A new year usually prompts me to clean my studio. I have had a painting in the beginning block in phase for over a year. It was going to be a painting of the Tubac, AZ cemetery. Unfortunately, I lost my inspiration on the return home. So, I decided to change the composition to be a Midwest scene and I felt the result was pleasant, even expressing the happiness that I felt while I was painting it.

On 10/10/17 I wrote a blog about painting emotion. At that time a person passing by commented on my plein air painting and the peace that it displayed. This was truly how I felt at that time. If this most recent painting spoke to happiness, could I paint the same scene and intentionally try to communicate other emotions? I thought I would give it a try. Here is "Angry," "Depressed," "Passionate," "Peaceful," and "Worried."

Color, format (vertical or horizontal) value (light vs. dark), directional strokes and edges all came into play to convey a certain emotion. Is there an emotion you would like me to try? Leave a comment.

Sue and Suzy, the Artist with the Split Personality

It is so very dangerous for me financially to go into an art store like Blick! My intention was to only buy some pouring medium. Unfortunately, Gelli plates were in the same aisle. This is a gel printing plate to print patterns onto paper. Recently, I have been reading "Pastel Innovations" by Dawn Emerson. One of her techniques is to print interesting backgrounds for her pastel paintings. She has printing presses. I thought this might be an economical alternative for me.

In the past I made a gelatin plate from unflavored gelatin poured into a cookie sheet with sides. This was a lot of fun but it has to be refrigerated to keep it solid. It is also fragile because it is easily scored and it has a limited life. So, of course, I had to buy the Gelli plate at Blick. This is what it looks like. It feels soft and rubbery. I hope it will be more durable.

I used Canson Multi Media or Stonehenge paper for my prints. You also need a brayer, acrylic paints that are not too thick, and items that will make marks on the plate but they cannot be sharp. Once you have incised the plate, it is damaged and will always have this mark in your print. I used bubble wrap, plastic stencils, corrugated cardboard, leaves, the cardboard sleeve from my Starbucks coffee, netting, etc. Paint departments in hardware stores have a lot of tools as well.

Next, you dot paint colors all over the plate and then use the brayer to spread the paint over the plate. Be sure to clean the brayer immediately when you are done. Just roll it over a piece of paper.

Put your items with texture onto the plate. Paint is pulled off the plate when you lift the item. When you are finished putting  texture on the plate then put a sheet of paper down and gently press it all over with your hand.

Pull the paper off from one end.

Voila, you have a print!

You can print the same paper several times using different colors and textures. These prints are to spark your creativity. What do you see? What would you paint on top of these papers? Or, maybe you would rip them up for a collage.

Since this is acrylic, you can use several mediums to paint or draw over this. My goal was to use it for a pastel painting. Since I like more tooth to grab pastel, I covered my sheets of paper with clear or transparent gesso. When this dries you can see the acrylic pattern through the gesso. Now you have tooth or a gritty texture to layer pastel. Do not use regular gesso because it is opaque and will cover your acrylic print.

I looked at a stencil and part of it looked like a flower pot. So I used that part of the stencil to form the pot. Then I developed imaginary flowers for the pot. You can see some of the background in the pot. The acrylic print gives depth and interest to the painting.

The pastel can totally cover the background or if it is applied lightly, you can still see the acrylic background. Here is another example where a lot of the background is still showing.

Sometimes, an idea comes quickly and other times you have to leave the print alone for a few days before it speaks to you. This is a fun and playful way to paint! I feel it is visually very interesting. Give it a try. There are a lot of YouTube videos on Gelli plate printing.

Sue and Suzy, the artist with the split personality

www.sueflanagan.com

"Intimate Crawdad Scene" is a 14 x 11 in. studio oil painting of flowers and grasses along the edge of the water at Crawdad Slough in the Cook County Forest Preserve District.

I am returning to my original love of oil painting for awhile. I am enjoying thick paint and expressive marks to create texture with a brush and palette knife. I briefly looked at my photo reference because I just wanted my impression of the scene, not an exact image. I'm told that the pink flowers are a type of hibiscus and the  Queen's Anne Lace looked like it was reaching for the sun. It reminds me of the beautiful, sunny day I spent with friends painting by the water.

