The Center of the Anomaly

Following up on my hunch last night I soaked a smallish piece of the 300 lb paper in a bucket, half in and half out for about 5 - 6 hours.  I let the paper dry all night and went to work on it this morning.  I painted new swatches of color across both sides, paying particular attention to the phthalo and indanthrone blues, which seem to have it the worst problems.   There wasn’t any appreciable difference in the appearance once dried.  So much for that theory.  I’ve tried getting a good picture of the problem so y’all can see what the hell I’m talking about, but I can’t get this futzy camera to focus in close enough.  Anyway, I started fooling around to see what else I can do.  Pre-wetting an area doesn’t work.  I had an idea about using some gum arabic to pre-treat an area and that actually does work!  No specks!  Unfortunately, that makes the paint kinda glossy, which is okay by itself, but if I put another color next to it and don’t use the gum arabic it looks different.  Grrr.  I’ve just about come to the conclusion that I’m just not an “Arches” dude.  Oh well - it’s made in France anyway.

Been busy. I test-fired the Death Star trebuchet at work and I was disappointed at first. The instructions said to fill the bucket half-way with gravel or sand (I used sandy dirt and gravel) and it had no oomph whatsoever. The clay ball only went 5 feet or so. Filling it up more did little to boost the distance really. One guy suggested putting coins in and he had a bunch of pennies so we put a bunch of those in on the dirt. We started to get some distance finally - 10 feet or so. Still, not the 20 as promised. Obviously we needed more weight. I dumped out the dirt and rock and put all the pennies he had and tossed in a few more coins. I cast around for more metal stuff and eyeballed my paper clips. Then I found my screwdriver/socket tool - ha steel! I threw the sockets and screwdriver heads in. Coin Guy had a small faucet head and I put that in too. That bucket was a lot heavier now. I set it up and let her rip. MUCH better! Big height too! Too high though. I was launching off the top of a long table and the ball was hitting a ceiling beam. I put it on the floor and launched from there and got a distance of 15 -16 feet. I was still getting a lot of hight that should be going for distance. I played around with the string length and by lengthening just a little bit I got a nice ballistic arc and BAM! 20 feet! Huzzah! No, I didn’t get any video of it because I suck. Soon though! Plus, I want to get it finished so it looks pretty for the camera. This weekend, I promise.

On the watercolor front: I did a couple and they suck. Oh yes. They will not be posted. I wrote earlier about stretching a half-sheet of the Arches 300 lb in my new frame and I was really eager about trying it out. I also dropped a chunk of change ($130) on new paints that finally came in late last week. I fooled around with color swatches on some small samples of the 300 lb paper I was going to use and had some disturbing results. The colors went on beautifully, but as they dried they kind of “broke up”. White specks started popping through. It was fibers of the paper. When completely dry the darker color swatches were shot through with white specks. They looked really bad. I could get rid of them by re-wetting the painted areas, but that’s not such a great thing when doing watercolor.

Monday evening I went in to class but forgot my paper sample with the swatches. I did some more on another piece and showed the problem to one of the other advanced ladies. She didn’t know what the problem was, but she never paints on 300 lb paper. The other lady who does didn’t show up. The instructor was busy with the class and didn’t have a much time to look at it. Well, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time and effort planning a real detailed painting where this was going to be an issue so I just quick sketched another tree (with foliage this time) and painted that. The sky went in ok but I was doing wet-in-wet there and didn’t have much of “The Problem”. The tree went in okay, but I went over it a lot. It was very smudgy by the time I got finished. Meh. I’m not getting the real quality I’m trying to get. I didn’t like the result. I didn’t have a lot of problem with “The Problem” in the rest of the painting either though. I think the soaking and the stretching solved a lot of it. It was a beautiful stretch job though - that paper was completely flat the entire time and came out that way with a neat crimped edge.

I threw a piece of 140 lb paper from my Canson block in the next night. It wasn’t long enough though so it didn’t reach the stretchers on the short ends. I did a quick non-tree painting with the new paints, mostly just playing around and trying some new things. I had buckling issues on the unsecured ends as expected. There’s no trace of “The Problem” with the 140 lb paper.

The lady who works with the 300 lb paper showed up that night. She didn’t know what “The Problem” was either, but she works very wet when painting. Nnnn. Actually, as I type this up I think I know what is going on here. In another post Weasel talked about problems painting on papers with sizing. I just remembered the other women mentioning a while back that she typically soaked her paper in the bathtub for an hour or so and then drying it out. Hmmm. Anyway, she gave me a sheet of another brand of paper to try - Kilimanjaro. It’s softer and smoother. I’m putting it into the frame now.

Well, that’s it folks! I’ll type at you later.

I finally got around to getting this put together.

It went together fairly easily and it looks pretty good. Some of the stuff didn’t fit quite perfectly, but what the hell. I haven’t tried it out yet because the glue has to cure for 24 hours. Sometime next week I’ll take it over to my Dad’s workshop and put a nice stain and polyurethane finish on it.

Now, if I can just find a toy cow…

Hot damn!  These just might work:  Cows.

Now that the second tree in the series is done, it’s time to start the next one.  Generally speaking I only have vague notions about where I want to go with this.  This morning I was in a long, boring meeting and I usually doodle while in those.  My thoughts and pen turned to trees.

In the late 80’s, early 90’s I lived in northern Florida in a house next to an actual bayou.  We had knobby kneed cypruss trees, alligators, weepy spanish moss bearded trees, the whole nine yards.  It was very “atmospheric”.  This was the kind of scene I wanted for one of these paintings.  I like this doodle / sketch and I think it will work well in the scene I’m now imagining.  I usually only post stuff that is done, or nearly so, but this time I thought y’all might like to see what goes into the art sausage.  It often starts out with something like this.

You would think that they would send him an e-mail or something warning about this.

Getting better.

This is starting to get more in the direction of the stuff I have been trying to do.  The ground is a LOT better than the other one and the overall feel too.  I still don’t have the proper stroke / texture for the tree.  The instructor had to help me quite a bit with that advisewise*.  I like the way the roots turned out and they are almost exactly  what I had in mind from the start.  I’m going to use that again.

I had some problems with the paper that really hampered me this time though.  These days I’m in the habit of trying out my strokes and color selections on another piece of paper before executing on the painting itself.  As noted in the Tech Specs below this is Arches paper.  It’s one of the more expensive brands out there and it’s the one that a LOT of professonals use.  My test paper is the less expensive Canson brand, but the Arches paper simply didn’t perform as well!  It fuzzed up really bad when I went in to lay fine texture lines on areas that had a base color.  The Canson never did that.  Hmmm.  There might be a problem with the latex masking fluid I’m using.  I’m going to do some tests.

One of the other “advanced”** students is an older lady and she routinely uncorks some amazing paintings full of big, bold colors and are done with real painterly skill.  She works almost exclusively in the full sheet (22 x 30 inch) sizes on 300 lb paper (unstretched).  She’s also an old hand at painting with oils so she’s got a lot of experience that translates well.  Anyway, she made an off-hand remark about how the other one in our little group of repeat students uses small brushes on big paintings that struck me.  I do the same thing, and now I think that may be a big part of my problem.  I keep using fiddly little brushes when I should be laying in with the big guns to put down the big, bold strokes that can be filled in / modified later.

Technical Specs:
Image size: 9.5 x 13.5 inches
Paper: Arches 140 lb cold pressed
Colors: Phthalo Blue, Burnt Sienna, Payne’s Grey, Violet, & Sepia
Notes: The paper was pre-stretched with tape on a pine board.

*The Instructor will often paint directly on a student’s work to show her how she can improve the painting / technique and whatnot***.  He used to do it with me too, but now he doesn’t at all.

**Use of sneer quotes around “advanced” refers to me - not her.

***The vast majority of people who take this class are women for some reason.

I finally got around to using my store credit for those stupid helicoptors and got the Trebuchet and Plasma glass.  Together they were a bit more than my store credit but what the hey - it’s still birthdayapalooza here and I’m off work today and you’re not.  More toys!!

Funky, I had to fish one of my own comments out of the spam bucket.  That ain’t right.

