illustration | Subalpine Design

December 18, 2020September 14, 2021

The View from Our Place

As promised, a post about my latest watercolor painting, The View from Our Place. If you’re here for another fiber project roundup, you’ll have to wait for the next post. I decided there’s too much to talk about to cram it all into one update.

This is my latest finished watercolor. The inspiration comes from my husband’s grandmother and our front yard. I’ve known Grandma Dollar now for over 24 years and since we’ve lived in Pagosa for nearly 20, she’s never had the opportunity to see our place. When we visit with her, we entertain her with stories about the wildlife that visits our yard, and she always asks about my garden.

At 91, she’s had some health issues over the last year or two that have dampened her spirit. When I started painting, Chris suggested she might like one of my artworks. Much like, Favorite Things, I chose some of the things that make me the most happy: summertime when young fawns are found bouncing along the hillside, the hollyhocks in full bloom, and all year round we celebrate visits from the most entertaining birds, comical gangs of pygmy nuthatches who defy gravity. I call them my minions.

According to the progress photos I like to take while I’m painting, I started this one on Oct 8th with the hollyhock and finished by Dec 5th. I saved the trees and background for last. Even though all the leaves were gone for the season, I spent an afternoon on the deck, painting en plein air to get the best interpretation of the hillsides.

Nov 24 – Painting with my feathered friends

Oct 28 – What’s wrong with this picture? Painting from the dog bed in front of the fireplace so as not to disturb the slumbering dog under my desk.

When it was finally completed, I peeled it off the Arches block and pressed it flat for framing. I placed my first order ever with Blick Art Supplies, including a pre-cut matte and wooden frame. There were some reviews saying their frames or mattes had arrived damaged, but my order was packed as carefully as possible and arrived in great condition. After mounting and framing the painting, I carefully packed it back up and shipped it on to Chris’s parents. I think they must be waiting for Christmas to gift it to her as I haven’t heard that she’s seen it yet.

Since I recently opened a store @Society6, I’ve included this watercolor as a design available for purchase. You can order your own copy to hang on the wall, as an art print, framed or even as a printed canvas. Check it out @Society6.

Disclosure: All links to our Society6 store are affiliate links. When you make a purchase using these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
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December 11, 2020December 13, 2020

Subalpine’s Designs @Society6

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we may earn a commission. We appreciate your support!

I did it! It’s been percolating for many years in my mind, about a decade. I finally decided on a platform to license our designs and jumped in. I’ve loaded in a half dozen photographs and watercolors and curated the best products according to the designs. I’ve got a million more ideas, and I already enjoy finding and being inspired by all the other talented artists.

There’s still time to shop for the holidays and with Society6’s Holiday Flash Deals, you can save up to 40% off everything.

Check out our shop. Expect more posts as new designs are released or follow @SubalpineDesign on Society6 to stay up to date.

Next post, I’ll catch you up on all the new textile projects and behind the scenes of my latest watercolor, The View from Our Place.

May 27, 2020June 14, 2022

Practice Making Progress

Continuing to share my journey of discovery with watercolor, today’s post is meant to encourage you to find ways to advance your creative practice and for me to appreciate what I’ve accomplished.

As a creative, I know about the traps, obstacles or blocks from both inside and out that can make it challenging to follow through. They still litter my path. I’ve talked before about how it’s been difficult to get motivated and stick with finishing a piece of art. I haven’t encountered that often with my textile creations or when under contract to get a job done; but when it comes to putting something to paper via drawing or painting to feed my soul, everything else seems to take priority. The first thing I needed to do was to dedicate time to allow myself to paint.

As dr. e says, “Protect your time; . . . I know a fierce painter here in the Rockies who hangs this sign on the chain that closes off the road to her house when she is in a painting or thinking mode: ‘I am working today and am not receiving visitors. I know you think this doesn’t mean you because you are my banker, agent or best friend. But it does.’

“Another sculptor I know hangs this sign on her gate: ‘Do not disturb unless I’ve won the lottery or Jesus has been sighted on the Old Taos Highway.'”

