Sketchbook Pages

 

I spent an afternoon painting in my moleskine sketchbook a couple of weeks ago while waiting for my husband and daughter to ride their bikes down the Pa'rus Trail.  They are able to tolerate the heat better than I do so I stayed in the shade near the river. 



Desert Sunflower in Watercolor

Handbuilt Porcelain Box

Handbuilt Porcelain Box 

4 1/2" dia. x 3 1/2" high

Light Blue Celadon Glaze

Below you will see a couple of photos of my building process.  This piece is now in my "permanent collection" because I like it so much and it inspires me.  I may re-fire it as a bit of alumina hydrate drifted to the edge of the glaze on the bottom half and so I need to retouch the glaze there.  Alumina hydrate is painted on the flange to keep the two clay surfaces from fusing together during the firing. 

This photo shows the clay sheets I have rolled out and cut into sections for the wall of the box, the lid, bottom  and a strip for the flange. I have already laminated thin triangle shapes of colored slips in a pleasing pattern onto the wall section of the box and  pressed them in with a rolling pin.  After painting porcelain slip on the underside of the shapes I place more of them onto the sheet that will become the lid. The slip helps create a bond between the two surfaces.  The lid section is then also pressed with a rolling pin and trimmed into a circle.  

Just to the right of the newly formed box you can see the temporary form used to wrap the clay sheet around and hold it upright while I seam it and add the bottom section.  I had flipped it over and pulled the form up and out.  This form was made from foamcore and held together with masking tape.  When I decide if I like the shape of the new piece I will make a bisque mold from clay in the same shape and in the future use that to form the pieces around as a bisque mold releases the damp clay piece easily.  My handbuilt pieces are then dried slowly, bisque fired and then glazed fired.  I have displayed quite a few of these boxes in different sizes, shapes and colors at the Tivoli Village market here in Summerlin on Saturday mornings along with our wheel-thrown pottery and we have had an excellent response to them.  I've also been very busy in the painting studio working on oils from reference sketches and photos taken during our recent trip to Zion National Park.  We spent a few days in the park to observe "In the Footsteps of Thomas Moran", the Plein Air Painting Invitational 2012,  and to enjoy the gorgeous fall color along the Pa'rus Trail and in the Narrows section of the canyon.  Once again, the world-class color of the sandstone cliffs and foliage were breathtaking.     

"Tumbling Triangles" Porcelain Lidded Vase

This is a picture of me placing one of the last pots to be fired in the kiln.  We glazed most of the first week of September and fired on Monday the 10th.  By Wednesday the kiln was cool enough to open and the next picture shows how the pots looked after a cone 10 firing.  Cone 10 means reaching 2350 degrees.

Opening a kiln is a little like Christmas morning.  It's exciting because you never know what you're going to get.  Some things will be wonderful and a few things will not make it.  There is a high loss rate with porcelain because it can change shape, shrink, slump or the glaze can run too much and pool on the shelves.  But the translucency of the clay body and the luscious tints of the celadon glazes make it all worth it.  

This is one of my finished pieces from this firing.  It is glazed with a celadon, a gorgeous yet subtle shade of apple green.  The color shapes were added on after the vase was thrown on the wheel. It was carefully dried, then sanded, and bisque fired to make it strong enough to withstand the glazing.  To explain further how I did the color shapes, I paint a separate sheet of thin clay with colored slips in an abstract expressionist manner and then cut shapes from that sheet to design and apply patterns on the vases.  The beauty of painting in oils and making pottery as well is that the oil painting has made my approach to the slip work more layed, thicker, and painterly. The handle on the lid was handbuilt using the nerikomi method of pressing color shapes into a small sheet of clay and then rolling it into the desired shape.  I like to call this pattern "Tumbling Triangles".     

Nerikomi Porcelain From Our Gas Kiln

I have been working in the clay studio with my husband this  past month .  He  works there everyday and I am usually in my painting studio.  But he talked me into finishing some pieces I started a few years ago and carrying on in  the direction I was going at the time.  So this is a photo of a glaze firing we did this past Monday.  Bill made most of the pots in  this firing.  There were 90 pieces in all.  But 20 of them were mine and I'm very happy with them.  It felt wonderful to handle porcelain again and play with patterns of colored clays on the shoulders of the pieces.  Below is a photo of some of the work.  

The tall faceted bottle in the foreground is one of Bill's o'hata red pieces.  The vases behind the bottle are some of my nerikomi porcelain work.  The pots didn't stay on this table beside the kiln for long.  We are having 110 degree heat nearly everyday here in Las Vegas so we unloaded the kiln, took some quick snapshots and carried everything inside and out of this heat wave.  

Plein Air Landscape Oils From Tucson

"Trail Leading to the Catalina Mountains"

10" x 8" oil on linen panel

My husband and I spent last week in Tucson while I took a workshop from Kenn Backhaus at the Tucson Art Academy. The teaching was excellent and the weather was perfect. The class worked in the studio for a couple of days where we were challenged by exercises including painting from a reference photo tacked to the easel up-side down. We also were instructed to paint a landscape from memory. This was especially valuable because I didn't realize I had the ability to do it. I have added new elements to a composition but I had not painted the entire scene from my imagination. So we're home now and I'm putting newly learned methods to work on the Mojave Desert after a great week painting the Sonoran Desert.

An 8 x 10 of the mountains across from the arroyo.

Painting along side of an arroyo in Tucson.

Working at a state park just above the city of Tucson.

Working on an 8 x 10 oil of a couple of palo verde trees.

My Husband's Porcelain in Watercolor

While working on an oil painting of nearby Turtle Peak yesterday, I took a break for lunch and while sitting at the dinning room table I felt inspired to try a sketchbook page in watercolor of my husband's beautiful calico glazed porcelain. We have an old wooden chest near the window and it is covered with dozens of his pots. I have always liked the haphazard way they form interesting compositions. This vignette is painted in a new Fabriano Venezia sketchbook of fine drawing paper. The paper is really nice to work on. A colored pencil line just glides on and it has just the right amount of texture. I was surprised how well it takes the watercolor as well, but lifting back to light is really not possible so I added the highlight reflections with a little gouache.

Plein Air Watercolor of the Spring Mountains

"Blue Mountain Shadows" 11" x 8" watercolor

I have been painting in Red Rock Canyon for the past couple of weeks as the weather is in the mid -80s with little wind. This is a nice time of year here in Las Vegas for painting en plein air. This painting is on Arches hot press from a block and you can see from the photo of my set-up below that I use masking tape on the edges of the paper as the tape helps to control the buckling of the paper when it is soaking from wet-into-wet washes. My windshield sunshade comes in handy clipped to my pochade box to keep the sun off the paper and palette. The desert is blooming again - our second spring - so I wanted to capture the beautiful yellows in the arroyo contrasting with the atmospheric blues in the distant Spring Mountains.

There were lots of people enjoying the park this past Sunday when I painted this. Many rock climbers to watch on the Calico Hills behind me. Park volunteers set up at the trailheads to give information to all the hikers. It is so calm and peaceful up in the desert and is a nice change from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Throwing Wheel in Pen and Ink and Watercolor

My husband is taking a workshop with Tom Coleman this week called "Super-Hot Shinos" at Pottery West and I went up with him this morning at 7:30 to see the work he did yesterday. While he was busy in the glazing area I sat down next to his wheel and sketched. This is his throwing wheel for the week with his sketchbook, coffee container, and water bottle on top of the wheelhead. He has a piece of wood spanning his water bucket and on that are some of his throwing tools. It was such a nice morning in the studio, still cool because the weather has been ten degrees cooler than normal for six weeks now. A few people were starting to throw and then Tom came in with a cardboard box full of beautiful carbon-trap shino glazed pieces. Some were his and some were from his personal collection. They were gorgeous and the stories he told that belong to each piece were fascinating. This was sketched in a 5" x 8" Moleskine.

Painting In Zion Canyon

"Red Leaf Maple at Zion"

7" x 5"

Watercolor and Gouache

This little painting was done in an Arches 7" x 10" cold press watercolor sketchbook. The scene is on the trail to the Emerald Pools in Zion Canyon. Just over this rise one sees the first waterfall and the lower pool is below you about 60 feet. This trail has many beautiful painting opportunities but it can be a challenge to find a suitable sketching niche off this trail where I won't be in the way of other hikers. I managed to find a spot, sketch quickly and put further layers of color on later in the studio.

Watercolor from Zion National Park

"November Gold"

7" x 10"

Watercolor

My family and I visited Zion National Park several times this past fall. The weather was pleasant into mid-November and the trails were bordered with the oranges and golds so typical of autumn in this beautiful canyon. I recently finished this little painting of the cottonwood trees at the entrance to the Narrows Trail. Done on Arches hot press 140 lb. paper, it was a joy to paint.

