The Other Kind of Painting. In the Office. With Stencils.

I'm back to working on the office.  For a while it housed a very special house guest, and so the office got moved into the family room.  This turned the family room into a bit of a mess.  As accustomed as I am to messes, I don't like them to hang around forever.  Spiders (eeee!) like to make nasty little spidery nests in undisturbed, messy areas.  The ick is icky and creepy--a bad combination.

First, I have to finish painting.  I could have opted for plain walls and a plain ceiling--the condition in which it existed as a guest room--but nooOOOoo, I had to start looking through books.  Of course I found a great paint scheme which involved stencils.  I have a laser to help me mark straight lines, so putting stripes on the walls was only somewhat arduous.  

Stripes and stencils?  

It gets better.

Because of course stenciled leaves (I had to pick something with delicate details, naturally) within broad, widely-spaced stripes wouldn't look as nice without some sort of border highlighting the closet and window.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  For now I'm just going to go into that darned office so I can start stenciling the stripes I've got on the wall so far.  I've got about half (maybe more) of the stripes filled with their background so I can put some of the furniture in its proper place.  I only want to do that so that I have room to set up the laser so that I can stripe the rest of the walls, but getting the office furnished even that little bit more will be an added bonus.  I might even go a little crazy and put some books on the shelves.

Clearly, life is one big adventure.  Now, to have at, with paint brushes, sponges, and latex.

Painting ... the House

Normally when I say I'm painting, I mean on canvas or watercolor paper.  This time it's the exterior of our house.

But you know, the finesse-stuff is kinda all the same.  Sure, I'm not going to put a mural on the side of the house or anything (though I'm tempted to put up the occasional 1/4" ladybug here and there like little physical Easter eggs) but paying attention to brush stroke and line is still the same.  The main thing that's different is structure.  I don't have to worry too much about the canvas/paper/ground on a painting.  Prepping surfaces like that for the main event is really pretty easy.  On the house, we have to wash, and scrape off flaking paint, and fill in those little holes that bugs occasionally make in siding.  

It's looking really nice.  I like it, anyway.  And it feels like a familiar task, even though I've never done it.  Sure, I've done the inside walls, but never the outside except for some trim touching-up I did at our prior home.  I'm comfortable with this work, like I've done it a lot.

By the end, I will have done it a lot, I guess.  It's a big house.  Maybe when I'm done, we'll have a grand re-opening or something.  Toast the accomplishment.  Speaking of which, here's a big thank you to my son, who has done most of the work this time.  Did I just say most? you ask.  Yep.  I've had to work, and he's taken up the brush and roller in my place.  Thanks, kiddo.  I very literally couldn't have done this without you, especially with the rainy season looming.

Yay boy, yay painting, yay new-looking house.

A Writer's Process

I don't usually have trouble keeping BIC (butt in chair) but some days ...

Perhaps a writer might decide that the house is becoming too much of a distraction, and some cleaning has to happen. This writer might, then, do the dishes, followed by a carpet steam-cleaning that gets about half the living room damp and the upstairs mostly uninhabitable due to carpet shampoo stench. The downstairs might be even worse, due to slowly decomposing rat nests. The solution? Paint that unattractive, scraped-up section of wall under the window seat RED.

The writer might have some RED paint from a previous paint job. Perhaps her daughter wanted her closet door trimmed in red, and the writer reflects, with a gentle smile on her face, on the fact that the RED paint job looks fabulous to this day. So she could therefore find a partial quart in the laundry room, and take it upstairs. Of course all writers have painter's tape just laying around, rolls and rolls of it from a sale at a hardware store.

(See, packrats aren't all bad.)

It might be, then, that after the writer tapes off the area and pats a little RED paint around on the wall, she will recall that this is a particularly translucent red (Velvet Cake, Miller Paint) and that she'll need some serious painting supplies. So she must merrily go, singing a song, to the hardware store where she will pick up some phosphate-free TSP (the rest can be used on something else, say a deck re-stain) and fancy primer on sale for half off! which she kindly asks to have some red put into it ...

... so that it's PINK.

Sadly, this does not change the fact that rather translucent reds remain translucent and any area she happens to accidentally double touch or add a little extra paint will be noticeably darker than the rest. The writer may contemplate this problem, and decide the only solution is to go to Home Depot where she has a gift card, and get a different RED.

Of course writers who are also watercolor artists can be wise in the ways of RED paint, and so the writer is somewhat likely to select the correct RED, a slightly warmer, opaque red called Red Delicious (Glidden Paint.) Being a writer has its disadvantages, though, because writers often forget to use the gift card and just swipe their debit card.

