Putting the Chart to Use,Exloring a Value Chart, Motivation for excellence,Honey Blue Cheese Dressing

Loxahatchee River Trees
12x16 inches
oil on canvas panel

WIP

Palette:
Daniel Greene-
Ivory Black
Titanium White
FUB
Sap Green

Utrecht-
Yellow Ochre
Transparent Red Iron Oxide

This painting is in progress from the chart I used yesterday to test this palette. Of course, making a chart is far different from making a painting and I think that needs to be said for those painters who are less experienced than some others. Mixing paint on a chart is fairly easy, taking longer for some than others to do, but mixing paint for a painting is a different experience entirely. There are many more decisions to make on the values and temperature biases than are possible on a chart. The advantage to the chart is that it gives you an overview of many of the possible combinations and the range of the palette's potential. To me it is all important to actually use the palette to make a real painting, even if it is a small painting or study. Only after using a chart in the practical, can you understand it's full potential. Mixing paints for swatches is tedious and takes little skill. Using that chart to create something of beauty takes some painting skill.


The chart is just a tool for your toolbox of knowledge in painting. I am a believer in having as many tools as possible to help improve painting technique. I think one of the things I want to do next in my chart study program is to work out a color values chart to go with the initial chart I do for each palette. The values chart will be based on my value plan of using five value families. I posted a few weeks ago about my "Five Families" of values. I believe this chart might be very useful in tandem with the color mixing chart for each palette I want to explore.

Skill building does not simply occur because you paint a lot. Practice does not necessarily make perfect. I can paint all day long, day after day and not paint well if I don't have good technique and study to back me up. Doing bad paintings every day does not result in good paintings. We all do bad paintings, at least I do, but they are often transitional stages for me, experiments and growth spurts in the learning process. I must study in order to make progress and that comes with some bad paintings now and then.

I think painters who are good, are open to learning. They are trying to figure out what they can do all the time to improve. They are naturally curious about what will happen if they do certain things. Good painters recognize their limitations, but work within that parameter to be the best they can be. We are not all equally gifted. Many of us are handicapped by poor health, vision, or lack of natural ability. That should not stop us from working hard to use every bit of ability we posses. I know too many painters who say " I can never be as good as Mr X, so why do I try?" I will admit that I see painters who bring tears to my eyes, they are so much better than I am. I could never be that good, but I can be a lot better than I am now if I keep working and studying.

I'll show you a values chart to match my color chart as soon as I figure out how I want to do it and I'll post a bit tomorrow about color values and how I study them. Color value is the lesson plan for my plein air class next Saturday.


Today's Recipe:

Honey Blue Cheese Dressing

1/2 Cup bottled French Dressing
3/4 tsp celery seed
dash powdered garlic
dash salt/pepper
1/2 tsp dried onion flakes
1 T honey
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
1 T red wine
1 T red wine vinegar

Mix it all up and use it on your favorite salad.

Palette studies with my student,BLT Souffle"

Yesterday I had a private student for her first lesson. She is a delightful "Yankee" from New York. We had a very interesting discussion on the cultural differences between north and south in America. She is funny and enthusiastic, which makes for a fun morning in the studio.

Her first lesson was the paint mixing exercise I posted on the blog yesterday. It was a real eye opener for her, having had no idea of the range a five color palette could give her.



Gloria with her 5 color palette.

My friend, extraordinary painter Nancy Moskovitz HERE, asked me to elaborate a bit about my palette mixing charts, so I have included three images of the chart I did yesterday after my student left. I'm afraid I am not as neat and tidy as she is.

This chart explores a palette of colors I am fond of. I will be doing a painting in a couple of days with this chart and I'll share it with you as a WIP.

My oil palette for this chart includes:
Daniel Greene Titanium White
Daniel Greene Sap Green
Daniel Greene Ivory Black
Utrecht Yellow Ochre
Daniel Green French ultramarine blue (FUB)
Utrecht Red Iron Oxide.




The beginning of the chart:

The colors are layed in as first vertical stripes and then horizontal stripes. It is difficult to see the white lines but they are there. The color swatches are mixed according to the lines that form the spaces. So some will be three color combinations, some two, some four. I mix whatever the line colors are around each space. This allows me to mix the full range of colors this palette is capable of.

The first swatch is blue because both lines are blue.




This is my full palette study completed. It takes me about 30 minutes to do one and it is a fabulous warm up for the painting I have planned with any particular palette. I can use any medium I wish to including gouache,casein,oils and acrylics.




