Painting Together on Skype

Question: How do you become re-motivated to do a beloved activity again?
Answer: Try doing whatever worked in the past.

My watercolour palette.

I haven’t written very much about the art side of our lives lately. My painting took a back seat when we finally moved into our wonderful house six months ago.

I tried out the following excuses for not painting:

• Moving into a grand house that still needs finishing is too distracting. (painting, shelving, organizing)
  • This a lame excuse. What difference does paint-on-the-walls make to painting on canvas?
• How can I paint when I’m visiting with our VIP guests? Our wonderful kids came for a long winter’s rest and like an adoring fan, I just wanted to follow them around and have conversations with them all the time.
  • Also lame. They didn’t appreciate me stalking them either!
• It wouldn’t be fair for me to create while Larry still has to slog it out in the main studio insulating, mudding, drywalling, painting , etc.
  • Another lame excuse. It would actually be helpful for one of us to start creating a marketable product!

I finally pulled out my art books and placed them on shelves.

The longer the non-painting period lasts, the harder it is to get back into the brush work. I started questioning whether painting and art is what I really want to do and whether I still have that creative spark anyway. This is one of the topics of conversation that comes up from time to time with fellow artists in Bear River.

I thought about where my motivation came from in the past when I went through ‘fallow’ periods in painting. I remembered that painting with others has always created an energy that leads me back to a place where the ideas, motivation and inspiration start flowing again. I fondly remembered painting with my friends Kathy and Dianne when I lived in Toronto. We’d spend a Sunday together painting and eating and catching up on each other’s lives. I missed that camaraderie and I wanted to recreate that for myself.

We used the same reference photos.

Kathy missed our painting time too. (Dianne would too, but she’s busy having a fabulous winter in Hawaii). We talked on the phone and made a date to Skype each other and try to recreate one of our painting visits.

We treated it like an actual visit and sent each other photo reference material in advance so that we could work from the same images. We made a decision to work with watercolours this time. We angled our computers so that we could watch each other paint. It was quite the experiment!

Kathy's computer was positioned in a better way than mine. At the same time, she could see my paper and palette.

We spent 3 hours on Skype and chatted while we painted. Kathy’s had lots of work to show me and I felt that old energy and love of painting coming back. It wasn’t as good as actually being together, in person and we got disconnected a couple of times. The worst part was the visual. Skype is not (yet!) able to display the range of colours and high resolution like a photograph does.

BUT it was a wonderful way to spend a morning and way more successful than I thought it would be. By the end of it I felt like I had actually spent time at the same table with Kathy.

I enjoyed playing with wet watercolours again.

I’ve waited a couple of weeks to write about this, partly because I didn’t want to ‘jinx’ my return to painting. Since then, a couple of other developments have helped to spur me on and, guess what? I DO still have the spark!

I’m painting and I’m loving it.

Thanks Kathy!

Monoprinting with cut paper stencils

Watch my latest video tutorial about monoprinting using cut paper.

Hanging at the Flight of Fancy

My latest very exciting news is that I sold a painting at the Flight of Fancy last week. I  blogged about the creation of this canvas last March. It was inspired by the kindness of friendship. I wonder what thoughts or feelings it sparked for the buyer.

The Gift, acrylic, 2009. (above); Peonies, acrylic, 2009. (below)

Like many artists, I  feel awkward about the selling part. I just want to create the art and let someone else sell it.  Many art-appreciators don’t realize that 99% of artists have to figure out how they are going to get their work seen by the public, on their own.  This can mean paying thousands of dollars to rent a booth at a big show like the Toronto Art Expo,  One of a Kind, or  approaching galleries with a portfolio.  And selling is a very different skill than creating.

Cyclamen, Watercolour and crayon resist. by Flora Doehler.

I have been selling my paintings on my own for a number of years now, in self-organized group shows, art club shows, and in studio tours. While it is a thrill to get feedback from viewers and to actually meet future owners, it is quite wonderful to let someone else take the painting and match it with an interested buyer because that way, I can spend the time doing what I do best– creating the work.

My canvas of Hollyhock will be coming home this week.

My daydream fantasy was that one day someone would walk into my studio, look at my work and say “Let me sell this!  You paint the paintings and I’ll take care of the rest.” In some ways this has  happened to me in Bear River.

Painting under ‘Cordelia’, our willow tree.

The first time we visited this village,  we went to the Flight of Fancy, a beautiful fine arts and fine craft store operated for almost 30 years by artist Robert Buckland -Nicks. I was impressed with the originality and the quality of the work he had in the store. I hoped he would be interested in selling my paintings in his second-floor art gallery, but I was too shy to show him the small paintings I’d stashed in my suitcase. After we moved to Bear River he approached me. He’d heard that I painted and asked  to see my work. I kept putting Rob off because I believed that my best work was yet to come at some unknown future time. Finally he just showed up at the studio one day and left with a few canvases to hang at the store.

