Recently I learned there are 7800+ MIA Korean War. If not for my father being sent to Germany during his Service in the Korean War, his name could be on the lists. This caused me a shock with my sewing machines- Singer now manufactures in China and Brazil, so their bottom line of profit depends on China. China is the ally of both Russia and North Korea, and we are still at war with North Korea.
Although 90% of our products come from China, I have started to eliminate them from my life and am keeping wither those tools I make myself, or that are American. It's a huge shock and a huge task.
My criteria in the past as a Fine Artist has been to use the best materials. I was recently venturing into using American or hand-made fabrics for landscape design, but kept running into my Singer sewing machines. I have some oil paintings to finish, and am going to finish some of them with oil pastel over oil- and of course "the best" oil pastels are not American, but French. The Statue of Liberty being given to us by France is not a strong enough reason for me to use Senneliers over - wait for it - Crayola Oil Pastels. I love Crayola crayons, and making my own crayons came out of knowing the high quality of Crayola crayons. I have worked extensively in oil pastel and crayon, but do not in any way expect to Crayola oil pastels to be on the level of Senneliers, Holbein, or any of the major brands.
However, Crayola is still based in the U.S. and manufactures in the U.S., in Pennsylvania. So, instead of spinning my own wool and cotton for quilts for Veterans, instead of painting flags, I am going to work in Crayola oil pastels or crayons. I believe it is going to simplify my art on many levels - quality - color range-longevity-but at the same time, will not be supporting either China or North Korea. I will use cardboard for a support if I have to. American hardboard.
I will be posting photos of work in Crayola products as I do them. As a side note, Dixon Ticonderoga is now owned by foreigners. A heartbreak, just like Levi's and Singer.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Monday, May 20, 2019
Whales In Oil
Whales in Oil
As I have been leaving some areas of my 42-year artistic career behind, I have been gaining and growing with it in other ways. After many, many years of working in meticulous pen and ink, I have developed a simpler love of art and nature. My metalpoint drawings reflect this, as do the oil paintings you see below. I have a love of whales. I think that if the whales fail, then we have failed. As such, I am painting simple depictions of several whales species. I am keeping them simple because my intent is to remind us of the gifts that they are, just as they are.
No. 900 "Sperm Whale No.1"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 901 "Humpback Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 902 "Beluga Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 903 "Orca Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 904 "Northern Right Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 905 "Blue Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 906 "Pilot Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 907 "Minke Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 908 "California Grey Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 909 "Baird's Beaked Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 910 "Bowhead Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 923 "Pygmy Sperm Whale"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
No. 929 "Moby Dick"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2010 laeom
Also in this Series:
Also in this Series:
No. 940 "Moby Dick No. 2"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2012 laeom (gifted to Jonathan Farland)
Currently I am working on a Fin Whale in oil
No. 953 "Sperm Whale No. 4"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2013 laeom
No. 954 "Harp Seal"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2013 laeom
No. 955 "Sperm Whale No. 5"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2013 laeom
No. 956 "Moby Dick No. 3"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2013 laeom
No. 957 "Narwhal"
Oil on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2013 laeom
I had also done a Fin Whale in oil pastel (on 6 x 18 stretched canvas)
No. 994 "Fin Whale in Oil Pastel"
Oil pastel on canvas.
6 inches by 18 inches.
© 2014 laeom
The oils are painted with Winsor and Newton Artist's Oils, the oil pastel is Sennelier for the most part, with some other brands used as well. Canvas is by Blick Art Materials.
The oils are painted with Winsor and Newton Artist's Oils, the oil pastel is Sennelier for the most part, with some other brands used as well. Canvas is by Blick Art Materials.
I have been working in fabric and sewing in order to get some of my art knowledge active again after a very bad seizure in December. Below is the link to a playlist of videos on landscape design and fabric:
Although I wish to be more earth-friendly, if I don't finish the paintings I had started in oil, I fear I may lose abilities.
So, don't think I'm contradictory if I am both advocating fabrics for art, and yet painting in oil. I use Turpenoid Natural, and as many natural pigments as possible.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
"Yarn Landscape Design No. 1"
As I am working out the colors and scale of landscape design in yarn and fabric, I find (maybe because of my seizures), I am not at black ink plans, I am at oil pastel and bright simple colors, easy to identify.
So, knowing the toxicity of oil pastels (oil, wax, pigment) and how they remain smearable even when a fixative is used, I have to not balance natural fibers against them, but acrylic yarn against them, due to the colors.
This changes both the cost (buying yarn vs. spinning fiber), and the method because natural yarns work up differently than acrylic. And how green is my planet if I am still using acrylic yarn? Cotton fiber and time-consuming dyeing is an alternative.
It also puts the time focus on making the yarn and not on the designing which is not what I want to do - I have already done that. Hmmmmm. I am wondering if I may as well just work in oil pastel on bio-friendly products.
Update:- oil pastel and solvents is not better than yarn. I solved the color issue with cotton floss. And the scale will be 1 to 10 (feet). I have a page complete with that scale and a paper-size of 8 x 10. I can go larger from here.
"Yarn Landscape Design No. 1" (c) laeom
The floss thread allows me to make either color designs or traditional black and white with color accents.
