Carrasco Studio

Spellbound Among the Trees, Watercolor Lesson # 4

Cougar and kingfisher and muskrat, etc.....4 feet by 8 feet, Ruins ballroom, acrylic on canvas.  Jennifer M. Carrasco

I've heard it said that making art is a way of stopping time. All the creatures, the wind and the water are caught in one still moment.... before the water cascades down, the second before the wind blows the branch where the kingfisher sits, the minute before the cougar leaps. The forest, with all its attendant  mystery and threat, is one of the most ancient metaphors for human search for meaning.

The artist's ability to capture a still moment is a path into power , and like with poetry, photography and dance, the deeper we walk into this forest of images and thoughts, the more we grasp its connections in the universe.In the beginning of learning an art, the artist is struggling with learning technique and strengthening creative muscles. It's important to remember, however, that something  more important calls us from that dark wood.

CandP Watercolor......4th Lesson

1. Show Cam’s idea.  Look at chicken paintings....catch up on the “news”  Review page 68-69

2.  Demo...”Magic forest”  Cool or cold, day or twilight.

3.  Look at forest photos...Vertical compositions...cool, light walues in background, overlapp with second slightly warmer and darker value,  and finishing up with darker and warmest value.  Look also at Placement on format, and amount of detail.  Show demo.  Wash with blue or yellow.

4.  Lay down background intial wash....yellowish, red or orange(warm).....blue, purple(cool)  Let dry.

5.  Please read through 5-8. Then plan out in tissue the background  level in first light  cool value.   Think of negative space and differing tree widths.   Place at least one critter in the background.  ( You can do African, S. American as well as N. American....or fantasy.) Think Avatar! Where do you place the “ground” on the format to make it seem farther away?  Size of animal.  Detail? Show me before you pencil on background on background to  LIGHTLY transfer.

6.  Mix a light blueish or blue violet, mixed either with a little raw umber or a little lunar black for your first “layer” and apply. to background shapes. Check the value on a scrap paper. At this point think mostly silohuette. Only one color!  Establish some ground “slashes” of let the ground softly fade into the forground...No hard lines there!.

Why does the red bird not seem part of this level in the forest ?

7.  While drying, plan next “level” on tissue.  Deeper value, warmer, more detail, more critters.  If you want something to remain white (i.e, stripes on a zebra or magic “lights” in the forest) or a detail to appear in the wash, apply a frisket and cut out shape or apply maskoid.  More creatures...larger relative size! Show me before transfering tissue design.

8.  Apply middle ground level....warmer and colors begin to show up....i’e., a mid value bluish or brownish green in the
foliage....a brownish bunny or deer, a hint of red in a red bird or a giant toadstool. Slightly more detail, lower on the format.

Do plan out levels on paper....note where I DIDN'T plan and "cancelled out " my divine little deer in the background.

Next Class.  What do you want in your foreground....foliage? Animals? Fairies....bring pictures.

Blog Blog Blog

The Light of the Moon

This lesson is actually  about sunrise or sunset, and all the wonderful cloud effects of those times of day.  I don't happen to have any sunset paintings for examples, so this nighttime view of trees against the Sound, the far Olympic Penninsula and a night sky will have to do. 

The basic techniques...top to bottom, light to dark and back to front puts the painting together.  Instead of vivid background sky, I just used a "manganese? blue, went around some star spaces which I softened later with a scrubber brush and dropped water into the moon shape so it would bleed out.  When all was dry, I started laying in the foreground...working with a light lunar black and lunar blue combination and waiting until all was dry to do the darker forground...note, that I put a little sap green in with the lunar black in the closest tree.

Lesson 3, CandP watercolor lessons 11/10/09

1. Review and look at work.   Discuss complementary colors.....Demo how they work. Review graded washes.
...re-read 86-89

3.  New students....do graded washes on 1/8 paper.  Cool color on top, warm color  on bottom, 2nd paper, vice versa .
#1. Cobalt blue or pale pthalo  on top, raw sienna on bottom. Leave some unpainted areas for clouds. and let the color blend imperceptibly toward the middle (barely any color in the middle) show examples.
#2 a pthalo blue or cobalt on bottom and a pale auroelin yellow on top. Blend imperceptibly toward the middle. 

