Get Out of that Car!

Quenching Water's of Wirreanda Creek
Approx 47.5cm x 68cm
Pastel on Terra Cotta Colourfix Paper
Copyright Susan Borgas

(The blue is not quite right in this image but the best I could get at this time)

I don’t know how many times I have traveled near this spot and never appreciated what is really there. This is permanent water fed by a spring. The surrounding area doesn’t have much in the way of tall trees but there is plenty of salt bush heading off into the distance. I always find the floating algae interesting, especially when it is aging, because of the varied colours and textures that it becomes.

Here in Australia it isn’t unknown to travel quite some distances to reach destination. Time often does not allow us to pull over the side of the road and walk with a sketchbook in tow or a camera bag slung over the shoulder, but instead I have quickly park the car and taken a snapshot from the side of the road for reference to work in a studio. After awhile it isn’t quite so stimulating to paint something that is seen time and again, although these paintings often sell quickly because tourist do recognise those spots and want to take it home as a reminder of their trip.

Walk
"
See what is around that corner!
"

My husband and I are parking our vehicle more often now and walking up or down a creek bed or climbing that nearby hill. It is a good way to find new material to paint, as well of course some exercise tossed in as well.

I am happy to say that I have now sold Water Course, Wilpena Creek.

technorati tags: pastel, landscape, artist, photorealism, water

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Saral Transfer Paper

Katherine from Making a Mark asked me in the comments section of my last post how do I transfer my drawings to my support. I thought why not make a post about it in more depth to the reply that I gave Katherine.

This work in progress is the third drawing that I had prepared for my artist in residence stint at Wilpena Pound a few weeks back, which I ended up not using due to running out of time. Because I wanted a detailed drawing so that I didn't have to concentrate so much with so many tourist looking over my shoulder, the Saral transfer paper is ideal. One thing I have found out though is to make sure a light hand is used when transferring the drawing onto AS Colourfix paper or the lines can be hard to cover with pastel. I found this to be the case with any method of transferring a drawing because I believe I dent the paper slightly or break down the grit with the marks that I make.

There are two other ways I transfer as well by making my own 'carbon paper'.

1. Tape drawing to a window with the drawing faced against the glass. With vine charcoal, trace all lines that I can see that is showing through from the light behind the drawing. Remove drawing from window then face the charcoal side down onto the AS Colourfix paper and proceed to redraw the drawing so that the image transfers.
   
   
2. This last one is the method I use the most but perhaps not as ideal for a lot of detail to be transfered. I have a large sheet of paper and rub pastel dust that has fallen into the gutter at the base of a previous painting onto it. This makes a nice carbon although it can be rather messy. I do like the grey tones for the transfered drawing and find them easier to cover if I am using pastels in a particular area lightly.

Getting back to the Saral transfer paper, it can be used again and again. There are five colours.

• Graphite
• White
• Blue
• Yellow
• Red

For the artist that works with a great deal of detail and strives for realism, I can truly recommend this product to them.


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technorati tags: draw, drawing, artist, art

Pastels

Something a bit different to what I have done in the past when showing you a 'work in progress' (WIP). These pastels that you see here are what I have used on Water's Path - Willochra Creek.

I Said I would post images of my pastels in this thread at WetCanvas so decided to post larger photos here on my blog because there is a limited size for the WetCanvas Forum to view and will point them to this post.

On completing the pastel work the first image shows the pastels that I was constantly picking up and putting down in a given day. They are resting on soft foam in a pull out drawer of my easel. The foam is also used to wipe the pastels against to keep my colours clean. These two images show you all the pastels for my last project that I did use.


I am right handed and this second image displays my pastels that are on a trolley to my right. Usually what I do is at the end of my days work, give a final wipe to the pastel on that piece of foam that you see in the bottom left and place in the plastic tray (recycled from supermarket) for a fresh clean start at the easel the next day. In other words there will be no pastels left in the drawer as you see in the first image. The white charcoal pencil was used to sign my name. The dark shape at the back is kneadable eraser, which I knead while working to keep my hands clean. It is also handy for erasing mistakes when I am working.

Now all I have to do is give a final clean to the pastels and place them back into their special boxes for another day when I start a new pastel project. First though I am going to finish the grisaille that I started some time back.

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technorati tags: pastel, pastel artist, art, artist, pastels

Training your Brushes to Behave

Once upon a time there was pure soap to drag your brushes across and flatten or shape into points to help care for the tips after a day of painting. Well let me tell you there is another way that you can pull those wild brushes back into shape and the magic ingredient is….wait for it… Hair Gel!!!

Months ago I pinched my sons jar of Hair Gel to try it out. It is an inexpensive supermarket brand and does the job beautifully in controlling my brushes of all types. If we can put it on our hair without it falling out or change to a weird colour I can’t see that it will hurt and after months of using Hair Gel on my own brushes, I can recommend it.

After each painting session I rinse the brushes out in water or turps (depending on the type of medium used). I then wash my brushes out in warm water and pure soap, no matter what medium I have used. Do this by rubbing the brush onto the soap, rinse and rub onto soap again and rinse until the brush does not soil the soap. One last rinse than remove excess moisture on a cloth, dip in the Hair Gel, shape and allow to dry. It might be wise to rinse the gel out of the brush for watercolour painting but I don’t bother for oils.