This is a closeup. I don't know if you can see the notations I have started to put under the swatches. Some of the combinations will duplicate. It is useful for me to go back and note the most successful of the two efforts in terms of balance or bias in the color. For example, some of the swatches will have a double color and two singles, like red,red,blue,green. The bias in your mix must reflect that double red to be accurate.

I do this before using a new palette for actual painting because it is a terrific reference to use and go back to again in the future. I punch them and put them in my color mixing notebook. I always write the colors of the palette on the paper too, because months later I may not remember. Sometimes I will do these palettes as simple experiments, not actually using them right away. At some time later I will run across a situation where that particular palette will be perfect for a painting. I then pull out the chart and I'm ready to go.

They are also very useful for doing commission work. Sometimes it is necessary to use a palette to match a clients decor and furnishings. ( I know we all hate that, but I consider commission work my day job.) I will often make a chart for the painting and keep it for that particular client. He/she hopefully will want another painting to add to their collection. By doing the chart and labeling it for them, I have half the work done for their next painting.



Today's Recipe:

BLT Souffle'

Mix 2 eggs, 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar,1 tsp mustard,dash Worcestershire sauce,salt and pepper to taste.

Spread this mixture on 4 slices of bread. Place bread on Pam sprayed cookie sheet.
Top with 2 slices of tomato on each, 1 slice of onion, and two strips of bacon criss crossed. Bake for 30 minutes at 300 degrees until bacon is crisp and done.

Some Sharing Fun, Musing on color mixing,Walnut Snacks

Tomoka River Final Image
40x48 inches
oil on canvas

This is the last of the WIP's I've had in rotation. It's time to start a new one!!


I thought it might be fun to feature some of my friends here on the blog. Mondays seem to be a good day to do this because I am in the studio all day. I would like to show a photo of you, your brief bio, an image of your favorite painting or whatever you may like and a link to your blog and web page. If you would like to be featured on this blog, send me this stuff in an email and I'll put you on the blog on a Monday:>) I like to share. You don't have to be a visual artist. You can be a writer, dancer, actor, soccer Mom or whatever!!

I have a new private student coming today so I must pick up the studio and clean up a bit. We are going to start with acrylics.

I'm going to start with color mixing today to give her some experience with that before she begins to paint. One of the thing I like to do is to point out to a new painter that there are various palettes to use. I use about 6 different palettes to suit my mood, the time of year, or for limited color temperature palettes. This is a useful arsenal for me.

Many painters start out using a palette that works reasonably and never change it. Their work begins to have a sameness year after year with no variety at all. They become so dependant on that palette that they fear changing it and are unable to. I know painters who's palette remains the same no matter where they are painting and no matter the season. They wear that palette like a badge.

To me, flexibility is esential in painting, especially for a landscape painter or location painter. When I go out of my region to paint, I am faced with many changes in atmosphere light and terrain. It is really impotant to be able to adjust the palette to make it work in different locations. Seasonal changes are part of that necessity as well. For an experienced painter, north Florida is vastly different in winter and summer. Not quite so much in south Florida. The seasonal change is striking up here. Because of this, my palette rotates between warm and cooler bias depending on the season.

Over the years I have studied various palettes, modifying them and tweaking here and there. They are like old friends. I can pull them out when I want to play or if I need them for a particular situation. The one commonality in all of them is the limitation of colors. They are all from 5 to 8 colors only.

It has taken me years to learn anything about color mixing. I'm still far from competent in that particular arena. I believe that all of us see color differently as artists. By that I mean we see intensity differently. Some of the color I see as bland, will seem just right to another painter. Some of the intensity in another's work shreiks at me, but seems just right to the artist. We also change in our likes and dislikes in what we think looks good. After intense study of Notan and values for the last year, my old work seems way too intense to me, so we evolve if we allow ourselves to study and grow.

Patrons have definite ideas as well about what they like or not. I believe it is a mistake to try and be all things to all patrons. We must be true to our own muse. The secret is to find those who agree with us, wherever we are in our art journey at any given time. :>)

This is a great little color mixing exercise I made up to develop all the possibilities of a new palette:

Let' use the following palette as an example

Ivory Black
Yellow Ochre
FUB
Cad Red Light
Titanium white

Any medium is fine for this, gouache,acrylic,oils,casein will all work.

