Editorial

by Barbara Benedetti Newton
February, 2011

Here it is, February already, and I’ve been doing everything except painting. I’ve been more interested in cleaning and re-organizing my studio.

Part of my studio cleanup was a ruthless culling of art books I no longer use. I listed 36 used books for sale online in my own “store” at Amazon. It’s easy to become a seller so if you have extra books, consider it. Go to the Amazon site for information.

I also gathered together the 4-ply mat board “window” remnants from the mats I’ve cut for framing pastels. I sorted them by size, then cut them into the square format I like to paint on. They range from 11 x 11 to 14 x 14 inches.

To turn the mats into pastel painting surfaces, I laid a dozen of these mat squares out on newspaper and applied a homemade pastel ground mixture to them with a foam roller. The recipe I used was 1 cup water + 1 cup acrylic gesso + 11 heaping tablespoons of marble dust mixed up in a blender.

If you try this, apply one or more coats on both sides of the 4-ply mat boards. Let each piece dry completely between coats and don’t be alarmed when the boards first curl up and then, as they dry, reverse and become concave. When you coat the opposite side, they will do the same thing and then flatten out. I like my boards really flat so when the last coat was nearly dry, I stacked the mat boards with glassine or other slippery paper between each, and laid a piece of heavy glass on top of the stack. The next day they were dry and perfectly flat.

For the final coat, I added some Venetian Red gesso to the mixture to make a raspberry color.

At this point, I had a cleaner studio and a good supply of prepared surfaces but still no real desire to paint. I needed a jump-start for a new year of painting so I went on a photo shoot to the wetlands of my hometown.

Back in my studio, I transferred the reference photos from my camera to my computer and viewed the images on my display. I had a few inspiring shots, but most photos showed muted dead grasses and bare-limbed bushes. As is sometimes true with photo shoots, the resulting photographs aren’t as motivating as actually being there.

Still looking for my jump-start, I set up a little painting station in front of my computer display. I used a 16 x 20 inch pad of Lanaquarelle, 140 lb cold press watercolor paper, my travel palette of watercolors and a couple small brushes.

I spent a couple hours viewing reference photos on my display and creating 2-inch square thumbnail paintings of what I saw until I had a 16 x 20 inch sheet  -  a total of 35 little images.

Next, I took a photo of the whole sheet and in Photoshop, turned the image into a grayscale and printed it.

I posted my bright idea for a jump-start on my art journal blog, www.bbnewtonartjournal.blogspot.com, and immediately got several nice replies. Contact with fellow artists turned out to be just what I needed to start painting again. I began to paint using the sheet of thumbnailsfor reference without looking at the corresponding photos. I can’t imagine a series of 35 paintings but I am working on number 3 and my bright idea has brought me some new Internet friends.