Red plus brown plus white

January 20, 2013

They cancelled art class yesterday. The weather got so excitable that the province closed a hundred kilometres of the local freeway.

I was despondent about losing my three hours of escape. Jeff told me to go out, find somewhere to draw. So I went to the art school anyway and painted by my lonesome.

After working out colour charts for landscape (my unfinished class homework) and for flesh tones, I attempted James in acrylics. It is just a sketch, but it's him. He really looks like this. Yah!

Scratchify

January 2013

Last fall I was blown away by Spanish artist Ricardo Martinez' illustrations in Scientific American. What technique was this?? I looked him up (amazing work, right?) and discovered he works in scratchboard.

Scratchboard, huh? Never heard of it. So I promised myself I would check it out.

January 2013

Scratchboard is a paper backing coated with a layer of clay, usually white, and a layer of paint or ink, usually black. Your tool is a slim blade on a stick. Using your quasi-nail file, you scratch off the black stuff so the white shows through. As I was often better at using my eraser tool in Photoshop than the brush, this seemed like a great technique.

Here are my first attempts. The scene at top is my bedroom and it includes a framed painting that is actually the plan for a piece I'm working on in art class. I'm thinking of putting the completed painting in the same spot once it's done. Just because.

Admiring her imagination, hoping it's enough

A personal post today. Two art posts in the queue coming this weekend.

***

Hello,

I would like to introduce you to my daughter, Ada.

Ada, aged three-and-a-half

 Last week I entered our living room to discover this:

It's the crane her uncle gave her for Christmas. She has placed two figures in the crane. 

But here's the thing. The construction set to which the crane belongs came with these figures (hello fellas!):

Construction Big Site by Kid Connection

She didn't use these figures. Instead, she took this figure...

Playmobil

...and one figure from this set...

Melissa & Doug

...to use in her construction play. Problem solved. At least according to the child.

I didn't put her up to this. It has just become more and more important to her over time to play with the figures she has that represent her own sex.

Ada dreams of being a fireman when she grows up. This Christmas, her grandparents bought her the Melissa & Doug fire truck set, above. I tried to tell her the female was a firefighter-in-training. She poo-pooed my idea, telling me instead that the girl was getting rescued by the firemen, which of course she is. (Those are her words. I always say "Firefighter.")

We have a lot of old toys around saved by Grandma. These toys are so impressive. The figures here...

Fisher Price "Little People"

and here...

Playmobil (truck is unrelated to these figures, of course)

...have defined genders but each can still  play any role a child might want.

Toy manufacturers have improved in terms of race. Look at those black firefighters and construction dudes! You used to be lucky if you could find one person of colour in your toys.

But my daughter, who loves trucks and tea sets equally, has been nudged out of such roles. And yet, in real life, there are more females occupying more roles than ever before. What gives, toymakers?

As a mom of two (I also have a nine-month-old son), I have to tell you that I don't like the fact that she has to make do by cobbling together what she can scrounge out of the toy bin. It's not fair.

It's embarrassing and sad. Especially when in every other way all these toys are just awesome. I just want to see one woman in each of these sets. And I really don't want her to be the one getting rescued! Please help, toy companies!

Signed,

Lia Hiltz

Patiently

January 11, 2013

My long-term theme being "draw whatever, wherever" but especially new things (it just happens to be my eating theme, too -- I tried sweetbreads in December! Yum!), I took advantage of some impromptu hospital visits to get in some sketching. My innards aren't functioning quite right, unfortunately. It's scary having your body parts examined and I always find my drawing pad a great relief at such times.

January 7, 2013

These studies are from Queensway-Carleton Hospital's Rooms 9 and 10 as well as my doctor's office. I think they are very studious! I'm sooooo glad I have more patience now. I was really hyper when I was younger and it was so hard to stick with this kind of thing. But it really pays off artistically to do it. Better late than never, I hope.

December 20, 2013

Happy Second Anniversary, Bus Blog!

