Celebrating Color

The latest news from Carol McIntyre's studio...

Painting Out of My Funk – Mixed Media Demo

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How do you get yourself out from under emotional challenges? Do you use your creative outlets and/or something else?

As most of you know, starting late summer I took a sabbatical for several months because I needed to Prevent a Train Wreck. This time was followed by our much anticipated vacation to Barcelona. Unfortunately, it was rudely interrupted by the theft of all of our luggage from inside of our rental car as described in Thieves Among Geniuses-Miro and Gaudi. As a result of this traumatic experience, I have been experiencing periodic mild anxiety attacks. This was a surprise me and continues to confound me. Consequently, I have not been inspired or motivated to paint, much less anything else work related.

I had intended to return from our European vacation all charged up and ready to get back to work. Ha! My psyche wasn’t ready, so I have been patiently listening to my body and trying to take care of myself. Meanwhile, what about my art? As I mentioned in my last blog post, I asked a good art friend to push me to start a couple of paintings. I did and that was Okay, but not satisfactory.

mixed media demo

This week, after a few mornings of mild anxiety attacks, I decided that I needed to do something different. Painting has almost always served as an emotionally grounding activity for me, but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to paint! This is not a common phenomenon for me. Feeling lost like this indicated that I still needed some healing time. However, sitting around watching the snow fall (quite the snow storms this week in Colorado), wasn’t working for me.

When in a conundrum such as this, I often pose challenges for myself. I decided that I would use existing painting materials and try something I have only watched on YouTube. I would paint multiple paintings on one sheet of 22″ x 30″ watercolor paper. Here is the step-by-step process of my mixed media demo. [Read more…]

Ever Considered Starting an Art Book Club?

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How many color theory and painting technique books do you have in your artist library? When I first started painting, I soon realized that many of us are art instruction book junkies. We are fortunate to have so many artists willing to share their knowledge and skills with us in print and video.

One of the final pages for me to write for my forthcoming book, I Just Want to Paint: Mixing the Colors You Want! is the Resources page. This is a list of various art instruction books I have collected over the years and have continued to reference throughout my art career.

Before I share some of these with you, writing the Resources page spurred me to reminisce as I looked upon my large stack — I think I have over thirty books just related to the subject of color — and reflect upon the important role these books have played. Because I am a self-taught artist, I was highly disciplined and would pour through each book when it was new to my library. I continue to do this today whenever I purchase a new book.

Then I remembered an art book club that I participated in. What is an art book club?

It was about six painters meeting monthly in one of our homes or studios to discuss a particular book. We would speand about three to four meetings per book. Often we would bring paintings or sample exercises from the book to share. These meetings deepened the understanding of the book’s content, plus they served as a meaningful catalyst to furthering our respective skills and knowledge. The benefits were significant. [Read more…]

5 Tips for Your Art Studio

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Creatives are wonderful problem solvers, which is one reason why we create because it is what we love to do.  When presented with a ‘problem,’ we are not likely to turn away. We use our curiosity to come up with possible solutions. My art studio is one such place where I have had to be a creative problem solver. Since we all work differently, we need different things to support our passion and our working rhythms. Often storage is the most challenging. In this post, I want to share some of the everyday items used in kitchen and bathrooms that I use in my studio.

What are Some Tips for Your Art Studio?

Here is a swing arm mirror attached on the other side of my art studio across from my painting area. I use it to look at a painting I might have on my easel. The mirror image helps to see the painting from another perspective and perhaps find areas that need to be altered. [Read more…]

Eliminate Burnt Sienna From Your Palette

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Have you ever considered eliminating burnt sienna from your palette? After all, it’s probably one of the most popular earth toned colors found on painters’ palettes. I know it is one of my favorites and for most of my painting career, I always squirted it out of a tube. burnt sienna

[Read more…]

Have You Tried Water Mixable or Water Soluble Oils?

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Water soluble oils have arrived! Actually, they showed up in art materials stores over 20 years ago, but are just now becoming known and more frequently used. They are also called “water mixable” oils. Either will suffice, though I prefer water mixable because soluble can imply that the paint, once dried, will dissolve if it comes in contact with water.water soluble oils

I began working in water mixable oils in 2002, having been introduced to them at a plein air workshop. At that time, only a few brands were available. The most reliable and consistent was Duo by Holbein. Having come from 15 years of working in watercolors and a few years with pastels, I had not spent a lot of time with traditional oil paints. Hence, I dove in without much bias toward regular oils. [Read more…]