Palette knife

Grounded  

oil on canvas  12” x 12”

This piece is available for purchase on the Available Works page

Its been awhile since I used a palette knife for painting but today I had the urge. I had come across a photo I had taken of an iceberg that was grounded in Flatrock cove one spring and thought I'd play around with it.
I'm in the process of framing gyotaku prints as well as printing more.  However I'm waiting for a big crab to unthaw before I can go further so I had a little time to play today.


Using a palette knife to paint with is like scooping butter onto a slice of bread.  Its very satisfying and speeds up the process of applying paint to canvas.  I don't know if I'm particularly proficient at it and I was a little frustrated at not having the right colours or being able to mix what I wanted from the ones I have.  I do have some oils on order but hate the waiting period between order and receipt.

My October newsletter went out on Friday and thank you everyone for your kind comments.  I have a special offer for pet portraits in the issue and have seven commissions already!  The offer is open until November 1st, so sign up by clicking on the box in the right hand side of this blog, if you're interested, and I'll make sure you get a copy of the current newsletter.

Simple things

 

Often we overlook the simplest things in life only to find that they are the ones that provide the most pleasure or contain the most beauty.  We look for the perfect composition, the pristine flower, the right light - all to achieve a pleasing piece of work.  We work so hard at achieving perfection that we often miss it entirely but ignoring the obvious and searching for the unobtainable.

This is a quick acrylic sketch of a view stretching across a field in Saskatchewan.  To the farmer it represents revenue, hard work and investment.  To the average person it is 'just a field'.  To an artist it represents values, light, form and potential to make the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Ode to the Sea - the study

" It slaps the rocks and when they aren't convinced, it strokes them and soaks them and smothers them with kisses. With seven green tongues of seven green dogs or seven green tigers or seven green seas, beating its chest, stammering its name.  Oh sea, this is your name."

I always have an affinity with the sea and Pablo Neruda is my favourite poet who has written so many exquisite poems that have the sea in them.   I have been listening to this one - Ode to the Sea - while I paint a little slice of the sea.

This piece is a  6 x 12  study in oils and right now I'm concentrating on getting the shapes of the water reflections in place.  A lot harder than anticipated!  My plan is to create a similar piece on a much larger scale.  Like most pieces I prefer to work out the colours and kinks on a smaller scale first.  Then I go into the main piece more relaxed and confident of my colour choices and technique.

This view of a section of water is an amalgamation of photos and life studies of a fairly calm sea, close to shore.  The subtle variances are so very complex. If you haven't studied water before, I suggest that you do.  The ever changing light and colours and shapes of waves and reflections are amazing.

Maple leaf

 

With colder nights, the leaves are changing colour and dropping from the trees,littering the grass and driveway.   I stopped and picked up a handful of leaves on my way into the house.  They were in varying stages of transformation and the colours ranged from gold to copper, brown, red and even some traces of green still fighting against the change.

I haven't drawn or painted a leaf for such a long time, so I thought I'd give it a try.  This maple leaf is from a tree in the front garden.  My favourite maple unfortunately succumbed to Hurricane Igor and will warm me next winter by providing firewood.

This watercolour sketch is in a 5.5 x 8.5 sketchbook with 140lb paper.

Contemplation

I'm still using up old canvasses and painting over images I didn't like.  This is another of Tripod contemplating his next move .  The subtle, thoughtful pose doesn't indicate what goes on inside his head.  Its somewhere you probably don't want to go...

This is the image so far.  I still have a little work to do to add some more definition to the face and its done.  Its 8" x 10" on stretched canvas in acrylics.  Eyes are difficult for me to achieve in this medium.  The ability to blend paint well is limited in acrylic as it dries so quickly, especially as I'm using glazes for colour in the eyes.

A few well placed Anglo Saxon phrases and a few repaints and I think I'm there with the eyes.

Sweet dumpling

This summer was good for growing squash and one of my favourite is Sweet Dumpling.  These are small, portion sized squash with sweet flesh and beautiful green and white skin.

I had a handful of them on the kitchen counter and decided to paint one.  I also created an 8 minute video showing some of the painting process, which was then modified to a brief one minute clip.  The final painting is 5" x 7" and I used acrylic paints.  I usually don't use acrylics but they are quick drying and I like experimenting.  Once I get myself together, i will try for a video that shows progression from start to finish.

Playing dress up huh?

This isn't Tripod's buddy because Tripod has no animal friends.  In fact, he really, really, really dislikes all other animals and usually tries to attack them, especially dogs.  He's not too fond of other cats either.  Or rabbits.  Or mice.  Or squirrels. I saw him sizing up a horse and looking a little perplexed the other day, no doubt wondering what the best angle of attack would be.

