Carrasco Studio

Russet, Ochre and Madder Brown

Last Sunday we set up an arrangement in the main room of CandP coffee house and five of us painted away for about 2 and a half hours.  Sharon and I went for the whole thing but the others found it too overwhelming and went with one object or another grouping.

I felt my composition was too busy, so I went home and tried it again and then thought it was too hard edged.  So I just said to hell with it and slathered water along all the outer edges and inbetween.  It turned out sort of 1950's illustration-ish.  I wonder if all my exposure as a kid to Lady's Home Journal and Redbook illustrations are leaking into my 2009 psyche.

CandP Watercolor Class 10/27/09 ....I Wish I Could Tell You

                                                  ©Jennifer M. Carrasco 10/30/09

.....How these peonies speak to me...before, during and after their extravagance, their blowzy, lemon scented June magnificence. From 1983 to 2002 when I finally moved into my own house , I have moved from pillar to post with lily of the valley and my grandmother's peony plant roots.

Lily of the valley because those were the first plants of my garden I started at the age of 7, and my grandmother's peonies because they are so inextricably tied in with my childhood and  family memories.

 Enough.  Here's the first lesson of the second unit of the fall watercolor classes. For those who have taken previous classes, I call you "Old Hands"...a sort of cowboy-in-the -bunk-house term.....your instructions are in italics, since you have learned to read cursive by now.   "Newbies" sounds too pewling and naked for the new students.  I'll just call you "New Students"  Your instructions are in regular type.

I have included one photo I took last June of one of my peonies.  If you have missed the first class, you can use that one for your practice.

 

CandP Watercolor classes...  Oct. 27, first lesson, second unit

Old hands.......pictures/peonies and lilies.....show lily structure...remind about positive/negative space
Look at the whites in Sorolla, lily, books    Show my peony....acrylic, but done like watercolor..  Glazes.  If you haven’t read page 20, read it now.
Lightly sketch both flowers on 1/8 piece of paper.  On lily, paint the negative space very pale blue. ... with peony, pale yellow.  (you are welcome to hang out to review with new students)

2,  Tear and tape 2 papers.  Hand out “fish” pictures.  Beginnners draw a Large Fish Very Lightly with pencil on one paper...almost touch either end of paper.  Paint your fish with a watery Azo or Aureolin Yellow.  Using only a watery pthalo or manganese blue,drop into the watery yellow.  See how the pigments move. Tip it.  Try with alizarin crimson.....try other pigments...what happens as the paint starts drying?  Leave a MOAT between fish and negative space and paint the space a pale pthalo blue or manganese blue...drop colors into that.

Old hands.......discuss initial glazes for peonies and lilies, then  the overglazes.  Have 

Explain to Daisy and any other Old Hands how to use “tabs” of color to match values of hues...Review...top to bottom, light to dark, cool to warm, soft to high contrast.  Glazes....don’t use Pthalo blue or green as an overglaze...Why?
what stainer color works for glazes IF you water it down?  Alizarin crimson works OK IF you dilute it.

Discuss my peony example.  Work back and forth on two flowers......why? (let's the areas dry)  How would you get those little dots of gravel behind the lilies (use masking fluid)

3.  Look over Pigment chart.....stains...go into paper (pthalo, quins, azos)
                opaque, sedimentary, transparent.....(cadmium, chromium, manganese,    
                        ochres, siennas, umbers, ultramarines, cobalts,etc.

Assignment: Re-read 6-15.  Try doing the same technique you learned with the fish on some fall leaves...start with a pale yellow or red or blue....bleed some other colors into them.  Wait until they dry and then glaze some colors over them.  BRING TO CLASS!!!!!

Assignment for Old Hands.  Finish at least one flower painting (both will make you expert faster!) Bring to class !    Read pages 22 to 25

.....and here's one of my all time favorite cartoons by Booth.  Too too appropriate.

Oh That.

Photo by sally shintaffer, May Day, Paint-a-thon

It was called to my attention by my esteemed friend and respected journalist, Patrick Robinson, that I forgot to list the PLACE for the Autumn Paint-a-Thon. 

It is, of course, at Cand P coffee house ( CandP coffee house, 5612 California Ave.SW, West Seattle. November 1. 2009, 11:00 am to 2:00 pm.  Meticulous painters and spontaneous sketchers welcome.  Stealthy and quiet drop-ins are fine! No instruction, just hanging out and making stuff...paintings, drawings, Monumental Sculptures, poems, short stories and/or the Great American Novel.

...and so here I am, on my own darkling plain.  Confused by alarums of struggle and flight....what place? what time? where am I going?  O Well.  Foggy Bottom Carrasco.

