m. p i l g r i m (art)

  I have this friend who really, really loves those hairless cats. I think they look like wingless bats, and she knows that I feel this way, but she loves their adorable faces and says that they have fantastic dispositions. Her youngest is "Rob," a male that's about 5 years old.  Last year she posted a picture of herself holding one of her cats while standing in her kitchen.  (I've blurred this picture for her privacy. ) We decided that this needed a Renaissance Madonna and Child paint treatment...which I feel better able to do now that I've completed a year of art history.  My reference photos include this, for the background. The Renaissance was the first time that atmospheric perspective was widely depicted in painted works.      I isolated the background from one of those paintings using AI.   I started with a blank, white canvas board. I didn't bother with a mid-tone ground because I wanted the background to be bright.  I laid ...

 I live on the Olympic peninsula just a stone's throw from the Hoh rain forest. (Just kidding, it's like a 2-3 hours drive to get there. The Oly Pen is HUGE, and the Hoh is cool. The only way to get there is AROUND because other than a smattering of logging roads, there aren't many ways to get across it, maybe because there's a mountain chain.  I first saw the Hoh when I was here for the Seattle marathon over 10 years ago. We drove around the peninsula, and went for a short trail run in it, and it's this fairy mossy wonderland. Honestly, I could paint forever and never run of out subjects here. So, a mossy, damp green wonderland of ferns and trees that look like characters in a Grimm's fairy tale. One, in particular, gets photographed a lot. It arches over the path, like a gateway. And that's the scene I was after today.  I started out with a study, using some of the leftover guache that I had from Design I class. I thoroughly hate guache, but I have decided...

 I decided to try a new painting today. I have two week off before my next round of classes start leaving me with WHOLE DAYS FOR PAINTING.  I donned my favorite paint-smeared overalls and started studying a photo that had gotten my attention. I can't share the original photo because it was posted in a group I belong to on social media called "Landscape photos for artists". I also flipped the original photo horizontaly and cropped it. Apparently the original photo was taken in India. I just loved the atmospheric mauvey colors. In addition, the sky in the photo is yellow.  Like smoky, hazy yellow. That's kind of a challenge for me, but my previous work gave me some practice in transitioning sky into yellow, so just all yellow should be doable, right? I decided this could be done with some quick-dry white, alizarin crimson, indian yellow, sap green, and a tiny bit of ultramarine violet.   First I had to reconfigure my Artristic Evolve to hold a 16x20" cradled wood ...

 For my next painting I decided to paint a picture that was in my photo roll on my phone. I don't know where I got it, but there's no signature on it or name in the info. I tried to track down the owner via two different kinds of AI, but neither of them could find it. Google said it was a sunrise on the west coast (Google's AI sucks, LOL) the Chat GPT said it was near sunset, mostly likely on or near Second Beach, near La Push, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. It also offered that the photo has been edited and possibly flipped horizontally, and gone through several iterations of copy-save-copy-save. I'm not going to post the picture here until I know for sure whose it is. I did my usual prep for this 24"x30" cradled board (60cm x 75cm for our friends not in the US): Gac100 on the wood to seal it from the oil paint. Apparently wood has bad stuff in it that wreaks havoc on oil paint. Aside: I belong to some groups for painting on Facebook and I am AMAZED at ...

This quarter I'm taking Design 1 (meh) and watercolor. I started by creating a space in which to do watercolors, since you generally paint them flat.   It's tucked into the corner in my studio, next to my computer desk.  Fittingly, that table on the right is my mother's kitchen table. I feel good in this space, and close to her. You can see in the middle where I have markers organized - those are specifically water-soluable markers, and in the little tiny flat drawers are graphite, pastels, pastel pencils, charcoal, watercolor pencils, colored pencils, and permanant markers, all neatly organized.  The shelves are shoe racks with the middle shelf taken out. The stool is a "leaning stool" so that you aren't putting all your weight on your butt. You can see my porcelain watercolor palette under one of the shelves, and the double porcelain water container on the right.  I love this space. I love spending time in it.  I bought a couple of Baohong blocks: Artist-...