No, this cat is a study for another piece that may turn into a Christmas card or something seasonal.  The cat has been dressed up and has that look that says 'Take this off me now or something unusual will happen to your shoes while you are sleeping tonight.'  You know the look if you have a cat.  Dogs tolerate humanizing much more than cats do.  Dogs usually associate dressing up with going out or food or fun.

Cats take it all very personally and plot your downfall while you think they are just lounging.

Something long and slinky

 
No, nothing exotic.  Well, I guess it would depend on your definition of exotic.  This is the start of an oil painting of a jelly fish.  The piece is on gallery canvas 12 x 36 using oils.  Suitably long and slinky for the subject matter.

I love seeing jelly fish in the ocean as they bob along next to the boat or drift past as you sit on a rock at the ocean's edge.  Sometimes I find them on the beach, a shining, transparent blob that is transformed into light, elegance and lace in the water.  I'm still wary of them however, as their sting can be quite painful and long lasting.

One of the jelly fish found in Newfoundland waters is the Moon jelly fish.  They look as if someone has drawn them in the water a bit like wonky space craft. I have another painting in my head for the moon jellyfish, but that will have to wait awhile.  This jelly fish?  Well I'm not sure of its species or origins quite yet.  Perhaps a cross between a Lion's Mane and my imagination.  Time will tell.

Catching up

Its been a crazy busy few days and only now do I have time to grab a few minutes and catch up on some art.  I had some long days at work that stretched into the weekend which is usually my time to get some serious art done.  Then a farmer's market on Sunday took up the rest of my weekend and time just slips away.


Its so easy to get behind when you have a schedule laid out.  And at the moment when it is laid out with precision is the exact moment when everything else goes crazy.  Life does it to test my stamina limits I'm sure!

When I have little time, sketches keep me going and these quick ones of Tripod are little thumbnails for potential paintings in the future.  Now if someone can help me understand why Blogger keeps flipping my images...sigh.

As an October treat, I'm offering the chance to win an original reproduction of 'Middle Cove Fog' to those who have signed up to receive my newsletter Jeanette Jobson Fine Art.  I will draw a name from the new subscribers who have signed up since my last newsletter in September.   October 31st is the draw date.  I will notify the winner by email and the winner's name will be announced in the November newsletter.

Sign up now and have a chance to win !  The October newsletter will be out on the 15th of this month and will include an interview with the talented alla prima artist Jonathan Aller.  (I have one of his oil paintings and it is exquisite)

You can find the easy sign up button on the right hand side of this blog.

Asterias vulgaris

I seem to have an endless supply of long narrow strips of watercolour paper from cutting down full sheets to sizes I want to fit into frames.

As a result, I'm using the left over pieces as little slices of printed ocean or lake life.  This is a section of the third piece with is a little more narrow - 4 x 22 approximately.  A series of these hung as a stack on the wall could be quite interesting.

The addition of watercolour and sand creates an almost abstract piece for these sea stars.  This started with a print of a Boreal Asterias sea star, which is common in the waters around the province and starts life as a pale purple colour drying to a sand colour.  I have been lucky to access more sea stars of different varieties, one with six legs that is very red and another with nine legs.   Sea stars or starfish as they are commonly known are amazingly aggressive in their habitat of the sea floor and can decimate sea urchin and mussel populations.

Blog adjustments

 Large mouth bass trio

gyotaku and watercolour   22" x 6"

In the everyday scramble that is called life, we often throw a post or image onto our blogs then forget about them again for a day or two.   The overall look or feel of the blog becomes as important as the content and can entice viewers in or chase them away.

Over the last couple of days I've been tweaking my blog to try to make it easier to navigate and read and have removed and/or changed some elements.   One of the major changes I've made is a move over to Fine Art America for on-demand reproductions and greeting card printing.   FAA is one of the leaders in the field of POD (print on demand) and has the highest traffic levels of the current POD leaders which translates into more visbility for your art and more potential for sales.

Original pieces have moved from Etsy for the moment and reside on their own separate page on this blog.  Its simply easier to track where things are and to avoid confusion.   You can browse the art available for reproductions through the slide show on the right side of the blog.

A sign up button for my newsletter makes it simple to ensure that you get the October copy which is building nicely and will be chock full of reading goodies, with a few Halloween treats thrown in for good measure!   Sign up and try out the next issue of Jeanette Jobson Fine Art.

