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aladyx — Just for Robert
Published: 2007-06-07 00:55:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 832; Favourites: 18; Downloads: 22
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Description
9X12 watercolor painting on Arches 140# paper. Painted for Robert Sloan, a great friend.Image is less vibrant the original and scanner has cropped to 8 1/2 X 11. Light area at top right is due to light getting under scanner. (I know, I know, ...use the digital camera)!
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Comments: 40
Thank you. Sorry for the late reply. Here is link [link] my friend Robert's work. He is a great artist.
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Thanks you so much for your kind comments. I am sorry I have taken so long to respond. I hope you understand.
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You are welcome my friend!
Not a problem, I myself find it hard sometimes to respond.
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Thank you so much for your comment. I'm pleased you like my work!
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I simply love this and honestly, I don't have much to say (that's rare! LOL) I just know it is brilliant!
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Wow! How long apart did you do this compared to your Bird of Paradise I? This is so much more vibrant and alive. The other is technically good but this has real life and flow in it.
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The one for Robert was done before the other. Robert's has much more love in it! I just wanted to do a quick study on the last one. It actually has a bid on ebay and so will be sold.
Thanks so much for the fav!
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Good for you! Well, the one for Robert is just breath-taking and full of life force. You are most welcome.
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Thank you so much, Moniki! I appreciate your support and am glady you like my paintings!
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Oh, I love this very much! Lucky Robert! He deserves it though, because he's a special guy! 
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Yes he surely is! Thanks for faving this one!
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My pleasure! I love these flowers and intend to paint them from my own photos. I took dozens of photos of them.
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Well, Robert sure is one lucky guy to get this lovely painting! Brilliant work! 
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Thanks much! Thank you for the fav on this painting.
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WOW!!!!!!
Perfection. It's incredible. It's leaping off the screen at me, all those rich colourful washes flowing back and forth, distinct shapes and wild flowing colours, it's like it's flowing in my blood as much as the sight in my eyes. Thank you so much! It is incredible!
And at the same time I know what your scanner does and what mine does, and that it'll be much brighter in person. I have to get it framed, with glass, no question about it. This needs to hang right in here and my other wall needs rearranging -- the wall that I can see both from the bed and from my chair... the herbal prints can both go into the hall and the little iris oil pastel can jump to the other wall and that'll give it a place of prominence right between Reef and Black Eyed Susans.
Thank you! 
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So glad you like it! I wrote the colors and brands of paint I used on the back in case you are interested.
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Ooooh thank you! Yes, I am very interested. I'm just starting to migrate into artist grade watercolour and yours are so incredible. I'm not sure if the texture is different across different brands either, though I know there's a big difference between Winsor & Newton Artist pans and Cotman pans and that the Cotman pans are a lot better than most of what I tried before them.
Hee hee, my package comes today with all fourteen new colours! Perylene Maroon, Winsor Violet, Hookers Green... Hookers Green was missing from my Lukas set and I wound up with two Chromium Oxide greens instead, though that's a good colour I don't have anything with Hookers Green yet. I am so excited and all ready to try doing something new!
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I notice a big difference in some colors, but don't think it is a biggie for many of them. I read a review or saw a chart somewhere that rated the different brands, but now I don't remember which magazine. I love some of Daniel Smith's, like the quinacridones and hemotites. I was buying the 3 for 14.95 deals he was promoting for awhile and some of them really charge into other colors really well, but some of his colors are kind of sticky and require quite a bit of mixing before they really come to life.
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Oooh yeah, it was Daniel Smith, not Daler-Rowney that you introduced me to. If you link me to the website that has them I'll stick it on my Favorites again. I lost all my bookmarks when my other laptop got unusable, so I have been re-finding all the sites that I use one by one.
Quinacridones fascinate me and hematite is a cool mineral. Those were pretty large tubes for 3 for $14.95, weren't they? That's a good price. I realized after I got my order with my tiny 5ml tubes of Winsor & Newton Artist, that I had just paid the highest price per ml for any watercolors on Blick, bar one -- I think there's just one brand that runs about the same and a dollar more per tube for small tubes. But their prices on the 14ml and 37ml tubes start to get very reasonable!
So now I'm looking at them as something where it will be initially costly to try new colors, but when I find the ones I'll use all the time it'll be cheaper to go buy the biggest tube and replace it less often. And get 14ml tubes of less often used colors. Still, I was able to get a good starting range this time using the smallest-tube price so I'm not feeling too bad about it. I know some colors off the top that I'll definitely need the 37ml tubes. French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna probably top the list.
I could do a painting entirely in French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna together, if it was a landscape, getting all the blues and greens and even a yellowish color by choosing a mix close to the Sienna and then thinning it a lot. I tried this on the first mixing chart I made for Winsor & Newton Artist watercolors, the one that's up on the current top page of my Scraps.
I get frustrated with tube paints where the binder separates from the pigment and they need mixing. It's much harder to mix paint that's in a tube than paint that's in a jar. Thanks for telling me the Daniel Smith's watercolors behave this way, I'll watch out for it -- and try to figure out something that I can shove down into a tube to do stirring. I might try the tiny goldtone spoon that's in my small sumi-e set, it's supposed to be for mixing or stirring the red paste ink that goes on the sealstones or something. But it's got a very small spoon shaped tip, and so if it's a large or wide mouth tube, I might get the end of it inside to swirl it around a lot and stir it easier than trying it with a toothpick. Or make a micro-spoon out of metal with my Dremel tool.
