Category: marigold

Back In the Studio

Playing in the studio again the other day trying to make it a daily habit.  Eventually, I’ll get in there for a couple hours each day.  Until that habit kicks in I’m thankful for the times I do find myself at my desk instead of in the kitchen.

I’ve been wanting to visit the local art supply store to look over some new watercolor paints.  The old tubes I had were dried up.  The new ones I had didn’t have the range of colors I really wanted.  I don’t want to resort to my travel set because then I’d need to replace those pans, too.

When you buy an introductory set of five tubes they  don’t always offer the colors you want.  Strange colors I would never buy are included.  So I need to supplement the sets with more paints.  Some how I can’t get to the store!  Is it a block?  Am I putting other things in my way so I never get there?  I don’t know, but the great thing is that I painted anyway in spite of the weird colors.

Five large tubes of MamieriBlu and twelve tiny tubes of Holbein paints is what I have.  The MamieriBlu are wonderfully creamy and hold up nice while painting.  The Holbein are also nice to work with.  I had my eyes on a set of Russian Yarka paints. 

However, some wonderful fellow artists on the Etsy shop forums gave me great info on them and I decided to stick with what I have.  I don’t feel like spending good money on inferior quality paint.

Off to the studio to look at the disaster of a painting I did last week.  The Artist Way course says bad paintings point the way to a different style.  Ok, so I did a junky painting.  I felt like thowing paint on the paper in an effort to abstract the marigold work. 

Well, let’s say it looked like a mess of color.  Instead of ditching it, I went back to it and tried adding line, blotching some color out and generally playing with it.  Just a play date in the studio.

Maybe it wasn’t what I had in mind, but a good effort anyway.  I’m not that embarrassed to show it.  Thankfully, things sometimes work out in the end if you try again.

It’s Play Time

Fall Marigold on the easel ©2009 Dora Sislian Themelis
I’m so happy I had my little tantrum yesterday.  I told myself I was just going to do the things that needed doing and get over it!  Whatever time it took to clear the table, so to speak, I was going to set aside one hour to play.  One hour to just fool around at my desk. 
The other day I had taken a few more photographs in my garden.  I decided to just upload them from the camera and see what I had.  Some photos looked good enough to paint from.  I prefer painting from life, but it was okay for now. 

I chose a photo and took it to my drawing table, squeezed out the colors I was going to use and just got to it.  Without any rhyme or reason I sketched with color on the paper.  No objective other than playing with the brush and the paint.

Can you guess that I ended up spending two and a half hours painting?  By the time I looked up from the watercolor paper, it was already dark outside and I had no idea what time it was.  I was amazed.  Yesterday I was having a hissy fit about not painting and today I was painting!  Talk about a creative u-turn!

Fall Marigold 14×20″ Watercolor on 140lb coldpress paper
©2009 Dora Sislian Themelis

The Energy of Art

After working at straightening up my desk and studio area last week I had that idea for a painting, remember?  The painting tools were available and so was I.  A good block of time with nothing else to do was before me.  At least I had planned from the day before with the sketch, the technique, and the tools.  Somehow the synchronicity was there and I took advantage of it.

The instruction in watercolor I had was a disaster, but I’ve been playing with the medium for a while now and whatever I’m doing seems to please me.  It may not be how it’s supposed to be used, but hey, I’m allowed to change it up!  The technique of just applying the paint to the paper without thinning sounded interesting enough to try.   Oil painting is what I’m used to and this seemed close to how I worked in the past.  I mixed color on the palette, but then I would mix again on the canvas.  It worked for me. 

I used a limited palette of basic colors from two different paint companies, Holbein and Maimieri Blu, in tubes.  I think I liked the Holbein better, but I’ll have to experiment again in other techniques. 

Without wetting the paper first, I dipped into the paint with a large brush.  I began to shape the petals of the flower adding color where I felt like it belonged.  The photo I used was just a guide for where the light and shadows fell, and for the basic colors.  After that I was on my own. 

The act of painting was energizing.  I could feel the electricity of the connection with the painting surface through the brush, to my fingers holding it, up my arm with my body and mind totally engaged.  There was no talking in my head which usually has a hundred conversations going on at once.  Delicious silence and all the attention was on the painting process!

The end product was not the agenda.  I wasn’t sure what art my painting time would produce and I really didn’t care.  To be able to move into that realm of daydream/energy/action was the focus.  The means was the medium and the technique, which would justify the end, so to speak. 


And the result wasn’t bad either.