I'm So Excited

... and I truly can't hide it!

Image (c) Westland Gallery Square Foot Show

Westland Gallery has posted pictures to their Facebook page of the 2021 Square Foot Show hanging and I was able to see two of my pieces hanging. It all feels a bit surreal still to be honest. My inner child is absolutely squealing right now LOL! 

 

A Milestone Day

 Major excitement for me today as it was my drop off day for the Square Foot Show at Westland Gallery in Wortley Village. This goal has been several months in the planning and I'm quite chuffed with myself for having followed through. Wouldn't have foreseen doing this a year ago LOL. 

Lots of new experiences for me in bringing pieces forward for sale - applying hanging hardware, applying a protective finish, labelling and signing each piece. I decided to go with spray varnish for the canvas piece and then cold wax for the two pieces on wood panel. As far as a signature goes I finally settled on putting my initials in one lower corner and then full signature on the back. For the non representational pieces I don't want to choose for the purchaser which way to hang it. As the painter I certainly have a sense of which way it goes but once it's out of my hands it should be up to the buyer to choose for themselves and I don't want my signature to determine that necessarily.

Looking at them here I see I also need to practice my photography skills, as you can hardly see the hints of red that live in Gale Force. 

    

     Gale Force - mixed media          Adrift - mixed media                 Tufted Joy - mixed media

       on 12 x 12 wood panel              on 12 x 12 canvas                    on 12 x 12 wood panel

Tufted Joy is also serving as my personal xmas card this year, so spoiler alert for those on my card list LOL. It was painted from a reference photo belonging to Mary Villazon , with permission, as we are both members of the Photos for Artists facebook group. 

The Square Foot Show  runs November 24 - December 30, 2021.

Up next - my winter project is to build a proper website for my artwork and I'm hoping to be able to link this blog to it at some point. Lots more learning ahead!

Fall is Here

How quickly it seems the season changes. 10 weeks of the FYJ2020 course has just flown by. Later this morning will be the wrap up zoom call, which will be an ending of sorts but such an amazing beginning. I can't say enough about the value of Louise's teachings. There's just been so much to take in and the amount of exploration that still awaits is huge. So glad we have access for a full year! 

 

I've kept up with the videos with each new module but not necessarily the assignments and journaling that is so key to moving forward. But all in good time! I've been having a blast just through swatching different colour palettes, amazed at the variety of tones and colours one can make with just a couple of colours plus black and white. There's a part of me that would like to pick a short term palette to work with for a period of time. 

This piece to the left is baltic blue, yellow ochre plus B&W and I'm quite enjoying it. I've watched a lot of the series Shetland recently and find a wonderful beauty in the bleakness of the landscape. Such a drastic difference from my own surroundings. I also have a 'thing' for the simplicity of some of the cottages found in the UK. It all ties in with my connection with inukshuks I think, in that here is a marker that someone has been here, no matter how harsh the geography might be. Someone has been and left their mark. This is one of the many revelations that my journaling uncovered for me and that is key to why I want to make art. Can't wait to see what else I find out about myself LOL. 

Before and Afters

 A little over midway through FYJ2020 and it's everything and more that I was hoping for. I'm still keeping up with viewing each modules videos even as I fall a bit behind in the exercises but that's okay. We have access to the course for a full year and there's just lots of room for exploration, so I won't lack for things to do for the upcoming months LOL. 

The current module is dealing with contrasts in relation to composition and tone. I took my 3 least favourite from an exercise in the taster course and decided to use those to resolve. Pretty happy with my first attempt. 

        

Using the same colour palette of payne's grey, Q nickel azo gold and pyrrole red I changed up the shape sizes  and made the darker tones more dominant. Don't think it's done yet but definitely progressing. 

I also took another piece that was meandering in no fixed direction and decided to see where I could take it. Again, not sure it's reached its final destination either.

  

New Season

Fall is definitely upon us! Cooler temperatures for the past few weeks have forced induced me to alter my studio time. No longer can I head out there first thing in the morning - well I can but I'm not a happy camper being out there LOL. 

