Great Lakes - Dramatic Sky

I recently had someone purchase my watercolor painting "Dramatic Sky" from my Etsy shop, which was an assignment I completed several years ago for a watercolor studio class in college. This person also loved my "Great Lakes" watercolor paintings, and requested that I make a custom "Great Lakes" painting for them, in colors matching the "Dramatic Sky" painting they'd purchased.

In this first picture, you can see the "Dramatic Sky" painting, which I kept and referred to for color reference while I painted the new piece, as well as the outline of the Great Lakes traced onto a new sheet of watercolor paper.

I taped down the new painting-to-be (to keep it stretched taut while I worked on its surface with paint and water), and dug through my watercolor collection to find tubes that I thought would best match my "Dramatic Sky" painting.

Because I painted "Dramatic Sky" so long ago, I didn't remember what specific colors I'd used, and had to guess.

There are two types of yellow I often use - one that's a warmer yellow and one that's a cooler yellow; for the "Dramatic Sky" piece, I was quite sure I'd used the cooler one, called "Lemon Yellow," which I'd favored more back in college and had since used less and less frequently. (In fact, I'd noticed just a month before this commission came in that I didn't even have any Lemon Yellow still in my box of watercolor tubes - which is why I'd included it on my holiday wish list this past December. Thankfully, my in-laws bought me one, so I had Lemon Yellow to work with again when I got this commission!)

For the greens and blues in the painting, I figured I'd used some mixture of Phthalo Green, Phthalo Blue, Hooker's Green, Viridian, and Ultramarine Blue. I got all of these tubes out so I could easily access them, and made sure they were all represented with fresh paint on my palette - though I may or may not have used all of them as I went. Hooker's Green in particular (a very dark green) I likely didn't end up using, instead going with the brighter Viridian, and getting the dark colors with dark blues instead.

The predominant color in my "Dramatic Sky" painting is a dark blue-green/teal, with just a little bit of brighter green, and even a smaller amount of Lemon Yellow. I tried to duplicate these proportions in the new "Great Lakes" painting as well, though ultimately ended up using more green than I had in "Dramatic Sky," just to add more visual contrast between the dark blue and somewhat lighter green.

Here is the finished painting below, still wet.

Once the painting was dry, I signed it and untaped it from the table. The person who commissioned this piece specifically requested that I sign it so that it did not look like a print, but an original painting. I always do this for my original paintings, often signing my "Great Lakes" paintings with my last name and date just under Lake Erie. For this piece, because of her request, I signed it slightly larger than I normally would have.

I love how this painting turned out. I think the dark blues and greens are very striking against the white paper, especially when paired with a matching white mat.

For comparison, here is the "Dramatic Sky" painting next to the finished "Great Lakes" piece. I packaged these two paintings together to save on shipping costs, and sent them along to the buyer.

I charge the same for a custom "Great Lakes" watercolor as I do for the ones I've already painted (which are for sale here in my Etsy shop). Each "Great Lakes" painting is $49 (not including shipping), and comes with a white mat.

Do you want a custom "Great Lakes" painting in a very specific color scheme to match another piece of artwork in your home, or a general color scheme for a particular room? Leave me a comment below, send me a message on Etsy, or email me at afrownfe@gmail.com. I love making custom pieces, and would love to work with you to create exactly what you envision! 

New Listings on Etsy

I finally got around to listing some of my recent colored pencil drawings (the Stronger Together series) on Etsy, where they are available for purchase.

You can check out the listings here:

• Race Bouquet (Stronger Together)
• Gender Bouquet (Stronger Together)
• Sexuality Bouquet (Stronger Together)
• Class Bouquet (Stronger Together)
• Religion Bouquet (Stronger Together)
• Ability Bouquet (Stronger Together)

Each are for sale for $399, including custom frame.

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I also added a listing for an old watercolor painting of mine titled "Rose-Lily Hybrid". I created this as a class assignment at Eastern Michigan University back in 2009, and then had it framed and gifted it to my grandma (for either Christmas or her birthday - I don't remember which anymore). She hung it in her living room for several years, before moving it to her bedroom in my parents' house when she moved there in 2014. When she passed away this past July, my parents decided they longer had a place for this painting, so it has recently come back into my possession.

It is for sale for $249, including custom frame. You can check out that Etsy listing here.

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I am holding back some of my other recent works for now (such as the 22x30 colored pencil drawings "30 Days" and "28 Years" to submit to local art exhibition opportunities), so they are not yet listed on Etsy - but they may be at a future time, so make sure to check my Etsy store frequently! :)

Taking Responsibility For Your Ignorance

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people have the means to do something but choose not to do it - either out of laziness or a lack of confidence in their own self-sufficiency.

And, just to be clear, when I say "pet peeve," I mean something that frustrates me because it makes me sad to see. It doesn't make me angry (very little actually makes me angry) - but it does make me sad. When I see people do this, I pity them. I want to ask them why they don't think enough of themselves to care about the image they're putting out there, or why they don't think enough of themselves to believe in their abilities.

