Leftover Paint

This painting came to life when I decided to use up the leftover paint on my palette, colors leftover from the previous painting. I began to scrape off the sky color…and my hand slipped! The palette knife left behind the white highlights and I immediately saw a huge wave emerging from the ocean. The leftover paint colors did their magic. I affectionately call it my first Leftover Painting.

What do we do with all that leftover paint? It’s not really suitable for letting the grandchildren play with. When I am too tired to clean my brushes I often put them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator overnight. But in a place where you can see the bag or they will remain in there for weeks! But where does the paint go?

Save plastic lids from the kitchen and scrape the leftover paint into them. My favorite lid is from a gelato company because it gives me an excuse to eat the gelato. Make a cover for it with a foil tent and put it in the refrigerator. A word of caution…if you have teenage boys be sure to label with the words “oil paint” or else the boys will be into it for certain.

If you use paper palettes it's easy to tear off that piece of palette paper and put the whole paper in the refrigerator. Place it on something inflexible. Or put the whole palette pad itself into the frig. The paint will stay moist for a day or two. My painting friend, Isabel, takes her paint home after a session. She tapes the piece of paint-covered palette paper onto a flat piece of cardboard to make it easy to carry in the trunk of her car. All her mixed colors are available to continue to work on her in-progress painting.

Recently I have been making what I call Leftover Paintings. I take the extra paint on my palette and re-use it on a small canvas. I come up with a landscape idea that can include the variety of colors I have leftover on my palette. Some of them are outlandish. Some are fantasy colors. All of them are fun to do. It forces you to use the colors you have, and you could end up with a magenta pond and a yellow sky. Good messy fun!

One other paint tip. Every time I go to an art supply store I treat myself to one new color…one that I have never bought before. One that intrigues me. Sometimes I get a tube that is an awful color once I open it. But many times I have found a wonderful new friend.

Know where your painting needs you

The best tip I ever received was from an instructor I spent only one day with. We called him Mr. Joe. There were about 15 of us in his class that day and we were at various stages of our painting assignment…and in very differing moods. Some of us were somewhat pleased with our paintings thus far, some were disappointed in what they had created, and a few painters were in utter despair.

This much beloved instructor knew exactly how to help all of us at the same time. Mr. Joe told us about “Priority Fix”. He had us stop working on our own paintings and then take 5 minutes to walk around the room and see what the other students had painted. After the 5 minutes he had us stand in front of him and gave us the following explanation of Priority Fix.

“Go back to your painting and stand at a distance. The very first spot your eye rests on will be the place that needs Priority Fix... the place where the painting needs your help. Your eye will not go to that sweet spot where everything you put down on the canvas is working well. You eye will go to the area where you are most needed.”

He told us to stand back from our own easels and allow ourselves to be hit over the head by the Priority Fix! All of us were seeing where our paintings needed us the most. And conversely the beginners were now aware that their canvases did have some successful areas, too. The whole studio was beaming with anticipation of the corrections we would be making.

Mr. Joe had written the words Priority Fix on a flip chart and tacked it to the bulletin board in the studio at the beginning of class. When class was over at 4pm I stayed behind. He was cleaning his palette and I stood there like sheepish teenager and asked if I could keep the large sheet of paper on which he had written Priority Fix. He told me to place it in my studio where I could see it while I painted and to keep it there until I no longer needed to be reminded of this wisdom. That was in 1989. I still have that sign. When you come to the studio I will show it to you!

How do you find inspiration for your painting?

Think back to something you have seen that gave you the “oh wow” response. It might originate from an unusual use of color, or an atmosphere that you find intriguing. You can always trust your “oh wows!”. They are telling you that you love that subject and that look. Perhaps there’s an “oh wow’ in one of your own photographs, or a photo you see in a magazine. And always remember that a composite of several different things that you love can be truly remarkable when they are brought together in a painting. Artistic license.