I do have a space heater but that necessitates me closing the garage doors in order to be effective, and I'm loathe to give up the light just yet. So I am starting to make a plan for when I finally have to close my little haven down and relocate inside. A list, because I love lists, of things such as what art supplies need to be stored indoors (mostly just paint and mediums) and what kind of art do I want to make until I can get back into my studio. I know in my head it makes perfect sense to spend the winter working on my ancestry, and I'm sure I'll embrace that once again when it's time but the painter in me isn't ready to give up the reins just yet to my more pragmatic side!

In the meantime, here's a sampling of some of the pieces I've worked on since my last posting. Oddly enough, I've gotten back to my watercolour roots in recent weeks. Wasn't expecting that but I'm delighted that it happened. It's also got me dreaming of working on full sheets of paper which is huge, both physically and philosophically for me. Scary and exciting all at the same time!

Siddall Road (c) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart
acrylic on 12 x 12 in canvas panel

Cosmic Duet (c) Kate and Susan Langdon
mixed media on 12 x 16 in paper

Southwest (c) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart
watercolour on 12 x 16 in CP paper

My Second Process Post

I do love how something can be nothing until all of a sudden it isn't anymore. The following piece started off with no specific intention other than waiting for it to tell me what it wanted to be - and apparently that was some post apocalyptic hell hole! Definitely not on my mind at the beginning LOL. 

So it started with some mark making with charcoal on paper.

Then I added some paint in an analogous scheme of predominantly yellow with some blue and green added.

Wasn't really excited about that so I threw in some white spotches for some relief and smeared some of them around.

Not sure where to go from here so I put it aside for a day or two to 'ponder'. Of course, that led me to the other day when I decided it was the day to make a bold move and transparent orange was on my palette LOL. So first I turned it upside down, decided on a high horizon line and glazed the top half. All of a sudden there was excitement! 

I loved that you could so clearly see the previous layers but in a whole new way. So I wanted to glaze the lower half with blue. I chose prussian blue rather than the previously used phthalo blue which gave it the much darker look. This immediately made me think of the wildfires we have been seeing in the news with sadly increasing regularity. Hellhole was the first name that came to mind but I'm not sure if that will stay its name, yet.

Hellhole - mixed media 11 x 15 inches on paper
(c) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart

The Pitfalls of Green Tape

I remember taking a watercolour workshop a number of years ago, in which the instructor made an adamant stipulation that we not bring coloured painter's tape to class - the standard masking tape or white tape was fine, but there was no tolerance for blue or green or any other colour of tape. At the time I hadn't been painting all that long so this struck me as a rather odd, individual quirk of this particular artist but hey, one that was easy enough to follow. As my painting experience has grown over the years, I have come to see the wisdom of his words but that lesson really hit home for me this week. 

I had been working on another free form piece that started out with purple as the dominant colour. White tape had been added to my list of needed supplies - primarily hoping for better adhesion and hence masking, than the green painter's tape I had been using up from my stash - but in setting this piece up I had used the green.

Once again my plan was to let the art dictate to me what to do, admittedly influenced by my purchase of the new-to-me phthalo turquoise. After working over several days, it just wasn't coming together and I finally decided to write off the loss and abandon it to my orphan drawer. 

But first, I had to strip the tape off. And wow, I was not prepared for just how much of a difference that made to the look. It's not the best thing I've ever done but neither is it the hot, unsalvageable mess I thought it was LOL. So, hats off to Joe F. and no more coloured tape for me!

Purple Koolaid (C) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart
mixed media and collage on 11 x 15 watercolour paper

My scanner cannot accommodate the width of this piece so there's a portion of the two smaller pieces missing from the right edge. I set this up with the intention of it being an all in one tryptych ie one frame for three complementary paintings, however I don't have the technical capability/tools to make that happen for posting here. Hell, I'm just happy when I can get the image to sit where I want it to LOL. 

Threadbare - a process post

This will be my first process post - providing I can get the blog to cooperate when I post the images, and that's a big IF. Well, I'm sure it has more to do with my abilities than the workings of the blog template LOL.

