Happy Holidays

No birds were harmed in the painting of this watercolor...

Putting sushi to work

I've heard that ginger is good for cleansing the palette. We'll see...

X-mas time

Working on this vaguely holiday-themed watercolor painting...

Way back when

TBT: A long-ago and inauspicious beginning for my first ever oil portrait, painted some time around the late Pleistocene, if memory serves. I eventually got better at this...

Stretching watercolor paper

For me the key to watercolor happiness is stretching the paper before starting. It makes a huge difference. Some artists or well-meaning art store employees will tell you that the paper on a watercolor block is basically the same as stretched paper, but I'm here to tell you they are all living a lie! A block is just a pad that is gummed on all four edges. The paper in a block is merely stacked on and attached to other sheets of paper, so it's not stretched or softened. It therefore will not be as absorbant, and it will ripple when it gets wet enough. So if you're one of those die-hard block-heads out there, no offense intended, but you are missing out on one of the finer pleasures in life. Stretch paper now!



Update: After I posted this same photo on Instagram, I was asked for more details on how to stretch paper, so here is a rundown of the process... I run cold water over both sides of a sheet of Arches 140 lb. hot press paper and then lay it on a slightly dampened 3/4-inch plywood drawing board (faced with maple or birch and sanded very smooth and scrubbed clean before you use it the first time... Note that a masonite student drawing board is not a good substitute for plywood – masonite warps easily when wet!). Rub the paper surface gently from the center outwards with a clean soft sponge to flatten any bubbles. I use a large sea sponge that I’ve been using only for paper stretching for the past 25 years to flatten it. The sponging removes some sizing from the paper surface and softens it, making it more absorbent and receptive to watercolor washes. After the paper been lying flat for about five minutes on the drying board (or less if the air is dry), tape the edges down with 2-inch gummed kraft (brown paper) tape, and let it dry flat somewhere. If it bubbles up after you tape it, that probably means you taped it too soon, but it may settle down again when it dries completely. Once dry, I lightly draw the rectangle that I’m going to paint in, and I mask this border with drafting tape so there will be a few inches of white paper between the painting border and the kraft tape. When it’s all finished, I remove the drafting tape and cut the painting off the board by running the point of a sharp knife through the kraft tape along the edge, and then cut off the taped edges with scissors or paper cutter. The kraft tape remaining on the board can be removed by soaking with water for ten minutes and then scraping it off. It will come off easily if it has been soaked long enough – if not, just soak it longer. Good luck, and please feel free to ask if you run into any problems.

My OCD painting process

Is this jasmine aquaculture watercolor painting finally finished? Maybe. Almost...

Slow Saturday

Studio cat with oil painting...

Fixing watercolor

Who says you can't fix mistakes in watercolor? A damp nylon bristle brush will loosen some or most color, allowing you to soak it up with a paper towel. But it will never get all the way back to the original white, if you use staining colors as I do. And the paper that has been scrubbed will not take a second application of paint quite the same way, because the torn fibers on the paper surface wick the paint in unexpected directions. And the more you damage the paper surface, the worse it gets for subsequent painting. So really, it's much better to get it right the first time. But still, it's nice to have options when you don't.

Watercolor painting

If it feels like this takes forever, it's because it does.

Hey, I'm on Instagram!

Do you Instagram? I just started last week, and so far, so good... There will be a little overlap with Facebook, but I'm also posting more studio photos, works in progress, and some of the odd creatures who pose for me, plus the occasional studio cat. (Facebook's creeping monetization has made it increasingly difficult to reach people on that platform without paying to "boost" each post, so I'm hoping Instagram will be more egalitarian.) So look for me at: http://instagram.com/paulpitsker.

In praise of (condensed) clutter

I'm sure I've said this before, but the nice thing about a small studio is that everything is within reach without having to get up...

One more threesome

My third and final tongue-tangled trio on the drawing board...

Buzz back on the drawing board

Detail view of "Buzz" (watercolor still in progress)... I had to make some corrections to certain background elements after pulling this out to look at it for the first time in months. This is a habit I really must try to break.

Article in American Entomologist Magazine

This is almost certainly the first time my artwork has appeared in a scientific journal, in an article analyzing the effectiveness of a 2009 art exhibit in raising public awareness of invertebrate conservation issues (Brosius, T., L.G. Higley, and L. Johnson, 2014. "Promoting the Conservation of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle Using the Visual Arts," American Entomologist, Volume 60, Number 1). The watercolor painting included in the article (shown below) is Spotted. (The plastic pony and his friend are just some props that live on my drawing table.)

