Casein Sketch, Krak des Chevaliers

Got inspired by James Gurney's outdoor casein sketch to haul out the caseins again. I'm trying to get used to the color shift again after working in oils for a while, but it's fun. This is from a photo (not mine) of the Krak des Chevaliers, a medieval Crusader castle in Syria. Thinking enviously of Richard Parkes Bonington and his amazing light. Caseins are a great medium for having fun--they dry absolutely matte, so they reproduce really well, and it forces you to consider your colors much more seriously than the glossy mediums like oil and acrylic because it's too easy to let the gloss "enrich" the color for you. I'm hoping these essays into casein are going to help me stay honest, color-wise.

I've taken to making up my own casein medium from powder. It's not hard, and a lot cheaper than the prepared stuff. This batch was made with casein powder soaked in tap water for a while, then mixed with a hot saturated solution of "40 Mule Team" borax. It turns into a honey-like syrup that's fun to smear around. The cool thing is that the borax also keeps the stuff from rotting for quite a while. You can make casein using ammonia or ammonium nitrate as well, but it's really prone to rotting and stinks of ammonia unless you heat it to drive it all off. Basically just making the stink go really bad for a shorter time. I've got a parrot, so I prefer to avoid those sorts of things.

Day 39, and broccoli

I don't recall having tried to paint broccoli before, which is odd since we always have it around because the parrot loves it. He alternates between liking the florets or the stems, though, and whichever part is his current favorite, the other part becomes anathema to him.

Day 38, and the last of the tomatoes

Tomato season is over, long live tomato season. Actually, this painting was done a while ago but I've been lax about posting. I miss tomatoes, though. Store-bought just doesn't cut it.

Day 37 and Some More Tomatilloes

Green is such a fun color to paint. Utterly frustrating and infuriating, but fun. And painting on a super-slick surface has its drawbacks, aswell. The paint goes down easy, but comes up just as fast, requiring some tricky brush maneuvering to keep it applying well. Sort of like trying to put down a long roll of fly-paper, or vintage chewing gum.

Day 36--Another Landscape

Just some fun with a layered landscape -foreground, middle-ground, background--in which the layers separate out completely and absolutely. It's also a view of my favorite marsh: Jacobs Point.

Day 35--A Landscape

I've realized that I don't often paint skies, which is odd since I love looking at them and constantly photograph and sketch them. This is a step toward addressing that lack, and a lot of fun to paint. It was just a really gorgeous late-winter day on the marsh with a lot of crisply-defined and clear-cut clouds. A fun mixture of blues, whites and grays.

Day 34--Tomatillos

I love tomatillos, and I love the salsa you can make with them. For painting, the contrast between the apple-green and incredibly waxy/glossy skin of the fruit and the papery translucence of the covering husk is enticing in and of itself. The board this was painted on had a very glossy surface, leading to the brush scraping off almost as much paint as it put down. Ordinarily the way around this is to pile on more paint until you're painting on and into paint (Sargent's maxim that the brush should never touch the canvas, only the paint), but I thought I'd like to use the scrapiness to try to depict the papery grain of the tomatillo husks, with limited success.