The result will have no choice but to turn out fabulous. The carpet stench must in time subside from extended drying, and therefore the writer may (the next day) at last breathe a happy sigh and write. Later, she will have the option to remove the painter's tape at her leisure, with the assistance of a very sharp knife.

Sharp knives do come in handy sometimes, as do the DHs who carry them.

Just a pic

Two finished stencils

Still Painting

If you've ever worked with stencils, then you know.  They seem like such a simple, elegant, easy thing to do.  Everything from conception to cutting them out to execution is simple.  Right?

Of course!  Which is why I decided (shut up, stop laughing at me!) that I could take a stencil from a book about stenciling I got quite some time ago, modify it (I can still hear you laughing) to get rid of the fleur de lis and add ivy leaves (spades if you prefer though I deliberately made the leaf asymmetrical) and lay it out properly.  You see, in the original it wasn't even.  It was wider than it was long, which wasn't a big deal, but when you folded it in half either way, it was crooked.  So I straightened it all out.  It only took, oh, about two hours working with a ruler and a curved edge.  And now I'm in the midst of slicing it out with a razor.  The best part?  I won't be done when I'm finished cutting it out.  No, that's just the beginning.  I have to treat the watercolor paper so that it doesn't absorb too much moisture and warp.  And then I have to actually tape this thing up, stencil it on, move it down to the next marked spot and stencil again.  All the way around the room.  Well, okay, I can skip the wall with the oh-my-gawds-what-were-they-thinking glue-on paneling that's peeling off now.  (I have plans for that wall later.)

Real artists use acetate and a hot acetate cutting thingy to cut out a stencil.  I don't have acetate and a hot acetate cutting thingy, so I'm doing this the old-fashioned way, the way they used to do it before acetate.

Wish me luck.  I'm gonna need it.

Project apace

I'm painting.  There's paint, there's brushes, there's paint pans, there are cats everywhere.  Carey supervised for a while but got bored.  The other cats come and go, mostly when they think they're most likely to get away with shedding hair on a wet wall.  

These are some pics of the crappy first coat.

Actually, the trim has two coats, so it's in the pretty good coat stage.  I don't think a third coat will be necessary.  Trim paint is quite a bit denser than wall paint.  

The other walls will be about the same brightness as they are now, but warmer.  Think pale peach.  In retrospect I probably could have gotten away with a much darker peach, but sometimes we don't learn these kinds of things until we get home.  I can live with pale peach.  Right now they're a cold, grayish white.  Obviously the pic shows the walls as being warmer and more yellow than they actually are.

That teal wall will have IKEA shelves over it eventually so it won't be unrelenting TEAL like it is now.  But I like it dark.  It definitely adds character to the room.

And, for my next trick, I will continue to paint the walls.  It's like magic, only it's slow and messy.  Oh, wait, magic is slow and messy.  NM, it's just like magic.

Paint? Not yet

Today has been prep day for painting (wall kind, not fine art kind.)  I was hoping to get some actual paint on the walls today, but it's almost 1am local time here and I've just finished filling in all the holes in the wall.

I may do some hand-painted details around the room after the regular paint is up, if I'm feeling brave.  Stuff like that is notoriously tricky, so I'm not planning anything really big or dramatic--maybe some leaves around light switches and such.  If I didn't have so many other writing and art projects on my list, I might plan out a trompe l'oeil on the section of wall between the sliding glass door and the big window.  In particular I'd love to do an ivy plant growing out of a Green Man pot with maybe a butterfly on one of the leaves and probably a caterpillar or two.

With those sorts of things it's best to first make a master sketch that you then guard with your life so that if it works out you can use it over and over again.  You transfer the master sketch onto canvas or, preferably, a board painted with the same latex you have painted on the wall as a ground.  You then paint your subject in oils if you have an oil-based paint on the wall or acrylics if it's latex, taking notes and/or pics as you go along.  If you're satisfied with your project, you then transfer the sketch onto the wall and paint it step by step (skipping any errors and making improvements as you can) and then you can sell the painting on the canvas or board.  If it didn't turn out, you shouldn't put it on the wall!  Just paint over the board or canvas and start again.  It's much less aggravating  perfecting your project on a board than making a mistake on the wall, especially since trompe l'oeils are notoriously hard to cover.  It's doable, but you have to treat it just like dark paint on the wall--a couple of coats of primer, and then two or three coats of your wall paint.  Why are they tough to cover?  Because even really good paint is just a wee bit translucent.  With a monocolor on a wall, there may be some of the underlying color showing through your paint, but not enough to notice anything but the most overt change in hue from your paint chip.  When there's a pattern, though, the eye is really good at picking up subtle variations in a monotone and you'll see just that hint of pattern under the paint unless you have enough pigment to cover the pattern so the eye can no longer detect it.