Guaranteed to please or your money back!  I know, I couldn't resist...

These little largemouth bass were printed onto the left over piece of 200lb watercolour paper from the cut down of another sheet.  I have one more left of these strips and thought that long narrow pieces make good windows into the watery world.

Sand and water

I've been trying different fish prints on different papers to see how they work.   I can't reveal the whole piece as I want to keep it as part of the final exhibition, but you can see enough here to understand the technique and what I'm trying to achieve.

This is a peek at a long narrow piece with bluegills printed on watercolour paper in raw sienna ink.  I then flooded the paper with watercolour that enhanced the natural colours of the fish and while it was wet, I sprinkled fine sand over the lower surface.

The sand doesn't absorb pigment and water as salt grains would, but disperses it evenly giving a soft effect to the piece.  The sand does stick to the paper and adds texture, but I'll need to rub it off before framing or it will have its own little beach behind glass!

Initial newsletter launched

I have been considering a newsletter for awhile and its been brewing in my head and in draft copy while I mulled it over.  Today I took the plunge with a brief initial copy and a promise of more to come.  Jeanette Jobson Fine Art newsletter will be monthly and any updates or changes will be sent out to subscribers.

I am using a specific email software - Constant Contact -  to produce and manage the newsletter.  It becomes one less thing to deal with if I know that my email list is secure and that the format of the newsletter is professional and appealing.  No, it is not free, but it provides me with the services that I need to provide the service that I want my subscribers to have.

I`m adding a few features that will remain constant, such as `Monthly Collector` where subscribers will have an opportunity to purchase a piece of my work at a reduced price for a period of time.  I will also be adding other features such as draws for paintings or prints, interviews with other artists, tutorials and video.

I have provided a sign up widget on the right side of this blog as well as on my Facebook page to make it easy for people to access the newsletter. 

And for those artists wondering if a newsletter works, the initial Monthly Collector piece for September at the discounted price has sold.   This piece is now available at the regular price on my `Photographs`page.   Be kind to your collectors, keep them informed and treat them as the important people they are.  To all my collectors, friends and artists who support my artistic way of life - thank you!

I tweaked the painting of Biscuit that I started last night with my hour time limit.  I added about another 30 minutes of work this morning and this is the final piece.  I then went to visit him where he is buried at the edge of the woods to tell him about it.  He approves.

One hour Biscuit

While clearing out the studio I found some old canvasses paintings that were put into the never never pile.  Being the frugal artist I decided that I would start painting over them.  Why buy more if I can use these right?

I found a photograph of Biscuit, my old dog, dead 4 or 5 years now, poor soul.   I decided that I'd give myself a time limit again and see what I could come up with in an hour with some acrylics.

This is the result and I'll do some more work on it tomorrow and it will either work or go back to the pile to be repainted again.

I've figured out Blogger's secret for images now.  If the image is photographed vertically instead of horizontally, and I adjust it in an editing program, it will revert its original state.  Very very frustrating.  Blogger, please fix that!

Smelt

Smelt are a cousin of the capelin family and I hadn't seen one previously until Lori provided me with one on her return from coastal Labrador/Quebec.

It was fairly delicate, as the capelin are and didn't take many prints before starting to degrade.  However, I think I got at least one good sheet of prints from it and then tried this one on a piece of black card that I had on my table.  Unfortunately, I had managed to smear ink on the paper so only the front half of the smelt is usable.

I rather like the ghostly effect on the black paper and the final print sheet has similar in pale gold on a rich deep blue handmade Japanese paper called Moriki Kozo.

This isn't the finished piece, but gives you an idea of the colours in the inks I'm using as well as the paper.  Why its posting vertically instead of horizontally, I don't know.  Another of Blogger's little mysteries!

After Igor

Its been a wild 24 hours or more with the arrival and departure of Hurricane Igor.   Being surrounded by trees in the woods is generally not the best place to be in a storm, but luckily, despite debris of tree parts flying and trees being uprooted, we survived with minimal damage.

The power went off for 18 hours and that left a sump pump in the basement not working and a bunch of young chicks in the barn that needed heat lights on, so generators were called into action.  An all nighter was done to keep checking the waterline at the pump in the basement to make sure it didn't overflow and flood the basement.

The storm is past, all things are still in one piece and life gets back to normal slowly.  Unfortunately some favourite trees in the back garden were blown down - a maple and a birch, both about 40 feet tall.  Willows at the rear have a distinct lean to them too.   I so hate to see trees damaged, especially 'my' maple, it was so stately and lovely.  But it had the grace to fall on the hydrangea and flatten the fence instead of the house, so that's good!

