do.  I used the downy part lower down the feather.  Smaller feathers with a fine quill work best.  The downy part form the "belly" and the upper ends (cut to about an inch long) on the outside, bound by string/thread.

They are the 3 on the right,  You can vary the sizes to your liking.

The 2 brushes on the left have filaments (hair) that were made from long shavings of the bamboo handle and tied to the handle's end with string. Use a craft knife to shave them like sharpening a pencil.  Be careful as the blade is razor sharp.  Shave away from the body.

When used use a light touch with the filaments just touching the paper, they'll skip and dance about making marks that are very random and "unpredictable" thus giving a spontaneous appearance.

Use a rather strong mix for more striking results.  They take some getting used to, lifting at the end of a stroke and "hesitating and changing direction" during the stroke will give interesting calligraphic marks.  Practicing on scrap will show what they can do.  Try them "wet" and try them "dry".
Both types cost practically nothing .

Lastly, if any of you have similar projects or tips to share, please do so.

Jaka (or Jen to some of us)


Thanks Jen, I so appreciate when other Art Tutor members contribute to this site. This is so interesting. It never occurred to me to make some of my own supplies. The brush tips interest me the most.

Today's artist find is Pablo Ruben. I chose this artist because his style is similar to Jen's/ Jaka.

Paint my Photo and online photos free of copyright

If you want to paint from photos but don't have a wide variety of photos of your own to use as reference, I invite you to check out Paint My Photo. It is a web site for artists who are interested in painting from photos who also want to be able to access reference photos taken by other people to do this - all without issues on the copyright of the images. Ever wanted photos of elephants or eagles in their natural habitat but have not had the privilege of travelling to locations where these animals live free - well Paint My Photo can help you. 

This site was created with the intent that reference photos supplied by photographers are copyright free and hence can be used by artists to produce art which they can sell without a fee to the photographer. In principle, all that is asked is that you provide credit to the photographer.  You might want to check out the web site yourself for the details about copyright as it might not be as simple as I've explained.

Joining this web site is free, however, donations are encouraged to cover the expenses, of which storage is a large portion. 

Today there are nearly 105,000 photos and 20,500 members on this site, which is also referred to as PMP for short. Luckily there is a search function and pre-made searches to help those looking for specific photos.  However, there are so many photos that it may take a while to find photos if you're looking for something specific.  You just have to be patient.

Artist can also upload their paintings that have been inspired from a Paint My Photo  photograph. Painting from other sources of inspiration should not be uploaded to this site.

I'm sure that there are other similar sites.  If you know of other sites that are similar to this one, please use the comment function below and share those other sites with us.

Other sites (added after original publication)
https://www.arttutor.com/group/reference-photos-group
http://painting.about.com/od/artistreferencephotos/
http://www.morguefile.com/archive
http://www.photos4artists.co.uk/
http://www.copyrightfreephotos.com/

This week's art find is Chen-Wen Cheng. He just won first place at the World Watercolour Competition in Narbonne France in October 2014.

Did you know that five of the seven prizes at this competition were won by Chinese artists?

Have a good week
Danielle

A Beginner's Thoughts from Jim

I thought I would take this chance to quickly tell you my experiences here on ArtTutor.

Having recently retired and deciding I wanted to have a go at Watercolour painting, I somehow, with the help of Google, came across ArtTutor. Though there might not be a lot of free content with not being a member, I soon decided to take a monthly option and take a good look.

My month’s subscription was well spent and very informative. Having looked at the gallery and the members’ contributions, it would be fair to say I was overwhelmed and a bit daunted by the quality of the work. Where are the beginners? I wondered. So I took the bull by the horns and nervously asked the question. What a response. You can see the item on the Wiki List, a great resource provided by one of our members Dragongirl. Here is the link to the page (only available to ArtTutor members)
https://www.arttutor.com/group/watercolours-group/discussion/where-are-all-beginners

I had so many replies, members welcoming me, offering advice and telling me that we are all beginners at one time and that this was the place to be. That was enough for me. I quickly upgraded my subscription to a yearly one.

They all proved to be right. The cornerstone of ArtTutor must be its members, not forgetting the staff who must work tirelessly on our behalf – but the members’ help and support is invaluable. I suspect, like me, you might be a little ‘shy’ at uploading your work as the members’ work uploaded is so good, and I understand if you feel intimidated. (I’ve been there.)

However, if you wait until you are producing work to a high standard, you will wait forever to get involved, and getting involved is the key to the learning process.  

OK, a lot of beginners (and some not so beginners) out there might hide their work away, but they are missing out on so much. The camaraderie and enthusiasm provided by my new-found friends is unbelievable. My wife is quite jealous of my worldwide friend network, and I thank them all for everything.

I decided to post my own work, good, bad or indifferent, and I get such good feedback and encouragement. Watercolour is not easy, I didn’t expect it to be, but with the help here I am enjoying my journey.

So, if you’re thinking is this for you or you’re new here, let me assure you, you will be amazed by everything ArtTutor has to offer. No matter what medium is your desire, help and advice is here in abundance. Try the lessons, look at the Academies as they become available and read all the posts.

As a beginner, I cannot recommend it enough – come on in and get involved.
Jim (aka Jimbo24)


I'd like to thank Jim for this article and I hope that others will be able to contribute in their own way in this new year. Stay tuned for a piece on brushes by Jen (aka JAKA).

This week's artist find is Emmanuele Cammarano.

Have a good week, 

 Danielle

2015 New Year Resolutions

Well here we are in 2015.  How many of you have made New Year resolutions? I’m not sure if this is a North American “tradition” or if people from other continents/ countries also do this.

I confess to not making New Year resolutions and haven’t done so for as long as I can remember. However, if you are inclined to make some, here are some ideas related to watercolours that you might be able to stick to. Yes, we all know that most people do not stick with their resolutions beyond a couple of weeks. We can still hope.

So here are a few ideas to stretch your artistic self:

• Paint or sketch every day (wouldn’t that be nice);
• Experiment with new colours that you can mix. Get out of your comfort zone;
• Try different brushes. Most of us have a preference for either round or flat;
• Try out a new style (e.g. loose, realism, etc.). This can only benefit your natural tendencies and you may discover a talent for something different;
• Read more about composition or colours or techniques;
• Try painting on a different surface, e.g. hot press, yupo, canvas, watercolour ground on board, etc..;
• Make time to study the work of artists that you admire;
• Write an article for this blog (wink wink);
• Exhibit in local art fairs;
• Volunteer with a local art association; or
• If you haven’t already done so, start going through the lessons in the Art Tutor Academy. There is so much to learn from that site.

I’m hoping that this list will have triggered some new ideas for you.

 

This week's artist find is Ray Hendershot.

Happy New Year everyone ... make it a great artistic year!

 

Danielle