And here's some stars of the watercolor firmament.........Sara and KayLynn from the last painting class.

 

and another wonderful photograph by Pat Robinson.

 

Watercolor Class #3 Fall 2009: Color and Value

This is a lesson in color and value, and I think it's one of the most challenging aspects of watercolor.  As a painter, I know how difficult it is to make that final dramatic statement of color and value that gives drama and focus to your painting.  In watercolor, it's especially difficult, because when you apply your paint, the colors are a lot more vivid and deep while they are wet.  You have to cultivate a value memory of how a wash or a more intense application of hue  will look when it is dry.  Some painters make a chart of colors to remind them.  A good thing. 

Another issue to complicate matters is that different papers absorb the paint differently.  A softer, more unsized paper will turn your brilliant viridian into ethereal green, a sized and rough paper will granulate your pigments better and give sparkle to what might be a large flat area of color.  Sigh.  All I can say it takes practice and Noticing. 

Here is an exercise to help you see value changes.  The first flower is in values of black, Lunar Black, because it is such a pleasing warm black and can show a range within a value.

The second is monochromatic....and you can choose any color.  I chose Alizarin Red.

The third is using a full range of colors .

  First,  for each exercise, I painted the very lightest value of the hue I was using over the entire flower for each example.  Paint a mark of this lightest value above each of your flowers. This gives the first flower, the shades of black, to dry a little before you start on it with your medium value of grey.  Squint and you can see it.  Then start with the medium value for the black shaded flower, then go to the monochromatic flower and paint the medium value of your chosen color, and then paint the medium value color for the full color flower.  Probably a medium shade of orange and one of green.

When you work in sequence like this, you don't have to wait for your piece to dry, you can go back and forth between pieces.

Now apply your appropriate darkest values to each flower.

Each exercise is like playing scales on a piano....you are honing your visual memory for value....the light and dark of colors.

Assignment.  Read page 118 and 119.  On a 1/4 size paper. Working large to small brush, lay in a background of a light graded color, then with a mediam value of colors , make some large zig zags and stripes and checker boards.  Then with your smaller flats, rounds and riggers, using your darkest values of color, make patterns of different strokes.  dancing. wiggles, dots, “smiles”, lines, circles, squares....anything you think you need to experiment with brush strokes. Remember, wet on wet will “bleed”, but maybe you may want that.

Go back to re-read lesson 2 on this blog.....I can almost guarantee it will make more sense to you now in relation to questions about color and value.

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.

Last Gasp

I really had no time to gather roses this morning, but I kept thinking about  time's winged chariot, the rain clouds massing over the Olympics and the obligation to honor the rose when it is in season.  So, I hurriedly clipped some of my beauties, and one bush nailed me good with a thorn....probably in protest...and I brought them in for an informal arrangement.  Most of the time I don't go for Ikebana....I feel like I should get in a more contemplative state for that.  Besides, I do like LOTS.  It makes me feel wealthy.

I don't put insecticide or chemical fertilizer on my roses ( they were my Dad's roses before I brought them over from the Palouse)....just bone meal, alfalfa meal and an occasional dose of fish emulsion.  It never fails....the roses throw up their hands (buds) and shriek "Allelulia!, (or maybe "Not again!!!) and produce these spectacular excessive expressions of RoseHood. 

This year has been a season of wonderful and awful roses....mainly because the weather veered from the 90's to drippy 50's....but because of the hard winter there have been few aphids.  There have been a lot of earwigs, however, and their vile little bodies slither out of all my arrangements.

The little clay men at the bottom are from my ex husband, who is an Ikebana Master.

They make me think of a poem by Yeats called "Lapis Lazuli" where at the end, some old Chinese men play music together and "their glittering eyes are gay"

Night Gardens and Flower Ghosts

First of all, let me make this clear.  I do not sing to the devas in my garden (although at times I may inadvertently water them)  I just like to consider possibilites.  Play with ideas and have a good time visualizing the "perhaps" in this astounding universe.

Do not sign me up with a cult or send me messages from the gods.  I think I'll figure that out on my own.

I do go out in my garden in the late afternoon light and sit to watch the sun set over the Olympics.  In my very priviledged life, I am able to watch how, for about a half hour,  twilight seems to incandesce the colors of the flowers...even my gravel path has a purple hue.  And the plants and the trees exhale, a gentle breathing out.

Then I stand up to walk among my roses and galliardia and cut out the flowers that are finished...the term is the gruesome " dead heading"; important for  gardeners if you want the flowers to continue blooming.  And I think to myself, how would flower spirits leave their bodies?