1 sheet index paper

I make five lines evenly spaced, from top to bottom vertially, left to right, black, ochre,FUB,red,white

Then I make five lines horizontally, evenly spaced, left to right black,ochre,FUB red, white.

This is going to make a grid on your page.

Next mix equal portions of the grid line colors for each middle of the squares. Some of the colors mixes will be two colors, some three and some four. You simply mix the colors together that form the lines around the blank center. Say your lines of a square are two red and one black, use two portions of red and one portion of black for that middle swatch, You lay in a swatch of the mixture in each blank square. You will quickly understand all of the potential mixes for that five color palette and really know what you can do with it for real painting. Punch holes in one side and put it in your color mixing notebook when it dries. If you do this for every new paltte you want to use, you will have it to refer back to whenever you need it. it will also help you know whether a new palette has potential.

Today's Recipe:

Walnut Snacks

1/3 cup orange juice concentrate
1 tsp lemon extract
1 cup sugar
1 T butter
2 1/2 cups walnuts

Combine butter,sugar, OJ, lemon extract in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat stirring continuously until mixture is creamy and loses the sugary look. Stir in walnuts and pour out on baking sheet lined with waxed paper. Separate the nuts and cool. You can use pecans instead of walnuts or both.

Finished the Orange Shop Painting,Google Alerts,Beef Marinade

The Orange Shop
14x18 inches
oil on panel

I had a great time doing this painting. I left some things fairly minimal, left out various elemnts which would have busyed it up too much. I really enjoyed the process.One thing I have discovered is that people really love old buildings. Hopefully someone who enjoys vintage Florida and historical places will want to take it home :>)


Have I told you about Google Alerts? I use them all the time. I have about 6 at a time going. Basically they are a search for information on the key words you use to make the alerts. Some of mine include, Linda Blondheim,Florida Landscape Painters, Gainesville Florida Landscape Artists, then I use some for specific events like Wekiva Paint Out, gallery or museum openings and so forth.

Anything about that topic comes up in a list that google sends to your email with links to the topic. This morning I got a google alert that I am mentioned in the Artists Magazine June 2008 issue. Very cool!! I never would have known without the google alert.

Whenever I send out press releases for my work, I find out exactly which publications are using the information in print through google alerts. I have been able to read articles about me in North Carolina and all over Florida from newspapers. I never would have known about them without the alerts. The other advantage to them is that you will see how much a promoter is actually trying to promote events that you will be participating in. Sometimes they will tell you there is huge publicity, when in reality it is isolated to the local paper and not regionally as they have claimed.

Google alerts are really useful tools for marketing, and for reading about other artists events. You can use them for virtually any idea or topic you can think of. They are easy to set up and remove when no longer needed.


Today's Recipe:


Meat Marinade

This works great for meat to be grilled, either beef or pork.

1 envelope dry onion soup mix
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup catsup
1 cup water
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup oil
2 T mustard
2 slices lemon
1/2 tsp salt

Put everything in a glass container and heat in microwave 5 minutes. Cool completely and pour over meat. Marinate in fridge for 24 hours before broiling or pan frying.

Mailing List Grows, A step by Step Painting,My favorite Green Beans

I have noticed that my mailing list is growing quite a bit this year. This is always a good thing. I have around 500 names currently on it. This is an area of marketing that many artists overlook. A real mistake. An active mailing list is gold, pure gold!! When you think about it, these are the people in the world who are actually interested in what you do. Many of them are patrons and the rest are people who care enough about you to want to hear from you.

I use mine in a variety of ways. I often use it regionally. Let's say I have a paint out in the Orlando area. I will scroll through and make post cards for the folks who live in the greater Orlando area about the upcoming paint out. I'll tell them where it is and how to find me there, mentioning the opening and so forth. I will use an image of a painting I have done in that area. I do this for the Wekiva River paint out each year. The same for any other event or opening in other parts of the South. I rarely have to send out a postcard for the entire list. That would be very expensive. By using it selectively throughout the year, I am able to keep in touch with most of the people on my list. For general news I will rotate through the list quarterly, a fourth of the list in January, another group in March, another section in June and then the last in November.

I keep my list on a spread sheet on excel. It is very easy and I can make notes about when an individual was contacted last and for what event. It is a very efficient system for me. I know every artist has their own method.