I sketched a few views of a mussel shell while the storm raged outside.  I just adore the Lunar Black watercolour from Daniel Smith.  Its granulates so perfectly when painting shells or fish.  Its likely o ne of my 'can't do without' colours.  Chris Beck has told me that when wet, if you draw a magnet under your painting, you can drag the lunar black particles around!  Isn't that amazing?  I haven't tried that yet, but I must!

Drawing or painting by candlelight sounds romantic, but in reality my eyesight won't cooperate with that light level to do finer tasks, so art was abandoned once darkness fell.  Hopefully now I'll have some time to play catch up on some projects.  Of course now I'm catching a cold.  I blame it all on Igor.

1986

Its funny to look back on art done years ago and see where you came from, what you produced and how you change over time.

This oil painting is one that I did in 1986.  This was of my niece who was about two years old at the time and in the UK staying for a visit with me.  Looking at it now, there is so much I want to tweak, but it should stay as it is as it marks a moment in time for both her and me.

However, that background...just a little tweak...

Malware message resolved

Startled   Sold

8 x 10  acrylics on stretched canvas

I'm not the most technical person in the world, so when people started telling that got a malware warning message when clicking on my blog today, I wasn't sure what to do about it.

But like everything, a little research and some factual reassurance by major players have convinced me that I have the issue resolved now.

The message was linking my site with rpc blogrolling dot com, a supposed host for malware.  Apparently quite a number of other blogs have been getting the same message when clicked over the last few days.

Publish Post

   My Norton antivirus scanner picked up nothing on a full scan of my laptop that I use for blogging.  Next I did a check on Google Webmaster Tools for a diagnostic of my blog.   The result:  Google has not detected any malware on this site.

Ok.  No viruses, no malware, so what?   Looking through some help sections on Blogger I found some similar problems that seemed to relate back to blog rolls on blogs.  So I decided to remove all my blog lists on the site, then slowly add them back in to see if that resolves the problem.


Please let me know if you do get this message again and never fear, I will reinstate all my blog links again!  If I miss anyone, please send me a message and I'll add you back.  


Meanwhile, having some paint left over from Tripod's last portrait, I did another.  Its his alter ego this time.  The fight or flight within him is a fine line and when surprised he generally flees.  His invisible enemies win then.

I came across him in the barn lying in some sawdust.  The startled look and lighting was something I wanted to try to capture.

The Stalker

 The Stalker

8 x 10 acrylics

SOLD

 Tripod's attention span is pretty limited, especially when in the house.  Outside however, he can focus something in his sight and stand perfectly still for the longest time.  Especially if the object of his 'affection' is a mouse or a rabbit.

In that frozen window of time all his energy is focused, he barely blinks.  The only movement is the very tip of his tail twitching and sometimes a  slow motion movement as he inches forward.  He, like most animals, believes that if you move in slow motion, nothing can see you.  You become invisible.

Tripod also believes that he can become invisible if he takes something that doesn't belong to him, destroys something or pees on something.  He doesn't seem to understand how very visible that makes him to humans.  However, that's another story.

I captured the stalker's gaze in acrylics on an 8" x 10" stretched canvas.  I use acrylic paints very seldomly.  I usually end up at some level of frustration with them and always forget how quickly they dry.  But I had cleaned off my oil palette and thought I'd try the acrylics once more.  And a more appropriate viewing distance.  I so dislike the constant 'in your face' views that are online.

There may be a few final adjustments, then it will be presented to 'Sir' for approval.

New experiment

After some input yesterday and some further tweaking, the new logo is now complete as you can see from the header of the blog.  I'm excited that I now have something that represents me as an artist and hopefully will be timeless enough to last well into the future.

Now comes the task of using that logo or brand to create some marketing materials with it.  I have a number of ideas in mind in addition to the usual business cards, but I'm starting small and keeping costs at reasonable levels right now.

I've been working on a new piece that involves gyotaku loosely, but in a very new medium for me. I've used molding paste on canvas and impressed it with fish bones, crushed shell and sand and overlaid with washes of colour.  Now a gel transfer (keep your fingers crossed that it works) will be applied tomorrow if it dries.  Its feeling more like a piece of sculpture than a painting and I'm quite enjoying creating it, whether it turns out well or not.

This image isn't the final piece and shows the basic background and colours, along with some seaside 'bits' that I am experimenting with for possible inclusion.  Who knows where it will end up yet.  The piece is small - just 6 x 12 - as I wanted to use it as a test piece to see the new mediums would work.