By the way, there's a particularly wonderful Green Man here, though it's not my favorite so far.  My favorite was created by my good friend Roz, and it's hanging on her wall at her house.  I've yet to find one that equals the depth of emotion and expression.

Cut to black

Chatted on the phone today (actually, talked my poor friend's ear off!) and discussed, among many other things, writing (of course) and art.

It always amazes me how useful it is to compare painting and writing.  Everything from contrast to negative space can be applied in a teaching way to writing.  Knowing this, I shouldn't have really been surprised when I described a technique for preserving the best parts of a painting and painting the rest black and C.S. came back with how someone could do that in writing.  But instead of painting in black around the preserved areas, a writer could link the best portions of a story with fresh writing.

I have to try this.  I have just the story I want to do this with, too. 

The sickness spreads, and paint geekiness

It's official now.  The girl is sick too.  

I went to the doc yesterday and my lungs are clear (so far) and I don't appear to have secondary infections going on.  So, despite the fact that I'm ill, have an off again, on again fever and sound like I've traded my vocal chords for sandpaper, I can still declare:

My immune system is mighty.  Here me roar!

Actually, you can hear me roar later, after I'm done with the laryngitis thingy.  I'm supposed to rest my voice as much as possible.  Which, btw, for those of you not in the know, whispering is as hard if not harder on your voice than talking.  Don't whisper if you have laryngitis.  Write a note.  Point.  Shake your head no no and point again more firmly.  That.  That right there.  Yes!  No, not that, that.  Oh, I give up, I'll get it myself.

In painting news I plan to get some new paints.  I've been working with the same palette for a long time (well, about four years which is not that long I guess) and, although I'm sure there's much more to learn about these colors, I've learned to trust their properties, how they mix,and I know how they lay beside each other.  It's time for some new colors to shake things up.

My 'normal' palette is primarily composed of Schmincke aquarelles (watercolors) with some M. Grahams.  I use vanadium yellow, gamboge, vermillion, cadmium red, madder red dark, quinacridone violet, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue and viridian as my 'primary' colors and yellow ochre, raw sienna, raw umber, and Hooker's green as my 'earth' colors.  My earth palette is pathetically limited and I can't paint with it in a functional manner.  Although I don't have black or gray I haven't missed them.  I mix them.

Anyway, I went to Art's Desire to snoop around.  I was almost out of quincridone violet and viridian so I picked up a tube of each (all of these are in M. Grahams, a local company, which I'm moving over to away from Schmincke) and I got pthalocyanine green because it looked useful to me.  I'd also been thinking about how prussian blue would fit into my earth palette, and since it was right there ....  After some hemming and hawing I also picked up burnt umber, a nice, red-leaning brown.  

For 'normal' colors I'd like to add new gamboge because as a yellow it has more range and interest than regular gamboge.  I'm also picking up perylene green, which, I admit, may make me lazy about mixing my blacks.  I'm probably going to phase out Hunter's green.  Although Hunter's is an artist's standard, it hasn't been very useful to me with my current palette and when I dip into it as a straight color or for mixing I'm usually disappointed with how flat it is.  With the new additions I may change my mind.  I have until the end of the tube to decide.  For now, though, it's on the 'need not restock' list.  I also at some point picked up chrome yellow.  I never use the darned thing.  What was I thinking?  

But the colors I'm really excited about are the Daniel Smith Primateks.  These so-called mineral colors show a lot of promise.  This overview on Handprint discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of these colors.  One negative for Handprint is a positive for me--I paint very dark, and so the dark nature of the mineral hues will serve to my advantage.  I'm also excited to see how the precipitation will work on yupo.  Will it do too much?  Behave itself?  Go wild?  Disappoint?  Can't wait to try.  My choices are blue apatite, sodalite, piemontite and bloodstone.  With these colors, I think my earth palette will become at least as fun to play with as my primary palette.  I can expand as an artist and play with some grown up colors.  

One thing is certain.  My normal palette (the actual palette rather than the colors I have) is too small.  Either that or I have to break down and get a second one, separating the earth from the primaries.  I can no longer foist my earth colors into mixing pockets.  I'll need all the mixing pockets now.  Interestingly enough, although I hadn't planned on it, I'll end up with ten primary colors (replacing gamboge with new gamboge) and twelve earth colors (if prussian blue works out in that palette--it may end up fitting better with the primaries.)  This will be the first time I'll have more colors in the earth palette than the primary.  I think it will work really well with the subject matter I choose, but I won't know until I get there.  