Hmm... if I took copper tubing that's narrow, like only an eighth of an inch thick, and used the Dremel or tinsnips to put a slit in the end of the new tool up about a quarter inch or three eighths, then put the slit part on a vise and spread the sides open and clipped them rounded with a tinsnips, I might create a mini-scoop stirrer that would work for putting into the mouths of threaded paint tubes to remix binder and pigment before squirting it out.
When I had paint tubes go that way -- and it can happen with oils or acrylics or gouache too -- one thing that I worry about is that the blorping run of thin binder that comes out will fill the pan and the mix on the pan is thinner than the tube paint was at first. Which would not in itself be as much of a problem as what to do with the too-thick rest of it that's in the tube after doing that several times. Getting liquid gum arabic or dissolving some of the powder into water and then replacing a few drops into the tube might help restore the original consistency if you've had this happen more than once on a watercolor tube. It is the main component of the binder and would restore them if they got too thick.
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danielsmith.com will get you there. Yes, the 3 for 14.95 were very generous tubes.
Oh, yeah, Ultra blu and b. sienna. I have always loved to see them together. I did an abstract that is hanging in my daughter's dining room with that combo and have always loved it.
I have gotten into the habit of stirring some of those misbehaving colors in the tube with an old brush that I have loaded with water, but it sounds like your idea would be better. Yes, I am concerned about the binder running out, too. I do have a bottle of gum arabic on hand. Sounds as if we are both at about the same level of frugality! lol I hate to waste anything, especially paint supplies! Many would just throw out the tube - not me - I cut it open with manicure scissors!
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Thank you for giving me the link! Not only will I be able to find it the next time I want to order watercolors, but in surfing the site I found dozens of good articles.
Hmm, yeah that'd work too, using an old brush loaded with water. The up side with toothpicks and gum arabic though is that you would not get loose brush hairs from old brushes getting into the paint as you stir it. Gum arabic is wonderful stuff. I bought some years and years ago at a medieval event at the same time I bought a set of pigments to grind and a glass muller and plate, which I was thinking of doing egg tempera with.
On the Daniel Smith website I even found an article on how to make egg tempera with pigments, water and fresh eggs! The techniques were there step by step including what other ingredients would help and suggestions on which pigments grind in which ways, which ones work best for it. The problem for me is that it doesn't last very long after it's made but would take some work making the medium, so I would have to be in a particularly good stretch physically to be able to both make the paint and use it within the one or two day window while it's usable.
So maybe what I'll do is use the gum arabic instead, or buy Sennelier egg tempera medium for it which apparently lasts quite a bit longer and gets stored in tubes once you make it up. But I might do it once just to have the real medieval experience, with a color I know I'll use a lot of in one painting that's rather small and can be done sitting down -- better to waste most of the egg than to throw out great wads of paint because I got overambitious and then wiped out physically. Heh, what I need are medieval apprentices doing the labor and handing me paint, then finishing the easy parts of the paintings. lol
With the gum arabic I may turn most of those pigments into good watercolors and enjoy the fun of having done them myself. I am going to use it, just going to be a bit cautious about the egg tempera itself even though it's very beautiful when it's done right. It handles more like gouache. Brush strokes are very distinct but it's not quite as opaque, layered translucent strokes do reflect through each other so a shaded area could become very rich looking.
When I think about the way most artists use the palettes, a tube that's stuck shut and opened from the rear could just go into its spot on the palette and be allowed to dry there till it used up. The problem with those is mostly that they weren't well mixed and separated within the tube. I've had very few of them dry completely solid, and even then I think soaking it in a little water might soften it enough to dissolve, mix and pour into something else like a palette cup.
Thanks again for the website! I'm enjoying all of its articles.
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I have thought about egg tempera too but it seems like it would be a lot of work. I am too lazy to try it. I ordered some casein a couple of years ago but it is too chalky for my taste. I never really gave it much of a chance and may work with it again some time. I did buy the medium for it too.
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Ooh, that would help a lot with casein, having the medium handy. When I look at doing egg tempera I dither between authentic medieval recreation, do it exactly the way the article said and find references and do a showoffy historical recreation project... or just wait and sometime buy the set that comes with a bottle of the medium and use that. Presumably their bottled egg tempera medium does have some preservatives or something that lets it last like linseed oil and other mediums do. I wouldn't have to use it up as soon as I opened it or mixed it.
The latter is probably what I'll do. I drifted out of the medieval society anyway and interesting as it would be to try egg tempera in its original form, I'd probably do better saving that for a one-off experiment and doing a near-monochrome in it so that I don't waste that much paint. Make up lots of the egg mix but only enough paint for the small project and just do it whenever -- but learn to use it on the Sennelier set first so that I know what I'm doing once I try that egg mix. In my medieval references it also mentioned using the reserved white of the egg, mixed half and half with water, as a varnish for the finished painting.
This also made sense to me because if egg white dries on a counter, good luck ever getting it off. lol
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I'll be interested to hear how it goes if you get to it.
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Purr thanks! Something like that, I'm bound to journal it in progress and go into detail because the process is so interesting.
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Thank you for your comment and the fav!
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Beautiful. I bet Robert loves it. You are a very talented artist.
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Thank you! Glad you enjoy my work.
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