What's new

A recently completed watercolor...


"Forked," watercolor, 10 x 7 in., 2014

On the drawing board

On the drawing board today: another three-way tongue-twister...

Never ending story

One of the reasons I started working primarily with watercolor nine years ago is because it forces me to work faster. You can't make endless adjustments to a watercolor without the paper giving up and unraveling on you. In other words you have to decide a painting is finished just prior to reaching that point, or else the medium will begin to punish you with rapidly increasing severity. Oil painting, on the other hand, invites endless tinkering, as is proving to be the case with this painting in progress...


Tremor, oil on linen, 40 x 24 in. (incomplete)

Venice Art Walk Auction

You can now bid on one of my watercolors (and numerous other artworks) online prior to the Venice Art Walk Auction on May 18, 2014. The minimum opening bid is just half the normal selling price for this painting. Auction proceeds help the nonprofit Venice Family Clinic provide healthcare for low-income families. Click on the link below to visit the auction page. Thanks for looking!

http://paddle8.com/work/paul-pitsker/32170-run


"Run," 2012, watercolor on Arches hot press paper, 6 x 8 in.

Between the ticks of the clock

It turns out that time has many strange loops and singularities, and a million years can skip by in a heartbeat...


Forever, 2013, watercolor, 8 x 6 inches

What else?

On the drawing board today... plastic mermaids:

Wired again

Potential, watercolor, 6 x 8 inches

Watercolor birds

Matches on the drawing board -- still unfinished. Watercolor is generally considered a fast medium, unless you happen to be me...

Upcoming at the Santa Monica Museum of Art

My first ever square watercolor... "Conjoined," 2014, 7 x 7 inches:

Match game continued

These are the steps...  First, outlining some contours prior to taping:

 

 

Painting the background with various areas taped off...

 

 

Some seepage under the tape has occurred, per usual...

 

 

I scrubbed off some of the black seepage, but there are still plenty of fix-ups left to do.  Watercolor basically gives you one and a half chances to get it right.

 

 

Darkening all those feathers and matches will keep me busy for at least a few more days.  Thanks for looking in!

Match point

Still painting a lot of safety matches.  I want to get the foreground objects rendered at least lightly, so the pencil lines don't get pulled off when I mask everything to paint the dark background.  Because the thick watercolor mix I use for that has to go on in one pass, everything else will get the maximum tape treatment.

Okay, some shadows...

More on strike anywheres

Yes, painting still more matches...

It seems like every watercolor I've ever worked on (which I'm guessing number somewhere from two to three hundred total at this point) has gone through at least one phase where it seems like it can't possibly work out, and you find yourself thinking it's never going to look anything like you want it to.  Usually this crisis comes somewhere near the beginning, but often there's a final struggle near the end as well.  I think I'm near one of the early doubt attacks with this one.  What to do?

Simple answer...  Change the water and keep plugging away.  It always gets worse before it gets better, and sometimes it's awful before it's excellent.

Strike anywheres

Spending a quiet, cloudy Sunday afternoon painting matches...

Forever on the drawing board

Forever on the drawing board.  That actually sounds like the story of so many of my paintings.  Right, anyway, this is a studio in-process shot of a small watercolor on my drawing board.  The painting was originally intended for the Santa Monica Museum of Art (for "Incognito").  But now they are asking for a square painting.  Really?  I need to figure out how to paint like a square...?  Tough luck.  Meanwhile, here's Forever...

 

(click to enlarge)

 

 

Someone recently asked me why I go to so much trouble to meticulously paint text that looks exactly like it was just jotted down in seconds using a pencil.  I suppose it's sort of like paying for a custom license plate that just has a random sequence of numbers and letters on it like every other car has.  Well, the truth is I kind of feel like I'm paying for that custom license plate all the time, each day when I pick up a paintbrush.  To be an artist requires some stubborn instinct to swim against the current for no obvious reason.   But the question is how far to take this...  Should I really wear myself out with monumentally laborious and possibly futile tasks?  I think perhaps the only possible answer for me is yes.

In the studio

I found these studio photos from a few years back...
This was a watercolor called "Ride" in progress:



Some days and many brushstrokes later...



Detail view of the nearly completed dragonfly...