So today I'll paint some with what I have and see what happens.  First thing, got to do some paint swatches and see where I'm at, and then it's onward and forward from there.

In Flux

Katherine is settling in nicely.  She's learning the joys of chasing paintbrushes, empty dinnerplates left on the counter after a prime rib dinner, a steady food supply, toilet water (ugh!) and kitty laser pointer games.  I'm still worried about her.  She sits a little funny and her hindquarters aren't very strong.  Still, she gets around and has enough energy after a day-long nap to play, explore and knock things over.  I'm teaching her the joys of stealth, aka not knocking things over, and areas that are out of bounds.  She responds very well to intimidating body posture, so I haven't had to yell at her, which is great.  I just stand in her way and loom and she backs down.  She's not fearful, just responsive.
Such a perfect little kitty.  No calls yet in response to the ad or the Humane Society file.

Meanwhile, we've had more snow.  Right around dinner time we had a big fall that kept the big flakes coming until sunset.  We ended up with more record-setting snow and pretty sky colors despite the warmer temps today.  It's really fun, wondering whether I'll wake up to rain, snow, or clear skies.  After many years of dreary, rainy springs with non-stop cloudy skies from early March through early June, I feel like we're actually getting to experience a new season as opposed to enduring the long, drawn out death of winter.  

I celebrated by taking some pics, some movies, and I wrote some and painted some.  Technically I'm still painting.  There's a phase in watercolor called leave it the hell alone.  So I'm leaving it alone so that the color can dry and stabilize before I go play some more.  Katherine informed me that it was time to leave it the hell alone by hopping up onto the dining table and sniffing around the watercolor palette.  Something smelled intriguing enough that I was worried she might sample, so I picked up the palette.  She would have none of it.  She followed the escaping palette by climbing onto the chair.  When I swung it out behind me she made a jump for it and tipped the paint tray just enough to splash a little Hunter's green onto the soon-to-be-eradicated white carpet.  

Time for the kitty to go play with Orion.  She purred madly as I picked her up.  I let her play with the paper towel I've been using for blotting while I carried her down the stairs.  I let the boy know it was his turn to entertain the thing.  She has served her purpose.  She got me away from mucking up the colors.  Now it's time to get back to work.

I hope everyone is having good, or at least fun, weather!

Ideas

Traveling and two great INK meetings (one open one at Starbucks and one just for us) have filled me with all kinds of ideas. I don't know where to start.

In the garden for as long as I can, I guess, since the opportunity to garden will certainly go away. It'll never be like the Buchart Gardens around here, but I can live with country splendor. In the meantime, though, this time of year our wildflowers look intensely shabby. Everything is browning and going to seed. That's what it's supposed to do, but ... And I look at it and it feels like if I just took a pressure hose to it, the brown would come off and my shining, beautiful garden would be revealed from under the muck. But that's just an illusion. There is no muck. There is only this, the natural course of annuals and herbaceous perennials. Underneath the six foot tall mass of withering plant matter there is an evergreen and some deciduous shrubs. They're babies now, but as the years grow them up for us, they'll fill that large bed and I won't put in the wildflowers anymore, at least not there. The idea that I took from the Buchart Gardens was to keep at those weeds. Yes, they're constant and yes, it's a losing battle (I loved the little sign they had for sale that said The Weeds are Winning and the picture of a dandylion going to see on it) but if I never give up, never surrender then eventually the garden will settle in to a point where there will be shade. And where there is shade, there is victory. I already have a few areas where the plant mass over the ground is heavy enough that weeds have no chance to develop underneath. Must keep going ... The other idea I got from the gardens is the concept of patience. Seeing so many mature shrubs and trees there reminded me that I have many, many of those same specimens, but they're only 4 feet high at most. It takes surprisingly little time before they mature, especially when you're busy--

Writing. My second set of ideas came from chit chatting for hours with my writing pals and my beloved, handsome husband. Now I'm all conflicted, of course. I'd been all decided to blue screen Mayhem, my very first novel ever, for my Nano project, but then along came the idea of writing a novel about writing a novel. I realize this is not a novel (heh) idea, but there's something compelling about the subject and I can't seem to let go of it. I don't know.

