Nature Journaling :Phenology Wheel

Nature  Journaling Phenology Wheel-Covid Journal for May by Meera Rao 

I made this Phenology wheel in May because I always wanted to do a nature journal that way.  I did it on printer paper bigger than my Journal so set it aside in a watercolor pad. Out of site meant out of mind until I picked up that pad couple of days ago.  I then right away photographed it for the blog, before it slipped from my mind again ! 

I spent many hours trying to figure out how/what I wanted to illustrate in the wheel. There were many tries before the template  felt 'good enough'.  In the end it all hinged on the size of the wheel- four sections, one for each week (9 days the first week since there are 31 days in May) and I decided to concentrate on a nature find, moon phase and something fun for each section. I noted temperature highs and lows for each week and in the center noted the coronavirus cases for May in our little town! I tracked down average rain fall, average temperature, humidity, sunset/sunrise times foe may1 and 31.  I did not have any trouble filling the sections each week.  The bread is in there because its sour dough made from 'scratch' harvesting 'yeast' from air :) 

Sheltering in place has meant lots of time to really observe nature in my backyard. And it is so much fun :) I have always known much goes on out there but this is the first time I have been recording some of them a little more diligently! Last year for my Virginia Master Naturalist class, I started nature journaling and have found it very satisfying. Because it was just regular printer paper I used color pencils, not watercolors. I saved the template for the wheel, so I may try again soon may be for another month or on pie piece for each month in a year  :) 

#OneWeek100People

Lady Water Bugs  #oneweek100people Day 3  3-7-2018

I am trying to squeeze in time to sketch people this week.  Yesterday was day 3.  I returned from helping out with the water testing and did a quick sketch of my fellow volunteers :) 

International Women's Day #oneweek100people Day 4  3-8-2018

As today is International Women's day I decided to do a quick sketch of some notable women for day 4.  Hoping I will get some time later today to do more. 

At a Book Talk #oneweek100people Day 2  3-6-2018

At a Book Talk #oneweek100people Day 2  3-6-2018

On Day 2, I was at a Book Talk and sketched a few people from the audience.  The room was quite dark and it was challenge to see what I was sketching! 

At the Dentist Office  #oneweek100people Day 2  3-6-2018

At the Dentist's I tried to memorize the scene as I my teeth were being cleaned :) I surreptitiously took a photo in the waiting room and did the sketches at home from blurry pic -- and took my liberties with the colors ! 

  

At the Gym  #oneweek100people Day 1  3-6-2018

  

At the Gym  #oneweek100people Day 1  3-6-2018

As I worked out at the gym on day 1, I watched intensly and tried to commit to memory the scene before me. Again, I had a blurry photo to help out with some details as I sketched later at home. 

Watching Oscars -warm up for #oneweek100people   3-6-2018

So far I only have 29 sketches plus five I did as warm up watching the Oscars for an hour or so.  So this year it has been slow and I might have to take a few extra days to sketch 100 people! Anyway, I am sketching something every day :) 

Altered Facts

Altered Facts  mixed media on photograph 5x7" by Meera Rao

I had been fascinated with how artist James Gurney ( I love his art, and his wonderful treasure of blog posts!) uses casein paints in his art. I decided to try casein paints on one of the photographs I have been using in my mixed media experiments.  Along with casein I applied Pebeo Prisme, ceramic paints and white gel pen to manipulate the photograph. It is no exaggeration to say I had loads of fun painting and then coming up with title :) 

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

Altered Facts  mixed media on photograph 5x7" by Meera Rao

Creating And Sharing

Horseshoecrab2  color pencils by Meera Rao

My work Horseshoe crab2 has been selected for the Hill Center Galleries 2015 Regional Juried Exhibition that will run from June 25 through September 29in Washington DC.  I was super excited to read in the acceptance letter that 'Juror, Mark Leithauser, Senior Curator and Chief of Design for the National Gallery of Art, selected a distinctive group of pieces from a very large field of entries -- 500 pieces from over 100 artists.'  I am grateful and looking forward to the exhibit!

Equally satisfying was the wonderful interaction I had with elementary school students in our little town at their annual Arts Festival.  I had cut up a couple of my abandoned paintings into bookmark sized strips and had the students personalize them with their art work on top or the back with color pencils as they wished.  For most of them having a background already present meant no fear of the blank paper :) - they were very happy to create on top of it. They were excited at the challenge of incorporating the colors and patterns into their own design. 

Few others decided they wanted a to decorate both the sides and made use of the learn to draw reference books! I had so much fun with them - helping them understand art is what they decide to create and is very subjective.  They also saw how to recycle art :)

Transcending Chaos

Transcending Chaos mixed media by Meera Rao 30x22"

"I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."

Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954)

Even though it looks like a perfect match for Kahlo's quote, I had started this painting almost 18 years ago at a workshop given by Doug Walton. The shapes and various elements were drawn to cues given. The steps also included 'spiritcard' shapes and underpainting. Unfortunately my choices somehow never jelled into a decent composition.  Over the years, I tried to unify and pull something out of the chaos that was on the paper. At one point I added a unifying background color. Most recently, it got a bit of gesso on it in places and some collage as I tried out what I had picked up in Myrna Wacknov's workshop. All I can say is that I learned a lot as I brainstormed and tried out various options.  

Here is a Doug Walton gem from my notes from that first workshop which perhaps sums up my efforts? : "Wrong is right and right is wrong. Allow your 'how' to show- not the 'what.'  Your wrongness is your difference; your difference is your significance. Be consistent. Be decisive even your wrongness. " 

Try And Try Again Differently

Lunch Break again mixed media by Meera Rao

This painting was the result of playing with an abandoned piece.  When I painted Lunch Break  (check out that post for variation1) about two years ago it was my second attempt.  Earlier this year I pulled out the first discarded try.  I like to have something to keep my hands and brushes busy while I am waiting for washes or paints on a piece I am working is drying.  This, I hope, keeps me from muddying the work but that does not always happen! I have been trying to remember to take photos of my playing around to see where it takes me. Below is the piece when I first abandoned it. 

w-i-p

 I used a black Prismacolor pen to outline the various shapes. May be I should have stopped long before I outlined every shape!!! 

w-i-p 

I went on to darken some parts and then cropped the painting( - see the top most photo).  I had always underestimated what a tremendous learning experience it is to paint variations. I see now how very interesting it is to see the two paintings side by side now.  

And as this quote by Bob Brendle says so eloquently, "There can be no failure in an art experiment excepting that of vision."

Figures in Color

Figure in watercolor on Yupo by Meera Rao

Figure in watercolor on YUPO by Meera Rao

For almost three weeks now I have been practicing drawing the human figure.  Painting on Yupo was perfect for practicing with watercolors since I could easily rectify any mistakes by wiping off! I drew with watercolor pencils for the top one and graphite pencil for the bottom one before picking up transparent watercolors and had fun with it. It has been very exciting and challenging.  

Last year I volunteered to be a model for a portrait painting demo at our watercolor society meeting.  The one thing I noticed was that the artist constantly looked at me --as much or more than looking down at the paper.  Her rapid fire glances, constant measuring and checking the angles was my takeaway from the session --since I couldn't see what she was drawing only how she was looking at the model! 

I came across this quote by Leonardo da Vinci : "Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works."  So off to more practice :) 

Textured Variations

textures and colors by Meera Rao

The last day of the "Variations" workshop was all about textures. We saw the possibilities with Myrna Wacknov's collection reference photos, her paintings, and use of gesso, stencils, stamps, patterns, tissue for collage, etc and  unlimited imagination :) The day's task was to bring color, texture, value and other design elements together. 

After the van Gogh like textures of my day 3 painting, I decided to tone down go for subtler texture :) and I like my final piece. 

gesso covering old painting

After watching the demo about applying stencils, tissues, and stamping, I proceeded to gesso -not too thickly or carefully- a painting I didn't care for. Applying the textures subtly with stamps and even fingers, and lifting some color with the stencils, I prepared the paper.  When the paper was dry I knew where and how I wanted my drawing to go. It did not really take much time to paint after that and I had to be especially be wary of not overworking it since it was so much fun to paint on the gesso prepped textured paper! Rest of the day I played with experimenting with preparing  paper in all different ways. 

Here is the photo with all my paintings of the week together:

variations by Meera Rao

Creative Variations

Day 1: plotting shapes and values

Cyber follower to real time with artist Myrna Wacknov - I am back from a wonderful week of Myrna Wacknov's workshop "Variations" :)  It was really special to finally meet her after following her blog, admiring her creativity for a few years now! I was immersed in five days of fast paced exploration of creative interpretations of the portrait. Everyone worked with the same instructor provided black and white image and it was amazing to see the 'variations' at the end of each day as each participant chose different design elements to emphasize and brought her own talents, interpretations and style to Myra's instructions, prompts and guidance.

Day-1 was spent designing the shapes of the image with a modified contour drawings, creating a uniform grid for original image and then creating distored grids to reshape the image.We simplified  lines and connected shapes. We then experimented with various value patterns.   At the end of the day we each had atleast one sketch to work on day2 with shape+one other element (roll of dice) and another to work with value+a different design element. She also had 24 combinations of color chords on index cards and luck of the draw determined what colors we would be using. The color chords had Analogous, compliments, triads, spilt compliments to choose from. The seven elements (line, size, shape, direction, color, value and texture), decisons about dominance, relationships (unity, harmony, dominance, contrast, repition, variation, gradation, and balance) was to create a mood for the paintings.