It isn’t unusual for me to place a stubborn flat tipped brush that doesn’t want to be trained under the edge of a large cutting mat on my table. It is sufficient weight to hold the fibres together until the gel is dry.

If you would like to share by commenting to this post how to gain a longer life for brushes, I would love to hear from you.

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technorati tags: brushes, hair gel, cleaning brushes, brush care

Hints for Staying Focused

Staying focused in your work isn’t always easy, especially if there is a daunting amount of work to do over a period of a year and the next and so on. Time management is so important to stay focused on what needs to be done. This is how I try to stay focused and for the most part it does work.

1. List off the main jobs that have to be completed for the year. For artists that would be how many paintings you need to complete as well as exhibitions you are exhibiting in. Be sure to list any other major events, including non work related ones. Once you have a list, pencil each job into the years calendar at a pace that you know you can handle comfortably with room to spare for any hiccups that may arise and trust me they will. You will also be aware if you can handle anymore additional work for that year.

2. Write out a daily task list. I started doing this when I read Maggie’s post How to Juggle & Other Parlor Tricks on her blog. It is a great way of staying on track for your day, which then allows you to focus more on what you should be doing, creating art or whatever else your job is.

3. Your time is important so learnt to say no when someone else wants a slice of your day. If it can’t be avoided do a trade off. For example because my husband and I own a business there is sometimes a task that I can only do that wasn’t on the agenda. If my husband wants me to do a job for him he ends up doing a mundane job or two off my own list.

4. Delegate jobs to other members in the family or staff rather than trying to be ‘super work hero’ that ends up coming to an almighty crash from overload. It takes a long time to climb back out of that hole that you created. I learnt that at an earlier time in my life where I ended up so ill that I was useless to those around me.

5. Consider using your answering machine to take your calls. This I have done when I see ‘private numbers’ showing up on the ID screen. 99% of the time ‘private numbers’ are either a fax or somebody wanting to sell me something; perhaps I should try and sell them a painting.

6. As an artist I know I lose focus when painting. This is when it is time to have some refreshments or do one of those smaller jobs on the list that take no longer than ten or so minutes. That break for me will help me refocus once more on the painting.

7. I love my email and the contact I have with family and friends but like phone calls, it is distracting from work and rarely touch my email during my work hours. If you have time, check your email & blog feeds first thing in the morning (I do while having my breakfast) and once more during the evening when finished my list for the day. Over my midday meal I sometimes will check my blog feeds. Once the clock says back to work, it really means back to work and I get on and do just that. On the subject of rss feeds, do you use a Feed Reader (for example Bloglines or Google Reader) to check your favourite blogs? You should! They save a lot of time as updated blog post drop into the same place and so much quicker to read. Many blogs offer email subscriptions if you prefer not to use a Feed Reader.

8. Listen to music while you work. It tends to help your mind settled on what is in front of you instead of all the other stuff that is going on in your life.

9. If you write to a blog, consider drafting your post rather than leaving it to the last minute then feeling rushed about what you want to write. I paint from the screen of my laptop, hence if an idea pops into my head for a post I make a note of it on the laptop. If the momentum takes off with that post, I do tend to go with it so that I don’t forget what I want to say, then once more able to concentrate on the main task for the day. This is especially so when painting WIP’s as it is easy to write about what I have done while I am painting. After all the blog is on my list of things to do for most days and can post without any loss of time then.

10. I do have a very messy studio but my immediate working space is very organised. This save me time and the most important factor is no loss of focus when searching for an item because I can lay my hands straight away on what is needed.

11. Don’t be a perfectionist with your ‘home’ chores. You will be the only one that knows if you missed cleaning the floor. If you do the cooking; a ‘gone out of your way to make’ meal will be appreciated more by not serving them up regularly. Cook in bulk when you can and place extra cooked meals in the fridge or freezer for ‘fast food’ meals.

12. For artist, keep the bookwork up to day so that it does not intrude on your creative time. My trade off with this is no blog posting for the day. As some of you know I have a real dislike for the GST bookwork that I have to do and because it is left brain thinking, it upsets my focus on the creative right side.

13. Don’t get bogged down with what this and that person says you should be doing. Listen and learn and weed out what isn’t suitable for your direction in life. Do what is right for you and you will have a very good focus on completing tasks that you have set out for yourself. This goes for anything in life, not just work. Sometimes your decision might seem selfish but if it means keeping your head above water, so be it.

14. Allow some time at the end of the day to reflect on what you have achieved. This will put you in the right frame of mind to get out of bed the next day and start all over again.

There you have it, this is how I stay focused for the most part. Yes things in life do get in the way of best laid plans but have learnt with maturity to step back and look at the bigger picture and reroute my plan of attack. If this happens to often I then become a very cranky artist, which my husband has found isn’t an ideal person to live with. Maybe that is the temperamental artist surfacing.

There must be many more ways to stay focused on tasks that need to be completed and would love to hear about them. Once more use the comments option to share your thoughts.


