Magpie 70 - Artificial Life

Courtesy of Tess Kincaid

Artificial Life

Just one of many purchases

Picked up for cheap at the antique store

A relative for a new life

Pictures of an unknown

To deck the walls.

The oh so sterile walls

With no memories

Beginning anew

Living without a past

Not made up.

She had stood but briefly

At the edge of devastation

Saw the freedom of the total loss

From the horrendous storm

And simply walked away.

Picking up what wasn't true

From here to there

As she moved homeless

Nameless

Without a past she wished to revisit.

New identity in St. Louis

New name in Cleveland

New job in Pulaski

An apartment with rented furniture

New relatives from the antique store.

Total investment $1.99

For a new aunt

No investment in emotion

For a life

A nameless tornado could take away.

J. Binford-Bell

June 2011

Snowy Solitude

Snowy Solitude 12 x 12 on diagonal cradled panel

I saw this watercolor painting a couple weeks ago that was of a snowy canyon. I studied it every time I passed it. In oil it would be easy. Just splatter white paint over the painting when done. But in watercolor what is to remain white has to be decided in advance of any paint being applied. A number of methods can be used to leave an area white - masking paper, masking compound, a resist or something like soap that repels paint from an area.

The artist had to have used masking compound. And he had to have scattered it on like the oil painter but first. If I were to spatter white oil paint I would use a tooth brush and run my thumb down it. Generally the oil paint would be thinned but not too much.  One wouldn't want to thin the masking compound because it would not peel off the canvas easily. Time to play and experiment. And I did using some scrap panel and canvas I had about. There are control issues. The painting that had inspired me was a full sheet of watercolor paper. It could be years before I had that much control. But I decided to give it a try on a 12 x 12 panel. Now for a subject.

The back of the Ranchos de Taos church seemed perfect because it is so plain; no complex details to confuse the subject which is clearly the snow. I was really quite happy with my results but I also see it as just the beginning. Currently sketching out a high county ranch complex which is slowly melting into the land. I think it will be perfect for my next attempt at snow on a larger format.

Artists should always look at the art of others. Otherwise our world gets too confining.

Grand River Passage

Grand River Passage 2' x 3'

I thought on this particular painting rather than doing a step by step analysis of the process I would focus on some of the details in this painting. I began work on this large painting after completing a 19 x 13 inch study.

Water Passage

One of the biggest differences between a study and a full size subsequent painting is the amount of canvas that has to be covered. You cannot be as picky about details in some degree just because of scale. And yet because of the size some aspects of the painting have to be different. I find I can seldom do the same painting only larger. In Grand River Passage there is more sky than in Water Passage. And I found it necessary to carry some of the colors of the cliff into the water.

Water detail on Grand River Passage

On Water Passage this area of the painting is merely shades of green, gray and blue but on the larger painting, partly through a happy accident, I have brought in the purple and yellow and pinks of the canyon walls. And I opted out of using any of the metallic colors I used in the smaller work.

Upper Canyon Detail

I, of course, used my signature ravens in both paintings but chose to make them more numerous in the larger painting. Also I cast some gray shadows on the far walls. The upper canyon is also glazed with a white wash to give it a sense of distance and detail in the upper canyon is minimal.

Middle Canyon

This detail shows the line and granulation used in the middle canyon to focus the attention of the viewer. The delicate lines added with a pen and ink to me give the rocks more reality and substance. And it has always rather amazed me just how few lines this takes. Most of the "texture of the rocks" has been achieved with floating color with a granulation medium that causes a separation of the colors that appears as grain or texture. I then take a nib and India ink of various colors and define color "blocks." I did less of this in the smaller painting because to do too much would make it too busy.

The result of the subtle differences in the two works is that they are two different paintings even if inspired by the same photograph. I often think that the process of painting from sketch to study to full size work is a grand passage in and of itself.

Magpie 69 - Tiny Treasures

Image from Tess Kincaid Magpie Tales

Tiny Treasures

A seashell smaller than a fingernail

Overlooked by so many others

Combing the smooth sands

Deserted by the departing tide.

Missed looking for larger beach treasures

Scotch bonnets, lightning Welks, conch shells

Found among the baby ears and jingle shells

Wrapped in a piece of kelp.

And then it seemed

They were everywhere

A window opened upon their presence

Dotting the beach.

Thousands of tiny treasures

Awaiting collection

Washed and saved

In an neglected brandy sniffer.

Tiny treasures

Given pride of place

Because like a magic charm

They opened an unseen world.

