Oil Painting- The Early Works

I’m being optimistic and very driven to entitle the blog entry this way, inferring that eventually I’ll look back and say, “Wow, look at the stuff I did when I was just starting out,” and we’ll all have a good laugh. But I’m nothing if not optimistic.

This, like all of them, has been a hot summer so I took a break from mosaics for a few months. There were two other main drivers in this decision. The first is that I can’t find green tile anywhere, not cheap at least. A couple of Christmases ago I bought out all the dark green plates I could find at Dollar Tree and the 99 Cent Only store. Since then, I have searched high and low and can find nothing without spending a fortune on upscale designer tile online. I made one small cactus on the wall and now am completely out except for anything but the lightest green.

The second driver (because lack of green doesn’t preclude me from making a red and white mushroom on the back wall) is the new mosquito infestation in Southern California. I’ve lived here seven years and have never gotten a bite. And now not only are there mosquitos everywhere, a reminder of home I didn’t want, but we have “day biters.” At least in New England we’d be safe until dusk when we could hide inside as if avoiding zombies or vampires. But here? Any time of the day or night is fair game. I sincerely hope the cooler weather will come soon and they will go away.

So back to the point of this blog. I saw a Groupon for a painting class so dragged my husband along. We were told ahead of time this would not be a relaxed paint and drink night, but serious painting. And it was. That first night we learned the art of mixing colors by instinct and judgement and not to rely on “red and yellow makes orange” though that’s part of it. We learned that anything but primary colors can have many other colors within. I used exclusively Windsor Oil Paints, Artists line though I picked up some Winton ones in that brand and they work pretty well too in a pinch but aren’t as glossy.

I was hooked and for two months took classes four hours every Wednesday night. It was brutal as I had a master artist instructor whose art hanging in our workspace was breathtaking, intimidating, and inspiring. I learned what Realism was and wasn’t but went into it blind, knowing very little outside of maybe ten famous artists and the difference between water colors, oils, acrylics, and crayons. Every stroke was a lesson. If time and money permitted I would have stayed in the class for years, as many of the students did. But some work and life changes so I had to drop.

This first picture is the one I completed after a month with the teacher’s instruction. I’ll note that most of it was his work. As much as I’d like to take credit for it, and the fact that I had more paint on the canvas than he did, his touches and final layers made the painting beautiful. Each time I’d paint for an hour and he’d walk over, dip a brush in linseed oil and smear away everything I did and do a section “right.” Then he’d repeat that over and over until I was close to tears. But I learned. I learned a LOT of what not to do.

But I also learned that all painting isn’t Realism, and that painting to paint because it’s a peaceful activity is also okay. Since I’m not painting to become famous and get my work into a gallery, I took everything I learned in those two months, plus what I absorbed from at least 100 YouTube Videos, mostly Draw Mix Paint, and have been painting away. I’m getting better for sure but have a long way to go. One thing I love about working with oils though is that you can paint over and over the errors, and keep adding layers until you get it right.

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One thing I realized early on is that I have a REALLY hard time with perspective, and everything is always crooked. My gas pump looks like it’s melting. Mr. Peanut is leaning though not as much in the early drafts. My crayons started off fat and different sizes. With a little more work they got skinner. The blue one on its side looked more like a crayon. And then I painted in the brush I was using because I kept seeing it. I painted a picture of the rolling hay fields in Prince Edward Island but also wanted to feature the little straw man in my living room. This painting didn’t get finished because of a canvas issue I’ll discuss in a few paragraphs.

The bottle painting below is the last one I finished. One thing I learned along the way that varied from what I learned in class, is that I can use my imagination to change the colors or backgrounds or anything else. In the one below, in real life there were some bottles on my kitchen window next to an old coffee grinder. Behind it was a dirty window looking into my driveway. There’s a screen and part of a tire that appears to be floating because of the lighting. If I painted that it would look ridiculous. Pus when I painted the grinder I just could not make it look three dimensional. Yes I could have spent a month on it, and studied perspective and repainted that object over and over. But I’m not trying to achieve photographic realism. I just want to paint because it’s calming.

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I painted over the coffee grinder, changed the bottles a little, and changed the real white metal panes for chipped green wooden ones. I updated the real background of screen and sun, floating tires and palm trees, for a snowy winter scene. In the end, the bottles were merely inspiration, much like the subjects in my fiction stories. For me, this is good fit.