I started with thin paint blocking in the background water, the dark shape of the grasses and the foreground shorter and warmer grass. Then I used thicker paint to develop the grasses and flowers. It is important to be free and random with my marks because that is nature. Often my students want to draw or paint each blade of grass and it must be perfectly aligned. That is a good goal for my front lawn but not for a natural scene.

There are many pastel paintings in my studio but they have been for my students and what they wanted to do. I guess it is time I did a pastel that I want to do. Sign up for my newsletter to also see some of the acrylic paintings that I have done. www.sueflanagan.com

Sue and Suzy, the artist with the split personality

"Into the Mist" is a 9 x 12 in. pastel painting and the 30th daily painting of September 2017. I did this painting only using the Jack Richeson soft handmade landscape pastels on the Richeson paper. This was my experience with this product.

I won a $100 Jack Richeson certificate in a plein air event. I asked the company for the largest set of their half stick soft handmade pastels that I could get for that price. They sent a 46 set of landscape pastels and an introductory set with a sample of their three types of pastels from hard to very soft. They graciously added some paper and a panel.

I decided to do a painting only using these materials. The paper is their "clay" color and it has a white edge around the 9 x 12 in. surface so I could use the edge to tape the paper to foam core. Of course, when you are done, you might have to cut the edge off before framing. The paper has an even tooth but it is very coarse.

The value on a scale of 1-10 is between a 7 and an 8 so I knew that I didn't have to go much darker than this. Most of my pastel application would be lighter. I thought this would be a nice color under a landscape with a lot of greens and blues.

Here is my photo reference. I picked something that was familiar to me. Then I started to put down pastel in the major shapes.

The paper is supposed to take liquids so I started by using water in the sky and distant shapes. I was very surprised that it was difficult to dissolve the pastel. The pastel was an unusual texture, sort of gummy when water was added. And, it was not easy to spread.

Maybe there is something peculiar to the light pastels. So, on a test sheet of UART paper I put some dark colors and added water. The pastel almost felt water resistant at first. With persistence and pressure I got some of it to dissolve but it did not move evenly on the surface. I have never experienced this before.

So, I took a risk with the other shapes and used 70% rubbing alcohol. This worked nicely. The paper could take the alcohol and the pastel dissolved. This is a picture of the wet under-painting and a closeup after it dried. I was very pleased that the paper did not buckle with liquids. I like some of the red paper color showing through.

Now that the background is fixed, I added the main shape of the tree that is the closest. I used alcohol again to liquefy the pastel.

When the surface was dry, I started to develop the shapes by adding pastel working from dark to light.

I continued to refine the major shapes adjusting by comparing value and temperature. I found that a foam brush or fan brush could easily remove enough pastel to make adjustments.

Almost done. My gloved or ungloved finger was not helpful to blend small areas. I had to use a tool like a foam pad or a rubber shaper. Before I could blend even an edge, I had to lay down a lot of pastel.

And done. I was pleased with the outcome. I was able to cover the paper color in the sky where I did not want texture but it took a lot of pastel to cover this dark color. I was able to keep the paper color and texture for the middle ground and foreground where I wanted it.

Summary

I found the Richeson pastels to be rich in color and very soft but not fragile. The landscape set had a nice selection of colors for my part of the country, the Midwest United States. The paper was durable and did not buckle but pastel does not physically blend with ease. If you are a blender you might not like it. The paper does accept a lot of layers of pastel for optical blending. The Richeson company also carries other paper colors. Remember, this paper is coarse. If you like a fine tooth, you might not like this surface. Other than the problem with adding water, I was pleased with the pastels and paper. I would recommend it.

Sue and Suzy, the artist with a split personality

I love to experiment with art materials. Lately I have been working in oil paint with cold wax, acrylic, and soft pastel. I wish I had time for oil pastel. Maybe I'll try using that with the oil paint. Here is "Sunset on the Lost Prairie," "Negativity," and "Another Sunrise on Serpentine Trail."