Since I’ve worked from home for over a decade, the distractions here aren’t as hard to ignore as the obligation I feel towards my clients to make myself available. This required establishing a mental boundary. A few years ago, I turned off the alerts on my phone and continue to generously use the do not disturb feature. The true test is not checking it during or before painting, remaining present to the process.

When the pandemic cancelled the class I intended to take this month, I set aside the time that would have been spent there. During the first session, I nearly completed the Flagstaff Beetle. After the initial sequestered 3 hours, I checked the phone and learned no one had any urgent requests for my time, gifting me with the luxury of painting the rest of the day.

Finishing that painting over the following weekend, I added a quickie California poppy on a Zentangle® tile. And then I was stuck. What to paint next? Should I move onto the larger sized paper? I’d been working on 5″ x 7″ canvases and the 12″ x 17″ block of Arches paper bought for the class was intimidating. Gently pushing myself through the block by doing google image searches, I ended up with more ideas than hours in the day. With more demands on my time, most of the second class session was spent sketching and setting up for painting the next week.

Spending a little time one afternoon with my camera, trying to capture a suitable image of one of the hummingbirds that frequent our feeder this time of year, rewarded me with my next muse.

Until recently, I didn’t understand the desire to record a time lapse of one’s drawing as can be done in Adobe Sketch unless you were trying to create a tutorial. I’ve taken several pictures of this one in progress and there are a number of things I love about it. Obviously, I can turn those images into these fun animated gifs, but it also helps me see values or other details from a different perspective. Like recording myself playing the mandolin, I like to look back and see how I decided to approach a section of the canvas.

The last observation I’d like to share is that despite having limited workspace, I’ve been able to keep my painting supplies set up as I’ve worked on Large and In Charge and that has helped to motivate. This reminds me of another parallel to playing the mandolin. My good friend and musician, Mark Dudrow suggested if I wanted to get serious about practicing, I needed to keep my mandolin out of the case. “Put it in your way, where you’ll see it every day,” he said. Make it easy to pick up.

That’s the real beauty with watercolor. The paints can dry out, and be reconstituted with just a drop or spray of water. I find myself eyeing the composition throughout the day; or even picking up the brush for a quick stroke, while I wait for something to heat up in the kitchen. It also reminds me of something I learned from Zentangle’s creators, “Anything is possible, one stroke at a time.”

April 23, 2020April 23, 2020

Pardon Me, I Arted

I’m sure you’ve noticed. The boundaries of the world have changed.

Yesterday, the watercolor workshop I signed up for before the pandemic that was supposed to start in May, officially cancelled. So I’ve decided I’ll still set aside the time I would have spent in class, practicing and learning more about the medium on my own because I haven’t picked up my brush since that last post. My work in progress is exactly as I left it.

It’s not necessarily for the reasons you might think. Fortunately our lives and routines haven’t changed that much in the wake of a pandemic and this economic downturn; yet I can list the postponements, cancellations and the things that don’t meet what we used to call normal expectations. I’m not trying to gloss over the loss of life or pain. I’m looking for ways to express those feelings. I’m learning how to see obstacles as opportunity.

Choosing not to dwell on negativity or fear, I don’t want to talk about how uncertain everything is because nothing is really ever certain. I believe the control we think we have over our lives is mostly an illusion. We should always expect the unexpected and be willing to learn. Always be prepared. And even when you think you have it all figured out, then something will surprise you.

I want to know what I can do for the highest good right in this moment. Looking forward, I want to start taking the baby steps towards whatever our new normal might be with caution and wisdom. Observe. Orientate. Decide. Act. I’d like to share some of what Lights up my days.

If we want to talk hoarding, I reacted by adding to my yarn stash and ordered official Zentangle® supplies:

I finished up these socks I started for my mom back in December.

And made this infant set in anticipation of welcoming my niece.

I’ve made progress on the poncho and started a whole new sweater!

I’ve started cataloging my projects on Ravelry…

The garden is starting out great with a bunch of volunteers of lettuce and the reliable return of old friends like rhubarb and strawberries. The daffodils have just started blooming since Easter.