I have been challenging myself in recent days to just start a piece and let it dictate where it goes until the voice inside finally says 'it's done'. The only idea I have in the beginning is usually the colour palette I start out with. Over the past couple of weeks that has been complimentary colours - predominantly red with accents of green/blue etc. The piece here was to use an analagous scheme of blues, greens and greys. (My apologies for the poor lighting and the neon green painter's tape - it was what I had on hand.)

So I began with some scribbling of several shades of blue and green watercolour crayons and then added a scribble of charcoal to connect these areas. It was at this point that potential names for the piece came to me - you can see it there in the upper right hand on the tape - threadbare I or tapestry I. 

When I added water and pushed the colour around the page it faded much more than I expected it to. Up until now I had been using my Inktense blocks and this was my first run with watercolour crayons, so while it surprised me I was not unhappy with it and I learned something, always a bonus!

The next day, I decided to do something bold and declarative to see where my muse would take me. I drew in the bold black square with my extra wide Sharpie marker. Well, that was certainly an in your face bit of mark making LOL. I left a sliver of open space underneath which comes into play in the next stage. The square was coloured with cobalt green crayon and then wet and brushed into place. At this point some spattering of that same colour happened intentionally.

By this point, the green tape was a distraction and I was pretty sure I was done with my outside edges so I removed it. The piece needed something else to give it life so in comes pyrrole red to play with the teal. It joined the spattering crowd as well as the blob and the sliver under the square. My brain just laughs at all the technical jargon here. 

I was done for the day, but not sure the piece was done so I did what has always worked well for me and walked away. I just love how refreshing and helpful that approach is to really clarify what is missing. When I looked at it first thing the next morning I knew the weight of the black marker lines was waaaaay too heavy, so that needed to be fixed. I painted over most of the square with gesso, thinning the border lines to about half their previous width, then added the cobalt green back in. Much happier!

Threadbare (C) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart
Mixed media on 12 x 16 watercolour paper

By this point I'd decided to name it Threadbare and that led me to the final decision to paint a line of stitching down the right hand edge of the big square. Seeing it here, it really needs the white border around it but my scanner isn't big enough to capture that

******************

If this post were a dvd it would have a blooper reel LOL. Because I had used charcoal to draw the initial, thread like lines, I needed to 'fix' it in place so I decided to cover the entire piece with matte medium. I knew it would give a bit of fuzziness to the charcoal itself and I liked that idea. What I hadn't counted on was it smearing the ink of my signature really badly, so bad. I didn't want to abandon the piece so after letting it dry thoroughly I brought out the gesso again, covered the old signature up and redid that section again with much better results this time around. Another lesson learned on my journey as an artist LOL. 

Bold Colours for Grey Days

To say November weather this year was dull at best and outright gloomy at worst is being much too kind! It has definitely had an effect on my work though. I mean if I can't have colour in real life I can create my own. And I did.

Both started with a random charcoal scribble with only the dominant colour predetermined ahead of time. It was free wheeling from there LOL. My muse has taken to waking me in the middle of the night, much to my chagrin, with ideas for what to do next. It's better than not hearing from her at all though

Red- mixed media 8x8 on watercolour paper
(C) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart

Blue - mixed media 8x8 on watercolour paper
(C) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart

From this to That

Almost a month ago, I started an experiment. 

I wanted to do a painting starting from a given reference but then only use it as a jumping off point with no expectation of where the journey would end. Each day I would sit down with it and just go with whatever struck my fancy. 

To begin, I was inspired by an image that is part of Windows 10 library of images that appear rotationally on my lockscreen. It is of an iconic tree, in a lake near the mountains in New Zealand. I wasn't wedded to my rendering of it and that was tremendously freeing for me.

I started with charcoal and added colour with Inktense blocks on 12 x 16 Arches HP paper. The second day involved throwing a lot of gesso around as a veil, then adding back some random marks with charcoal. Some days I would work on it for only 15 minutes or so, other days there would be a lot more contemplation involved. I worked on it daily for about a week and then life intervened and my creative voice went quiet for a spell. 

When I took it up again, I still had no idea where it would end up but distance told me it needed some life put into it and so I glazed the whole thing with green gold and that really seemed to bring things into focus. It still took a few more days but then suddenly and very quietly I knew it was finished. I've never felt more like an artist than I did in that exact moment. 

I won't bore you with the in between and quite frankly ugly bits but here is the beginning and the end. I will definitely be doing this again.

"Underneath a Tree"  mixed media on 12 x 16 HP paper
(C) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart

Lean on Me

Lean on Me - 8 x 10 mixed media
on 300lb CP wattercolour paper
(C) Susan Langdon aka NUKIART

My sister Kate sent me this charming photo of her friend's dogs Louis and Wilbur a short time ago and asked me if I thought I could paint it. Given that their personalities seem to pour off the page I was eager to give it a go. Sadly, her friend's mother died unexpectedly within a few days of Kate's request; I was even more motivated to do this picture justice.

I took my time, mentally sorting out how I wanted to approach it and then began it last weekend. I had to verbally remind myself to slow down and let the watercolour bits work their magic. My own impatience is often where things go wrong for me with this medium LOL. 

Bit by bit it came together and I am so pleased with the final results. It is scanned, signed and packaged ready to be delivered to its new owner next week. 

Hibernation is Over

It's not that it's been a horrible winter per se - it just feels that it went on forever! This is partly due to a 2 week period mid February where we had spring like temperatures, total absence of snow and the return of the robins. We couldn't be faulted for feeling like maybe, just maybe Spring was coming early.

Well, HAH! said Mother Nature. Fooled ya! And that she certainly did. We've had an ice storm of late and as recently as 4 days ago awoke to fresh snow on the ground. But I think, finally, that we can put Winter behind us. Fingers crossed! 

So, during my period of hibernation, literally nothing artistic happened. I had set this dark time aside in order to devote myself to researching my family tree. Don't know if you've ever explored your own but I will tell you that it requires a lot of dedicated focus. My left brain just sings doing this kind of work and becomes a bit of a brain hog about it. Now, I know myself well enough to accept this and move forward with it. But once Spring came, it was move over LB because your creative counterpart is all rested up and ready to play. 

I was inspired by Tara Leaver's most recent 7 day mini series challenge. I have long resisted painting the same thing over and over again and I don't really have a good reason for why, just innate stubbornness. So confronting something I usually avoid seemed like a good place to start. 

I would use the same photo reference and create a new piece each day using a different medium. Pencil, water soluble ink, charcoal, chalk pastels, watercolour, mixed media and collage. There was - to my mind anyway - an organic progression to this process. The drawing became easier each day I did it; I developed my values before moving into colour. Each day seemed to build on the previous ones. 

I had never worked with chalk pastels before so that was a first for me. This last one bottom right was intended to be just acrylic but after I gessoed the paper I started playing with whatever I felt like so it ended up being a combo of Inktense blocks, Sharpie pen, water soluble markers and acrylic paint. It was also done with a bright yellow underpainting beneath everything but the blue and purple berries. 

Not surprisingly, there is something about each piece I like but no one favourite. And yes, there are only 6 images here. These were done on 5 x 7 cold pressed paper and when it came time to do the collage I found the small size quite restrictive so that one will have to wait for now. 

Okay, enough for now. I have some pieces from my orphan drawer to play with next. 

Touchstones

Touchstones (C) Susan Langdon 2017

mixed media on 8 x 10 CP watercolour paper

I am taking an online course of artistic self discovery called Touchstone, offered by an English artist who I found through P interest. Her name is Tara Leaver and she is amazingly generous with her ideas and philosophies. She is also a gifted teacher when it comes to communicating those things as well!

This piece was done to commemorate this chapter of exploration for me and I've utilized a photo reference belonging to Karen Broemmelsick. Used with permission accorded to members of the FB group Photos for Artists, to which I belong. 

So pleased with this!!

What I Did on My Summer Holidays

Fall is officially here - one of my favourite seasons. I truly can't decide between spring and fall. My favourite seems to be whichever is happening at the moment! So for now Fall is it!

