More about gorgeous, metal palettes

Was reading Brenda Swenson's blog post today about her method and equipment that she uses to sketch on a daily basis.  Her bag is a wonderful bag that we have all bought at one point in time, trying to copy Brenda - because, you know, if you just have the same equipment as Brenda, or Charles Reid, or Ted Nuttall, or.......you'll be just as wonderful a painter?   And when you say that to yourself, tell yourself to "go wish upon a star" at the same time!!  All 3 of these painters use a very fancy palette made in England, out of solid brass, by a man named Craig Young.  The boxes are in the hundreds of dollars but are absolutely gorgeous to the feel!  This little box is what they all have and when you take a class from them and see them handling this little, beautifully made, solid brass box.....It's hard to control the drool.

Because of Brenda's comment about the Craig Young box I wondered if anyone else had taken up the method.  Because we now have so many "individual" artists here in the U.S. and England?  Yes, 4 more box makers.  They're all still expensive but it's fun to read about them on this blog.  The blog writer's first name is Ron - never could find his last name - he actually uses a totally different palette for his outdoor trips and it's definitely affordable.  Not brass, alas, but the same configuration in plastic.  Frank Herring is this manufacturer's name and his palette is displayed below.  Ron, then, at the very last minute, mentions another palette box.

Okay.

I've wasted the whole day.

Again.

Maybe I'll paint tomorrow using my brand new paints and my brand new palette that cost me 4.99.

And then one final click on a palette link and a whole, whole blog about palettes showed up.  Now you, too, can waste a whole day and a whole pocket full of change if you're not careful.

11-11-16 It's been awhile and today I've been wasting time looking at......

Portable watercolor palettes that will hold the 1/2 pans for a friend of mine who lives in Canada.  She wrote me an email today with what supplies she's using to learn how to paint and expressed a wish for a traveling palette that would hold 1/2 pans.   I've now wasted a comfortable hour cruising the internet, fascinated by the ingenious inventions of so many people.  And then this one great idea.  Give it a try??

http://ritasquier.blogspot.com/2012/05/tuesdays-tips-techniques-for-watercolor.html

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Water Control Tool

When learning to paint in watercolor or improving your watercolor painting skills, controlling the amount of water in your brush is very important.  The ratio of water to paint, paint to water, water to paper, etc. is one of the more difficult things to learn.

Years ago, I took a number of Zoltan Szabo watercolor painting workshops.  I learned this little trick in his workshop.  It's in several of his books as well.

Create your own blotter.  With this blotter, you will learn how to control the water in your brush faster than you would trying to use a sponge or an old kitchen towel. 

1. Take a cheap roll of toilet paper.  Yes, toilet paper.  Squish it flat once or twice to crimp the inner cardboard tube.  Pinch the tube with your fingers.
2.  Twist and pull out the cardboard tube.  Completely remove it.  Recycle it.  :)
3.  I prefer Bounty paper towels.  You will need 5 sheets in length of regular paper towels or 10 sheets select-a-size (my favorite!).  Take the long length and fold it in half lengthwise.  Then fold in each short side half way to the middle, this will end up about the width of the toilet paper roll.  Wrap and roll the toilet paper with the paper towel. 
4.  Stuff it into a square plastic container.  I used an old square Tupperware sandwich container.  Charge or pre-wet the top of the surface with a little clear water.

You now have the perfect watercolor paint brush blotter, cleaner and water control tool. 

As you paint, blot your brush on the top to decrease the amount of water in your brush.  Swipe a paint filled brush across the top if you have too much paint in your brush.  Or swipe a dirty paint brush across the top before cleaning it in your water, this will help your water container to stay cleaner longer. 

The top gets dirty, swipe a wet wash brush across the top a couple times with clear water and the paint seeps into the middle of the roll.  If it gets really dirty, twist the entire roll until a clean portion of paper towel is a the top.  This little tool lasts quite a long time.

As silly as it sounds, it really is a good learning tool and extremely handy!

These are some of the palettes I found.  An incredible company makes a palette that will hold 80 or more 1/2 pans!!  How could you ever learn the names of the colors!!

http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2013/07/diy-watercolor-palette.html

http://happinesseveryday.com/my-diy-watercolour-travel-palette/

and then when you’ve sold several paintings for hundreds of dollars each, you can treat yourself to the ultimate.   these take about 2 years on a waiting list but they are really special!

http://www.littlebrassbox.com/prices.html

and then there’s the cheapest version possible!

http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/2014/07/hey-dont-thow-that-away-altoid-tin-watercolor-palette.html

and i’ve never seen this one before! overwhelming number of paint colors would be confusing i would think

http://www.robax.com/palettes.html

August 29: The man in the hat.....

As I said yesterday, this man caught my eye at a watercolor society meeting several years ago and I asked him if I could take his picture.  I dug him out of my files of interesting faces, drew him up and took him to class.  I like my start.  Let's see if I like my ending on Thursday in the class at the Huntington Library that's being taught by Rob Sharrill.  Class got me back to painting.