Since then Rob has sold 8 large paintings of mine in 18 months.

Rob poses with me upstairs at the Flight of Fancy.

Like the rest of our life in Bear River this piece has  fallen neatly into place. Rob drops into the studio now and again to look at what’s new and to talk about painting. I only have to paint the picture and figure out a title. Rob chooses pieces that he thinks will suit his store and his clientele.

My paintings are in good company at the Flight of Fancy hanging with works by  Alan Syliboy, Anna Syperak , Craig Rubadoux, and Bear River’s Charles Cooper.

The Flight is closed now until next spring.

Crocosmia painting for next spring’s collection.

Making of a Tea Pot – Part 3 – The handle and spout

The Handle.

Here is a photo of the acrylic cut-out shape that will become the handle.

Acrylic cut-out for handle.

In this photo the handle has been filed into a comfortable shape for the hand. The clear acrylic material with a satin finish will hold the light and allow the handle to have a soft shape. Here it is with the ferrules attached.

Finished handle with ferrules.

The Spout

Here is the spout with the decking. The excess metal will be cut away and the piece will be filed. Then it can be prepared for soldering onto the body.

Spout with decking in place.

In this photo the spout has been soldered onto the body of the tea pot.

Spout takes its place on the body.

The tea pot is starting to take shape.

Next part 4 – the lid, hinge and ferrules

The making of a Tea Pot – Part 2 – The spout, lid and handle

Here are the next stages of making a tea pot. The ferrule are made to hold the handle. The handle is made of acrylic and will be shaped with files. The lid was cut out of one the spheres before the body was soldered together.

Begining stages of the ferrule, lid and handle.

Next stage was making the spout. I hammered the spout into shape using the anticlastic method of forming. The spout has a classical look about it. A little sinking was applied at the bottom to help move the tea up the spout.

The decking was cut to fit generously over the spout and hammered into shape. Here is the spout with the decking soldered in place.

Spout with decking.

The spout will be trimmed with a hand saw, and filed into shape.

Next part three:  The handle takes shape and the spout takes its place on the body.

The making of a Tea Pot – Part 1- The body

Body of Teapot taking shape.

This month I want to tell you about
“The making of a TEA POT”
It’s not your standard tea pot, this one is unique!
I call her Jupiter.

I started dreaming about classical teapots!
Then I was dreaming about modern teapots!
So I started drawing a modern/classical teapot. Why not?
The body, feet and lid are modern and the spout and handle are traditional.

For this project I used flat sheet stock.
The hammering techniques I used are sinking, forming and anticlastic raising.

I felt the body need to be a round, modern shape so I hammered two spheres using the sinking method. I hammered a band form for the equator section.
Then the three sections came together using the soldering process.
Then the feet were attached and here is Jupiter.

Next, the spout, handle and lid.

—————–

If you have any questions about silversmithing or gemstone cutting I will try to answer them for you if you email me.

If you would like to order a custom made piece of jewellery, holloware, or flatware please contact me by email: larryknox.ns@gmail.com

Through the Studio Window

As an artist I believe it is important to show some stages
of development in the creation of a piece of work.
It gives the viewer a window into the making stage
that is not present once the work is completed.

I’m going to call this process
” Through the Studio Window”

I’m going to explain the procedure and show some of the in-progress photos.

Metal Forming Process in the studio with Larry.

Shaping metal with a plastic mallet

Metal raising technique

Next, I want to show you how I made a metal teapot.

Altered Images with Photoshop

Lupines grow all over the Annapolis Valley, especially along the roadsides.

With my shoulders and legs sore from rototilling the garden, I headed for the studio at the end of last week to paint some of the fabulous purple lupines that grow wild around our house. I also wanted to capture the beauty of some masses of Siberian Iris that my friend Pamela gave me from among the hundreds that grow in her flower gardens.

My friend Pamela also gave me a clump of Siberian iris for my garden. She is one generous friend!

Iris represent to me my late mother and grandmother. They both grew iris and I brought some of their original rhizomes to plant here in Nova Scotia when we moved. I always think of their love of flowers when I see iris and each year for many years I’ve tried to paint their luscious shapes and colours in the short window of opportunity, for they don’t bloom for long.

These were my mother's bearded iris and before that, my grandmother's. I brought some to Bear River from our postage-stamp sized front garden in Toronto. I paint them every year.

I wanted my painting to reproduce the feeling of being outside (but without the very active black flies) so I pulled out all my vases and water jars at the studio so that I could create a garden on my table!