One thing I learned the hard way is that when you use canvas paper it’s hard to frame. I’d bought it in pads for practice rationalizing that it was easier to throw away a piece of cloth I’d practiced the heck out of than bulky canvases. When my painting improved and I wanted to frame some of these, like the bottles, the bear, and Mr. Peanut, the canvas pulled in on itself when it started to dry. I finally understood why it’s normally stretched over wood. Live and learn. I set the pads aside for true practice work and picked up some 9X12 boards to use at Five Below. These are solid and not springy like a true stretched canvas and easy to work with. Plus I don’t want a trash bin full of bulky canvases.

For now this will be my thing. I have urges to write sometimes, characters barking at me to write their stories, but I am not ready to delve back into that overwhelming abyss of fiction writing again. Playing my dulcimer calms me, mosaics calm me. Painting calms me. Writing revs me up and takes over, obsesses me, makes me cranky and dismissive of all the real life stuff around me. Sorry Fiction, you’ll have to wait in the sidelines a bit longer.

Here’s to hobbies that bring me peace.

-Tracy

My Mosaic Wall – My Sugar Glider

A lot of people still don’t know what a Sugar Glider is, which is probably a good thing. They’re adorable, snuggly, loyal, and more work than someone would expect for a tiny marsupial that weighs less five ounces. A lot of people buy them on impulse, like Ivy and I did, and then realize they’re not just an expensive, smart, hamster-sized creature that is content to live alone in a cage and chew things. A lot of them end of being neglected or rehomed. Ivy and I had one for eight years until she passed away. Mia, as we named her, had a lot of adventures with us. She was on Pets 101 on the Animal Planet with us, played escape artist and got lost several times in our old place, and spent about six hours a day on average sleeping in my shirt and sharing my lunch when I worked from home.

A few weeks ago I thought it would be fun to add a sloth to a bare spot I had on the wall. I looked at cartoon pics of a sloth and laid out a draft of it on a 12 inch square tile. I was pretty excited at how cute it was and expected this to be an easy project. I used bathroom white tile from the Habitat for Humanity Restore, gray floor tile from the same store, and various pieces of brown glass tile and black penny tiles from Home Depot. I’ve got some Dollar Tree broken plates for the leaves.

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Unfortunately once I added it to the wall it looked terrible. But I wasn’t worried because once I add the grout everything usually falls into place. Except because there was so much white, it didn’t look at all like a sloth.

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So I painted the in between spots with black grout paint. It looked ridiculous. And worse, I discovered sloths didn’t have tails so I had to chip away the tail, much to the annoyance of the husky next door who DID NOT LIKE all that hammering and chiseling. This was the final, which I hated. I planned to go out the next day and chip the whole thing off the wall which I have never done before but I was not pleased with it, at all.

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When I looked at it closely, I saw that it kind of reminded me of Mia, my old Sugar Glider. She was gray and hung upside down from things and resembled this bad attempt at a sloth. She passed away a few years ago and I had failed to memorialize her on the wall previously.

I picked up medium gray grout stain and mixed it with my grout. I chiseled away the nose and the sky where the big ears would need to go. I didn’t want to chip away the sky where the sloth tail had once been, and add the tail back. But Sugar Gliders have long tails. I placed the tail tile over the sky tile, to go give it a 3D look but more so because I didn’t want to start chipping away too much of the long-settled piece beside it.

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Finally, my finished result! Still not great but a lot cuter than it was before and now I’ve got my little Mia to make me smile when I look at the wall.

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Now that I’ve got the gray stain I may go back and work on the Easter Island heads again. If I do, I’ll add an update to the last entry.

Two weeks ago I started an oil painting class so I may be adding pictures of new art one of these days.

Until then, happy creatiing!

Tracy

My Mosaic Wall – Holding Hands Around the World

Since the wall beside my house is getting full, I decided to start adding mosaics to the back wall, at the top of my hill. I knew it was going to be a large project. It would have to be so we could see it from the patio. Here’s my original sketch. I planned to surround the earth with people holding hands. Looking at the finished product every day (we can see it from the couch in the living room if we scrunch down) reminds me that there’s a lot of love and hope in this world.

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I wanted the people to be uniform size which I would not be able to accomplish unless I bought pieces already cut. I picked up a few containers of these from Amazon. I never measure anything and was relieved in the end that I had just about enough of the little pieces to complete the people circle. For consistency’s sake I decided to use black penny tiles for the heads since I only had blue, black or silver. I like the uniformity of the black heads.

