Pinocchios

I am starting two paintings. One another Gem and the second my "Pinocchios". Back to our Italy trip for this one. 

I always start with a very detailed drawing as you see here. One, because I love to draw and two, so I can really give all my attention to the painting process once I start. I start with the background of a crumbly concrete street.

"Pinocchios",  14" x 16"
©Carmella Tuliszewski  2013

I first paint in a liquid mask to protect the areas not part of the background. You see here my tools of choice for applying the mask, which is a liquid latex, and dries very quickly. I first dip the brush in a little liquid detergent then in the masking fluid. This protects the brush and makes application a little easier.

You see my handmade color charts ready to go but more about that later. Now to finish the background.

The background is in and the mask is removed. I am not totally finished with the background but it's enough to move onto the figures and return to tweek. I never use black for forming or shadows but blend two complementary colors, in this case, Cadium Orange and Ultramarine Blue for this neutral backdrop. I anticipate this making the reds and greens to come on the figures really pop.

A good days work starting the color and style for my Pinocchios. At this point I can see where I need to adjust color as in warming up the wood color on the limbs and glazing a little orange over the red to brighten it up. Not sure about that green right now-wow-am I picky! 

I have been posting real time progressions of "Pinocchios" on my FB Fan Page.  Please stop by to visit and like this page by clicking the FB badge to the right of this post.

Primroses

The beautiful Primrose is a small flower forming in clusters.  There are over 500 species of Primrose in a multitude of colors.  I have chosen the deep red to represent the January birthstone Garnet.

I have also always loved the white "piping" around each pedal as a natural contrast.

A basic red of Alizarin Crimson is glazed with Permanent  Rose, Permanent Carmine as well as various violets, indigo and hunters green.  The glazing gives the coloring that deep, rich hue needed for this flower without heavy pigments turning the surface muddy.

"Garnet"  (January)

Watercolor, 8" x 10"

©Carmella Tuliszewski 2013

Sorry about the not so smooth progression here but I just got invloved and forgot to stop and photograph!

Red Lilly

The birthstone for January is Garnet, a deep red stone.

The inspiration for this month's flower came from my own neighborhood.  On sunny days I take some time to walk around my neighborhood with camera swinging around my neck just looking.

I will sometimes even go into backyards (if there are no fences to climb!) and snap a quick photo.
But these red lillies did not require any tresspassing on my part.  They were in abundance in my next door neighbors front yard.

I often find reds difficult to work with.  They dry considerably lighter than they appear wet so that nice deep color I thought I had, vanishes quickly.  This is where glazing really comes in handy as overlays of rich color will usually do the trick.

Something I always do when I think I am finished with a painting is to photograph it and put it up on my monitor.  I do this because for some odd reason I can see adjustments I need to make much  better up on the screen that I can by looking directly at the painting in front of me.  Weird, huh!
I thought so too until I heard another artist mention this on a Blog Talk Radio Show.
Try it next time you are about to pack away your paints for the day!

"Garnet" (January)

Watercolor, 8" x 10"

Cymbidium Orchid

You only have to examine a veriegated leaf to see the beauty that can be found in the color green.

To find that beauty in the pedals of a flower is a little unexpected.

As Kermit says, "It's not easy being green."

My challenge in this birthstone series is to match a flower to the characteristics found in the gems associated with each month of the year.  Some are more difficult than others. 

It took me awhile to match the glow of the Peridot for the month of August.

But I found one I was very excited about in my photos from the Philadelphia Flower Show a couple of years ago.  

The Cymbidium Orchid glows with greens.  And in this 5th painting in the series my greens range from very bright yellow greens to the darkest olive greens.  Now I do have a nice assortment of green watercolor and I did use some right out of the tube.  But many of the colors you see here were produced by mixing my own variations on my pallette and by glazing one dry layer over another dry layer.  The best shadows are made  by mixing the complementary colors and here my shadows are a mixture of variuos greens with pinks and reds.

"Peridot", Watercolor, 8" x 10"

©Carmella Tuliszewski

Honors for "Balloon Piazza"!

I am so very happy to share the news that one of my Italy paintings, "Balloon Piazza",
has been juried into 

The Philadelphia Watercolor Society's 113th Annual International Exhibit of Works on Paper

The show will run September 13th through October 25th. at

 West Chester University’s E.O. Bull Center for the Arts 

Well, I'm off to the framers, yeah!

Orchid Weather

These are certainly the dog days of summer here in the eastern U.S.

In the Philadelphia area we are at a feel like temp of 105.  Lucky me, I am in my AC studio working and listening to Blog Talk Radio (Hi Leslie! Love the show)

My next gem is the Peridot for all you August Birthdays.

The Peridot is a bright lime green through olive green stone.  And after some research I think I found the perfect floral counterpart for this birthstone.

The Cymbidium Orchid fits the bill with beautiful greens.  I am about half way through this one.

Besides painting I am keeping busy constructing a new website to act as my "store" in the future.

I just build a page on Fine Art America where you can go to purchase a painting of mine, framed, canvas wrapped or just a notecard.  If you are so inclined please click the FAA icon at the top right of my blog and take a look.

Well, back to work thanking my lucky stars I do not have to be outside today!

Back to the Future

It has been a very busy last couple of weeks.  

Family, holiday week and party preps.  I have not been able to paint in the last two weeks.

And I think summer is like that for most of us.

So I thought I'd add a short post about how I got into this whole fine art world.

I was a greeting card illustrator.  First for Hallmark Cards, Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri and then as a very busy freelancer with card companies all around the country and beyond.  And I was very happy with this career.  It was not bad money and I got to paint full color and see them in stores.

One of my first cards painted for Hallmark.  It was their number one best seller that year.

And then the age of the computer hit with a vengence!  Suddenly people weren't buying so many greeting cards anymore.  The greeting card industry took a huge hit on this.  Companies, even Hallmark, scaled back their staff while quite a few other companies closed up all together.  And eventually my assignments began to dwindle.

By then I had two small children and deceided to settle happily into motherhood for awhile.

After the kids were in high school and college (they are in their late twenties now) I went back to school and completed graduate work for teacher certification.

I taught art for ten years at a private school in Philadelphia.  Great kids and many fun projects.

As a teacher I had to take continuing education classes to keep my state certification.
And one night I walked into a watercolor class at my local community college.  I had not painted in many years and never in watercolor.  I thought it would just be an easy class to earn my credits and off I would go.  Well, I was hooked from the first brush stroke!

I brought this holly twig in, laid it out on a white napkin and this became my first painting from that class.

After the class I went back to my classroom but on my days off I read everything I could about watercolor.  I watched you tube videos, read all the art magazines and just played with the materials.
Finally I deceided to get serious and found this old photo I took in my garden and began.

"Blue Moon", Watercolor, 12" x 16"
My first complete real watercolor painting.


Although now I see many things I'd love to improve on this, at the time I was pretty excited.   Honestly, I didn't think I'd even finish the thing!

So then there was another and another and here I am.

My point in this little narrative is that you can become anything you want if you work at it.  I know we adults say that to kids all the time but how often do we say it to ourselves or each other?

Last year I retired as an art teacher.  I guess I could have gone on with teacher for a few more years.  But I had done every project imaginable, twice, and I wanted to see what I could do as a painter.

Painting is not the kind of career that you retire from and I hope to keep working at it and improve into old age.

I'll be back next week with a new painting.  Can't wait to walk into my little studio with coffee in hand and start all over again!