Martha Kelly Art

One year ago today, according to facebook, I posted a blog entry (https://www.marthakellyart.com/blog/more-self-portraits4708807) about doing self portraits in Paris, and I’m at it again. Being here is always a time of reflection and experimentation for me, and reflections and self portraits seem to go hand in hand. I’ve seen several marvelous ones in museums lately by other artists, and I always seem drawn to literal self examination when I’m also doing my yearly emotional accounting while walking some miles each day. Plus I have the time to get away from show work and play a little bit, though I’ve also done show work today.

I’m in a facebook group called Self Portrait Sundays, which I don’t always participate in, depending on how busy I am and what other art I’m making any given day. But I got back on the wagon this week with the vacation schedule and a nice full length mirror here in the bedroom. I’m spending the trip experimenting with gouache and trying to get more comfortable with it. That’s definitely a work in progress, but on Sunday , after I had done the still life I needed to for my show next month, I took the still wet paints into the mirror and tried a couple of very small ones. I’m also playing around with a new white gel pen and a felt tip fude pen (with a bendable nib that lets you get more line variation). I used both on the brown paper I’ve been using for goache.

I don’t want to use all my gouache paper for drawing, and it’s quite small (the two gouache studies are 2x3”), so I found a brown paper sketch pad at a stationery store and got it to play with. I think I’ll try some landscapes with this pen combination as well. It’s fast and fun, and it either works or it doesn’t, much like watercolor.

One of my projects here in Paris is to round out Daily Pleasures, my still life show for September. It’s hanging an alarmingly brief time after I return home (Playhouse schedules by the school year, so if you’re the first or second show, there’s not a lot of warning, and I already had my travels set.) I visited my frame builder before I left, picked out a frame to go with these tiny gouache pieces (I had already done two I liked, so I knew it would be a good fit for the show) and arranged to make my frame order the last week I’m here so they’ll ready to go when I get home. That way I can see how many and what size pieces I end up with. I love oils, but gouache is much easier for traveling.

I started with a big watercolor study in my sketchbook, which I had fun with. I really enjoyed doing some flow-y watercolors in Reims. I used it as a study to do a gouache of the same composition, but that one really fell flat. Working gouache-sized the scale was wrong, too small for the paper. I wrestled with it for a while, and finally I started over without the teapot and with a simpler composition that suits the size of the objects to the size of the paper. I’ll keep looking at the first one (below) just in case, but I came to feel that I was throwing good paint after bad by continuing to work on it. I’m much happier with the simpler piece.

I’ve been out a few more times with my gouaches to do plein air landscape studies. It’s been fun because I’ve been able to go on my new bike. The first one I’ve ever had. It’s got a makeshift but perfect basket on the back that will fit my stadium seat and my daypack with the art gear in it. I’ve enjoyed riding out of town to places I can paint. Getting out of town and into the countryside is so easy here in this town of 700, so I’m taking advantage of that while I’m here. I’m still struggling to find the right brushes, but mostly I’m pleased with the painting I’m doing. I’ve also included a snapshot of me working out on the trail, so you can see the small amount of gear needed for traveling with gouache. The stadium seat is optional but comfortable.

I’ve been working on more Gouache studies over the last week. They’re all quite small, 3x4” or so, and done on brown paper. With watercolors, I squeeze paint into palettes, wet the brush, and then just wipe it across the paint. Gouache very thin is chalky, though. It works better straight out of the tube — wet and thick. Which means I carry a zip bag of all the tubes of color with me, but it’s still considerably less to carry around than doing oils on site. I like that visually gouache has the darkness of oils, even if it doesn’t have the gloss. I think these studies will have enough depth to do oil paintings from back in the studio, though I try to always take a photo of the scene I’m painting in case I need more information. Sometimes I remember.

I feel like I’m making progress getting where I want to be, and I think this might be my project in Paris this year as well. I’ve done a lot of the watercolors I want to there, and gouache will give me a new way to see the city.

The lights are still weak in some of them. Here are two of the recent ones that have worked better. I really have to be intentional to work up to the lighter values, since I’m starting dark, which is exactly the opposite of leaving them open in watercolor. The good news is you can add them in if you forget (which I often do) to leave them from the start.

One of the things I came out west hoping to do was get more comfortable with gouache. I had started doing some forest studies in Memphis in pastel because watercolor just doesn’t have enough depth and value richness, but I wasn’t happy with the greens. Also pastels are cumbersome to carry around because I need an easel to keep the piece vertical while I work, and the pastel box itself is quite heavy.

Gouache has almost the portability of watercolor, and the same ease of cleanup. I carry full tubes of paint because I like to use it wet instead of reconstituted, but it’s still much lighter than pastels. I tried two years ago to learn to use it, and again I was dissatisfied with the artificial greens I got. This year I bought a couple more mossy, forest type greens to bring out. I was also trying to work as large as I do in watercolor, and that wasn’t going well. I notice that a lot of gouache painters I admire work quite small, so I brought a number of small bits of thick, brown paper with me (Stonehenge, my go-to printmaking brand).

This was my first effort, and I was pretty delighted. I could probably stand to have more highlights in the trunk, but the painterly-ness of it feels like oils without having to carry nearly as much stuff (and solvents) around with you.

Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Dixon today, since our show is still up there. It was a perfect morning for painting outside, and I'd been meaning to get back out with my gouache and see how I could do outside, after those magnolia studies went well a few days ago. I'm working much smaller in gouache than I did a couple of years ago when I tried it the first time. I need some smaller brushes for it -- my regular watercolor brushes are too soft for the stiffer paint. But I had fun playing and feel like I'm on the track to somewhere.

I couldn't resist Ceres (at right). I always seem to paint her when I go there, but it's a much different image than my usual, more clear, watercolors.

I've been enjoying the pastel studies lately, but I'm frustrated with the limited range of greens available to me. I've gotten spoiled by all the lovely watercolor and oil ones. So today I got the gouache back out to try. I've been thinking about it anyway, and then my neighbor was having  a magnolia tree taken down. I brought in a number of blossoms since I hated to see them going to waste. I had fun testing out the gouache over my morning tea. I used the same brown kraft paper I was using for the pastel forest studies as well. I'm still having trouble getting used to the texture of it and the color mixing, but I'm happier with these than the ones I had tried before. I just bought a couple more greens to add to my basic kit. Now I need to get back out and try this in the forest, but still life is always a good first step to keep things simple.

I'm still working with gouache and trying to get the hang of it (and also figure out which brushes are going to work best for me). I went to my very favorite spot this afternoon. It's technically a boat ramp, but its basically a small beach, a mix of stone and sand, where two small rivers converge. It's glorious. Mr. Darcy and I hung out and celebrated (FINALLY) the end of my book project. It was amazing to have a Monday where the only thing due was my invoice. It felt marvelous. I've been celebrating with farm stand ice cream, modest sleeps in, and a bit more gouache painting.

The one above and to the side are what I did this afternoon. I also went out in a lovely evening yesterday and painted a scene I've been wanting to do all spring. Never paint your crushes. I couldn't get what I had been hoping to, but I also got a number of photos to supplement the study and will probably do an oil of this one when I get home. I'm still learning, and truthfully I've only done a dozen or so gouache studies, so I know they will get better. I'm looking forward to trying this more painterly style in Paris next month. I've done watercolors there for three years, and I'm looking forward to trying something different.