For example, when someone egregiously misspells a common word. I am not the best speller myself (I was always in the lowest spelling groups in my elementary school classes), but I do read a lot and I write a lot, especially on the computer, and over time my spelling has improved. And if I'm typing, and that little red line appears that tells me I've misspelled the word, I don't leave it like that. I figure out how I spelled it wrong - either by using Chrome or Firefox or MS Word's suggestions for the word I meant or, if I spelled it so wrong that whatever app I'm using has no suggestions, by going to Google and typing in a few different ways I can think of to spell it and checking that against the definition to make sure that I find the correct spelling and am using the word as I intended to use it. It does take some time (an entire minute or two), but it's not that difficult and it's important to me to make sure the words are spelled correctly, so I am willing to put in that effort.

It is not so easy to do on a phone, I know. It's harder to run spell check, it requires closing the app you're in and opening a new one to search for the correct spelling, and sometimes even if you do all of those things, your phone thinks it knows better and "autocorrects" to a different word you did not intend to use at all. I don't fault someone for not caring about spelling or grammar as much as I do, and I certainly don't fault them for auto-correct mistakes. In fact, if it's a difficult-to-spell word, chances are good I won't even notice if it's misspelled. But if it is a short, common word, and your spelling is so far off that it takes me extra time while reading it to figure out what you actually meant to say, it feels like you're essentially saying to everyone else that your time is more important than theirs. You don't need to take the time to make your status easy to read; it is up to the person choosing to read it to figure out what you meant and do that extra minute of work.

I'm thinking of a particular case where I was following a Facebook friend who was complaining about a visiting friend being a generally horrible house guest, and abusive to boot. It was a very serious post, voicing a serious complaint, and looking for serious advice on what she should do. He had grabbed her arm at one point and left bruises there. Except that she spelled the word "broozes," which instantly made me think of "booze." It made the sentence confusing and took me awhile to figure out what it actually said - and the spelling "broozes" looked so comical that it completely underscored the seriousness of her post. It is possible that she honestly did not know that "broozes" was wrong, and so did not know better than to leave it like that. It is also possible (probable, I would think, in her case), that she was typing quickly, on her phone, and did not have the time nor care enough to stop what she was doing and find the correct spelling. She was stressed out and in a difficult situation, and the spelling of her status was the last thing on her mind.

But I have seen people do this kind of thing again and again, and often it is not that they are in a difficult or potentially dangerous situation at all. They are just going about daily life, writing something innocuous or mundane or silly, and they misspell an easy word. Or they share or retweet something that is simply not true but that they did not take the time to verify. Or they are having a discussion with someone and something comes up that they do not recognize or do not understand, and they just continue the discussion anyway, or ask the person they are talking with to stop to explain that thing to them.

To these people, I want to say: you have the ability to fix this. You can look up a word you don't know how to spell, or a word you aren't sure of the definition of. It is as easy as going to Google and typing in the word, or typing in "define" and then the word. You can verify the legitimacy of something you see on the Internet by clicking on it and seeing where it came from and what sources it cites or who wrote it. You can look up a phrase that you don't know the meaning of. We live in a world of easy information. We have Google. You don't have to not know things anymore.

I would think that it was just people being lazy, and not wanting to do the work themselves. But I don't think that's always it. I think a lot of people genuinely do not believe themselves capable of taking charge of their own education like this. It is literally as easy as typing a word into Google, but people don't know how to do it. I worked as a substitute teacher for almost two years, and a lot of the classes I did were middle school classes. These kids were not lazy; they were willing to do the work and were trying to work on the assignments that the teacher had left for them to accomplish in her absence. And they had easy resources at their disposal to help them finish the assignments. They had smartphones, they had tablets, they had laptops. I subbed a lot in the Romeo district, where every middle schooler had a school-issued Chromebook (laptop) to use. They used these every day, in every class. And yet, they still did not know how to use Google. They were so uncertain in their abilities to take charge of their own education that they didn't know where to begin. They wanted me to just tell them the answer, because then they would not be culpable. "That's what the sub said," they could say as an excuse if they got it wrong. They did not want the responsibility of doing the work themselves.

They would be doing a vocabulary worksheet and come across a word (not one of the vocab words) that they didn't know and they would raise their hand and call me over and ask me what it meant. I would point to their Chromebook. "Did you look it up?" They didn't even know what I meant. They knew how to find the correct definitions of the vocab words, because they were in their digital textbook. But if they had to look up a definition of another word, they had no idea. I told them to go to Google and they looked at me like I was crazy. It's a Chromebook! The whole thing is literally just Chrome. There is a Google search bar RIGHT THERE, on every page. I told them to type the word into the search bar and see what came up. "But this isn't what I want, this doesn't answer my question." Okay, then put "define" in front of it. If they tried something once and it didn't work immediately they just gave up. They had no self-sufficiency for finding answers to their questions on their own.

When I subbed in high schools, it was the same way. Kids would literally be holding a smartphone in their hand and ask me to define a word for them. You have the internet right there in your hand! Look it up yourself! They had no confidence.