The first day involved smashing a lot of Dollar Tree green plates. Finding green tile is really hard so I rely on Dollar Tree plates, and sometimes The 99 Cent Only Store. In this case I used up all my plates (1st picture) then had to stop for the day. Carrying tile up and down the hill, and trying to kneel and balance among the cacti and gopher holes was physically taxing. Luckily Granola was there to keep me company.

The next day I smashed some new plates. I finished the land masses and started on the water. I had some Dollar Tree blue plates, some small (about 3 inch) mosiac or subway tile from Lowe’s, and some of my friends’ leftover pool tile. I decided to add in a “love ocean” just because. I’m used to doing a whole project in an hour or two and grout it the next day. This was a much larger project and took four days overall.

Day three I used tile adhesive to glue all the people around the earth. I started on the bottom because I knew I’d be too worn out to sit in that position and stretch all the way up by the end. It was a good decision. This step took four hours (straight). Initially I was going to add the people and put yellow tile all around them. But because of the work involved, and how cute they looked on the tile, I decided against it. One thing I hadn’t considered was that if I put adhesive on the back of the pieces and pressed down, there would be extra goop that I needed to clean off. The pieces were small and hard to maneuver so I used a wooden skewer and had to clean up around all the edges, piece by piece, person by person.

By the end, there were 53 little people around the circle. I started with solid colored people but I ran out of matches and the ones on the top are all different colors. Finished product without the grout.

At night a solar spotlight shines on it. It was a lot of work but this is my favorite mosaic so far. I do feel a little bad that we can probably never sell the house now both because I love the wall too much and also because a new owner may not love it at all. Since I plan to be here until I’m dead, I’m not too worried about it and will keep beautifying the concrete.

Here’s to creativity!

-Tracy

My Mosaic Wall – The California Flag

I’m at a crossroads with my wall. The area I can see from my patio is full. I now have to stand to my left to see all of it where the corner of the house is. To the left of the wall is a tree I don’t want to tile behind. I could tile up the wall on the hill, or against the back wall but I’m worried about water from when I water the plants. At this point I think I’ve decided I’ll continue the wall even if it’s beside the house and I can’t get a picture of it all at once. That’s what video is for.

For today though, I’m posting about my take on the California flag with its symbolic bear. One thing I learned pretty quickly into this project is that drawing bears is hard. Here are the first few steps I took. As you can see I wasn’t off to a promising start.

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With determination, this finally all came together. All told it took about two hours the first day, and about fifteen minutes the next day for the grouting. First picture is the end of day one with no grout. When the project was done, I used black grout paint to make the bear’s white of his eye smaller. I sprayed the whole thing with grout sealer the third day and hoped the paint would withstand the heavy rain (and even hail that looked like snow on the other side of town). It worked out fine. I used a variety of tiles this time, from Dollar Tree broken plates to donated tile from friends, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Habitat for Humanity markdowns.

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Final pictures are of my trusty tile companion Granola. This was from another project but she’s always by my side and deserves a shout out.

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Thanks for visiting!

-Tracy

My Mosaic Wall – The Giant Giraffe

I’m always looking for new things to add to the wall. I was watching The Last Tango in Halifax, the most recent season, and in one of the episodes someone painted a giraffe on the wall of a barn. So I figured why not put a giraffe on my wall.

I had a rough idea of what giraffes looked like, bright orange with brown spots. But when I looked at pictures online many of them were tan with brown spots. Since my art isn’t meant to match reality 100% I decided to do what i could with the tile and broken dishes I had on hand.

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My daughter reminded me that giraffes have purple tongues (to prevent sunburn). Though I made the tongue light purple, it was hard to see until I grouted and added some black grout paint.

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I left the sky around the trees bare for now. I want to make a spectacular sunset and maybe a word from tiles, like love or hope. In the close up picture it’s a little easier to see her purple tongue. She loves eating the leaves.

This was made from lots of broken tile, broken Dollar Tree plates, and by her feet a bag of tile stones I got from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store. The tree branches are pieces of floor tile that looks like wood. I generally don’t use this because it’s porous but it was just right for this and I’ve learned more about wiping grout off immediately that when I started.

The very hot, then very windy, then chilly weather kept me from my wall for a bit but I’m back on track. Look for more tile scenes soon.

Happy Creativity!

Tracy

My Mosaic Wall- The Kids Next Door

We’ve lived in this house for six years. Over that time, the neighbors to our left have had several different family members and friends stay with them, and always a lot of activity. Though we have a six foot concrete wall, their yard is elevated on their side so it’s only three feet. This means that we have very little privacy, and over time the kids next door have made a habit of leaning on the wall, calling over to us, tossing things over the wall, etc.

