Carrasco Studio

Gather Ye Rosebuds

 

We had a fine time with painting images of flowers at Susan Allemand's studio. There were ten students, from beginners to professionals, and they did great. As I tell students, everyone starts where they are at.

We worked with Golden Liquid Acrylics on Roclon canvas, and we talked about how this combination worked especially well with painting flowers.  Flower petals, for the most part, are transparent, tender forms, and watercolor paintings of flowers, because of this transparency, are especially effective.  The techniques of watercolor....glazes, transparent levels of pigment...are easily transferable to working with acrylics on canvas....especially  Golden Liquid Acrylics mixed with medium or water on Roclon canvas. 

Roclon canvas doesn't need to be stretched before painting, and because of it's unique blend of cotton and polyester and texture, washes and glazes of acrylics go on beautifully.  The artist has a choice to built texture and opaque paint if they wish.

The class tried some single blooms....roses and peonies first.....and some did bouquets later.

And some rugged individuals did palm trees! (It pleases me when I see people pushing in different directions.)  I DO NOT teach splinter skills.  These techniques are effective for many approaches and subjects...from abstract to figurative....flowers petals, water, glass and splashes of color with great marks.  Try them all.

I get depressed and irked when students strive for a perfect copy of my work, take it home and put it on their website as their originals.  First of all, they are not me and their body talks differently from my body. Secondly, it always looks like student work because....well, it does. No ifs ands or buts about it.  Also, it crosses an ethical line.

Your creativity is a precious gift. If you never use it and continue to copy and copy, it will atrophy.  If you use an age old motif, ie. an acanthus leaf border, somehow expand it to make it your own.

I also demonstrated how I created borders with acrylic metallic tube paint (more body) on Roclon. (Roclon doesn't fray) and mounted it with wallpaper paste on a rigid surface.   With the right paste, you can remove the mural if you want after a few years without doing damage to either the mural or the wall.  Another method is to attach grommets and hang the painting like a tapestry.  Lori Wilson of Golden Acrylics showed me how to do that.  Another tapestry look can be achieved by hanging the work over a painted dowel.

Transparency, layers of color, organic forms overlapping in subtle arrangements of color and shape and value.  Sounds like a rose, doesn't it? 

Name this Rose                             ©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/23/42                                                             

 

Birds and the Bees, Promotion and Saving Sick Children

Carrasco Promotion Panel   30"x 20"    ©Jennifer M. Carrasco   2/15/2005

I think it was Auden who said poetry won't save the world, but maybe art donations to causes might help alleviate some misery. 

        

So, after schlepping down to one of my favorite causes for the 400th time with a matted and framed watercolor to be auctioned off, I put together a system that will be donate-able and save ME the  misery and expense of framing, matting and schlepping.

        

I painted this fancy border, then I tacked on a photo of my latest big project in the middle, and included a  brochure and bio and cards with a certificate awarding the donor 2 hours of decorative painting. With the stipulation, of course, that it will apply to within the city limits and be claimed within 6 months. 

I didn't want to drive all the way to Enumclaw.

        
This donation of hours would cover some hummingbirds over the sink or a flight of butterflies above the tub, and it's a win/win for both me and the donor, since often they want more.  Ergo, more hours and $. Both of us are happy. 

Or the donor forgets to claim the service and the charity and I am happy.  And got some free publicity.

        

I do love painting on a dark ground.  It is so easy.....the images pop and the ground affects the modeling and color in lovely ways.  With this piece I was inspired by  a beautiful decorative French illustration in a 19th century reference book.  I took the concept and ran with it, and it was one of those projects that just flowed.  I did very little sketching....and kept adding animals and flourishes and visual jokes (the mouse and the little fruits watching Kermit  on TV, the butterfly carrying a love letter, etc., etc) and a portrait of myself on a cell phone in the upper left hand corner..."Call me, Call me!"

                            

I finished it in a day. A record. That sort of serendipity is rare.

The material is acrylic gouache painted on black gessoed foam core with some sparkly stuff applied around the edges. 

                                        

Bagheera

My friend Tania Seabeck mentioned on Facebook that there is a vegetarian spider named Bagheera kiplingi.  I was struck by the name....in the Jungle Book by Kipling, Bagheera, the panther,  is a close companion of the boy Mowgli. 