J. Binford-Bell

June 2011

Size Counts

Escalante After the Rain 24 x 36

Most water media artists work relatively small. Oil painters seem to go from the ridiculously small little miniatures to fairly large. Those creative minds that transfer their imaginations to canvas and panel with acrylic seem to paint LARGE by in large. When I first went back to painting as a way to entertain myself and rehabilitate (practice what you don't want to lose) following my head injury I was overly fond of 11 x 14 and working on watercolor paper. I dreamed of half-sheet and full-sheet paintings.

Once I made the jump to watercolor canvas I fell in love with the 16 x 20 size. I was using pre-stretched canvases at the time and when there was a sale brought several at 20 x 24 and 24 x 36. I stared at the larger size for quite a while. Escalante After the Rain was one of the only 24 x 36 paintings I have done. This was due in part to the warping of almost all that were shipped to me except this one. Inferior pre-stretched canvases led me to stretching my own canvases and changing proportions. I rather like tall and thin or short and wide. I executed a commission that was 26 x 72. The two below are 12 x 48,

So I proved to myself that the medium is not necessarily the governor of size. Sometimes it is time or size of brushes or space in the studio. Or the cost of not merely the materials but the finished product. Lately it has been the economy that has dictated size of paintings. I entered an exhibition this spring that had a minimum size specification as well as a maximum. Artists have been painting smaller to have more reasonably priced work for the market. My booth at last year's Holiday fair in Albuquerque was filled with smaller works. I even did 6 x 6 cactus flowers.

As I was gathering up work for a new gallery, Old Town Gallery in Cimarron,  and the June exhibition at High Desert Art and Frame in Albuquerque I became aware of the vast number of smaller works I did have. Too many really. Any display of an artist's paintings should be a range. And as my artist friend, Sherry Wolf, pointed out as we were talking about Artsfest in July, there is something to be said of a bigger center of attraction. All the new work I had been doing for summer fairs were smaller. Some I even considered studies for larger paintings if they worked.

Water Passage 19 x 13

But with the whole car issue and the economy small fits my budget. Then a couple days ago I found an old framed acrylic painting at a thrift shop. it was 24 x 36 and was on great sturdy stretcher bars (the bigger the painting the more sturdy the stretcher bars must be). For $5 I got a good frame to put on the Escalante painting in the beginning of this post. Escalante, which I had never seen as quite finished, got its completion as well as the frame, And once the old canvas was ripped off my thrift shop find I had a great frame for new canvas.

Yesterday I completed the enlargement of the Water Passage sketch to 36 x 24 and got the canvas stretched. Hopefully it will be my center piece for the New Mexico Arts and Crafts Fair in June. And it will sell and I have to come up with a new center piece for Artsfest in July. I won't have to paint any more small pieces before fair season. I seem to have a plethora of those.

Mag 66 - The Library

Magpie Tales by Tess Kincaid

The Library

It was love at first sight

Smell and touch

The promise of tales unending

Lined up on the shelves.

Mother had secured her entry

Into the adult section

Where books did not smell of candy

Or have sticky covers.

Or pictures on the front

Mom had suggested

Something by Alcott, Louisa May

But first she had to walk every aisle from A to H.G.Wells

Her summer that year she turned twelve

Was all about Zane Grey

Lured by the title

Riders of the Purple Sage.

But the library shelves

Would take her from Wyoming

To ancient Greece

From Walden Pond to Pompeii.

 And into the future

College and beyond

Everywhere she lived

She first found the library.

J. Binford-Bell

May 2011

Knew it couldn't be that easy

I am trying my hand at another photography contest. The deadline is tonight at midnight and I thought I had my five submissions all picked out until I started playing around with my photo editor program and going back to FlickR to see if there was one I liked better than one of my choices. Before you ask the above was not one of my first choices.

Nor was this one. One of the reasons for these two not being included is I thought I had lost the originals with the crash of my external hard drive and the wipe of my desktop computer by a well recommended computer tech. But I found the originals on FlickR. Sometimes I do something right like back up important data (to something other than the failed hard drive).

I had considered these two because the first sold in my first photographic exhibit and the last one second. This however is a cropped version of that one on the recommendation of the judge of the earlier show.

I had also in that show entered this photograph. And when I posted my possible choices on my page in Facebook this was not in it and everyone asked about it. This five leaves out a couple I frankly like a lot. And if I was to consider the cohesive aspects of the five. I would delete the car and insert one of the two following instead.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.