I also have a spread sheet for those patrons who purchase and support me regularly. I like to send them new images fairly frequently because they are very interested in my work. I use this list to send nice little extras too, like tickets to charity auctions and miniature paintings. They deserve these little perks. After all, they are the people who put food on my table :>)

If you don't have a mailing list start one immediately. My research tells me that direct mail is still the best bang for your buck in reaching patrons. Do not depend on email for all your marketing. In fact, the more people are bombarded by email marketing, the less they are inclined to read it. I actually do less email marketing than I used to.

I am constantly receiving the html emails from other artists about their stuff and I rarely even read through them all the way. Yes, I could unsubscribe, but I don't want to miss something of importance from them. What I am suggesting here is that we need to be more selective about what we send out and when. We don't need to hear every week about the new coffee mug design available at Cafe Press and so forth. A once every three months announcement about the artist's store would be appropriate. Better yet, put it on the web site or blog in a link or widget so those who are interested will go there to browse. One artist last week sent me no less than four different announcements about her book and then four or five more announcements about her workshops. It was overwhelming and annoying to say the least. If I want someone to see it, I send it via USPS. They are more likely to read it, saving the pretty pictures to put on the refrigerator :>)

For workshop announcements I like to put them on art forums, blogs, my web site and bulletin boards. This reaches a wide audience and does not clog up individual mailboxes all day long. My rule of thumb is that if the message is not worth sending out by postcard via USPS, then it is probably not worth sending via email. If I am going to send out a post card, I will definitely include my message via email too.

On of the best emails I have received was from my friend Aliye Cullu HERE. She has sidewalk sales for her art at various locations in Gainesville. She sends out an email about the sale and offers the sale items on her web site so that people can purchase the work there without waiting to go to the sale. Very clever and an easy way to build twice the business for the sale.

Use your mailing list often and effectively without annoying people and you will reap the rewards.

A Step by Step painting Demo

A painter asked me to show a step by step process for my mixed media paintings. Some of you may remember them from last summer. At that time I used casein as the under painting but I was never satisfied with the fact that casein does not varnish well. Now I am experimenting with gouache and it seems to be working really well.



Cattle Ranch
12x16 inches
gouache over painted with transparent oils

Stage 1

This was the initial block in. I will skip a couple of stages to show you the finished gouache painting.



Stage 2

Finished gouache session




Stage 3

Oil glazes going on. Modifications will need to be made in color and intensity.




Final Painting


Today's Recipe:


Easy Green Beans

Beans with the ends removed left whole, or snapped. I leave mine whole.
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 small slice of smoked ham ( deli style sliced ham is fine) About 1 or 2 ounces chopped finely
1/2 small onion finely diced, or a few dried onion flakes
salt/cracked black pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a pan on the stove. Cover with a lid and steam until beans are just tender and still bright green.

Delish!!

A very cool marketing Idea,WIP's continue,Trail Mix

The big WIP is coming along. I have enjoyed employing the Notan elements as well as the manipulation of form in this painting. Another session or two should do it for this one.


I read on Empty Easel HERE about a great marketing idea.

Basically the blogger decided to make her readers affiliates for selling her paintings. She agreed to pay any blog reader a percentage of her painting sales, who closes the deal for her. Essentially, that is what my agent does for me in a limited way. She has a portfolio of my work to promote for herself apart from what I am doing. I love the idea of engaging blog viewers in the process of selling work. I think it is a brilliant idea.

Hey, anybody who wants to sell my work for me will definitely get a reward!! I think this concept could be worked out in more than one way for my own studio. Options could include a credit bank for the affiliate. He/she could build up a credit to use for buying paintings ,taking workshops, purchasing tutorials,notebooks,career consultations,or a 20% of sales in cash through paypal or check. It would be up to the affiliate how they would like to use it. It could be expanded to the web site paintings as well as the blog. Can you imagine the potential of having dozens of affiliates out there promoting and selling your paintings? It is a simple, great idea. Let's do it!!!

Today's Recipe:

This is a favorite snack that I used to make for my kids all the time. You can get various renditions of this at Fresh Market but it is cheaper to make it yourself, going to Sams or Coscos for the ingredients.

Peanuts
craisins(dried cranberries or raisins or both)
plain M&M's candy
Reeses Pieces candy
pistachio nuts
cashew nuts

Mix it all up, Yummy!!!

Salted pecans or almonds are also great.

