7 Days of Post-It Portraits

These were all done on 3" x 3" Post-it notes.  I used a combination of Micron pens and brushes, Staedtler watercolor pencils, and Prismacolor colored pencils.

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Please note: "A Path with Paint" will be on vacation next week and will not be published due to an art field trip.  Stay tuned for new posts beginning  Monday, February 6th!

Still Stealing After All These Years...

With Austin Kleon, author of "Steal Like an Artist" and  "Show Your Work!"
at BookPeople, Austin

Last Thursday night I attended a book reading at BookPeople with Manjula Martin, author of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living.  Manjula's book is a compilation of interviews and essays from a number of successful contemporary writers who speak about the challenge of making it financially as a creative person.  Among those featured in the book and present at the evening event was Austin Kleon.  Austin and his books have been pivotal in my efforts as an artist, so it was a treat to get to meet him and hear him talk about his path to creative and financial success.  In particular, I found his book Steal Like an Artist an exciting springboard to creativity.  Highly readable, it is filled with permission to copy or steal from other artists in order to learn one's craft.

"Austin Kleon" - Post-It Note Portrait in Ink and Color Pencils

Kleon makes a distinction between what he calls stealing or copying vs. plagiarism -- trying to pass someone else's work off as your own.

As he describes it, copying is intended to be a learning process: 

"Nobody is born with a style or a voice.  We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are.  In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes."

In my own experience, that has certainly been true.  When I encounter a painting or collage that takes my breath away, I often have an immediate, almost visceral reaction of "I want to do that!"  And so I try to paint like all my heroes.  It's actually a fun process that can lead to a sense of accomplishment and even connection with the artist I'm trying to emulate.  For me the list of my art heroes is endless -- Jane Davies, Chuck Close, Henri Matisse, Eric Fischl, Danny Gregory, Koosje Koene, Laurie Breen, Georgia O'Keeffe, Sabine Wisman, R. Crumb, and Tommy Kane -- to name just a few.  Sometimes I attempt to copy them, other times I just look in awe and delight.

I couldn't find my copy of Show Your Work!  I must have lent it to someone.  Anyway, you can find out more about it if you click on the link.  It's well worth reading!

Sketching and Reflecting

"Coretta Scott King" - Ink and Watercolor Brush Pens on 3" x 3"  Post-it Note

As I continue to sketch a post-it portrait everyday, here is one I did of Corretta Scott King.
And below is a quote from her worthy of thought and reflection:

      "Hate is too great a burden to bear.  It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."

Post-It Portraits

My Ink and Watercolor Pencil Drawing on 3-3/4" x 3" Post-it Note

I recently learned of an unusual and fun art project from an Instagram friend.  Ingrid Vermeer is an artist from the Netherlands who has created a project she calls "365 Days of Post It People."  She has a blog of the same name and you can probably guess what she does -- every day she draws or paints a person on a post-it note and uploads the image to her blog.  Her drawings are expressive and playful and provide a rich history of her artistic development throughout the year.

Seeing Ingrid's process -- and progress -- gave me the impetus to start creating post-it portraits.  I don't know if I'll make it to 365, but I'll see how far I can go.  You can see the results of my efforts thus far here.  (Click on any image to enlarge it.)

As with other artistic efforts, I'm learning some things the hard way -- such as post-it notes aren't receptive to watercolor paints.  When I attempted to use watercolors, the paper of the sticky note began to pill up and disintegrate, leaving an unattractive result.

I found that using watercolor pencils (without adding water) is a much better option than watercolor paints.

I've also found that even though the images are small, they aren't necessarily quick to do. The final one on the bottom right took me about an hour to draw.  

"Cluck, Cluck, Cluck!"

"Cluck, Cluck, Cluck!" - 12" x 12"
Mixed Media on Canvas

I've had a fondness for chickens for as long as I can remember.  I recently got the urge to paint and collage one using old dictionary pages as my collage papers.  Here's the process I went through to create "Cluck, Cluck, Cluck!"

I began by putting a pale yellow and white base coat of acrylic paint on my canvas.

I added some green for grass, put more layers of yellow for the background, and then drew an outline for the chicken.  Next I painted the chicken in white.

A beak, comb, wattles, feet, and an egg were added.

Here I've begun gluing down the torn dictionary pages for the collage.  I was able to find pages that had the words (and definitions for) "chicken", "fowl" and "egg."  They're difficult to discern in the final version, but if you enlarge the image and look closely you may be able to see the word "egg."

The final version: "Cluck, Cluck, Cluck!"

New Mixed Media Painting and Advice from Annie Dillard

"Still Life with Bird" - 24" x 24"
Mixed Media Collage

I had fun painting this mixed media collage over the holidays.  With more free time at my disposal, I took advantage of the opportunity to search the Internet for inspiration.  I came across the work of Laurie Breen, a mixed media artist from Brentwood, MD. I absolutely love her paintings!  The painting of mine above is influenced by her works.  

As you scroll down the page, you can see the process I went through to create this painting -- including a big mistake I made and how I corrected it.

And while we're on the subject of inspiration, I want to share a favorite quote from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard.  I found myself reflecting on her advice while I was painting. Although she is speaking specifically of writing here, I believe her words apply to all creative arenas:

                  "One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away,

                  every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it,

                  give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to

                  spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, 

                  from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is

                  not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost

                  to you. You open your safe and find ashes."

The early stages -- putting down some collage papers and a bit of paint.

I initially painted the canvas all over with a base coat of pinkish-yellow acrylic paint.  On top of this I glued torn dictionary and book pages, pieces of dress patterns, parts of a map of New Mexico, and various other colorful collage papers I'd made previously.  I placed the papers on the canvas in somewhat random fashion.

Have you notice the mistake yet?  It's most obvious in the version below.  

Here it is:  the blue bottle on the far left is painted wrong.  If it's behind the orange bottle, the bottom of it would be higher on the painting than the bottom of the orange bottle.  I agonized over this for a while, not wanting to spend time on it since the painting was almost done.  Ultimately I decided I to repaint it and I'm glad I did.  I never would have been satisfied with the painting if I'd left it with this flaw.

And here's the final version (above) -- with blue bottle repainted, some greenery in the red vase, a bit of shading and a few other details tweaked in order to complete the painting.