First I worked with watercolour in order to loosen myself up. I also love the way colour and water flow into each other and I wanted to ‘play’ with that.

I first painted some shapes with clear water and then loaded my brush with colour and randomly painted some flower shapes so that I would get 'accidental' colour bleeds into the wet spaces.

This is one of my favorite iris paintings that I’ve ever done with watercolour.

The Ancestor. watercolour by Flora Doehler, 1998. Collection of Gail Waiser.

I approached the acrylic like a wet-in-wet watercolour and tried to keep it very loose.

I sketched the flowers with watercolour crayons and then spritzed the canvas with water. Next I painted using watery acrylics. When the painting is finished, I'll fix the images by painting a mat or varnish medium over the entire canvas.

I’ve been inspired over the last year by reading artists’ blogs and online communities. There is so much creative work and exchange happening out there and it’s exciting to be able to see artwork online and to develop connections and correspondence with fellow artists all over the world, especially because I live in a tiny community that is a great distance from major galleries.

I subscribe to artist and writer Carol Wiebe’s blog called Silverspring Studio. I like Carol’s blog because it is a perfect mix of good writing and interesting articles. She writes about her own (beautiful) work as well as other artists. I have been introduced to many creative artists and websites through her descriptions. Carol recently set up her own online community called Cracked Paper Quilts and posted an online tutorial about her use of photo software, Adobe Elements, to digitally alter and enhance her artwork. I was very inspired by the mandela-like images she developed and I tried it myself with the paintings that I’m working on as well as this photo of lupines growing here with our new house as a backdrop.

Most of our wild lupines are purple, but we also have some pink and white ones.

I altered the colours in the photograph and experimented with some of the filters in Photoshop. To see more detail, click on the image.

If only it was this easy to change the wall colours in your house!

I photographed a section of the acrylic canvas that I’m working on. I adore the colours.

Iris and Lupines painting, detail. Flora Doehler, 2009

First I altered the image with filters found in Adobe Photoshop. I liked that pen and ink look shown here.

First I made the alterations using photoshop.

Then I quadrupled the image and flipped and/or turned the image upside down to create the kind of image I might get when looking through a kaleidoscope.

Next I quadrupuled the altered image, flipped and turned them and reassembled them.

I am thinking of ways to use the resulting works. I get it that altering images can be endless and addictive! It’s fun to see how colour changes can totally alter the feel of a piece.

This detail of the iris with watercolour was next on my list.

These iris were like having graceful dancers in the studio.

I changed the colours and applied a filter in Adobe Photoshop.

I love the batik look of this altered painting.

You can view the whole set here

I wish I wasn’t so consumed right now with gardening, moving, packing, sawdust vaccuming etc because I just want to paint these gorgeous flowers while they are still in bloom.

In another month or less we’ll be moved in and then there will be another wave of blooms to do. Still, I am promising myself to clear the decks for at least 2 weeks next year during iris time.

I think this looks like a piece of fabric now.

The beauty of Adobe Photoshop is that it’s as portable as your laptop and is something to ‘play’ with after a long day of mowing lawns and pulling weeds and turning up more sod by hand. Especially when your partner is sitting beside you on the couch watching the Stanley Cup final playoff game. That’s h-o-c-k-e-y for those of you living in an alternative universe.

Painting with Oil Paint

Some of these paints are middle aged!

About 35 years ago when I was an art student in East Berlin at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee, I painted with oil paints. At that time, in the 1970s, it was impossible to buy acrylics in the GDR (German Democratic Republic). I suspect that there was a shortage of raw materials that made plastics. Thus there were absolutely no plastic bags (people used cotton bags) and there was very little product packaging using plastic. It’s funny that now, 35 years later, we are trying to reduce our oil-dependancy by scaling down plastics usage.

In that land of socialism, university tuition was free and art students received a monthly stipend to live on. The rent on my little apartment was capped at 8% of my monthly stipend.

Deciding where to place the next flower.

My area of study was painting so a couple of times a year I accompanied my teacher, Professor Wolfram Schubert , to the school store room to receive about 30 tubes of oil paint, compliments of the state.

Oil paints last a long time, so after three years I had accumulated quite a few. I brought a lot of tubes home to Canada with me and even though I’ve given quite a few away over the years, I still have a container full of them that I brought here to Bear River with me.

I was reminded of this a while ago when I pulled them out to use as ink in printmaking. I wondered what it was like to paint with oils compared with the acrylics that I’ve been using for the last 20 years. 

My Flowerdale tea pot. Oil painting by Flora Doehler c2006

I love the smell of linseed oil (which actually is flax seed oil!) That’s right! The flax plant gives us linen fabric and the seeds are pressed into an oil. When it’s boiled, it becomes linseed oil. Because of the high oil content, the paint is thick and creamy like peanut butter. In comparison, acrylic, which is plastic, is very slippery. Watercolor, like the name implies, is like brushing colored water over a sheet of paper.