Pick out three gourds  and  sketch them, overlapping, on a piece of bond paper which is the same FORMAT as your watercolor paper.  Think of the negative space. Show Garret’s example   Do your designing on tissue paper (quickly!) and draw hard on the back to trace VERY LIGHTlY onto your cobalt blue and raw sienna paper.  Paint the entire gourds with a medium wash of Auroelin or raw sienna yellow.  Develop the gourds step by step, always thinking of where the light hits and the shadows appear. (In this case I used a little cobalt violet (transparent) and lunar black (granulated for the shadows...)

On the #2 paper,  create some “sunset” or sunrise clouds in the yellow sky with some soft alizarin crimson and purple ( mix alizarin crimson and pthalo blue or cobalt blue  to make purple). work wet with this part, then let dry while you work on your gourds  and put in a bluish mountain range toward the bottom  (read page 88 and 89)  Work back and forth between #1 and #2

3.  Old hands.. Sunrise or sunset? You choose.   Again, demonstrate how you can match value “tabs”
 
Read all through before you start.
 Wash one entire 1/4 sheet in pale auroelin yellow

  On  a smaller piece of WC paper, do some cloud studies while you wait for the bigger sheet to dry. Do #1with an orange and greenish  sky and the setting sun behind the clouds. (see page 86 and my example ....You can substitute a light value of alizarin crimson for rose madder)

 Do #2 with daylight clouds  with the sun behind the clouds.  Pay special attention to the shapes of the clouds as they recede in space, and the color of their “ragged” edges....look at values...use your tabs. Squint damnit! 

Think about the negative space (sky) and where the light is coming from (in this case behind the clouds), and how the sky seems to lighten as it goes down to the horizon. Soften some of the edges of the clouds while the paint is wet, and be sure to keep in mind that clouds seem to "flatten" on the bottom and become more narrow as they move away from you.

For the bigger sheet covered in auroelin yellow wash.  Pg. 88-89

Think of gazing either east (sunrise) or west (sunset) through a landscape of trees and far away hills or mountains.  In both, the color would be warmer and more intense at the edge of land.  What steps would you take ( write them down if it helps) to evoke the fierce exultation of the sun rising on a cold winter morning through the bare trees?  Or, the bittersweet end of a winter day as the sun disappears behind the mountains and casts the tree skeletons into sharp relief?  Think how the long shadows cast by early or late sun can “marry” the trees and their bases to the land ( and show the curves of the land as they are cast in long bars across the ground)  Remember, shadows are TRANSPARENT and usually COOL.

Work as quickly and as emotionally as you can, using large brushes until the end.  You have the information and techniques to do this now.  Be Brave.  Be Bold.  Go to the edge of your comfort level and if the work  doesn’t turn out, you can always do something else on the back.  Try to finish in this class session.  If it ends up somewhat abstract, that’s cool.  Like the poem below, "Make big shadows"
If you have to wait for an area to dry, work on your night landscape or try some more clouds or tree shapes on your scrap paper.

And here is one of my favorite poems .......

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Flare up like flame and make big shadows.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going.  No feeling is final.

  Marie Ranier Rilke

Assignment:  Both old and new students read pages 24 to 31

New students..........try placing some trees in front of your sunset.  And, try  finishing your gourds.  If you like, get wild and crazy with the remaining colors.  Experiment.

Old students........do another sunset or sunrise if you like....place a grove of trees in the foreground, or a reflecting lake.  How about some fiery clouds?

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.

Summer's Last Sigh...Watercolor class #5

There's a grove in Lincoln Park that opens up like a cathedral...the branches are gothic supports for the sky ceiling, the floor is laid with laths of green and gold,  and in the afternoon, the sun is a giant golden monstrance on an altar of leaves.