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Staying Focused feed readers time management

Injuries and Art do not mix

Well for me it doesn’t because pain blocks the creative juices and the pain killers the doctor ordered tends to make me fuzzy so avoid taking them as much as possible……. What am I talking about? read on!

Monday was supposed to be spend preparing a large canvas for an oil painting and has not eventuated right up to today. About a week ago I somehow manage to hurt my right leg. No idea what I have done to it though yesterday my doctor seems to think I have pulled a muscle. Mmmm….. the only way I may have done this is from a shopping trip to Port Pirie with a trolley full of groceries that once heavy is hard to maneuver. Nearly a week later, shopping once more I noticed an empty trolley made my leg well and truly hurt and that is when it twigged it may have caused the leg injury.

What compounds all this; other than very small works, I stand to create my paintings and consequently not working because of the injury. Over the years I have tried to work sitting down but find my hand doesn’t flow quite so easily with a much tighter finish to the overall painting. So sitting down on the job does not work for me. The link is just a bit of dry humour from me.

This is an old student chair that has been converted into a stool (or should that be a tall chair?) by my husband and just might be a useful "idea" for you. The longer axis pole allows the height of the chair to be adjustable in the same way the shorter vision did. The chair sits back from my painting and is used to sit on while contemplating my work. When putting some extra time in front of the easel and because it is then a very long day standing on my feet I may sit on this chair in short bursts while painting.

As you can see I am very lucky to have handymen in my family. For those that don't remember my son made a stand for my laptop. That post can be found here.

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technorati tags: Stool, chair, sitting down on the job, injury, art, artist

Mount Remarkable WIP three

My trip to Port Pirie went well yesterday other than a headache in the afternoon that soon developed into a migraine. Thankfully these types of headaches are not so common with me these days although getting over them still takes time. It was a late start in the studio because of being unwell but did manage to get some work done although not enough to post an updated photo.

After today the branches are now taking shape in the upper top right hand side of the Mount Remarkable painting. My hands are cleaned regularly, as I am using quite a few darks in this area along with lesser mid and light values.

Hint: Because my hands do perspire such a lot I don’t use rubber gloves while using my pastels nor do I get on using the cut off tips of gloves like some artist do. For this reason I am constantly washing my hands or wiping them on a very wet cloth. It is only just recently that I hit on an idea of applying Vitamin E cream onto my soggy cloth because I was always heading for the Vitamin E cream to apply directly to my hands and was costing a small fortune with replacement bottles. I am finding I will now wipe my hands more often and they stay lovely and soft. To keep bacteria away a clean cloth is used each day.

All in fun!
"
taking the Mickey out of Google
"

Now for something off topic from art: The Quick Online Tips post titled When Google Pen “Beta” Ran Out of Ink caught my interest straight away when it dropped into my Google Reader. Like so many of us I like to know what Google is doing and was rewarded with a most amusing story at the Ask.com Blog taking the Micky out of Google. For this entertaining story along with helpful suggestions to Scott Grieder, Group Product Manager for Ask.com through the comments section of the blog the track back (Permalink) entry can be found at Google Pen runs out. Enjoy I know I did.

This may interest my Aussie readers; some snail mail came in the post with the following information for local exhibitions near the area that I live.

Laura Art Exhibition
14-15 April 2007
28th Annual Laura Folk Fair

Key Dates
Entries Close: 30 March 2007
Personal Delivery of Works: Sunday 8 April between 1pm – 3pm Tuesday 10 April between 10am – 3pm
By Couriers: received before Tuesday 10 April 2007
You are invited to attend the Opening Night commencing at 8pm on Friday 13 April 2007


CHRISTIANITY – An Australian Perspective
28 April – 20 May 2007
A biennial art award at Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery, in conjunction with the Anglican Diocese of Willochra and the Catholic Dioceses of Port Pirie

Key Dates
Entries close: Friday 6 April 2007
Delivery of work: Friday 20 to Wednesday 25 April 2007 at 2pm
Opening of exhibition & announcement of prize winners: Saturday 28 April 2007


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technorati tags: Google, google reader, quick on linetips, ask.com, permalink, scott grieder,hints,vitamin e cream

Laptop Stand

I said in a earlier posting on my blog that our son and his partner are now living with my husband and I. Shaun is a metal fabricator and yesterday when I mentioned that it would be handy to have my laptop elevated above my work trolley he instantly had the ruler out measuring up ideas and implementing them into a plan and now the job is completed.

The three photos show you what my set-up now looks like. What started off as a steel hospital bedside cupboard that I purchased from a clearing sale is now a very workable area.

My husband some months back had made and attached a top with an edge to it so that my pastels did not roll off. This made the top surface of the cupboard twice the original size. The cupboard is easy to move around as it is on castors. With the addition of the elevated position for the laptop I now have more room. It also keeps the laptop away from some of the pastel dust that did concern me would eventually clog it up.

It is very handy having a husband that works with wood and a son that works with metal.

Oh yeah…..not a lot of painting is happening but when I do get a chance I add some colour but not enough that I felt it was worth posting.








art, studio, artist, laptop