I got some vines yesterday to put in my small planter bed and just got them into the ground today - a jasmine, honeysuckle, and bouganvillia.  A couple of them were a little big and I had to shoehorn them into the bed.  I guess I’ll see how they do.  I have a strawberry pot that I still have to plant up.  I’m going to get some herbs and stuff to throw into that.  I guess I ought to go do that now.  Type at y’all later.

Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday to mee-eeee!
Happy Birthday to me!

I am now Old Enough to Know Better.  I got toys too!  I’ll show them to y’all later.

****Update****  Yay toys!

I bought some more watercolor stuff online and they just happened to arrive today.  Whee!  One is a really nice tripod and the other is a board designed to stretch watercolor paper without tape or staples.  Just get it completely soaking wet, put it into the frame and screw it down.  As the paper dries, the fibers try to shrink back to thier normal state, but the frame keeps it stretched out, so that when you paint, the paper doesn’t warp or buckle.  I LOVE working on stretched paper, but don’t always have some on hand.  The board and tripod were made by the same company (Guerilla) so the board is designed to pop right onto the tripod.  Oh, and I also got some translucent plastic watercolor paper (Yupo) - I’ve mentioned working with it before.  They’re full sized sheets too so I’m looking forward to getting some nice, big paintings.  Oh, and I also ordered a bunch of new watercolor paints - high quality stuff from Daniel Smith.  I’m really looking forward to those getting here. 

***Another Update***

I’m really testing the watercolor board right off.  I soaked a half-sheet (15″ x 20″) of Arches 300 lb paper and screwed it in.  Even wet that sucker is tight - it’s going to be an amazing surface when it’s dry.  I hope those new paints get here soon.

***Yet Another Update****

I just tested the watercolor board.  The paper already feels dry, and there’s an oh-so-slight-sliver of bowing in the board because the paper no longer touches it in the middle.  Oh man that paper is going to be so tight.  Alas, the paints are still stuck in the warehouse. 

An email about this place popped into my inbox today. 

It is more than 1,000 yards long, covers 20 acres, had a 115ft deep end and holds 66 million gallons of water.

The Guinness Book of Records named the vast pool beside the sea in Chile as the biggest in the world.

But if you fancy splashing out on one of your own - and you have the space to accommodate it - then beware: This one took five years to build, cost nearly 1billion and the annual maintenance bill will be 2million.

The man-made saltwater lagoon has been attracting huge crowds to the San Alfonso del Mar resort at Algarrobo, on Chile’s southern coast, since it opened in January.

Its turquoise waters are so crystal clear that you can see the bottom even in the deep end.

It dwarfs the world’s second biggest pool, the Orthlieb - nicknamed the Big Splash - in Morocco, which is a mere 150 yards long and 100 yards wide. An Olympicsize pool measures some 50 yards by 25 yards.

Chile’s monster pool uses a computer- controlled suction and filtration system to keep fresh seawater in permanent circulation, drawing it in from the ocean at one end and pumping it out at the other.

The sun warms the water to 26c, nine degrees warmer than the adjoining sea.

Chilean biochemist Fernando Fischmann, whose Crystal Lagoons Corporation designed the pool, said advanced engineering meant his company could build “an impressive artificial paradise” even in inhospitable areas.

“As long as we have access to unlimited seawater, we can make it work, and it causes no damage to the ocean.”

That ain’t right, but there it is.  One of those blog memes that go around periodically has caught me twice.

Thanks Barry and McGoo!

Here’s the deal:

The Rules: 1. Write your own six word memoir. 2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want. 3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere. 4. Tag at least five more blogs with links. 5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play…

My six word memior:  “Eat it now, and worry later”

Since I was double tagged, here’s another:

I’ll have to dig around a bit to see if there’s anybody left to pass it on to.

Of course, victim #1 - The Lemur King

Hah!  Pin the tail on the Weasel!

 ***UPDATE***

Lemur King calls my attention to the second part of Rule #3 - we’re supposed to link to the original post that started this whole thing.  Nobody did that as far as I can tell, but crawling back up line the whole thing seems to have started here:  Smells Like Bullshit.