One important element to inspiration is building a file of subjects you love.  I like painting the atmosphere of early morning light. My files contain titles like Morning Light/ Still Water, Morning Light/ Desert, and Morning Light/ Fog. From those files I can build a scene of early morning on a desert road. From there I can go to the file I have created for desert roads and combine the atmosphere and the subject matter to create the look I desire. Don’t forget you can search your web browser for those difficult-to-find images.

I enjoy working with children and the young ones show great imagination. Two sisters received painting lessons from me each Christmas. I asked them to bring ideas and one time the eldest girl decided on a grizzly bear catching a fish in a roaring stream. I had the roaring stream and I also had the grizzly in my files. Easy. The seven-year-old sister walked into the studio and announced, “I shall paint a lady, wearing a blue kimono and holding a parasol while standing next to a flowering cherry tree. I had to scramble to come up with that one, but I found the elements in my giant 5x6 foot file cabinet in the garage! This is an extreme example but it illustrates the beauty of keeping files of the things that are interesting to you. My files are both on line and also in my file cabinet.

Get started NOW! You can have your first file created in a few hours!

Facing a Blank Canvas?

We have all been there. In order to be creative someone has to write that symphony and the parts for every instrument…someone has to plant that garden before anything will grow there…and someone has to face that pure white, glaring canvas!

You’ve come home from the art supply store with canvases and they are sitting in the corner waiting for you to be brave. We have all been there. I have felt what you are feeling. Many times. One of my older students, Joan, is full of great tips. This is her visual trick for getting started: ” If I cannot find the courage to face that blank canvas I take down the canvas and replace it with one of my art books, opened to a page that shows an image I love. I put THAT up on the easel, and every time I walk by it beckons me to get started.”

I highly recommend finding your personal “blank canvas music.” What kind of music makes you move around a little at the stop light while sitting in the car? What music gets you motivated? It does not have to be music you would choose for easy listening. For the past 15 years I have started every blank canvas with dynamic early 20th century classical. It is not restful! It gets me moving. It makes me forget time and place and I find it always motivates me to get a complete color sketch accomplished in a very short time. I dive in!

Your music can be anything that works for you. As an instructor I have heard some pretty unusual takes on blank canvas music! Beethoven to The Backstreet Boys. I have one gentleman who only paints to vintage Little Richard. Mildred is a southerner, and at 87 paints to Buckwheat Zydeco!

So now it’s your turn. Be open-minded. What makes you move…physically and mentally? You don’t have to listen to it at the dinner table or while you are completing your painting.  Use it when you want some quick color on that blank canvas to get you started.

Henri Matisse said “Creativity takes courage.”

Do you have to be able to draw to paint a picture?

“I’d love to try painting but I can’t even draw a straight line!” I hear this about once a week. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but perhaps you will do just fine without learning how to shade the sphere and the cube. It IS helpful to be able to draw the tree accurately, but a lack of drawing skills certainly did not stop some of the world’s greatest artists. 

Start with a sketch.

People who want to make the move towards creativity want to get started right away. That personal excitement is part of the growth process and I truly believe it should be honored. If you want to learn how to draw well I can suggest excellent drawing classes. But YOU want to paint. Now! And my job is to help you get on with it! 

In my Come Paint With Me© classes we usually paint a 9X12 or 11X14 painting in two 2 hour session. All supplies are included in the cost of your lesson, and everything is ready and waiting for you when you walk through my studio door. We start out selecting our subject, and quickly move on to a full color sketch. We don’t draw in charcoal or graphite. We quickly draw our basic sketch in thinned oil paint. We can make corrections if needed. We are adding the first colors within the first half hour! Many people are delighted to learn that wet, thin oil paint is completely erasable. 

Once we have the basic outlines make the color choices and add a thin wash with those colors. Our canvas now looks very much like a watercolor. The thinned oil paint comes right off if we need to make corrections. At the end of the two hours we know exactly where we are going with our painting and have a full color canvas to prove it. The happiest moment comes when you arrive back for your second lesson to complete your oil painting.

Over and over again I hear…”It already looks good! I’m excited!”