Category: Gouache - Martha Kelly Art

Demonstrating Printmaking

10/16/2019

This past weekend was the Pink Palace Crafts Fair, a longtime fair in Memphis, and I was the demonstrator for printmaking. It’s special for me to be out there. I started going to the fair with my parents as a kid, I remember getting to choose my special Christmas present just as I got old enough to fall in love with the silver handmade jewelry, and now I get to be a part of it. I don’t generally do outdoor fairs, and I don’t own a 10x10 tent, nor do I want to, but this fair puts me safely inside an enormous tent (which was key this past weekend) and lets me sit out and see all my friends and neighbors passing through the show.

It’s fun to sit and carve in my lap and let people see the laborious process (though deeply satisfying) that goes into each carved print. I like talking to the kids who love art, the teens who have done a block or two in school art class, and adults of all stripes who make art or appreciate it. I even get a little work done! This past weekend I worked on five different blocks. I had one large one going already and did a bit more on it, though you hit a point where damage can happen to something intricate if you’re in and out of concentration all day. I started a new large block for most of Saturday, but again, I felt like I needed more concentration to finish that one out. So later in the weekend I jumped to a smaller block based on a recent gouache painting of cherries. That gouache and all its friends are still up in my still life show Daily Pleasures at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis through November 3rd. I’d been thinking for a while of trying this one in a print as well, and I grabbed a scrap piece of Lino and drew it out Sunday morning to give me something new to work on. Above are yesterday’s color tests. I’m hand rolling several colors at once and printing it all in one go, a simpler form of color work than carving an individual block for each separate color.

One last tiny block I did was a snail, based on a sketch I did out west this summer. I had my sketchbook out with me, as I always do, and happened across that sketch. I always need new note card designs, so I’ll get this one printed for the later fall shows.

Here is one of the larger blocks I was also working on. The other hasn’t progressed far enough to really show yet. I’ve only got a small percentage done, even though it took a while to get there. Both are continuing my series about water that is mostly oils, but I’m working on getting some prints to go with the larger paintings. This one still needs a bit of work in the water, where light meets dark, but it’s mostly done now.

Daily Pleasures

9/14/2019

It's been a week, now. I did an artist market on Sunday, hung my main show of the year on Wednesday, and had the opening last night. It's lovely to see it all dressed up and on the wall. I've been showing bits of this edible still life exhibition along the way. It was my fun summer project, just grabbing something at a market or bakery and painting it without thinking too hard. I've always loved still life, and I've always loved the small things that together build daily happiness, so this show was a lot of fun to do. It's also the 20th anniversary of my first ever professional show, at Cecelia Lin Gallery, which is the last time I've done an exclusively still life show. It felt right to do one again and think about how lucky I am to do what I love every day. I'm so grateful for the whole tribe of folks who show up, spread the word, and sometimes even buy art. It was lovely to celebrate with friends last night.

Watercolor versus Gouache

8/22/2019

I came to Paris with the intention of doing a series of gouache still lifes for my September show at Playhouse on the Square. (The opening is lucky Friday the 13th for anyone planning ahead.) I like the depth I can get with gouache, but I’m still learning how it works, and often I find myself thinking it was better two layers ago. I’m going to have to pay attention and try to keep from over fussing. Somewhere along the way, I did a couple of watercolor studies in my sketchbook as studies before doing the gouache, and I really liked the lightness and airy-ness of them. So I’ve ended up doing four watercolors for the show as well.

It’s easy to default into the familiar and comfortable, though, and there was a time when watercolor was incredibly hard going for me. It still is sometimes, but I’m glad I pushed through and got it into my regular tool kit. I gave up on gouache two summers ago and don’t want to do that again, but I am still struggling. I want to do some forest studies with it when I get home, and hopefully that will keep me excited about using it. You can see the two side by side here and decide foe yourself. I think the gouache needs a little more blue in the purple shadows. I’ve got a couple I’ll do a small bit of balancing/retouching on next time I get the paints out. Right now I’ve shifted gears a bit and am painting more out in the city again.

Self Portraits

8/14/2019

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.

More Gouache Still Lifes

8/12/2019

It’s been raining some here, keeping the weather thankfully cool and giving me a chance to do some painting indoors. I went to two big flea markets I love over the weekend, but I also came home after each one and did a small painting or two. Here are the still life ones. I’m very happy with the Mille feulle one, and pretty happy with the peach. At the bottom is the Cherokee purple tomato. My oil at home of several of those is my favorite of all the still lifes I’ve done so far, but this gouache totally bombed. I got it way overworked, and I don’t think the composition was that strong to begin with. I also struggled with the teapot one and walked away, but I may go back into that one again and see if I can spruce it up just a bit. A couple of artists I really admire on fb sent me encouraging words about that one.

Patisserie Still Lifes

8/9/2019

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.

Gouache Still Lifes

7/15/2019

I was awarded a show at Playhouse on the Square for this September. It’s in the most visible gallery there, and also a much smaller one than the enormous, cement-walled ramp I often get assigned. I’m so grateful for the better visibility, and now I’m scrambling a little bit (since I’ll be gone most of August) to make sure I have a solid show. I’ve been enjoying the still lifes lately, but I’ve also been away from my easel. I decided to try a couple in gouache, and I had a ball doing them. This is a good travel project for August as well, so I’m tentatively titling the show “Daily Pleasures” and pursuing this line of work for it. I’ve got a handful of larger oils already, and I think I can fill out around them. My very first gallery show was still lifes, 20 years ago in 1999, so it would be nice symmetry.

More Gouache Landscapes

7/12/2019

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.

More Gouache

7/9/2019

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.

Gouache

7/8/2019

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.