Water Color Class # 5.....

Not a lot of instruction for this class...just reminders of working from light to dark, large to small shapes, top to bottom, background to forground.  Remember, this is just a set of guidelines for traditional transparent watercolor.  With any medium, there are many different approaches. 

No pronouncements from on high from this woman.

Lesson 5.......Review and Landscape.

Look at finished assignments.....Show types of paper. Different weights and the challenges of working with each...and the hot press, cold press and rough with the different qualities...

Review....hand out “Maxims.... Value, relative size, grouping, negative space, etc.

Choose a Landscape from the photographs I brought.  Interpret it with your watercolor.  Remember, where the water ends is your horizon line.
Do a thumbnail first (show sample) of three values in pencil...light, medium and dark on the same format. (show sample)
Don’t use any color straight from the tube!

Show mine...start light...light to dark., top to bottom, small to large, etc.  Match the VALUE with whatever color you are using.

For the next class, please bring one 1/4 section of GOOD PAPER and two 1/8 sections of GOOD PAPER already taped.

Next class will be the last of this series.  Will start the next six units on October 27th....let me know if you are planning to join us.  I need ten people to make a class.

....and my Boston ivy is burning out of control on my concrete garden wall....

Light in the trees

I tried again with my sun through the late summer trees, and I'm happier with this.  I think I'll do a series of these pieces.  This is probably closer to my true self as an artist.  Not the subject, but the approach....a little messy, more emotional, more abstract. I can do the exquisite,  controlled pieces  for clients, but for this personal work  I want the feeling, not every leaf.  Transcendant yearning, awe.

"Oh how that glittering taketh me!"....Robert Herrick

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/25/09  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"

Perils of Pauline, or the challenges of painting in the woods

A lovely late summer afternoon in Lincoln Park...listening to birds singing, the high wind in the trees and the lulling wash of the waves in the beach below.  I painted for three hours and loved it....hidden in the weeds, off the beaten track.

BUT DON'T GET ME STARTED WHEN IT COMES TO THE SHEER ICKINESS AND SOMETIMES DANGER OF THE WEIRDO GUYS THAT HANG OUT AND RUIN THE OTHERWISE SERENITY AND CALM OF THESE EXPERIENCES!!!!!

Today I talked to another woman who was painting in the same area at the same time, and she had to call the cops because some creep in the bushes near her was getting off on the Highly Sexual Context of  seeing her paint images of trees on canvas. 

And some years ago, my friend Gina actually had a naked guy jump out of the bushes at her!  Fortunately, Gina is a fast runner.

OK.  I am reminded to paint with friends, carry mace and a cell and watch my back at all times.  It is a fact of this modern world.  It still makes my feminist gorge rise.

A malediction on these creeps. May their fundaments shrivel and fall off in the filth  of their own making. 

Classes, Yup! Plein Aire, Yes!

Plein Aire painting is a joy and an aggravation.  The serendipity of centering a mosquito right in the middle of a divine splooch of yellow and green, the popping and groaning of joints when you sit on the cold hard ground, the approval or disapproval of onlooking squirrels, crows and people.  The sweet person who wants to tell you all about how his mother used to paint (before she had all those demanding children and a grumpy husband).

There is an energy that goes back and forth between the painter and the actual landscape that, on good days when the planets are in proper arrangement, practically vibrates on the paper. It's fast and loose (mostly loose), so you are never sure what you will arrive at.  You also get the whole spectrum......the sounds and smells and textures that you never get from the lovely but dead photograph.  This embeds the memory forever, and when you are drowsing at the edge of sleep , the vision of this experience will accompany you to your dreams.

I still remember, in 1969, painting at the edge of the Hein Palace lake in Kyoto.  I was looking across a bed of iris, across the shimmering lake, to the incredible delicate Hein Temple.  The purple haze of the iris bed, the dragonflies skimming the lake and the polite whispers of the Japanese behind me..."Ah so, des ka" they murmured.

So, I sigue into An Event going on in the World and Seattle..........

