Faces In My Palette

I use disposable paper palettes for my oil painting and though I look at them before I toss them out, I have never had cause to keep any of them before. I was transferring my wet, useable paint from an old sheet to a new one when I saw a face in one of the leftover paint stains! It only needed one more eye and a little shading to add emphasis but it was otherwise there - a green Hobbes-like cat face! Fun! So I checked out all the other stains and found this sheet had several.

What is odd is that I've looked over all my sheets closely for faces since then but none of them have such obvious characters living within. Hmm.

Click to see larger







Oils on palette paper, 2011.

The Abandoned - blocking

Oils on illustration board, blocking stage.

So I thought I'd block in all three pieces at the same time so they'd be more unified in their color palettes. It's pretty much working though it has taken one weekend apiece to block each one in. Normally I sketch on my canvas in Sharpie so that I can then quickly stain the canvas and not lose my lines. But since I've switched to illustration board, the paint soaks in past the Sharpie, leaving the ink lines on the surface. This means I need a lot more paint to cover up the lines. While this could be used to good effect, its not the look I was going for so this time I sketched in pencil. But I forgot how badly pencil smears and I didn't want to lose my lines. Being the detail control freak that I can be, I skipped the staining phase and went for a more tedious route in blocking. *headeasel*

I have nicknames for them: Lever Face, Painters Thinner, and Atlas Gauges, appearing below in that order. It is also the order I blocked them in. Right now I am really liking Lever Face; I think it is interesting and has good contrast. Painters Thinner will require more subtle lighting to make it work. Atlas Gauges is based on my favorite photo of the batch and it is interesting for me to find and draw out the colors that were hidden in the photograph.

Atlas Gauges isn't fully blocked in because the paint I had leftover wasn't what I needed for the large areas. The colors ARE what I need for some of the detailed areas so I started doing some of the details ahead of myself. We'll see if that gets me into trouble down the line.

Click to see them larger.









When painting rust or flaking paint, I block in the color that is physically underneath. So for the rusted dial or the can of painter's thinner, that would be the rust color. Later I'll scrape over it with a palette knife loaded with white paint to put the flaking paint "back on" there.

Airline Doodles

I had a nice 5 hour flight (each way) on which to kill time. I did so by doodling! The words in the backgrounds are mostly lyrics from songs I was listening to at the time and were a good way to fill in the negative space during turbulence. Done with a Sharpie Pen (not a marker, the Pen).

This first one is primarily made up of images sketched from the Alaska Airlines magazine, though the Pacific Northwest Coast art is from my head. The lyrics are from "Coloured Bedspread" by Annie Lennox.



The second one is all mostly stuff from my head except for the woodpecker and the man in the lower left corner which were from the Alaska Airlines magazine. It contains a bunch of random words as well as lyrics from "Weekend" and "Holiday" by The Birthday Massacre and "Ice Queen" by Within Temptation.

Up next: Abandoned series begins

I've recently been motivated to get started on my abandoned mine series, with focus on machinery at the moment. These are the three reference photos (that I took) that I will be painting from simultaneously. I only have 2 months to do these in and thought if I chose images with a similar palette I could finish them faster if I painted them at the same time. We'll see…







These are all from the Independence Mine area of Hatcher Pass.

Current Studio

Because people ask… I am currently living in the basement at my grandma's house. I've converted her old sewing area into an art area. A lot of the stuff on the shelves is my grandma's and some of my sister's art stuff, too. But this is how I have it set up for painting at the moment. Had to get creative with all mom's grow lights I kept from the move since the basement has stark fluorescent lighting. ;)

I usually like to print out my reference photo to paint from but I don't have a working printer at home, the color isn't always that great, and its sometimes a waste of paper so I usually just have the image on my laptop and paint from there. I can zoom in and rotate the image as needed and even check color and draw guide lines to match my canvas.


Oil painting stuff! Just the things I use as I am painting - I've got a tackle box full of other tubes of paint and more random brushes are living in a brush bag on the shelf. I'm a very frugal painter - this is the same wooden art box I've had since I was in middle school, although I've got all-new brushes and some new paint. (The laser pointer is for my cat - he gets bored watching me sometimes).


There I is!