I have a very cheerful pot of daffodils and I wanted to create a feel in this painting of the chaos and joy and persistence of the life force that are reborn every spring.

Inspiration in a pot.

In the smaller painting I started with a pale green yellow ground. A few months ago I bought some oil sticks and I just had to try them out! They look like gigantic crayons but they are actually oil paint suspended in a medium that makes them a little harder than paint. If you dip your brush into a solvent and move it over the oil stick mark on the canvas, the colors will instantly dissolve. I enjoyed experimenting with them.

It is so different than working with acrylics- which dry extremely fast…sometimes too fast. I had to wait several days until the oil in the paint was dry enough to paint more colors that won’t dissolve the colors that are already painted. I have discovered an advantage to this slow dry. Using solvents, I easily removed a section of the painting that wasn’t working for me.

Removing some paint.

I’m very happy with my finishedl daffodil painting. I like the drawn lines and the colours that are softer than I usually use. I think it has a good centre of interest.

Daffodils. Oil paint and oil stick. Flora Doehler, c. 2009

The larger painting has been more challenging. I have probably spent more time repainting a daffodil in the middle of painting than on the 2 canvases put together. I overpainted it way too many times. Finally I have just scraped and sanded and painted out that section. I’m going to wait a while to complete it because right now it feels like I’m having a power struggle with the poor flower! One day I’ll be in the studio and I’ll sneak up on it and finish it!!

Daffodils in progress.

Although switching mediums can be frustrating, I really like to mix it up because it keeps me learning new ways to approach the subject matter. It keeps me more aware of the properties of the colours and brushes I’m using. Each new way of interpreting the beauty I see around me helps me to better understand what I’m actually looking at. But most of all, it’s just so much fun moving from oil to acrylic to watercolour to printmaking and squeezing out a bit of the past into my present painting.

Creativity and You and Me

On the beach yesterday, feeling creative.

Recently I’ve been reading and thinking about ‘creativity’ and where it comes from. Years ago I purchased Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, that shows you how to access your inner creativity. I never actually got around to reading it. I was so busy working in an office and at a desk and in a library that when I had any ‘free’ time where I wasn’t dead tired I preferred to paint rather than read about it. I had little opportunity for creative expression in my job and looking at that reality would have been just too depressing. On the other hand, had I been courageous enough to examine my creative needs, might I have made other career choices?Hindsight, as we all know, is 20/20.

There is no shortage of patterns in ocean stones.

The assumption that we are all creative beings is fairly profound for some people who will say “Me? No, I’m not a very creative person.” or, “No, I don’t have any artistic or musical ability at all.”

But Cameron asserts that creativity is the natural order of life.

Nature's patterns are infinite.

The life force, as I call it (some call it spirit, the creator, Goddess, God) is present in all living things. This week I’ve been watching my tomato seedlings push their way out of the earth and transform from round, flat, hard seeds to a tall, fragile seedlings with two leaves. That same life force energy that turns a seed into a plant is in each one of us and it not only propels us forward physically, but it also develops us emotionally and intellectually. That combination is our growth, our creativity. We can:

• ignore it
• suppress it
• use it
• postpone it
• drug it
• numb it
• deny it
• postpone it
• but we can never ever loose it

It is in our DNA and in our every breath. It is part of our being human.

Julie Cameron calls it spiritual electricity. She states that:

• creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy : pure creative energy
• there is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves
• when we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the life force creativity within us and our lives
• we are, ourselves, creations. And we in turn are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves
• the refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature
• our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity

Today I painted in the studio. I started a new piece that just didn’t work. The colours were wrong and the composition was weak.

I set it aside and decided to make some changes to 3 other unfinished paintings that have been testing me. Not sure about the results of those either.

Before and After 22″ x 22″

In the past, I would have felt very frustrated by this and worried that my creativity had left. But now I have that most precious commodity of any human – time.

Outside warm rain pelted the studio windows and the sound of the river tide was wonderful.

• I listened to some acoustic guitar and percussion music from Ryan LeBlanc who played for us, right here in Bear River this past weekend, to inspire my emotions
• I burned some cedar incense to please my sense of smell
• I read some more of the first volume of Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series and time-travelled to 1915 to nurture my thinking
• I drank some tea

And then I planted a dozen eggplant seeds to add to the seedlings that are growing on the studio windowsills.

Leeks for winter soups.

Tomorrow I’ll try again with my brushes and with my paint in this great incubator of creativity that is our studio. And that tide outside will keep on moving and creating.

Tree lichen.