Auction Time!

Are you ready? It's time for another auction!  Here is the painting going up for auction today:

Titled, "Giraffe Descending a Staircase" (based on Marcel Duchamp's painting with a similar name), this painting was done in acrylics on canvas paper and is 9"x12".  

As soon as I post this (at ~10am EST on 1/26/16), the auction will open.  Comment below with your bid (bidding will begin at $35).  Each bidder should at $5 to their bid and continue in that manner. (You're welcome to add more than that to your bid, but I think $5 is a good incremental increase.)  Keep checking back from time to time to see if you have been outbid!

The auction will remain open until 10:00am EST tomorrow (January 27, 2016) - you'll have a full 24 hours to bid!  At 10am I will announce the winner!!  (Payment and delivery methods can be then sorted out between the winner and myself, usually via PayPal.)  

Please keep in mind that this is in good fun and keep things civil and upbeat.  Prints of this painting will also be available by the end of the week if you don't win the auction!  If you have any questions, please email me at katherinedownieartist(at)gmail(dot)com!

Thanks, and happy bidding!

Painting Auction, Take 2!

Welcome back, everyone!

Today we're going to try the auction here on my art blog in the hopes that the commenting section will be less confusing than over on my website!

This is the painting on the auction block today:

The Circus in the Style of Paul Klee, watercolor on paper, 9x12"

The same rules will apply this week that did last week.  As soon as I post this (at ~8pm EST on 10/29/15), the auction will open. Comment below with your bid (bidding will start at $5) - each person should add $5 to their bid and continue on in that manner.  (You're welcome to add more than that to your bid, but I think $5 is a good incremental increase.)  Keep checking back from time to time to see if you have been outbid!

The auction will remain open until 8:00pm EST tomorrow (October 30, 2015) - you'll have a full 24 hours to bid!  At 8pm on Friday I will announce the winner!!  (Payment and delivery methods can be then sorted out between the winner and myself, usually via PayPal.)  

Please keep in mind that this is in good fun and keep things civil and upbeat.  Prints of this painting will also be available in the future if you don't win the auction!  If you have any questions, please email me at katherinedownieartist(at)gmail(dot)com!

And please stay tuned for a big announcement coming from me tomorrow afternoon!!

Bon chance!!

Watercolor Wednesdays

In an effort to get me back in the habit of blogging, I thought I'd start a new feature called Watercolor Wednesdays.  Last fall I began teaching watercolor at Two Twelve Arts Center, and in January at the Saline Senior Center.  It was a bit of an awakening!  Watercolor was my concentration in undergrad, and I spent a lot of time in grad school using watercolors, even when I began working with oils.  My graduate thesis exhibition was half watercolors, half oils.  (You can see some of my watercolor paintings on my website, here.)

Even so, teaching watercolor was very different than I'd planned. But then, so was teaching acrylics and oils when I first began that several years ago!  It's one thing to do a thing, another thing entirely to teach it.  I have a friend who is a theoretical particle physicist, and he told me that the further he got into his education, the more difficult it became for him to teach.  He said that he was a much better teacher in grad school than while he was working on his PhD - he got so into the deep stuff, he found it hard to resurface and teach the basics. And as an educator, I have been taught that someone who has just learned something is the best one to teach it - the way they learned it is fresh in their memory, so they can help another person find that same path.  

I mention all of this because I found it immensely difficult to backtrack in my brain to where I first started painting with watercolors.  I tried to rewind back the lessons taught to me at EMU by Maria Ruggiero, the watercolor professor, and have memories of color mixing and still life paintings.  I took those memories, did the best that I could, fumbled through, and finally came to understand what works for me as a teacher, and I hope translates to helping my students.

What has worked for me has been doing small studies rather than large, finished paintings.  I've even done this with my intermediate-advanced students, and they have said that it's helped them a lot to better understand the nature of watercolor paint and paper and how they work together.  That's been my experience, too!  I've never been one who likes to do a painting over again - I do it once, and I'm done.  But with these studies, I've really enjoyed doing them multiple times!

With my senior center students, who are mostly the very beginningest of beginners, I've had to step back even further.  I don't think much about how much water I add to my paint, for example, but that is a completely unknown concept to them, so I have spent many classes encouraging them to add more water!!  I think I may be learning more than my students!

I've enjoyed the process of learning how to teach watercolor, and know it will continue to change.  I'll begin today with a color mixing chart that I did in January - as long as I've been painting with watercolors (10 years?), I still learned SO much doing this chart! I wish I'd done it years ago.

And here's a quick example of what I've been doing with my students - going over step-by-step how to paint things like apples - an insanely difficult object to paint!

Next week I'll share more of the summery things I've been working on with my students!

Week 16: Nightmares

In all my years of painting, I don't recall ever having a nightmare about a painting I was working on.  I've certainly lost sleep over them, worrying about how they were going to turn out or how I could fix a problem or how I could get over the Yips.  But my art has generally stayed out of my dreams.  

Technically, my art has continued to stay out of my dreams - it's someone else's painting that has entered my nightmares of late.

I need to back up a little, though.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a lady who had some questions about a painting she'd ordered on Etsy.  Very long story short, she brought it to my studio, told me she didn't like the way it had turned out for various reasons, and despite my protestations, convinced me to "fix it" for her.  

Next time I need to be more vehement with my "No."  

The problem, according to the owner of the painting, is that it doesn't match the rug in the room where she had hung the painting.  Also, it's too pink, it wasn't painted to the edges, and she spent a fortune getting it framed and still doesn't like it.

In the end, she emailed me photos of the rug (which is very abstract-ish), and asked me to eliminate much of the Pepto Bismol Pink (my description), paint it to the edges, get rid of the drip marks, and make it match her rug.

Let the nightmares begin.

It's been featured in my nightmares twice now, and while I don't remember much about the content, I know the painting was there, taunting me.

The problem for me is threefold:
First, I feel really weird "fixing," or painting over, someone else's painting.  The owner insisted it was ok, it belonged to her now, so I could do with it what I wanted.  Still.  Weird.
Second, the abstract floral style of the original artist is very dissimilar to anything I would do, so "fixing" it has proven tricky.  
Third, trying to make the painting match the fancy rug has meant adding colors that weren't part of the original theme, so it's become overwhelming and without a theme to tie it together.  

It taunts me.  

Also, this keeps popping into my head:

I took a break from it for a week and a half, and my goal for this coming week is to be miraculously inspired, finish the painting in a blaze of glory, and be rid of my nightmares forever.

And then never ever ever to agree to "fix" someone else's painting ever again.  Ever.