Lou’s been making stew.

There’s even been some time for mandolin practice. With the new year, I started occasionally recording my practices. Pretending to have an audience helps me play through hiccups and critique my technique. I’d like to share some of the better ones on youtube but I don’t know enough about music licensing issues when practicing popular songs. So I’ll spare you the audio for now…

When I shared a difficult time with one of my teachers a few years ago, she suggested:

“…it is good to find a book such as Pema Chodron’s, When Things Fall Apart to read during times like this.

When the mind obsesses about what we ultimately can do nothing about, but care so much for a good outcome, it helps to replace the overwhelming thoughts with thoughts of what is, and what we must do to remain balanced in times like this. It also helps to set the mind in a place to meditate and refuel our energy to carry on.”—Kat Katsos

I’ve picked it up to read again.

March 15, 2020February 13, 2023

Playing with Water

I can’t say I’m a complete novice when it comes to watercolor.

I used a simple Crayola set to create this logo for a client…

…and layered washes of color under the colored pencils in this poster for Habitat for Humanity’s Recycled Arts Show.

When my grandfather passed, I created this scene as part of a card for my mom.

Using photoshop to ‘photocopy’ this photo my husband took, I turned it into outlines, printed and re-applied the color using watercolor.

Like knitting and crochet, watercolor may be one of those talents that has somehow been transmitted to me from my ancestors even though I never saw how they executed the skill or viewed much of their handicraft. Grandpa practiced watercolor. Or it could just be something that can be learned with careful observation and practice.

I’ve been working in colored pencil and feel like it has taught me some valuable skills about shading and the use of white space, but I wanted to move into paint.

Paint is naturally more fluid. I feel like the pigments could be more vibrant than pencil, and it just flows, laying down the color much faster. I used to own some acrylics, and have played with enamels, but watercolor has been calling.

Some of my old acrylic paintings from 20+ years ago.

A flower pot decorated in enamel paints, inspired by the seashells we picked up on a visit to Florida in 2017.

The first thing I did was sit down and research recommendations on supplies. There is so much out there! I didn’t know where to start. As I found artists whose artwork I admired, Winsor & Newton was frequently mentioned. Anticipating that I would want a small kit that I could easily take with me, I wanted to keep it all small and compact. For less than $50 on Amazon, I purchased the following:

Winsor & Newton (W&N) Cotman Water Color Paint Sketchers’ Pocket Box
W&N Cotman short handle brush 7pack of assorted styles
W&N Professional Watercolor paper journal, cold pressed 140lb. 5×7

I also bought some masking fluid, but I haven’t used it yet.

Added since my initial order:

some fun washi masking tape for holding down the paper while I paint on a clipboard
Staedtler Pigment Liners, set of 6 in assorted sizes – I thought I wanted a pen that was waterproof, but I have yet to use these with my paints. So far I’ve been sketching very lightly in pencil and using the paint to outline. I’ve been using the pens with my tangling practice.

Since then, I’ve signed up for a watercolor class at my local studio that starts in May. There’s a material list for the class and per the instructor’s recommendation, I bought them all through Cheap Joe’s Art Supplies. So now I have tubes of paint, a palette, and a big block of watercolor paper. My favorite brushes so far are the no. 6 round Princeton Neptune I bought for the class and the no 1 round from the W&N pack for detail.

I’d been reading many artist recommendations and saw that a repetitive theme is to buy larger paper and cut it down to the size you want. I don’t plan on doing that with this block. I would like to try something large before the class but haven’t decided what yet. I like the small sketchbook size because it doesn’t take too long to complete something. Surprisingly, I’ve still been able to achieve a high level of detail, yet I know when I scale up it will open up a whole new world and style. I will probably order another sketchpad for the portability.

Camping on the Chama, featured at the beginning of this post, was my first piece with just my initial W&N supplies. For these succulents—the latest completed artwork, I used some of my new tubes of paint with the palette and new brush and the W&N pans. Here’s a little peek into the process: