ACEOs 6-10

More ACEOs! 

There's a huge gap between paintings here (and a big silence on this blog): I had a family tragedy in June and I lost my motivation to do anything. I tried to carry on as "normal" and it didn't feel right. I needed some time to just be a human blanket pile in my spare time, so I had it. 

I bought a Deck Box during the course of this batch of paintings because I couldn't deal with the mini paintings scattered everywhere, so now they have their own little white box to live in. I'd highly recommend them to anyone who does ACEOs. They're the perfect storage containers for them, and it'll be a long while before I've filled mine up. 

6.

11/06/2015

Cotman watercolours. I decided to try the waterbrush again with something a bit more sketch-like, and this was the result! It blotted an area of the fence without my permission, but otherwise was fine to use. I'm much happier with this than I am with the last waterbrush test.

7.

12/06/2015

Cotman watercolours. More of the waterbrush, and I used the exact same colours for this as I did for the previous one. I still had mixes leftover on the palette and the colours were so beautiful that I didn't want to waste them. I'm less happy with this one, but I think I've found my favourite bright green mix (sap and cobalt). 

8.

07/07/2015

Cotman watercolours, white gouache, Copic multiliner and clear wax crayon. This was a test for using a wax crayon on a water painting. It doesn't really work so well when the painting is this tiny. The wax was a bit overpowering, but it was certainly fun to try and I'd rather have tried it for the first time on an ACEO than a large piece that had taken ages to prepare for paint. Using the ACEOs like this was one of the reasons I bought them, after all. I used the waterbrush again for this one. 

9.

18/07/2015

Cotman watercolours. The tree went wrong pretty early on, but this was a very quick scribble done while another was drying, so it was never going to be all that great. I didn't have anything planned, I just wanted to play.

10.

01/11/2015

Cotman watercolours and white gouache. This is my first try at painting something like this. Apart from the too-large blobs (let the initial spatter dry before reworking some of the dots!), I quite like how it turned out. It was a lot of fun to do. It could do with more contrast in the lighter areas, but for a first go I'm fairly happy with it. It's the first time I've tried using white gouache with a toothbrush and the effect is perfect for things like this. Adding the gouache is a bit scary; if it goes wrong, like it did, it's usually impossible to fix. I thought it would be better to leave it as it is than to try and amend the blobs.

Fun with ACEOs (1-5).

I bought a hefty amount of ACEOs a little while ago for me to play with. I wanted to have a go at little paintings again - I guess I've missed working on small and quick things after all. I also thought that they'd be great for testing new art materials and practising techniques or new subjects (or old subjects that I'm still crap at). If it goes wrong, I haven't wasted much as the cards are really cheap to buy. Basically, they're for me to play around with. Some will be "finished", some won't. Most are probably just going to be the result of "I want to play with something art-related but I'm not sure what".

1.

05/05/2015

Cotman watercolours. Intentionally unnatural colours (that don't come across at all in the photo - that grass is NOT that shade of green). I couldn't be bothered with mixing, I just wanted to play with my new cards. 

2.

22/05/2015

Cotman watercolours and Copic Multiliner in Sepia. No sketch lines, no idea what I was doing, done freehand while the next one was taking ages to dry. Turned out to be my favourite so far. 

3.

26/05/2015

Cotman watercolour. Playing with more muted tones for a landscape scribble but I didn't really like them. I think I prefer the brighter ones I'm used to. Landscapes remain one of my art nemeses. 

4. 

06/06/2015

Cotman watercolour. Wanted to play with drawing pansies but then decided to turn this into a waterbrush test. I've never painted with a waterbrush before. Conclusion: detail is impossible, water water everywhere. I had to work with water when I didn't want water, which meant it had to be done in lots of layers (something I don't like doing with watercolour anymore) and the paint ended up thick and flat. For work like this, the waterbrush isn't ideal. I imagine it's more suited to sketching, which is what people use them for, so I'll try it for that soon.

5.

10/06/2015

This turned out a lot better than the last eye I tried to paint (and wasted a much smaller piece of paper, too) but I still have so much I need to improve. Eyelashes and eyebrows are really hard to do with the brushes that I have - I may have to dig my sable rigger out when I try these in future.

The only one I signed with paint and a brush is the third one, the rest were done with a Copic Multiliner. I'm not good at signing my name in miniature: 2.5"x3.5" doesn't give you much to work with! They're all a bit warped, as you can see. I did tape them all down, but there's only so much tape you can put on a card that tiny and still have a surface left to paint on.

I'm going to blog these like I did (and should still be doing but shhh) the Instagram photos. Every five ACEOs will be a blog. I have around 200 cards: I'm hoping to see an improvement as I work through them. 

Paintbox woes and homemade solutions.

The first painting of Paintcember (let's face it, there weren't many more after that) officially killed the idea of the 24-pan box for me. Rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle.

Rattle.

Unfortunately, the box I want doesn't exist and while I could probably design one, I have no idea where I'd go to get it made. Every box I can find for sale has something wrong with it.

I've been looking up homemade boxes on the Internet and trying to come up with ideas. I figure the only way I'll get a box that I like is if I make one, but I'm not great at making plastic boxes or ceramic palettes. I want a removable palette with a good amount of wells, so I'd either have to buy one and then build around it or somehow magically find one that fitted. I do have a wooden box, but it's quite large and really more suited towards tube paint (like everything else). Getting things for pan paints to fit inside the box would be a nightmare.

So.

The only other option that I had was to modify the rattle monster box. I could glue the pans in place, but I need to be able to remove them for cleaning. I also need to be able to replace the pans when they run out because I don't have many paint tubes (I know using tubes to refill empty pans is in the long run is far more economical, but since I bought so many sets on my quest for The Perfect Paintbox, I now have more paint pans than brain cells) and I like to change my palettes around quite a bit. I could fit metal plates into the box and attach magnets to the pans but that's a lot of work, as well as permanent, so it's a last resort. Also, then the pans may no longer fit in the box, which is useless. The plate and magnets would have to be super thin. So. White-tack to the rescue. I took two little pieces, stuck them to the bottom of each pan and stuck them down. Thus, the rattle monster was defeated. As a bonus to this, it now looks really neat!

Yes, it still closes with the brush there.

However, I quite liked the idea of making my own paintbox, after seeing so many videos about them while I was trying to figure out what to do. I own a decent amount of the six limited edition Winsor & Newton paints and they have nowhere to live once I start using them. If I open them and squeeze them out onto a palette and don't use everything that I squeezed out, then what? They're LIMITED EDITION, dammit!

For studio work, I bought a metal box with space for 12HP/6WP. I hate metal boxes. I really, really hate metal boxes. They're awful for mixing watercolours and I don't understand why they're so popular, but the metal box was my only option for a box that fitted pans in it (seriously, giant crater in the market, why do you even exist?). The six paints have six empty whole pans to live in and an unfortunately metal box, but as it's for studio work, I can just use one of my porcelain palettes and ignore the metal ones. The box itself is actually REALLY well made, compact, in perfect condition and I love that it fits either half pans or whole pans or a mixture of the two. It's just... metal. It fits two half pans as well as the six whole pans though, so I can have a half pan of white gouache and another colour in there too.

At least my da Vinci brush has a home now.

I'd still hate to take that metal box anywhere. They scratch fairly easily and I'd probably destroy it in a week. Useless metal palettes plus size also means that it would be a waste of space. I certainly don't need six whole pans just for painting outdoors. Instead, I bought a 1oz black "survival" tin and some empty half pans. I can carry the plastic folding palette that I always take out with me anyway and mix colours on that. I can fit some items in the box as well as the paints (the metal mini Winsor & Newton brushes fit in there but my da Vinci one doesn't), and a tiny pencil case for any extras won't hurt to carry (I have some super slim and small ones and they're perfect for things like this).

This box fits in the palm of my hand. Paintboxes don't really come much smaller than this. (EDIT: Yes they do! I found one online in America that's the size of a business card and fits 14 pans in it - I'll do another blog post when I have paints for it!)

I'm going to put more tack down to stop the paintbrush rattling around.

The box fits one whole pan and six half pans quite comfortably. Because I use blue the most, I bought the most of it before shops sold out, so that will have the whole pan and the other five colours can go in the half pans. The spare half pan can be used for white gouache or another colour. I stuck them down with the white-tack again and they haven't moved at all, so there's that. A lot of people I saw on YouTube glued their pans down but all manner of outdoor muck ends up in my paintbox while I'm out and I'd rather it wasn't permanent. 

Another idea is to use the tin you get with a Derwent 6-pack of pencils. I have four of these tins (in use currently though) and they'd be perfect for a more "complete" outdoor kit. They fit 13 Winsor & Newton half pans across the length, as well as a paintbrush and a pencil. You could probably cram another row of half pans in there as well. So that's an idea for when I use up one of the tins, if I decide that I want more space. They're quite small and don't weigh a great deal.

The studio box for the limited edition paints does have a purpose: I've been putting together my own mini studio space in my room over January/February! I have a desk and a chair for the desk and my table easel can live on top and I have somewhere to work at last! I'm currently going through my supplies and deciding what gets to live in the desk drawers and what goes into storage boxes, but when I'm done with that I might do another post to show what I have in there. The desk drawers are luckily quite deep and can hold a lot of art supplies!