And then as I upload these pictures, I see my first big mistake.  The hat is much, much bigger, taller than the head and I didn't catch that at all.  So a redrawing is in order before Thursday's class.

Darn, I liked the drawing and liked the initial washes.

I'll finish him up but boy that hat is now so irritating to look at!

August 28: And the felon gets painted one more time......

Drew the felon again.  Made some comments as to my drawing - face too wide, chin too long.....but it was a class and I needed to paint him.

Here's the progression of paintings.....ending up in a vivid display of color - the class went on too long and I just kept adding color and color and color.

Started another drawing, another painting.  I'll post that beginning in tomorrow's blog.  It's a painting of a man that's a member of the Verdugo Hills Watercolor Society.  He was at a meeting several years ago with his wife and I asked if I could take his picture.  I like very much the way the drawing came together and the initial washes of color.  Let's see where I can take him to make him way, way too colorful.

And so the felon:

August 22: And the first painting is complete.

Tore this photo out of the newspaper.  Couldn't believe this cherubic face was wanted by the police but then Karin Jurick (one of my most favorite portrait/anything painters) paints from mug shot files on the internet.  She never names them or says where they're incarcerated, but she always has faces to paint!

When you photograph the "real" person and then photograph the painted person, the errors are glaring. But......this is the first painting in 4 years so gimme a little break.  I didn't think it was all that bad and as a result, I'll go to class again this week - perhaps with this character redrawn and ready to paint again.

August 20: Karin Jurick, a voice from my past

Many years ago, maybe 6, maybe 5, I followed a blog by a woman named Karin Jurick.  She posted portraits (photos) once a week for all of us followers to paint.  We submitted our paintings to her via email and she posted them for all of us to study. It was a monumental effort on her part, very time consuming, but oh so wonderful for those of us struggling to learn the face.  I was so taken with her generosity that unbeknownst to her, I captured the names and emails of the participants and wrote them on the side asking them to take part in a huge thank you to her.  I sent everyone whose name I could find a copy of Karin's picture asking them to paint her, send me an email photo and I would post them all at once in a huge thank you to Karin.  All went well, until (you can see this coming), someone wrote Karin saying when should she send her the portrait she had painted.  The jig was up which was too bad but the project turned out wonderfully.  I'm wondering if I have any of those portrait posts still available.

What started this letter to all of you today?  Karin Jurick has started posting, blogging, once again and I'm hooked all over again.  She paints small:  4x6, maybe an 8x10 if she's feeling adventurous. She only uses flat brushes and look what she accomplishes.

I took a look at her blog and I'll be darned.  There is one of her final portrait posts.  She had all of us who had painted along with her send her a "selfie".  She then swapped/emailed us someone else's selfie.  We were told to paint the stranger (who was painting us) and return our painting via email.  I was sent a fabulous photo of what I termed the "hairdresser".  Wonderful colorful picture.  Alas, the hairdresser never got her act together by the deadline but Karin, wonderful manager, filled the blank spot by painting me!!  You'll have to guess which one.

Enjoy this sequence of paintings by other people.

August 18: And then the video I should have started with.

This man is in Spokane.  How lucky people are to have access to him and to his teachings.  The best part of this video, in my opinion, is his involvement in a local junior high school as a volunteer art teacher.  When he speaks about art in our lives, in our childrens' lives, he waxes eloquent and true.

Enjoy this.

August 17: Painting with values, not color. Fascinating demonstration

This man demonstrates using color value not necessarily color.  It's really interesting and something that we all should have learned years ago and didn't.  I know I struggled for a long, long time as to what "value" meant - I held up the grey scale, I held up the camera slide, I nodded my head when the teacher mentioned "value"......I think I'm beginning to understand and it's only been a gazillion years.

August 16: And then I start wavering, wondering whether I should really be learning oils........

This is the same Sheldon School of Painting in Los Angeles.  This man works with high school students who want to study art, who want to prepare a portfolio for an art degree somewhere.....he has videos of painting in every medium and every subject.  His oil technique is much like water in that great expanses of color are never laid down, dabs here, dabs there and the eye emerges.

August 15: Another watercolor portrait demo....I can't watch these enough!

Sheldon's Portfolio Art School in Los Angeles.

So many of these techniques remind me of Ted Nuttall's method of painting.  Many of us were lucky enough to study with him here in Los Angeles.

Enjoy these videos and hopefully some little tweek of technique will appeal to you.

Hopefully we'll all improve.

August 14: If only I could paint like this! But at least I've picked up a brush again!

A portrait demo by Zimou Tan

https://youtu.be/ipOPmJj6GbA

August 12, 2016 - Watercolor's back!!

Having just taken up a paintbrush again for the first time in 4 years....I've spent this Friday morning watching videos of other watercolor portrait painters, trying to get that "feeling" back again and yes, definitely, a lot, lot, lot of technique! Enjoy this first video by Stephie Butler.