How I Start Making Art Again

I'm back to painting again, finally! It's almost always in the back of my mind... color, pattern, ideas that slip through my thoughts often too fast for me to hold on to them. So often gone by the time I manage to carve out some time to get out my paints.

Beginning with an abstract background, I use negative shape painting
to carve out abstract figures. This work in progress will go through
several more layers and stages before it's finished.

I do my best when the paints are always out, taking over the dining room table for days at a time and I can walk right over and start painting without any set-up time. But then life and family need the space again and I pack everything away. I want a space where I can keep the paint out all the time, and I'm slowly transforming our spare room into a space where I hope that will happen.

In the meantime, one of the best things I do for myself when I'm in a creative rut (or just having trouble taking time to myself away from the responsibilities of family) is to sign up for a weekend art workshop. In March I took a class on Expressive Acrylic and Mixed Media with artist Jacqui Beck.

Mixed Media painting, Hidden Thoughts 17x14 at my Columbia City Gallery exhibit PALIMPSEST April 4-May 14. Opening reception Sat Apr 8, 5-7. www.columbiacitygallery.com. #mixedmedia; #acrylicpainting; #palimpsest, #collage

A post shared by Jacqui Beck (@jacquiart) on Apr 7, 2017 at 2:00pm PDT

Jacqui was a delightful and very knowledgeable teacher. The time flew by and I would definitely take more of her classes. I'm already somewhat familiar with a variety of mixed media techniques but I learned several new tools to add to my repertoire. Below you can see the start of a painting using techniques taught in Jacqui's class. We started with layers of acrylic paint enriched with a variety of mark-making in order to create an abstract background. Paint is applied by brush, brayer, with custom-carved stamps, through stencils. Marks are made by drawing on top of the paint and by scratching back through layers with chopsticks, plastic forks, or even sand paper.

Beginning abstract layers of acrylic paint to create an abstract background.
Paint is applied by brush, brayer, with stamps, through stencils. Scratching
back through layers with chopsticks, plastic forks, even sand paper.

The most exciting thing about the workshop to me was on the second day as we moved into exercises to help develop the rich, textured, abstract mixed media backgrounds into a cohesive and expressive painting.

One exercise was to take a photograph as inspiration and to recreate the subject matter of the photo, to capture the shapes, lights, and darks on the ground created in class the day before in order to create something totally new. I chose a black and white photo from her collection of a figure walking out of a dark room through a doorway into bright sunlight.

Windows and Doorways
11" x 17" acrylic on paper

The other exercise was to attempt to recreate a painting created by another artist that we admired. Like art students of yore who copied the masters as part of their study, this exercise encouraged us to ask ourselves, "how did they do that?" and then explore and experiment. I chose a painting from Cathy Hegman called Red Flags from her series The Weight of Balance. Here you can see where I tried to recreate the composition and the mood, using my own color palette.

painting exercise based on Red Flag by Cathy Hegman

A note on intellectual property:

In the first exercise, the finished painting is such a drastic abstraction from the original photograph that I believe I can safely call it my own. In the second exercise, even though my painting doesn't have the same deftness and artistry of Cathy Hegman's original, it is still quite obviously a copy of her style, subject, and composition. This exercise is for learning only and I do not in any way attempt to portray it as my original work.

It's been such a relief and a joy to start making art regularly again. There's a sensuality to exploring the relationships between colors and a very satisfying sensory experience to scratching back through layers of paint to unearth  what was buried beneath. I'm so grateful that there is a wide variety of art workshops available to me in my area to help me rejuvenate my creative energy and remember how to take the time to give myself the gift of art practice.

If you are reading this post because you wonder how to get started making art again, I want you to close your eyes for just a minute and imagine giving yourself the gift of a truly delightful art-making experience. Just meditate on what that experience looks like for a moment.

Are you carving a linoleum block at the kitchen table? Are you sitting on your favorite park bench sketching the view? Are you in a class with fellow painters learning new techniques together? Are you in a pottery studio, hands muddy with clay?

Now that you have an image in your mind of what would make for a truly delicious art-making experience, go make it happen! Don't think about the outcome, or get stuck in whether the art will be "good enough." Just take that step towards having a memorable experience, where you feel some true satisfaction at the end of your day.



And last, but not least, stay tuned for more painting updates and a new post on linoleum block printing some time next week, just in time for my one year blogiversary!

Artist Spotlight: Seb Barnett

It's been a while since my last post. One thing or another took my focus this past few weeks.

Today I learned some terrible news that a beautiful soul lost the battle with depression and took their own life. Seb Barnett was an incredible artist who inspired me and encouraged me. I wish I'd known you better when I had the chance. The world is less bright without you in it.

Blodeuwedd by Seb Barnett

I remember that Seb often railed against the idea of artistic "talent" as something you either had or you didn't. Instead Seb championed the notion that accomplished artists were the ones who put years and years of work into honing their craft.

So here I am, back at it with blogging my progress, still at the beginning of my journey, trying to follow your lead and put the work in.

Diva Challenge #287

I started with a watercolor background, created the design using Staedtler fineliner pens, and then I deepened the color shading with Neocolor II watersoluble crayons and Prismacolor colored pencils. I learned a valuable lesson about the way that finely sharpened colored pencils can sometimes scratch through the softer, more fibrous watercolor paper I was using for this piece. You might notice that one of the abstract orb shapes looks a bit more like a pearl than the others. That one got a bit of Liquid Pearls paint to cover the damaged paper.

Windsor & Newton watercolor in
Transparent Yellow and Quinacridone Magenta

Work in progress, after inking the design I
added shading with watersoluble crayon and colored pencil

Diva Challenge #287 on watercolor tile
Dreamcatcher, Nebel, Yincut, and Sandswirl

Daniel Lamothe's Dreamcatcher pattern is quite stunning all on it's own. Here I let it take center stage with a mandala-like circular symmetry. I used a Uniball Signo white ink pen and a white chalk pastel pencil on coal black Strathmore sketch paper. I was inspired to try my hand at the convergent shading technique shared by Lynn Mead.

Diva Challenge #287 on black tile

This post is for you, Seb. You are missed.

Siren Call

I know the idea of getting sucked into Pinterest is probably familiar to many of you, and I am not immune. I can spend hours browsing art in all kinds of media.

You know when you see a painting or a photograph and it feels like everything else in the world just stops for a moment? That lurch of emotion, that swoon if you will -- whether the piece inspires awe, pleasure, tranquility, curiosity, passion, rapture, or alarm, heartbreak, anger, grief -- is amazing to me.

It's a little like love at first sight.

And if you're like me, that lurch is followed by a dreamy, meditative state of wondering.

Lost in Thought
encaustic collage on wood panel
12" x 12"
Julie Bazuzi (c)2016

"How did they get that texture?"
"What materials did they use?"
"How did they attach this piece to that piece?"
And finally, "I need to try that!"

There it is again. The siren call. And I'm itching to get back to my sketchbook, my pens, my paints.

I've started a Pinterest board for art that I love and art that influences the way I create and wish to create my own art. It's eclectic in media, ranging from painting to pottery to quilt to stained glass.




I've noticed that while graphic black and white dominates my Patterns and Tangles board, my Art and Influences board definitely shows how much I am also drawn to color. This is so true of my own art explorations as well.

Zen Lillies
ink on paper
Julie Bazuzi (c)2016

Echo
acrylic monoprint on paper
Julie Bazuzi (c)2016

Sometimes I come across an image that I love or that moves me and I want to do more than just bookmark it. I need to write about it and share it here, in hopes that maybe one more person will get a chance to feel something momentous just from seeing it too.

That happened one morning when I found the website for artist Oriol Angrill Jorda. In the Blendscapes series, the artist uses watercolor, graphite, and colored pencil to merge more than one subject and create something fantastic and magical. 

For example, in Scarf of Cloud, Jorda creates an incredibly beautiful and surreal  portrait of a woman where jagged mountains become her shoulders and the filmy clouds hovering around the peaks become a diaphanous scarf.

I am especially intrigued by the blend of portraiture and landscape into an image that dissolves the perception of being separate from the land we inhabit.

We are not just of this earth, we and this earth are one. We are not separate. My breath was your breath was made by that tree. The salts and minerals in my body are from those mountains, that sea, this rain. Tomorrow they will be in your body, or part of a raven, or in an apple. I want to embrace this connectedness in my life and I hope that one day I will be able to convey it in my own art.