Category: How-to

Wherever I Go, There I Paint

Behind the Scenes, How-to, inspiration, Process

By Wendy P. Jones

It’s so romantic to see artists standing on the beach or in the middle of a flower field painting. And though I’d love to paint in a stunning spot, I tend to have small windows of time in which to paint. I love to paint, though, so I make it work.

I’ve painted in a parking lot when I was waiting to pick up one of my kids from school. More than once, I’ve painted in the bathtub. I’ve painted in a hotel bed. And I painted in the waiting room of a hospital when my daughter was having surgery—it helped me pass the time and kept me from going insane.

One of my guiding principles is that if something or someone is important to you, you make time. And painting is my happiness, so I’m going to find a way. For the most part, I paint for a half hour here, a half hour there, so I’ve come up with ways to make the best of that time.

Focus not on why you can’t, but on how you can.

In a Hotel Bed
In the Bath
In a Hospital Room
In the Car
In a Hospital Waiting Room

Four Grab-and-go Watercolor Essentials

I bring an in-process painting when I’m on the go. The initial stage is the messiest and requires the most water, but a painting that’s in the refinement stage is pretty manageable for wherever I’m likely to end up. As for size: I work on large pieces in my studio space, but any piece 14” x 18” or smaller is a pretty good candidate for mobile painting.

Sometimes, I bring a watercolor kit, but most of the time, I grab the four items below and carry them in a tote or even tuck them into my purse.

  1. A painting that’s still attached to a watercolor block or is taped to a hard board
  2. My palette (which I always wrap in a plastic bag)
  3. A size 10 brush and a rigger
  4. A travel mug with a lid that has a mouth opening—I usually keep the lid on and dip my brush into the mouth opening

That’s it. Super simple. And that simplicity is how I get to paint often.

I’d love to hear what’s important in your life, and how you’ve found a way to make time for it.

Happy creating!

Creative Practice

Behind the Scenes, Creative Practice, How-to, inspiration, Process, Warm-ups

By Wendy P. Jones

As a warm-up to a painting session, I often create a random background wash with no subject in mind. I learned this from my mentor, Jean Haines. It’s a way to test out color combinations and get into a flow before starting on a painting. It’s also a way to pay closer attention. I leave the wash on my desk, and as I walk by it several times, I often start seeing a subject in it.

Because I was a greeting card maker for a long time, I really enjoy smaller pieces. Recently, I’ve been doing my warm-up washes on 4”x6” inch paper. I do the washes knowing that I’m not necessarily creating a serious painting—I’m simply doing my daily practice.

As I walked by the photo below on the left, I started seeing a mountain. I used Rose of Ultramarine for the bottom half of the wash. That color separates into blue and pink, and as a result, the purple in the wash was dimensional, which I thought would be fun for a mountain scene. The patterns in the sky were unusual and dramatic. This is not a typical style of painting for me, but it was fun to stretch myself creatively.

Here’s another wash that’s been on my desk. I walked by this wash over and over, sometimes turning it in different directions. For the longest time, I saw no subject. Then I started seeing stars in an indigo sky. I’ll give you a moment to look at the wash to see if a subject calls out to you.

Does it just seem like blobs of color? It did to me, too. But eventually, I began to see what looked like an eye shape in the upper right quadrant. Do you see the eye? Now look closely—can you make out any other features of a face?

I decided to use as few brushstrokes as possible to tell the story in the resulting painting: Moon Child.