"We be of one blood, thee and I" says Bagheera to Mowgli.  For some reason,  the statement and it's old speech syntax gives me a frisson of pleasure and dread, much as certain passages of music puts  shivers up my spine.

Several years ago, I did this painting  of a great panther and his familiar (spirit companion? devotee) for a friend who felt an affinity for this animal. In the painting, the human and the panther both have blood red flower hearts  and the  boy dances toward the big reclining cat.

I think with any profound spiritual connection, one experiences an alliance of love and fear...and approaches shyly,  obliquely before such grace, such  power and beauty. A dance of terror and devotion.

Attack of the Teen Aged Ducks

Ducks at Highpoint pond        ©  Jennifer M. Carrasco 1/21/10

The mallards born and raised on this pond since last spring are used to being fed, and while they don't really attack, they are very enthusiastic when they see people park themselves at the edge of the water.  " O boy", they exclaim in quacks, "bread on the water", and they churn over, with chevrons of reflected light in their wake.  If you feed them, fights and exclamations ensue.  Splashes, sparkles and honks.

A very pleasant evening in the late summer sun was spent with friends in the meadow, and later, on my front lawn with roses, hummingbirds and a sunset Tiepolo sky.  Thanks for coming!

For the stalwart who attempted the West Seattle bridge construction project and turned away in despair, I apologize for not reminding you about the hideous traffic.  In the years to come, we will again have a convenient connection to the mainland.  Just remember, if you plan to visit at this point, pack food, water and a sleeping bag.

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 7/21/10  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.

Hola! What lurks in yon grass?

I'm inviting you to join me on next Tuesday evening, July 20, 6-9 pm and spend some time painting and/or drawing in the meadow, next to the HighPoint pond and all the ducks, barn swallows, cedar waxwings, goldfinches, dragon flies and clovers and grasses, and reflections in the water and fresh air. And it's FREE.  It's accessible to everyone...nice level walks, sloping meadows and viewpoints everywhere.  Tame, safe, and very pretty.

One of my students, Engrid, mentioned to me that she was noticing all the different lovely shapes of the meadow grasses.....the bobbing plumes, the delicate patterns of the crisscrossing blades and stems.  Think about it.  Right in front of our eyes!  We must draw and paint them!  And bring your camera too....

 

Bring what you need for creating, composing or just getting composed, and come sit in the grass with me.  I won't be teaching or even talking, for that matter....just sitting in a peaceful little meadow in the middle of the city  with my watercolors and pen. 

The meadows of the PNW are miraculous to this very Eastern Washingtonian, (Pomeroy Washington in Garfield County, to be exact).  Not only are they lush and full of clovers and wildflowers, but THERE ARE NO RATTLESNAKES!

Let's say hello to summer....it's on the wane already and we'll need to fix it in our hearts to help us brave the rains of coming winter.  And, of course, if it does rain on the 2oth, all bets are off.

 And, by the way, whoever sent me that case of beer via FedEx (with no message).....A big thankyou!  Manna from heaven.  Who needs roses. (I have my own)

 

Snagged

I was weeding out my hedge of wild roses (Rugosa...the alizarin crimson ones) and I was caught, literally and visually, by the thorns on cluster of buds.  So beautiful...the fresh green...just a little bit frosted, and the way the sepals curved around the crimson rose bud and terminated in a flaring tip.  There was something else as well....

"I have to paint it," I thought, or I'll never figure it out. So last night I painted a water color of it....held it back and squinted, and said to myself, "that something is missing."Then I noticed the edges of the sepals were a thin line of buff white.  So I brought out my gouache titanium white and painted a narrow line of white along the sepal edges.  There, exactly!  And yet....there still was something else.

I put it aside and started on my drawing for the new series of murals, and then it occurred to me.  The buds reminded me of those sumptuous Scalamandre tassels; the wrapped round knobs of gleaming silk at their tops, before the threads spread out into fringes.

There are two points to this.  One is how nature and the material world renew and shape our designs and art, and the other is that I'll miss all this if I don't stop to draw/paint it.  Photography, well maybe....but  a camera shot doesn't always demand the long careful looking involved in drawing and painting.

As birdsong , banging on a can or the sound of cars in the rain can extrapolate into music, the visual correlations of a flower bud, a crow feather, or  a flipflop are there to expand into art if I take the time to look with drawing and painting.