About a year ago they bought a trampoline. The kids of varying ages use it almost constantly. Since the six-year-old boy is one of the biggest fans of our side of the fence, and continually wants to chat, and is always complimentary about the new items on the wall, I told him I’d put him and his cousin and the trampoline on the wall. We had a couple of weeks of very hot weather but once the heatwave broke, I began the project. First the sketch, then a couple of pictures of the project without grout. For the poles I used glass mosaic tile leftover from my kitchen project a few years ago. For the light blue, I used broken tile from Lowe’s. The little pieces were smashed plates from the Dollar Tree.

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Finished project, which isn’t completely lifelike but certainly captures the essence.

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Wall in progress with the new addition.

My Mosaic Wall – Underwater Life

When trying to find new ideas for the wall, I found clearance penny tiles at Home Depot. They were pearlescent and shimmery and instantly made me think of fish scales. Needing guidance, I searched Google and saw several images of fish. One would think making a fish would be pretty easy.  It’s a basic shapes, limited colors right? For some reason this was harder than I thought it would be.

 

The layout on the white board was after several rounds of rearranging pieces until it actually looked somewhat like a fish.  Unfortunately I can’t capture how sparkly it is with the camera. Especially at night, the piece is as pretty at Rainbow Fish.

Sometime later, I decided to expand upon the underwater section and made a small red and white fish, a seahorse, and LOVE spelled out with seaweed and an octopus.

It may be hard to see the letters but look closely. I made sure the octopus had eight legs. In retrospect I should have used more dark green to make the letters but I didn’t have a lot of green left. Unlike some artists who have the best materials, and inventory everything beforehand, I look at what I have on hand and create from there.

Here’s a picture of the products I use in addition to tile and broken plates.

And here is a current picture of the wall from today, August 3rd.

Until next time, happy tiling!

-Tracy

 

 

 

 

My Mosaic Wall – The Dolphin

Once I made my first item on the wall, and learned a lot of what not to do, I was prepared to do something bigger and better. I decided to make a dolphin. It’s worth noting that except for being able to envision and describe things, I’ve always conceded that I don’t have much artistic ability. More and more though, as I complete this wall and look at some of the crafts and handiwork in my house, I’m thinking maybe I was too hard on myself. I’ve judged my work against artists who can draw something exactly as it looks. But haven’t just as many, or more, artists whose interpretations of what they see filled galleries with their work? My creations are certainly not gallery worthy, or anything I’d sell (except apple butter at fundraisers) but I need to stop thinking of my work as “something a kindergartner would do.” Which is how I usually describe my wall. As you’ll see in future posts, much of it has become a snapshot of people and pets and occasions in my life, right now. It’s a giant tile time capsule. It’s a way of expressing myself and capturing everything around me. It’s art for art’s sake, the best kind.

Since dolphins are complex,  I knew I needed to lay this one out on a whiteboard I used previously for brainstorming stories and books. It was collecting dust in the shed so I resurrected it and now it’s my go to layout board.  I recall using the tile cutting machine I bought when we did the kitchen, and painstakingly making a black circle for the eye, and carefully cutting the pieces of gray marble. Since then I discovered I can buy penny tiles from Home Depot online, and they’re already perfect circles. They’re the size of pennies and come in a sheet. The trend for home decorating now is white and tan and gray so it’s hard to find any fun colored tiles in the stores. I starting checking eBay and Home Depot for colored tiles.  I’ve gotten some for very little cost this way. I also check the Home Depot and Lowes stores for sale tile sheets.

Initially I bought mosaic tile from Amazon but when I got it, it was a box of tiny, thin pieces, shown above for the water and sun. I didn’t use it on the actual wall for the sun and didn’t have any other yellow then. There’s nothing wrong with thin tiles but when you have different height in the tiles, you can lose them when you’re grouting unless you remember to dig away the grout.

This is the completed dolphin before I added any grout. I was pretty excited about it, mainly because it looked so much better than the trees.

Next I added in some water. The blue glass was from a man on eBay who I drove an hour to meet rather than wait for it to come in the mail.  The only problem with it is that it’s glass and not ceramic tile, so if I smash it with a hammer it shatters and the shards fly into my legs (I’m usually in shorts and barefoot). Generally I try to fit it and otherwise use different tile when I’m trying to get into small spots. You can see some medium blue triangles. Those were the small ones from Amazon I mentioned. This is how I learned not to use them with the thicker tile. The black tile is from the Habitat from Humanity store.