It just made me really sad to see, that by the time these kids were 11 or 12 they had already given up control of their education. They didn't want to figure it out themselves. "Just tell me the answer," they would say. "It'll be easier." What they meant was - it would be more likely they would get the answer right. They didn't care if they learned anything, they just wanted to get it right.

You get out of education what you put into it. If you don't care, you won't learn.

I don't know. I like learning new things. I haven't been in school for 6.5 years now, but I still go out of my way to learn things. If I'm reading an article and I can't figure out what a word means by context clues, I'll probably look it up. Maybe not every time, but if it's something I care about and want to know, I look it up. I don't ask anyone else what it means. I know I'm capable of using Google, capable of figuring things out. If I want to know more about something, I read up on it. If I want to know how to spell a word, I look it up. If I'm writing something and a word pops into my head that I'm not sure about, and I want to know if it's the correct word to use, I look it up.

I think this is one of the biggest problems for the future... It's not just kids. It's adults too. This is why "fake news" is such a problem, why people share and retweet things that are blatantly false. People don't trust themselves to know things or know how to go about knowing things. They want other people to tell them. When other people tell them, they assume it's legitimate. They don't believe in themselves, but they believe in strangers. We all have so little self-confidence in our critical thinking skills, in our ability to look things up, to arrive at the right answers, that we rely too heavily on others - others who are also not self-confident, others who just got their answers from someone else, too.

You just need one person to say something - anything - and say it with conviction, and so many people will follow. Because we don't think for ourselves. We don't have the confidence to. It's pitiful, and it makes me sad. To see that even middle schoolers have this problem, that already they've lost all confidence in themselves - it was really disheartening. When I see people my age do these things, or older adults, or elderly people - it's still disheartening. At what point do we start gaining that confidence back? At what point do we learn how to be responsible for our own education, our own words?

People give up on themselves too easily.

Life Drawing - Pastels

There was one final media we explored in my Life Drawing classes at EMU, other than charcoal, graphite pencils, and magic Koh-i-noor colored pencils - soft pastels.

They're messy like charcoal, but come in a wide variety of vibrant colors. Most of these drawings were assignments for homework - self-portraits, or portraits of people we knew. Here are some of my most successful pastel drawings from these classes (2007-2008).

Acrylic paint in background

Acrylic paint in background

Self-portraits on colored construction paper:

Life Drawing - Charcoal

A few weeks ago, I already showed several self-portraits I completed with the Koh-i-noor brand "magic pencil" for my 2007 & 2008 Life Drawing classes at EMU. Today, I will reveal some of my best charcoal drawings from these classes.

I grew to have sort of a love-hate relationship with charcoal during those two semesters. I had used it a bit before, in drawing classes in 2006 & 2007, but had never used it before college. Perhaps more tellingly, after I switched to a Graphic Design and Watercolor major (as opposed to the Drawing major I briefly pursued at the beginning of college), I don't think I used charcoal again. This does not mean I didn't find success with the medium - just that I find graphite pencils and colored pencils easier (and cleaner) to work with. For the same reason, I found myself drawn to watercolor (rather than oil or acrylic paint).

It's not that I don't enjoy getting messy. I do - perhaps a little too much. I'm a bit of a klutz, and have a tendency to not put things away or watch out where things are when I am in the middle of an art project, and with messy media like charcoal or paint it was too easy to 1) get carried away making a mess and 2) make an even bigger mess, accidentally, just because I wasn't watching where I was going.

If I had an entire day to devote to art interrupted, in a space that was reserved only for my art, I might take on a "messier" project. But I usually have to squeeze my art into an hour here, or a few hours there - and I'm wearing my normal clothes, working in a room that is limited on space. I expect to be interrupted by a puppy needing to go outside. It just isn't feasible to make a huge mess when I know I won't have time to properly clean it up.

I had a similar problem in college. Life Drawing was only one of my classes that day, and I would often have a class right after, where I would have to switch from "studio" mode to "taking notes" mode - or "running a study session" mode, which involved using my laptop. I couldn't get charcoal on my laptop, so I had to spend the last ten minutes of class every day thoroughly washing my hands, making sure there were no smears of charcoal on my arms or sleeves or face which could later transfer to my notebook or backpack or laptop. I had to make sure the outside of my portfolio stayed clean, since I had to carry it around campus to my next class. I had to make sure that my charcoal supplies stayed in a different pocket of my backpack from my laptop, so there was no cross-contamination. It was a hassle - not least because lugging all that stuff around gets rather heavy.

That said, it was enjoyable to get my hands messy. Usually drawing is a rather clean activity, and charcoal was a nice change of pace. It's also quick, allowing for large drawings to be completed in a matter of minutes. Each Life Drawing studio class lasted three hours. We would often get 4-10 poses in during that time, depending on how long each pose was.

Here are some of my most successful charcoal drawings. Most are large scale, drawn on 18"x24" paper, or even 22"x30" paper. As per class assignments, some were reworked later, back in my dorm room - colored ink or paint was added to the background of a few.

(Because we worked from a nude model in class, some of these may be NSFW.)

Metallic silver ink wash in background