My watercolor palette

Watercolor colors low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

I picked up some new colors for my birthday and finally got a palette that would truly organize my watercolors rather than taking them from the tubes each time I used them.

I can't wait to play with them!

I placed them roughly in a color wheel format, but since I hadn't used a number of these before they're not in the exactly places where I'd put them now that I've really tested them out on paper.

Hodgepodge
My husband kindly gave me my first artist-quality watercolors from his collection. Over the last few years, I've acquired a few as necessary when I did specific calligraphy projects.

Finally, I felt I was doing enough additions of watercolor to my works, especially with transparent stained-glass effects, that I justified taking my birthday money straight to Daniel Smith last week to fill in the gaps. Though it's not the way I'd have acquired them if I were starting out fresh, building a collection a bit at a time eased some of the financial pain.

I tried not to get too many new ones that overlapped with the gouaches I already have. Hence my favorite color, cobalt blue, isn't on here.

NOTE: I'm very lucky to have a Daniel Smith store just a few miles from my home. They're one of the premier art stores in the U.S. and they also make many of their own artist-quality paints.

PrimaTeks
The first new set I picked up are the PrimaTeks, derived from grinding actual stones. Rhodalite (bottom left), Lapis Lazuli (bottom right), Turquoise (upper right) are some of the stunning examples.

I plan on using these both to make my nature illustrations look more natural and to make my illuminated lettering more historical.

Most of them have a lovely granulating quality (i.e., the pigment settles unevenly so it looks more pebbly). The Purpurite and Sodalite in the bottom right show this off especially well.

Quinacridones
After I put the watercolors into the palette (designed by Stephen Quiller who I mentioned in yesterday's post), I noticed I had very few oranges, reds, pinks, violets, and purples. I decided I'd pick up Daniel Smith's Quinacridone Set.

I felt these colors would liven up a number of my works and wanted some more transparent colors in addition to the mostly granulating qualities of the PrimaTeks.

True Color Wheel
Because it was built in such a hodgepodge fashion, it hasn't been constructed to have exactly complementary matches all around like my gouache palette. (And, I do have more gouaches than just these.)

Since I already have a true color wheel, I felt freer to experiment, choosing new additions that I felt would work in the contemporary updates of historical styles I already do. Especially with the stained glass effects I like so much and that pop in my scanned work.

Gouache Colorwheel

Gouache Colorwheel after Quiller low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

This year, I've been working on color.

One of the color gurus, Stephen Quiller, has written a some good books including Color Choices.

I had a number of his suggested colors already in my palette, but after reading his book I added the rest. Now I have his complete version of the color wheel, which lets me quickly figure out which colors I want to use for new works.

I found it especially useful when creating, Gift of Water earlier this year. Specifically, my first real use of viridian and phtalo blue were in this piece.

Vibrant Neutrals
Quiller chose his colors to be both the most useful for mixing AND be the closest he could get to true complementary colors. For example, Cadmium Red is the complement to Cerulean Blue.

As you mix these colors across the wheel, they turn into neutral shades with a great deal more depth than they would if you merely shaded one with black. The inner most three rings of my wheel show these neutrals as I gradually mixed more of one color towards the other.

Another neat trick
Gouaches are opaque, but if you apply them in light coats they look more translucent -- like regular watercolors. The other three rings of my color wheel are merely diluting the gouache with more and more water to obtain lighter colors. No tinting the gouache with white.

Full Strength color
The fourth ring (counting in either direction) shows what the gouache looks like at full strength. That's how dark I can get it straight from the tube with only a little water added for even spreading.

Special thanks to Louise Grunewald for discussing Quiller's palette in her workshop that I took last year.

Art Shows

Art Shows
I spent time at two different art shows, the biggest and best being the juried Bellevue ArtFair. Got some ideas for framing, displays, and more. Wish I had time to pitch a tent and do a show, but having a three-year old, I'll just have to put one more item in the "When My Child Goes to School" list.

Productivity
This week, the temperature in my area reached 107 degrees (official temp Redmond, WA), which was the highest I've ever experienced and I believe the highest recorded here. Seattle reached a record-breaking 102/103. My productivity as well as everyone else's nosedived as everyone in the area sought air conditioned public places for a few days.

Today felt more like summer in the Pacific NW. I was able to work more on content for a new website I'm creating with a coding-genius and friend, Anne Trent. Also practiced a bit more on Roman capitals.

Prehistoric Artworks

A site you don't think of when you think of art: National Geographic. Yet, here are two great art stories from them:

1. Prehistoric Hand Prints
After analyzing handprints in prehistoric cave paintings, they've discovered that many of them are done by women. Indicating that many of the actual paintings are probably also done by women, which isn't what was commonly taught. The older theory being men coming down and painting hunting figures as part of a religious ritual.

2. North America's Oldest Art
A 13,000-year-old mammoth bone etched with a figure of a mammoth.

Calligraphy: Is it Outsider Art?

Christopher Calderhead, a leading calligrapher and editor of Letter Arts Review recently posted a very accessible image-heavy lecture on Calligraphy: Is it Outsider Art?

In it, Calderhead examines how calligraphy is and is not integrated into the larger art community.

Calligraphy: Art or Craft?
One of the frequent discussions I heard in calligraphy circles revolves around this question. Calderhead graphs how he views this, giving calligraphy 3-prongs: fine art, craft, and graphic design. In my mind, I've always combined craft and graphic design, but I can see why he's made them distinct. However, I like how he points out how calligraphy is simultaneously many things, which is how I view it.

While the word, craft, often has some derogatory tones, as in "just a craft", I think of calligraphy in terms of William Morris' Arts and Crafts movement. To me, craft often rises to cultural high points, equally worthy of fine art in both time and money. When I'm addressing envelopes, this is the level I strive for. Ditto for graphic designs I do like logos and book titles.

But to say calligraphy is only a craft leaves out many pieces which hang well on the wall, which are fine art, and can compete with other fine art categories. For instance, the pieces that I've done for the CR Gallery, my illuminations, and some of my card images.

So, I found Christopher's take on the art vs. craft question interesting as well as his general take on engaging the greater art field.

Draft for Angela Rockett -- future altar piece

Draft for Angela Rockett -- future altar piece
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

When fellow artist Angela Rockett asked if I could collaborate on an upcoming altar piece, I knew I wanted to push everything else aside to do it.

Firstly, I only had to spend some hours to get a good enough draft, not weeks to get the final result.
Second, I get to be surprised at the end with the final result, seeing what some with Angela's artistic talent will do with my piece makes me very curious to see it. Just like a present!

Here's the draft, which displays some of my working habits, such as using a Westwind calligraphy practice pad for layout and spacing. Also, just trying to play around with tweaks to the same words even in the working draft I sent Angela. Earlier, I had sent her a very rough draft to see how she liked various lettering choices, so this current draft shows a very narrow variation.

The hand I used is a modern variation of Gothic called Fraktur, used more in Germany than in the States. This particular Fraktur is from Friedrich Neugebauer's The Mystic Art of Written Forms. It's a hand I taught myself for another project I did for Angela, the graphics for the ER Gallery show, Out of Darkness, Into Light.

Obsolete tools

I find it amusing that as a calligrapher, I use several of the tools that are part of this Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies