I was the sort of art student who loved the “outsider” art tacked to the walls in the basement of the official art shows in college. It was raw and rough. I liked the look.

There came a time when I grew up and I realized that even some of the most rough and rugged art looks great or even better when framed. It’s true. A frame sets art off from the wall, enshrines it and best of all emphasizes it.

Case in point, take a look at this image I painted of a sunset. It’s a small 5×7 inch painting. Alone on the wall it looks lost, even with the clean taped edge.

Stick that same image in a mat and wow, it looks so much better. As much as my 19 year old self would grumble at the added expense, this DOES look better, even in JUST the mat. Now imagine if I framed that image?

A friend of mine calls this effort, I call it extra work and added expense. But I’ve come to realize that IF I want to sell my art I have to appeal at least in part, to the buyers of art, not to my inner 19 year old rebel. Part of that appeal is handling my art in a professional manner- matting it up and placing it in a Krystal Seal bag or framing it when necessary.

I really do think that it looks a lot better when matted and those Krystalphane bags really do a great job of snazzing them up, giving you a good idea of what the piece will look like under glass.

Plus take a look at the prices on the mat and Krystal Seal bags I linked, those are pretty cheap.

I’m at that point in a painting where I want to dump a gallon of black gesso onto its surface and start all over.

Here’s the thing, I go through that with every painting. It’s a given that I hit a stage where I just hate it, hate the colors, hate the texture, hate how rough it is, and think it’s never going to get to a point where I’m happy with it.

Then I push through it, add another layer of paint, maybe some glaze, more white here, a little green here, maybe a little yellow, and soon enough it shapes up to  be closer to where I want, and then a little closer until I’m happy with it.

The problem starts when I don’t push through that barrier. If I let it go and stop working then I lose momentum and soon enough I’m staring at that crappy unfinished painting on the easel that lack clarity and mojo.

I’ll press on but I need a break from the painting but tomorrow I’ll be back at it.

As i was mixing my color swatches I noticed a few things. first, the Liquitex Basics colors are thinly pigmented. it’s great that they are relatively pure pigments but many colors that are not traditionally considered truly transparent are, due to the low pigment load. Now this is not much of a problem when you are using colors straight out of the tube but it becomes an issue when mixing shades and tones.

It’s great for mixing thicker glazes where you want some brush strokes to show through. but you may find that when you are mixing colors that you reach for those colors that have a low pigment load more and more often.  while a 2 ounce tube of Liquitex heavy body cadmium yellow light is $12- $8 and a 8.5 ounce tube of basics is $8 you’ll find the tube of the heavy body last longer because you’ll use less due to it’s EXTREMELY heavy pigment load. Meaning I can mix more greens with the heavy body versus the Basics. The 8.5 tube of basics has less than a ¼ of teh pigment that the 2 ounce tube of heavy body contains. (that could just be dramatic but it’s significantly lower.) Roughly saying a 2 ounce tube of the same color could last 4 times as long as the same tube of Basics.

I should do a measured experiment to prove my theory but I’d rather use my heavy body paints for painting…

The other observation that I made is that many colors have an inconsistent texture or consistency. The tube of cadmium yellow light is like spackle where with tube of cadmium yellow medium is thin like heavy cream and the cerulean blue is like greek yogurt. When i open a tube of Liquitex heavy body (or golden heavy)  the consistency is the same thick buttery texture, across the board for every color, unless I add gel or air brush medium.

Treat yourself to one of those pricey tubes of artist grade colors, you’ll appreciate how much longer they last versus the student grade. The texture is also very very nice. Also there is nothing that says you can’t mix and match artist/professional grade with student grade.

This week’s technique Tuesday is ridiculously easy.

It’s this:

I know, you are thinking, it’s a bottle with water in it, with a narrow tip. You think I’m crazy. Hold up, let me explain. This is a fabric dying squeeze bottle. Available for about 80 cents at artist & craftmans. People who dye stuff use it to apply tiny small precise amounts of dye to things like silk. It will dispense a fine line or a single drop of liquid.

I read a blog post that suggested that people use an old eye drop bottle to apply controlled droplets of water into a watercolor palette instead of a mister bottle to wet the palette, which is what I’ve been using until now. As many of you who have been reading this for any period of time know, I have allergies, I use massive amounts of eye drops so I don’t look like I’m crying constantly. (Seriously I use a lot of them.) Anyway, I’ve kept the bottles until now to use with ink. But the last time I was at A&C I was poking through the small baskets of stuff and found these (apparently I did this once before too as I found another of them) little bottles. At 80 cents Jane and I both bought one.

And it’s perfect, it dispenses one perfect drop or several with ease and only in the pan I want it in rather than EVERYWHERE like the mister.

It also keeps the water pristine, I’d like to see you stick a brush into the tip! It fills easily, either by sucking water in or by removing the little tip and running it under running water.

After my art adventure with Jane Saturday I really wanted to narrow my palette down to the 8 colors I thought would work best for me. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do when I run out of the paints that are in the small 22ml tube sizes. I may be forced to remove the water bottle from the pochade and just use my drinking water bottle for rinse water. If I do that I’ll switch to my 40 ounce KleenKanteen instead of the 1 pint bottle I’m using currently.

I headed to the basement and painted swatches of how colors mixed with one another. A scientific approach to picking the right colors for me. I used cheap mead 3×5 inch index cards. I painted on the blank side and wrote the name of each color represented. Here are some pictures. Please be aware I did not focus on making these neat, merely on mixing 2 colors; sometimes 3 colors.

These are held together by a 7 Gypsies cable ring that Dede kindly sent me. These things are super cool and very useful. I may have to buy a whole package of them. Or figure out how to make them…

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