And then there's the painting. I've been painting steadily, but also I've been better about letting projects rest for long enough so that they can develop better both in my head and on the page. While we were in Victoria one of the more compelling things I got to stare at was a collection of First People's ritual masks. It's unfortunate that you can't take pictures of them, but they're burned into my memory. Normally one viewing isn't enough (and now, thanks to S&C I have a gorgeous sketch book/journal that is just the right size for taking into places like royal museums so in the future I don't have to rely on memory) and this is no different, but this happens to be the second trip to the museum within two years, and so I have a better shot at actually realizing in paint what I experienced. In the end, though, I'm not attempting to accurately portray the masks. What I'm aiming at is what they inspired me to imagine, and conveying how they made me feel. They're mysterious, intriguing, frightening, humerous, beautiful, wild and graceful and primitive all at once. Gotta paint that. I just gotta.

So I'm full of ideas. Now I just have to make them flesh.

Piece of cake.

Turning Forty

The boy and his dad and his dad's best friend went camping this weekend. I'd planned on cleaning up the house and getting some projects done plus painting and writing. That didn't work out for various reasons--dogs running off, a visitor from out-of-town, much needed mom/daughter time (we were bad and shopped)--but it was still a good weekend.

With a milestone birthday coming up I've been feeling weird. Not mortal weird--that happens all the time and I'm used to that. Not crisis weird either. If I had a word for it I'd name it but I don't so I'll just make one up. I feel dooblesh. Dooblesh involves sensations of wasted time or time going by too quickly interspersed with a craving simultaneously for healthy food and chocolate. Dooblesh has me yearning to write but, despite having time to do so, I end up on the couch with my daughter watching I, Robot. Later I watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while munching on squash, chocolate, chicken strips and drinking a glass of wine. I get a bag of popcorn but I end up not popping it. I wash one pot and give up on the rest of the dishes immediately. I stop by my barely-begun self-portrait--watercolor on yupo, of course--and pick up a brush, but then put it back.

It might be turning forty, or it might be autumn. Autumn is the wandering. I got a good whiff of actual crisp morning. It's on the edge of uncomfortable to sleep with the windows open, though it's better now that I've added a second comforter to the bed. I'm wearing sweaters. I'm both restless and aimless, something that happens pretty infrequently. I'm usually simply one or the other. Restless Kami does chores, or paints, or gardens. Aimless Kami does sudoku or writes or gardens.

Hmm. I'm seeing why I garden a lot.

It's a good time to go on vacation, but I'm woefully unprepared. Programming Hell happens this coming weekend and I'll be in Canada for it, something I dread. I'll have to put together instructions for the convention's programming staff, CC everyone and hope that the critique sessions, manuscript crit and submit panels, hands-on mini-seminars and the open read-and-critique sessions all end up where they need to be with the people who want to be involved with them. On the 26th, I'll consider it out of my hands. We won't be gone yet, but I'll be too busy prepping to spend any time dealing with convention stuff. My focus will shift to the family, and sleeping in, and wandering.
Oh yes, this is good timing, unintentionally so but the chance to drive away from it all when the wind and the chill and reddening of leaves all play a traveling tune is magic. My feet can skip to the music and the landscape can move all around me, taking me everwhere, which is sort of like everywhere but quieter and less fussy. My family and I will adopt gypsy hearts, or maybe we'll become something even less tame and more playful, otters with wings or things with starlight shining in our eyes.

Rory's encouraging me to bring along paper and paint and brushes. That's going to be a big bag, but I think he knows that. Good good. They can plant me in a park or a garden somewhere and go play while I drip and stroke and splatter and flood colors onto paper. I like the idea of them having fun together someplace as much as I like the idea of being alone for a while among strangers in a strange place. Maybe someone will come up and talk to me, or maybe they'll avoid me, not wanting to disturb a work in progress even if it's weird art that doesn't suit their tastes. Meanwhile the fam will be mom-free. Everyone needs a break from the mom now and then, just like the mom enjoys an occasional break from them. I wonder if it's possible to be non-mom-like around them, and for them to be non-husband and non-child-like around me. I think it might be too intense, or a difficult or silly game that leads to secret names, asking questions and spying, or something unexpected and silver-bright.

It's late, and I'm not forty yet. The morning alarm is set, the dogs are home, clothes are tumbling in the dryer. It's quiet and I'm the only one awake. I'm definitely doobleshing. I thought that the restlessness was wearing off, but it's not. I really want to get up and try painting again. I thought maybe the aimlessness had gone, but I have a feeling that I won't actually paint. I'll look at the painting, and pick up a brush, and then think better of it and move on. I don't mind so much. I don't mind feeling dooblesh. Windy impulses will carry me along until I get blown up against the bed (out of the gutter, you!) and then I'll sleep, one dream closer to forty.