Mini Peppers in Holiday Colors

I'm in the holiday mood and felt like painting something with golds and yellows. So I spent an afternoon sketching these peppers in watercolor. Used strathmore plate bristol and my sketching palette. Felt great to be back in the studio.

Stoneware Vase In Watercolor

"Stoneware With Glaze Splatters"
7" x 9" Watercolor

Last weekend I spent an hour in the morning on our back patio painting a large stoneware vase I had set in the sun next to the lawn. I wanted a nice light/shadow pattern to play with. I was in the shade though as it was probably 100 degrees already even at 10 a.m. The vase is one of my husband's beautiful buff-colored stoneware pieces which he forms on the wheel with ribs held on the inside of the cylinder of clay while the vase shape developes. This method creates an outside surface texture that is organic and earthy. It was fun to work with dry-brush watercolor textures on cold press paper to depict pottery that has the same type of surface treatment. This was done in a Canson Montval watercolor sketchbook and was built up with 4-5 glazes layers.

Sketchbooking From the Tailgate

So I decided to brave the heat and head out to paint on location. I brought lots of water and a spray bottle to mist myself. The temperature has been between 102 and 108 degrees in the afternoon for about a month now so I have been working on oils in the studio primarily. I haven't been setting up an easel out in the field because when I stay in the shade of the top half of the back door of my car I have a larger shade area than with my umbrella. An old paint tarp thrown across the top of the door helps extend the shade as well. The above photo shows a watercolor of the Calico Hills done in a Canson Montval sketchbook. I really like this paper as it has just the right amount of surface texture and sizing. I spent about an hour on the sketch. I had taken an hour to set-up, but to be fair that time included a leisurely eaten breakfast while watching the rock climbers ascend the cliff face to my right.

This is a snapshot of the scene I was painting. Most of the plants on these hillsides were consumed in a lightening fire a couple of years ago. But the trees and shrubs in the gully are growing back nicely. I read in the Spring-Summer issue of Red Rock Canyon Keystone Visitor Guide that it takes 40 years for these plant communities to recover. Sometimes I paint the recovering areas with the mature growth I remember from before the fire.

This watercolor is from last weekend. It is a study of the big boulder where indigenous people left their handprints. The prints are called pictographs which are paintings or drawings done on rock. It is believed that these pictographs are 800 years old.

This is a snapshot of the scene. It's difficult to see the pictographs on the rock in this photo because they are located were the shadow side and light side meet at this time of day. I emphasized them in my painting though. This was another nice morning of painting as it included several interesting conversations with visitors. One family was from Israel and they told me that the topography of this valley is similar to that back home. Another family was from Japan and they were so appreciative of watercolor they made a point of showing it to their children before heading down the trail.

Sketchbook Pages

This is a photo of a watercolor sketch from last week. I bought the shell at PetSmart in their aquarium department just to have a new shell to play around with. I am using toned Rives BFK paper here - the tan shade - and I thought I might need a little white gouache for the whitest area of the shell. But I was surprised to find that I didn't need the white as the tan tone of the paper reads as a highlight next to the warm browns of burnt sienna and transparent oxide red. The transparent oxide red is from Daniel Smith and I added it to my watercolor palette after using it in my oil palette under advice from Richard Schmid in his book "Alla Prima". I really like this color and find it warms viridian to a wonderful earthy green and makes a good dark brown mixed with french ultramarine.

Another plein air watercolor sketch from about a week ago. Set up next to the road on the approach to the Pine Creek trailhead in Red Rock Canyon. Below you can see more of the landscape I'm viewing and my set-up. I took my umbrella down so the photo would have light on the sketchbook but normally I have the umbrella up.

This is a sketch from about two weeks ago. I was set up behind the old visitors center facing the Calico Hills. The hedge hog cactus were in bloom on this rocky hill and there were deep magenta blossoms all around me every 30 feet. They were gorgeous. Our brand new visitors center in Red Rock Canyon is wonderful by the way. After much planning and construction the new building opened in April. The habitat exhibits are fascinating and there is much to explore.

Oil Painting In Stages

"Colorful Canyon"
6" x 8" Oil on Linen

I have been working on small oil studies lately and this is an example. It is a view into Pine Creek Canyon from the Overlook trail. I have included stages of development below from the monochromatic block-in through completion. I always enjoy seeing other artists work through their processes so I thought some of you might also like to see mine. The colors in these digital photos are more vivid than in the actual painting. I must learn how to calibrate my monitor soon. One more computer skill I have to tackle.