Some studio organization was in order. There is nothing worse than grabbing the oil Titanium White when you are working with acrylics and you meant to grab the acrylic Titanium White. As the saying goes, "Oil and water does not mix."

I came up with stations for each medium: oil, water media, and pastel. In this picture you can see the closest table is for water media and that can include collage. The far table is for oil painting. The easel can be used for oil painting or soft pastel. If I am doing pastels, I separate the tables and that gives me access to all of my pastels. Notice the ergonomic mat. It is very useful for my feet and back. I could use another one. This area has natural daylight and color corrected light. I have another area with a dehumidifier and fan for drying paintings.

My supplies are separated in different bins or tool boxes. There is no confusion with color coding.

So, that is my organization. What do I mean about rhythm? Well I start my day by mixing acrylic paint. The paint should rest so that the air bubbles rise to the top. I give this several hours.

That is plenty of time to work in oil and cold wax.

That abstract needs to dry so I can work on fine tuning my oil plein air painting from this week.

When that is done, I could move on to this large sheet of pastel paper that is calling to me. Or, I can now go back to the acrylic paint. The air bubbles are gone and I can attack a larger canvas.

Instead, I have lunch and go to the store for art materials. I can never have enough and sale coupons are dangerous. More on that next time. I found something at ACE Hardware that will contain some of my mess! I ended up attacking a 16 x 20 in. canvas with acrylic paint. I'll photograph that when it is dry.

It is all so much fun that I want to do it all. I guess that is what makes me Sue and Suzy. Now back to the pastel.

Sue

I am sometimes slow to learn. How many times have I gone plein air painting in the "Moses Syndrome?" That means I was wandering around forever like Moses in the desert. I just couldn't find that scene that really appealed to me. All I had to do was to turn around! That is why I call this painting "Look Behind You." I was reminded of an important lesson in Australia.

We were having wine and snacks in the Outback of Australia waiting for the sunset that turns the rock formation, Kata Tjuta, into a reddish glow. The glow was not happening and so I wandered with my glass of wine. That is when I looked behind. I put the wine down and grabbed my camera.

When looking for inspiration, remember to look behind you! The scenery looks very different. The composition and the colors are different because the light source is illuminating the scene from a different angle. The action at that moment was behind me. The sun was getting low in the sky and the glow was through the trees causing the grasses to have a cool tint in comparison to the warmth through the trees.

Many years ago I painted two landscapes called End of the Road in Oahu. We were literally at the end of a road with a beautiful ocean scene on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. I stood in about the same location to photograph this beautiful scene. The first painting was looking slightly away from the sun and in the direction of fewer clouds with a high vantage point. The second painting was from a lower vantage point looking behind me into the clouds with the sun peaking through them.

Not only did I have two different compositions, but there were many differences in the colors. So, when you are taking a photograph or plein air painting, remember to turn around. Look where you came from because the action may be behind you!

Sue and Suzy,

An artist with a split personality

"Working in the Garden" is an 11 x 14 in. soft pastel on paper.

My inspiration was a long distance photo I took last summer at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. It was a picture of a woman working in the garden. I started with a piece of Wallis paper. Ah, the white is both exciting because of the potential and intimidating because it is blank!

The Center of Interest is the figure and I wanted to get that right so I couldn't resist sketching that in first. It was probably a good thing I did because I kept getting it too close to the center.

Then I did a gouache under painting keeping the background foliage in cool colors and dark values. The foreground was warmer and lighter. Here it is still wet. At this stage I put some texture into the vegetation by spraying water and lifting out color with tissues or a brush.

When it is dry the colors will be a little different. I liked the result especially in the foreground.

Now it is time to put some color on the figure. So I put pastel down for this and then put alcohol on top of that to thoroughly cover the figure.

Now it is time to add pastel to the figure and more to the background.

Then I move on to the foreground. and keep developing the painting all over at the same time.

OK, this is too much fun and you can see I'm getting carried away.

Time to double check the values and sign it. "Working in the Garden" is complete, I think.

Sue and Suzy