The next day I grouted. After this follows a later picture when I added a couple of palm trees and a sun. Those we done later but I don’t have a picture of the dolphin and trees only. Looking below I went back and added some other tile to the tree to get it to look better.

Here’s a picture of my go to materials, which I’ll add every time. I also use this adhesive and this grout. You can use something else but I prefer this texture. It’s easy to work with especially on a vertical surface. Since I like to immerse myself in the process I used to do this barefoot, and I never wear gloves because they tear on the broken tile anyway.  Eventually I had to start wearing shoes because too many times I got tiny bits of glass or tile in my feet and couldn’t get them out. I still do it all bare handed though and cut my fingers pretty regularly. Not bad cuts though, no sutures yet. The first couple of times I used a putty knife to spread the grout but because of the uneven surfaces it didn’t work well.

Since I’m writing these posts retroactively, here’s what the wall looks like today.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

 

My Mosaic Wall-Beginnings

Welcome back! I should say I’m glad to be back, blogging again. As I posted some (long) time ago, I add posts to my Rebounddogs.com blog here and there, but apart from that have been somewhat living in a creative vacuum. I was really enjoying the peace, not being manic and creative. But alas, I couldn’t contain it forever so in September 2019 I reached my limit of not expressing myself and shifted to “art.” That word is in quotes because it’s not perfect, but it’s been a lot of fun.

The burst of art creativity started when I wanted to paint a living room wall. I saw an ad on Pinterest for a special paint (though I can’t recall now what it was). I searched three hardware stores and online and couldn’t find the (now discontinued) paint. In desperation I searched “wall ideas” on Pinterest. What I stumbled upon instead were posts about how to dress up concrete walls. I was intrigued as I had some UGLY concrete walls, fifty feet of them in the back, and both sides of my yard. Gray, concrete, prison type walls. But there was the magic word,  a solution to a problem I didn’t know until then that I even had. Mosaic. The word excited me.

Mosaic. Years ago I had taken a stained glass class so I knew how to cut glass. My second husband was a tiler and we’d worked on some house projects together so I had the general idea down. And two years ago, with the help of friends and my boyfriend we retiled the kitchen. Once I’d made a large mosaic (on plywood that was too heavy to hang and ended up at the Salvation Army when I moved) to match what a character did in one of my novels (Missing). I suddenly wondered how it was possible I’d never thought to cover the outside walls with mosaic before. It was a brilliant idea!

I went to Home Depot and bought two products which I’ve used each time I’ve tiled since. There are other things you can use, like cheaper grout you need to mix. But for convenience, and since I’m doing small projects at a time, these are my go to favorites.  The Adhesive & Grout mix doesn’t come in big buckets, at least in my Home Depot, but it’s got a nice elastic feel to it. Regular grout can be sandy and grainy. I also bought some floor tile, the kind that looks like wood.

Next I went to the Dollar Tree and bought some cheap dishes. I went outside, covered them with a towel, and BANG BANG BANG. Before I knew it had lots of material.

This is the first entry about the wall and am not going to repeat all of this each time but bear with me.

I smeared the Acrylpro Professional Tile Adhesive on the wall, a section about a foot long. I wore a rubber glove and carefully added the pieces of the tree truck first. Next I added the light green tile (the only color green Dollar Tree had at the time). I had some colored glass pieces from the craft store (in my garage from another project) so added those in as well. I must say I was pretty impressed with how it all looked.

But then day two happened. I excitedly smeared a whole lot of Simple Fix Pre-mixed adhesive and grout. I covered the whole tree trunk section all at once.

Lessons learned:

• For one, September in Southern California is hot. I also hadn’t tiled in a long time and forgot how quickly grout dries in the sun. Actually I’d never tiled outside so should have given that some thought.
• White grout on light green “leaves” would make it look more like a cotton puff.
• Floor tile that looks like wood is crazy porous and sucks wet grout deep into the grooves.
• You need a sponge and a bucket of water to immediately wipe off the grout as you go. Not baby wipes. How did I forget that?
• When you grout, gloves are cumbersome. If you take the gloves off and wipe grout over jagged broken dishes you can cut your fingers, even if you’re careful.
• A wire brush and hot water will get dried grout off tile and when it doesn’t, you have to sit in the really hot sun with a razor blade.
• Those little glass beads were coated so when I scrubbed them with a wire brush some of the coating went away.

I am happy to report that though my first item on the wall was a little bit of a disaster, I got better as time went on. I’m writing this in July, ten months from that first tree. I hope you will join in on my journey from blank wall to a permanent happy place in my yard.