Paint Seattle / Worldwide Plein Air Paint Out / Call to Artists
Seattle joins the world for Paint Seattle, part of the Worldwide Plein Air Paint Out from September 11 -13, 2009.  Plein air artists are invited to create their art on site throughout the city as artists around the world simultaneously paint plein air.
Deadline: 9/7/09
 
Details:
Seattle joins the world for Paint Seattle, a part of the Worldwide Plein Air Paint Out from September 11 -13, 2009.  Plein air artists are invited to create their art on site throughout the city as artists around the world simultaneously paint plein air.
Artists wishing to participate in Paint Seattle should complete the registration process on the Walking on Water Gallery and Studios website.  There is no fee. Artists will be included on the Paintout Map and can show in the Gallery on Sunday at the Artist's Reception and Exhibition from 3-6pm at 4333 Fremont Ave N, Seattle.  16 to 20 works will be selected by Walking on Water and be displayed until October 13.  All art during this event must be created in 'plein air' during the three-day event.
For more information and to register visit:
http://walkingonwaterfremont.com/


Deadline: September, 7, 2009

I plan to be down, for this event,  at Lincoln Park again, painting away.  I'll try to be more specific on where I'll be if you contact me via e-mail.  Feel free to join me.  No instruction or conversation.  Just being a Tree, or the spangled leaves or a patch of glorious weeds, and splodging and flailing away with paint and abandon.

And!  Watercolor classes Will Resume at CandP Coffee House..6pm to 9pm on September 8...will go in units of 6 classes for $120.  Contact me if you plan to attend so I can arrange for tables and I'll send you the details and Materials list  Come one, come all.  See ya.

Full Circle

I ran across this when I was looking for entries for a poster competition.  I painted this mural  a few years ago on a plaster panel for Jergen's Paint, a family owned, high end paint company in Seattle. And herein lies a tale.

In 1991 I left South Carolina in a 15 foot van and a pickup in tow. Broke, scared that I couldn't make a living, and anxious to do any kind of work, I applied with my portfolio to everything from design firms to artist in residence to house painting companies.  Mr. Larry Jergens was the first to offer me a job as a house painter and I took it. I was the only woman working with a crew of very competent union painters and carpenters, and I was next to useless.  After a month, I was offered a more appropriate job, and I went to Mr. Jergens, thanked him for giving me a chance, and we parted on good terms.

About 12 years later, Mr. Jergen's son Tim asked me to do a painting for his atrium, and his plasterer Gavin did the plaster panel and I painted the ornamental  cartouche and birds with the iconic Washington Mt. Ranier scene in its center.  Tim was pleased.

Note the paint stained drop cloth draped at the top along with the hanging  brush.  Below it is  Mr. Larry Jergen's autograph...cleverly cleaned up and stylized by my awesome letter designer friend, Iskra Johnson.  Below that, if you look carefully, you will see a paint bucket.

There is a narrow band of faux marble on the inner edge of the outside molding, and I needed a delicate fillet of some sort to finish it out. I went to a doll house store on Phinney Ridge and a very old woman helped me find the proper tiny molding.  She would bring out miniature things to show me, cupping them in her hand and cooing...."Isn't this just precious?."......or, "this is soooooo sweet!" 

This experience alone was worth the whole project.

The Crow's Complaint

When I walked down 4oth today with my deposit for the bank and some letters to mail, I heard several crows cawing loudly in a mountain ash on the corner.
The tree had been carefully trimmed, so there was lots of space between the limbs and leaves.  The composition was so beautiful...the complements of blue and orange, the sheen of blue on the crow's black feathers, and the flicker of sun along the bark and in the leaves.  I stopped for a moment to "memorize" the vision.

What really struck me after I stood there and looked for a while was the intensity of this August 1, 2009 sky.  It reminded me of October skies, but with a heat and glow of summer.  This blue was so hard and flat, and yet so luminous that I felt if I threw a rock at the scolding crow and missed, I would shatter the sky and it would fall all around me in shards of blue.