Day 2 AM: Shape+texture

Day 2 AM : Shape:  The roll of dice resulted in texture being the second element for my exercise. The colors in my card were split compliments yellowgreen, red and violet. The textures were a lot of fun to paint - I  sprayed  alcohol, used oil pastels, stencils with paint and some gesso, some colored pencils to create the various textures.

Day2 PM: Value+lines

Day 2 PM : Value:  This time roll of dice for secondary element gave me lines along with complimentary colors yellow and violet. I sketched with masking fluid and incorporated the saved white lines into the design element. I used various yellows and violets to bring out the values in the painting. I had a piece of netting from a potato sack that I dabbed paint over to bring lines in the background. Splattering white liquid acrylic paint with tooth brush gave a cool look for the sunglasses.

Myrna is a treasure trove of ideas. She freely shared her collection of samples,  her paintings, clippings and tips with us throughout the week.  I loved her critiques of all the paintings.  The other participants were all accomplished painters from Potomac Watercolor society and it was a treat to watch them in action.  Myrna Wacknov has posted her demos in her blog . Watch for more postings in my blog and hers.

Art is a Verb

Memories of a bloom 3 watercolor on Yupo 7x5"by Meera Rao 

Memories of a bloom 2 watercolor on Yupo 5x7" by Meera Rao

Memories of a Bloom  watercolor on Yupo  7x5" by Meera Rao

Three paintings so far with the theme: 'Memories of a Bloom.'  I posted all three here just to see how they look as a group. It felt strange to paint #3 just as fresh spring blooms were popping up in the yard! Memories of a Bloom  and Memories of a Bloom2 were painted earlier. Yupo as I have mentioned so many times before, is a great medium to play with to see how to work out compositions, color and values without much hesitation - it is so easy to wipe off part or all of the painting and start over when things don't quite work out!  And as I rework my paintings I see that there is much truth in the quote from one of my favorite books - Art and Fear - Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland : “To the critic, art is a noun. To the artist, art is a verb.”  

As promised in an earlier post, it is time to tag blogs for the Liebester Award which Aparna from Warli Soul generously passed on to me. Liebster is German for dearest, beloved or favorite. This award is bestowed on blogs with less than 200 followers but deserve more attention :) Please check out these wonderful artists! : 

Rajeev Mohan's Spalsh of Color  

Lisa Graham's Lisa Graham Art

Kathy Staicer at Katsart

Nanas - Excellent Fruit

Pineapple watercolor on yupo 6x8" by Meera Rao

I bought a pineapple last week and it sat on the counter for a few days ripening slowly.  I sketched it in graphite first and then in watercolors. It took a lot longer to do the detailed pencil sketching than the paintings as I didn't do any pencil drawing of the fruit for either of the watercolor pineapple paintings.  I used waterbrush pens for the smaller pineapple. I think sketching them in pencil and then with the waterbrush pen was definitely good practice- by the time I painted it on yupo I was familiar enough with the fruit. But I guess no sketching ahead may also explain why it is a little plumper in this version :)  I also experimented by misting the yupo painting with alcohol to get the texture. 

watercolor sketch with waterbrush pen 5x3" 

We call pineapple as ananas in my mother tongue Kannada.  I just found out that "In the scientific binomial Ananas comosus, ananas, the original name of the fruit, comes from the Tupi word nanas, meaning "excellent fruit",[8] as recorded by André Thevet in 1555, and comosus, "tufted", refers to the stem of the fruit."  Tupi is one of the languages from South America and the pineapple plant is indigenous to that area.  I am sure, even though I am not aware of it, there is an interesting story as to how the fruit with it's name came to be a familiar crop all the way in southern India :) 

graphite sketches 5x3"

Drama of Color and Texture

Mushrooms 2 watercolor on Yupo 5x7"

I loved painting the drama of color and texture of these mushrooms.  I had painted these mushrooms before  - ( reproduced also below) but I wanted to experiment and play with them again from a slightly different angle.  I tried more stylized repetition of shapes  and more intense hues.  Colors on Yupo dry deeper than on regular watercolor papers when the brush is loaded with straight color but not much water. Pressing with crumpled up tissue, misting with water and letting each layer of paint dry thoroughly before coming back with another layer of transparent paints resulted in the different textures. 

Bursting Colors watercolor on Yupo 5x7"

Last fall finding these mushrooms on one of my walks I had held my small camera close to the ground and taken a few photographs.  It was really fun to dramatically transform the already colorful mushrooms even further :)  

Mushrooms digital photography 

Fascinatingly Beautiful

Orchid  watercolor 5x3" 

As I did a quick sketch of the orchid a few days ago using my water brush pen and sketch kit of limited paints, I vaguely remembered that the orchid varieties in number are almost double that of bird species. I went surfing to see if my recollection was right. 