Eastern White Pine Design element (c) laeom - the colors have specific meanings as to planting a young pine.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Earth-friendly Landscape Design
Through my seizures I have taken a direction of renewable-re-usable art. I have been a knitter since age 5. I am creating knitted panels for canvas, knitted elements to represent trees and plants of landscape design.
I love pen and ink and all aspects of painting and drawing. However, to make graphite, you need to strip mine, to make charcoal you need to burn trees. Where does our art come from? Our thinking, and not age-old ways of making art supplies.
People drew with charcoal because it was left over from their fires. By using yarns, some commercial, some acrylic, and also handspun, I can use art supplies over and over again. Life Is Fragile, the earth is fragile.
I am using knitting boards to knit the canvases. I am using flower looms to make design elements of trees and flowers, just like my pen and ink landscape design, except I won't be wasting paper and I won't be using the chemicals that inks use. It's as earth-friendly as I can get.
I currently spin my own yarns-using what most Americans see as "disposable wool fiber (opting for commercial yarns), I can give the sheep, alpacas, and goats a place to have their products used.
I currently have several commercial yarns to use up, but after that, all my landscape designs will be in handspun fiber. I am using a hand-made wooden charkha to spin the wool. I will have to photograph each design before re-using the elements,and will use digital instead of film
These are the looms I am using to make double-knitted "canvas"
Flower looms are most often used with yarn, and other than hand-spun (black and cinnamon alpaca included) embroidery floss makes a durable design element. Below photo is with yarn and a frame of crochet and are currently for another project. Pen and ink is more like floss flowers.
I encourage other Fine Artists, used to working in ink, acrylic, or oil, to consider working in yarn and natural fibers. Not to be a "fiber artist" per se, but to take your talent and make it as reusable and earth-friendly as possible.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
The Thoughts Behind A Simple Whale- Orca
I have been making quilts- that are really large canvases in some cases. Here's a very busy piece called "Code Talker" - It has an oil painting to go with it, which is not yet finished.
I have some videos up called The Circle of Integrity of Art- in which I take my work through three or four stages until I know I have an image or subject as I want it. Each of my art quilts is part of one of these sets, and leads to two oil paintings, and sometimes smaller drawings.
I'll put a photo of this complete set here when I get it more organized. I plan on giving the quilts and some other aspects of each set away, and I keep the paintings. Each set has a whale painting as the main (resulting) image.
I've done many of the whale paintings already- so the quilt sets are actually backing up the image, as if I have taken apart my thinking as to how I got to such a simple whale painting (with so many thoughts as I paint).
#903 Orca (Killer) Whale in oil on canvas, 6 x 18
Orca seems to go with this busy quilt - the other painting is of a crow, the quilt images are fish, eagle, jeep - and as I said "Code Talker", I can assume that all of my thoughts when painting the Orca were about Code Talking. The crow painting is called "Crow has the Secrets"
Even though I am "backing into" my own thought process, an Orca would see a jeep on land perhaps, would see crows, maybe an eagle - it's all as if I have been seeing my painting through the eyes of the whale. And the crow has the secrets.
Before my epilepsy got as bad as it is now- I never wondered how or why I painted what I painted, I just did it. But having the whale paintings up, and seeing all these thoughts in the painting, has prompted me to define them.
The piece I am working on now is a Fin whale, will have a Civil War quilt, a Cape Cod coloring book, and grey wool socks as "thought" elements. 42 pair of grey wool socks. This is where the abstract thinking comes in- why would a Fin whale know about 42 pairs (6 wks worth) socks?
The Coast Guard-and a boat on a six week trip offshore. A pair of clean socks for each day-so, this leads me to hope maybe a Fin whale followed a Coast Guard boat around for awhile.-My epilepsy leaves me unable to speak English at times,which is probably why I'm defining thoughts on the level of literally "making" them- quilts, two paintings, Christmas items or gifts, aspects of life all behind a whale painting - as if you could peek behind the painting and see how it got there. Simple images do not mean poor painting imagination.
Friday, August 17, 2018
One of my favorite paintings is an oil I did many years ago. Originally it was painted on a canvas panel. For some reason, I felt the canvas would be better off the cardboard panel, so I removed it. And then got distracted and the canvas was lying flat with some derivative pieces of it for a few months.
Much to my horror, something had been placed on it with weight and there were suddenly two large areas with removal of paint, and a crack where it had become folded. So much for the idea of flexible oils. I bought it some stretcher strips and re-mounted it. It has been a couple of months. It has flattened out, but the cracks are still visible. I have just repaired the two areas of paint removal. Lesson learned (that I already knew) paint them and keep them as if its forever to avoid damage.
"The Yellow Flower" No. 368 painted in 1999, Winsor and Newton Artist's Oil Colors
(c) laeom
Much to my horror, something had been placed on it with weight and there were suddenly two large areas with removal of paint, and a crack where it had become folded. So much for the idea of flexible oils. I bought it some stretcher strips and re-mounted it. It has been a couple of months. It has flattened out, but the cracks are still visible. I have just repaired the two areas of paint removal. Lesson learned (that I already knew) paint them and keep them as if its forever to avoid damage.
"The Yellow Flower" No. 368 painted in 1999, Winsor and Newton Artist's Oil Colors
(c) laeom
I haven't decided yet what to do about the cracks - filling them in carefully will still leave a bump. This painting and I have been best friends for many years. The photo doesn't do it justice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)