The cheap version uses raisins,peanuts and M&Ms

Marketing these days, A WIP request,Road trip to the Orange Shop,Honey Citrus Sauce

Last night I ordered a book about marketing. I had read a review about it. It is called "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark". An odd but catchy title. I'll let you know if it is useful. I am thinking that art patrons are a lot more interactive than they used to be. They are also a lot more interested in a relationship with artists than in the old days. Relationships are less formal in our casual society. I believe that may be why galleries are on a downward slide. The possibilities for direct sales through our studios and the Internet have made actual contact between patron and artist far more common. It seems to me that this changes the relationship greatly.

I know that personally, many of my patrons become close friends to me and I value that as much as the sales. I used to have a retail studio/gallery space in a small town. It never worked for me. Moving my studio back to the little shack behind my old mobile home in the country was the smartest marketing move I ever made. I am comfortable there and therefore my friends,students and patrons are comfortable there too. I think it is important to them to see how an artist really works and creates. The fact that I live a minimal lifestyle doesn't seem to bother them. I believe that people want to see honesty and integrity in the artists they associate with. They don't seem to care how we live, being more interested in what drives us to create what they love too. I believe my patrons have more invested than physical ownership of a painting. They have an emotional investment in the work and that spills over to a relationship with me, or so I hope. We have the commonality of a shared emotion and language though the paintings.

Above all is the honest commitment to my patrons, their lives and interests. If you are faking that interest as an artist, then you are doing both yourself and your patron a real disservice. Actually, most of my patrons are very interesting people with passions for many things I feel love for, including nature conservation, parks,ranching, wild places, the coast,animals,art and so forth. We have natural bonds which drew us together through my paintings in the first place.

Patrons enjoy good service. They expect their artist friends to provide good advice on sizes, framing, installation, delivery and shipping. Providing these courtesies is fairly easy and certainly makes a difference to them. I offer car delivery in North Central Florida for large sized paintings. I am willing to meet their needs for color matching, decisions on decor and so forth. I provide archival information for future restoration. These services don't take up much of my time but they are important to my clients. I guarantee my work 100% for both web site purchases, studio purchases and commissions. This is important to patrons. They know they will receive satisfaction.

I really don't know that much about marketing, but I do know what I feel about my patrons and how grateful I am to them. When I see all of these marketing schemes on the Internet and hard sell tactics, formulas and so forth, it makes my head hurt. That is just not me. I think treating my customers like family and being involved in their lives as someone they can rely on and share the love of painting with, is more my style.



Stage 1
Florida Cattle Ranch
12x16 inches
casein underpainting to be followed by transparent oils

I have a request to do a WIP in my mixed media technique, so I will share it with my blog friends too. This is the beginning bloc in. Playing around with it at this stage. I will make some adjustments in the composition in the next session.




All that talk last week about the Orange Shop sent me on a quest for their good eats. I took Mommy and Sis with me again. We started out with a good breakfast at the Clock Restaurant in Gainesville and then headed over to Citra. This time I bought a gallon of fresh squeezed Orange Juice, which I am sitting here enjoying. No preservatives and ice cold. Wow is it good!! I also got a jar of tangerine marmalade and orange marmalade, both sugar free, a bag of red grapefruit, and a pecan roll for Mommy. She said that when she was a little girl, she used to go fishing with her Daddy on Lake Lochloosa and the pecan roll was her treat when they stopped for supplies. She says it is every bit as good as she remembered. It is a bit too sweet for me. My downfall is the Pay Day candy bar. That combination of a caramel center and salty peanuts on the outside just does me in. Salty and sweet is a Southern thing for sure. There is nothing that comes close to a bottle of RC Cola with salted peanuts dropped in it and a straw :>)

We headed back through Hawthorne and State Road 20, passing fields of lovely old oaks and fat cattle. This is Florida at it's best, Fish camps, creeks, lakes,rivers, ranches and farms. I'm getting the itch to get back out to paint again at least early in the morning while it is cool. I want to go over to Twin Lakes Fish Camp in Cross Creek and paint again. It's been quite a while and also over to Mike's Fish Camp on Orange Lake. It has been ages. I think it might be wonderful to do a series from all of the area fish camps.


Today's Recipe:

Honey Citrus Glaze & Sauce

12 Oz. Can Frozen Orange or Tangerine Juice
2/3 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup Frank's® Original RedHot
2 Tablespoons Ground Ginger
1/2 Teaspoon Celery Seed
pinch of dried onion flakes

Combine all ingredients in small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook 15 minutes or until thickened and reduced, stirring occasionally. Use sauce to glaze ham, ribs or chicken during last 30 minutes of cooking.