Roses would float up, amorphous and glowing, dropping petals as they leave.  Lilies would shoot up like Roman candles, leaving  sparkling threads of connection to the earth.  Marigolds would bumble up like bottle rockets and silently explode in shreds of light.

O Rose Thou Art......a cliche?

 

I have a problem. I like painting flowers. Unfortunately, it's not exactly an unexplored niche, this flower painting.  How do you keep a flower painting fresh?

 I put little creatures and objects at the bottom of paintings of flowers, but that dilutes the power of the rose image.  Oooo! People coo over the little mice posing on the ledge or shudder at a beetle crawling up the side and disregard the the astounding, erotic, beautiful flower.  It vibrates in it's own field of color.

And the shape and the transparency of the petals.  Even the word "petal" is melting and delicate.  Some roses have little curly triangles for petals, others have notched and gently ribbed petals that all curve inward and hide its secret center.  Other roses are blowzy and amoral,  flopping open with petals that fall onto your hands.

 

I don't want to be another Georgia O'Keefe....she's  become a cliche herself, and I'm sure it would have distressed her. And I really don't like her paintings all that much.

I just want to stand in my garden in the late afternoon sun, watering my garden and drinking a beer and admiring my roses in all their much celebrated glory.  Then, if I feel like it,  go into my studio and whip up a few flowers on canvas or paper.  And, sell them to some nice person who loves flowers too and doesn't mind if they've been "done" since Paleolithic times.

Bliss.

Vegetable Love

We had an art business meeting last night, and Leslie brought me a purple kolrabi.
It looks like it will start humming, levitate, spin over the kitchen twice and take off into space.  I am ready to duck.

Jade Rivers and Sequined Trees

Our group of artist friends joined their artist hostess, Cathy, at her home in the Skagit county for a short visit of visual and gustatory delights. An exquisite garden, a sweeping potato field in her back yard and sheep-looking goats to her left and right..   (the goats were hairy, phlegmatic and looked like sheep from a distance except for the fact that they stood on their back legs to munch on trees and plopped themselves comfortably on top of outbuildings.  Most disconcerting.)

A short walk to the river, along the levy and into the woods brought us to a river of jade water and twinned images.  Us, the birds, the occasional cloud....these entered into a visual conversation with the river. A dialogue between reality and its reflection.

And, of course the brilliance in the trees.  The light, the sky and the water blinking and shimmering through the summer branches of the greenbelt between the river and the levies.  The light nipping at the edges of branches and leaves and making round sequins of yellow and green and blue. 

Michaela and I were entranced by the sign that warned the park was "OPEN UNTIL HOURS OF DARKNESS".  It sounded like a quote from the Inferno.

We had a splendid lunch  Garlicky chicken (divine), lambs quarter salad and beans in vinegarette, and Judy's deviled eggs with a tart salty olive in each center (a poem)....then the Skagit farm strawberries.  Fit for God.

The night before, after much wine and great conversation, I went to bed in a room of great purity and quiet.  High old windows, a very palest plaster of palest celery white, white cutwork linen sheets and quilt, and Mary had placed a bouquet I had brought from the tangled meadow that has become my garden. 

To wake in the morning, even with a slight hangover, to the sight of trees and green and far reaching fields, and bunnies hopping in the slants of light, the goldfinch flitting past and hearing the high shrill cry of the red tail hawk....and then returning to  the flowers in this still and perfect room.

Greeting Cards from (my) Far Cathay

 

Emery-Burton has just put out lines of my greeting cards.  These are samples of  everyday cards, and they can come with messages or without. 

I wrote the messages but they are pretty Hallmark-y, since Emery Burton cautioned me not to make the messages "too weird".  (Like, "Wish you were here with me in this bamboo grove so  we could shoot this pheasant, cook it on a spit, drink lots of wine and have sex later.") 

So, if you want to send something snappy and personal, I recommend getting the inside blank.

The images are from a whole room I painted in chinoiserie, a style developed in Europe by artisans to meet the demands of 18th century aristocrats who wanted images of exotic China on the walls of their chateaus.  The images are on canvas, and I pieced together the sections for the little room (about 10 by 20, with lots of corners and woodwork) for delightful (and delighted, if I say so myself) clients.

 

The company is in the process of putting up a new website, so I'm not on it yet, but if you are interested you can contact Emery Burton for retail outlets and wholesale orders by calling Emery Burton at (206) 329-4321, (206) 782-7069, or (206o0 329-4321.  Also, you can bring up Emery-Burton, Fine Cards and Gifts, online, and e-mail them.  I have 12 images in the set.