Practice makes perfect. Or something. (December/January 2013)

One of my favourite Ottawa artists is Blair Paul and he offers an introductory landscape course at Ottawa School of Art, which is where I took Anatomy for Artists in the fall. It starts this Sunday and I don't own most of the paints required on the course materials list. I guess that don't have common colours? More money to the art store, dammit. Well, I always chose paints by their looks. Only since I read a small book on Colour Theory in December have I more intention when choosing colour. (Did you know you can gray a colour by mixing it with a complimentary colour -- not by adding black?? Weird.)

I started going over fundamental elements of drawing and colour once the Anatomy course finished up. It's been really eye-opening. Yesterday I learned that pencil crayon artists often work on both sides of transparencies. And that scratching colour from a top layer of colour so an under-layer shows through -- something I always thought was kinda rebellious, something the kids dreamed up on their own -- is a respected technique known as sgraffitto.

Since leaving school I avoided instruction. I'd learned the hard way that I was impossibly impressionable. Flitting from one technique or idea about how to do things to the next, I was at the mercy of the last person I talked to or book I opened. Looking at other peoples' work was equally disorienting, and discouraging, too. Soon enough I just shut everything out and tried to muddle along on my own. And  now, at 37, I have done my own thing long enough that I don't get thrown off course as easily anymore. What a relief that's finally over. Impulse control - wonderful!

That's not to say that after ten years my own thing is particularly developed. I remember deciding in my twenties that the reason I must be having so much trouble dreaming up content was that I just hadn't lived enough. So I resolved to do some living before getting back into art seriously. That was another good decision, I think. Now I have some solid ideas and I'm excited about working on them.

But those unopened art instruction books, courses not taken, silenced conversations, and artists' work not viewed together left a big hole in my art stuff. I can't do many subjects and I've come to grips with only a few techniques. On the plus side, I have at least tried most things and I've developed a bit of the other things that matter, like commitment and discipline.

January 2013

So I'm working through some art books and magazines. The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature by Cathy Johnson was really good. I read a few others but that one, lent by my mom-in-law, was my favourite. More of a complete lesson on drawing for beginners along with the focus on drawing outside. She also got me a subscription to International Artist for Christmas. I'm mostly done The Sketching and Drawing Bible, also lent by my dear MIL.

At right are some remedial exercises I have been doing courtesy The Complete Guide to Drawing. Guess who I borrowed it from. :) Sorry for the terrible photo. Too big for le scanner.

I have also been practicing with Sennelier oil pastels. They're gorgeous, paint-like, but with no mess. That's useful for my non-ventilated home studio that has to be kid-safe and totally non-toxic. After reading about the dust problems of using chalk pastels, the set of Neupastels I bought last November (and fell madly in love with) has been set aside for a future where I have a suitable space. The picture at the top of the page is me sorting out flesh tone mixtures.

I wish I had a chance to get my brushes out so I'm less rusty this Sunday. I haven't painted since, oh, was the last painting I did really circa January 2011?

Happy New Year! Let the studies of trees and rocks commence!

Shh! She is sleeping

A.

This wee wisp of a girl, much fattened and nimbler now since the moment pictured here, was born in the spring along with a hundred other babes who, through their birth and their mother's attachment to the internet, form the offspring of the April 2012 Birth Club. Little A's mum was my Secret Santa. Of course, though she seems chuffed by the gift, really the pleasure of putting this pastel painting together was mine.

Very miserably for me, though, I won't be continuing to use chalk pastels. I was obligated to buy them for art class and did so reluctantly, only to find them a hugely sympathetic medium. So natural to use, especially for an aspiring colourist. However, they let off a dust that is very fine and, whether the pigments are toxic or not, is difficult to filter and to clean. No one needs that in their lungs.

So now I am trying oil pastels! Stay tuned.

Left-handed insight

November 29, 2012

Only one art class left. Sad to leave the situation that has allowed me/taught me to make easily the best art I've ever done.

The blog is quiet lately because I feel quiet about art these days. Not sure why. I do a lot of it, but it feels a bit too in-my-head to talk about right now.

November 22, 2012

One thing I would like to share. Our teacher, Aida Alves, taught us to draw with our non-dominant hands. It's oddly freeing. The picture at the top of the page was drawn (base drawings) with my right hand. First layers of colour, also right hand. All the movement was done with my non-dominan, left hand. It's easier to hear what the piece needs that way. Flaky, but truth!