My memory had served me well and  I also discovered that at 25,000+ species, there are four times more varieties of orchids as that of mammals!  More interesting was that 'the name comes from the Greek ὄρχις (órkhis), literally meaning "testicle", because of the shape of the root.'!  Greeks also thought if would-be fathers ate large new orchid tubers their child would be male and if mothers ate small tubers, the child would be female :)  The flavoring vanilla comes from one genus of Orchid -vanilla(of course). The Aztecs believed vanilla mixed with chocolate gave them great strength. In China however, orchids are a key ingredient in medicines for treating coughs and lung-related illnesses. It is also quite fascinating to read about pollination, propagation and seed production in orchids. Growing up in tropical India, I knew them as beautiful and colorful epiphytes and was fascinated how they grew on trees!  

I have a l wide collection of photos as well as few sketches of orchids and I hope to paint some larger varied flowers soon!

Comfort or Boredom?

A Day In the Life.. Page 7 The Fiction Project color pencils

I completed the fiction project last week and mailed it off to Art House Co-op in Brooklyn, NY. In the end I filled 30 pages with sketches and writing - that includes an author page, and two pages of tid-bits and explanations. I had initially torn off two pages to experiment on, and another three pages when I had difficulty with the page with the rangoli. I scanned the pages to my computer so I will be posting them slowly on my blog :) I sprayed the completed pages with Krylon acrylic clear coating so the color pencils will hold up and not smudge on the remote chance that it will be handled and looked at a number of times!

The project was exciting, fun and stressful all at the same time. I was sketching, drawing and thinking about  the book every single day and I felt daily practice definitely improved my skills. I am looking into another project to keep up the daily practice :). Giving my best and not being hung up on perfection freed me to enjoy the process. The project pushed me to sketch things I would have overlooked or afraid to tackle. I hope to give some of the sketches full treatment in larger versions.  I was excited to see the end product - a book authored and illustrated by me - not perfect or amazing, but a small accomplishment! Strangely, I did not mind mailing it off.  

Now, about  page 7: on a daily basis, I do not care for chores - will gladly by-pass them whenever I can!  Over the years I have noticed how my elderly or unwell relatives and friends have fiercely insisted on doing the daily little chores as they negotiated their days, and that made a great impression on me. I wonder, why, when, how or if, the perspective  will change for me. 

Imaginative Reality

Rose Pencil 9x12"

Yesterday as I was working on the Rose, I heard a discussion on NPR about "Scientists Pinpoint Monet's London Balcony." According to the reporter, artist 'Claude Monet spent the winters of 1899, 1900 and 1901 freezing on the balcony of London's Savoy Hotel, painting a famous series of images of Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge. Now, the scientists at Birmingham University have used solar geometry and historical weather data to figure out exactly which balcony Monet was standing on and what time of the day he was likely working.' I chuckled to myself as I followed the conclusions. I am sure if anyone tries to figure things out from my art work they would be in for a surprise because I do take a lot 'artistic license' when I sketch, draw and paint. I change or eliminate things often to match my technical abilities(or rather lack of) and to change the composition to suit my taste. And I started wondering how many artists really faithfully follow the original subject (other than for illustration purposes) and how many viewers think an artist is true to the subject's every detail :contour, shadow, value, color etc. ? Should we come to major conclusions about historical facts from an artist's creation or are these just fun exercises - not major theses. Along the same lines, earlier there was this piece on "High Art: Were Boticelli's Venus and Mars Stoned? " The object of discussion here was the identity and effects of a fruit that was in the hand of one of the little satyr in the painting. Click on the highlighted words in the blog and you can hear/read the scoop.

Rose is done using 2, 4 and 6B pencils and some Prismacolor cool greys here and there in the background leaves. It was an exercise in values I came up with. I had taken color digital picture of the rose from our garden. Then using the photo-software changed the color to black & white and played with the settings for light and shadows. I then printed it out for sketching using grids. The final piece is an composite of all that and my imagination as I simplified the background.

Drawing from Memory

Yesterday, while searching for art exercise ideas, I wandered all over cyberspace for inspiration and stumbled upon a couple of wonderful sites. One of the ideas that appealed to me was drawing from memory. I learned that Leonardo Da Vinci recommended that artists review in their imagination the outlines of forms they had studied during the day.  In the same vein, Sir Joshua Reynolds told his students to draw from memory what they had previously drawn during the life class. Artist and educator Marvin Bartel has a wonderful site about teaching art and fostering creativity in children.  The exercises there are good for all artists.  

I then rummaged through my kitchen drawers and found a wine bottle opener to practice  a modified form of the exercise. I studied it for about a minute or so, hid it from my sight and then started drawing what I thought it looked like. I know I need to work on my  observational and memory skills!