I have been spending my summer, at least artistically, by trying new things. New techniques, new colours, new media. And that will definitely be continuing on for the rest of the year. Some days I have to really make myself slow down and just focus on what I'm currently doing and not go haring off in six different directions. Here is some of what I've been working on.

The first is a second take at doing a study of one of Carol Nelson's gemstone series. This time I started with a black gesso base and built multiple layers up from there. While I'm reasonably happy with the results, I don't think I will be moving on with it to do any of my own pieces. At least for now. 

Next up is an abstract that I worked on over the entire summer, letting it speak to me when it had something to say. And let me tell you, when it came to putting the realistic chains in, it spoke very determinedly. I don't know specifically what it was saying but rusty chains, along with the ghost image in the bottom right corner were a must! My inner child can be so bossy sometimes LOL!

This last piece is a WIP abstract currently on my easel. It's acrylic with some underlying gesso texture. This version started out as a study of a piece I'd seen on P interest but then the bright blue poppy seedheads showed up so who knows where this will end up. Certainly not me since the plan when I first put paint to canvas  was to do an abstract version of our local river. There's also a bear under there somewhere too.

I won't know when it's done until it tells me it is - I just wanted to capture it here in case it looks nothing like this when that day comes LOL. 

2017

After many long months I have emerged from my hibernatory period LOL!

Spring is truly such a time of new growth bursting forth and my own creative impulses seem to be following suit. I recently had lunch with my forever painting buddy and was so inspired by her adventures into new areas of art. We started in watercolour together over a decade ago but she has put me to shame with her progress in acrylics and just general overall realization of herself as an artist. I am my own worst critic and obstacle so it's time to get out of my own way!

Abstraction and acrylics, well more mixed media, have been whispering to me for quite some time. I have been perusing various online sources for some tutorials in working in this new arena. Colour is still the first characteristic I respond to then followed by lines/shapes. I can break out into much bolder colours with acrylics and I have so much to learn. I've been working on a piece that is a study of a fantastic Colorado mixed media artist Carol Nelson. Her work makes we want to reach out and touch each piece. I'm trying to figure out her journey via trial and error just from observing a 2 dimensional image of her work. Not ideal but it challenges me and I like that. The point is also not to replicate her work but to discover my own path through the study of hers.

Unfortunately, I didn't scan the beginning stages (bad Nuki) so this is midway through what I think will be the process and the point where I'm at today.

Rock study - interim 

This is done on 8 x 10 inch paper but my next attempt will be on canvas and will be a design of my own.

Some Recent Work

Art has been pretty much on the back burner for the past 6 months. I've been focusing on other long needed lifestyle changes. Plus the summer and fall were particularly lovely this year, sunny and warm. Now that we're moving into the 'dark time' again I plan on kicking my own ass back into gear and get back in the habit.

There has been some movement to put paint to substrate since I last posted, primarily at my first real attempt at abstraction in acrylics. The canvas is 12 x 16 so much too big to scan and frankly I'm feeling lazy at the moment so I'm not even going to take a picture of it at this stage. But it is ongoing and, I have a feeling, going to go through many evolutions before it's complete.

In the meantime, here are a few little projects that I've worked on recently. 

Indian Corn - mixed media

Clay pots - mixed media

Pointsettia - watercolour

Interesting - I have a new scanner and this is the first time I've scanned items at this low resolution. Things look very different than in real life. Will have to play around with the settings I think. I may come back and switch out the images at a later date. For now they can hold their place.

2016 First Work

Inspiration - mixed media 12 x 16 on canvas

It's a new year and one of my goals in my art this year, as well as my life in general, is to push myself out of my usual comfort zones. 

This piece definitely does that. I don't have much experience painting in acrylic and boy, does it feel different than my usual watercolours LOL. But it is definitely something I want to do more of this year.

The other change, besides working on canvas, is the size. At 12 x 16 inches it's considerably larger than anything I've done in wc in quite some time. I still have another this size as well as two 16 x 20 canvases just waiting to be used. I'm working my way up to art that's measured in feet! 

This piece is also meant to serve as a daily reminder to me of where I want my focus to be as I head out to begin my day. Sometimes I forget that.