Small Self Portrait in Watercolor (Yes I have been wearing a sheet over my head, and yes my chest hair is glorious).

New Watercolor Self Portrait.

 (Watercolor on Fabriano 140lb Rough, 6*6 Inches)

This is one of two new small watercolor portraits that I am have been working on.  I rather enjoy working on a smaller scale, not because I am afraid of working on large scale, which simply is not the case.  I find small paintings can be equally captivating and require the viewer to get close. I actually am working on a 3ft by 6ft figure in a landscape in oil. 

I do no work from photos, only from life, so yes I have been sitting in my studio with a colorful sheet over my head, and yes my chest hair is glorious.  

Thanks for checking in.

Four Peaks Sunrise in Watercolor

Caught this beautiful sunrise this morning at Papago Park in Scottsdale AZ, looking over the East Valley and the Four Peaks.

I need to develop the foreground much more to make this painting more pleasant.  I will post more more pictures after I do this tomorrow.

Also I thought it would make for a more interesting composition by putting the actual rising sun off center to the right.  Too often there is a sun directly in the middle of a painting, and although it looks so appealing, I like to change things up.

"Four Peaks Sunrise. Watercolor On Paper 9 * 12 inches.

Just thought I would share a small detail of a rather large piece of work.

The piece is 3ft by 6ft, oil on canvas glued to panel and oil primed. I will only be posting small details until the piece is finished.  I will also be posting about how to rabbit skin glue and oil prime canvas aswell.

This detail is probably only 5 inches by 5 inches.

Watercolor Paint.

A Little About Watercolor Paint.

As many of you know there are a million and one articles talking about watercolor paint.  Blogs that talk about pans vs. tubes.  Sites like handprint talk about pigments down to a molecular level and have countless hours of research backing lightfast, and permanency tests.  So the question now becomes "what the hell could I offer you in regards to information about watercolor paint?"  The answer to that question is, "a little experience, a little fact, allot of love for the medium, and allot of silly opinions."

Why Should You Care About Your Paint?

Should you care about your paint?  That's a tough question to answer.  There are many painters out there who picked up painting as a fun and rewarding hobby for the weekend.  There are also many painters out there who have retired from their long careers and decided at one point watercolor was the medium for them.  This decision came, probably after seeing a fun video of Alvaro Castagnet, Charles Reid, Joseph Zbuvic, James Gurney or countless other high energy watercolorists.  You also have the students who are always looking to save a buck and go for "student" quality paint.  

My opinion on the matter, however useless it is, is that this is a craft.  We all have different commitment levels to this craft so our priorities are different.  My priority is to be in charge of every aspect of my painting, from the support(paper, canvas, or panel), to the paint, brushes and medium.  I like to take any guess work out of the equation as far as materials go so that I can focus purely on executing a decent painting.  I think (I probably should stop doing that) that once you start looking at your work as professional and start comparing yourself to other working artists, you will see how much more involved you become in every facet of your work.  Just some opinions.

So... lets talk about paint.

Grade of Paint.

Paint manufacturers generally market and sell their paints as either a "student/studio" quality paint or as "artist" quality.  What does this mean?  Let's talk about it!

-Student Grade

A student grade paint, is a paint that is made with cheap, inexpensive pigments that are usually mixed to imitate more expensive rare earth pigments found in artist grade paints.  These "student" grade paints generally have quite a bit of filler in them which actually results in you having to use more paint.  

-Artist Grade.

An artist grade paint is going to be quite a different experience than using a "student" grade paint.  The paint is packed with finely milled, expensive pigments with less filler, which means you actually use less and achieve brighter washes and color mixtures.  Unlike many of the "student" grade paints that mix several pigments to achieve a certain hue, "artist" grade paints more often than not are single pigment colors.

-Conclusion.  

Personally, my opinion(which is quite insignificant), is that you buy the best materials.  Learn with them, grow with them and take the bad materials out of the equation.  I am very aware that there are artists out there who kick major ass using cheap paints.  Steven Cronin, has a fantastic Youtube channel where you can watch him do magic with a cheap hake brush, a cheap palette, and only a handful student grade colors.  I was even reading somewhere on James Gurney's blog(which you without a doubt should follow daily) that he doesn't really care what quality paint he uses regarding oil paint.  I've worked with them both and always will prefer the finer of the two.

Half Pans or Tubes?

This topic is always up for debate, and like almost anything, it comes down to personal preference. I might be able to give you some information about the two so you could have a better idea of what you are buying.

-Pans.

Size comparison between half and full pan.  On the left is the half on the right is the full(minus some paint).

Watercolor paint, is generally sold in a moist buttery consistency which is packaged in tubes.  The popular alternative to this, is semi-moist watercolor cakes sold in either a half or full pan size.  The pans are formulated slightly different so that they can essentially be rewetted and used for the rest of your natural life.  These pans are popularly used in watercolor travel palettes and contain an ample amount of paint to create large paintings.  One of the downsides to these pans is that you can ware the tips off those nice expensive brushes you love so much.  Moral of the story, drop some water on each cake about a half an hour before you paint so they are good to go.

-Tubes.

Different sized tubes.  Left to Right; 5ml, 10ml, 15ml, and a 20ml.

Watercolor paint also comes in the very popular moist tube format.  These tubes are generally in sizes of 5ml, 10ml, 14ml, 37ml, and with brands like Old Holland and Winsor & Newton's Cotman they come in 4ml and 8ml.  First of all, more often than not tubed watercolors are a more economical choice than pan watercolors.  Especially since you can buy the small plastic pans that the cakes come in for cheap online and fill them with the tube watercolors(boom).  Many modern tube watercolors like Sennelier, Daniel Smith, and M. Graham use honey to keep their paints moist and easily rewet-table.  For example I have poured Sennelier and M. Graham out in a pan, and unlike all the other brands they stay sticky and soft for weeks.

-Conclusion. 

I personally will always choose to buy tube watercolors because you get more for the money.  Though when I really have some money burning a hole in my pocket I might buy a couple half pans just because I can.

Which Brands Should You Use?

I won't tell you which brands to use.  But I will throw a few names out there, and no matter which ones you choose, you will be getting great paint.

Some brands I love are...

-Utrecht (Very high quality paint, but definitely dries the hardest out of all of these)(Made in U.S.A)

-M. Graham (Made in U.S.A. and all color are great)

-Sennelier (Made in France, they come in affordable 20ml tubes online)

-Winsor Newton (Made in France.  Liking this brand less and less but still very quality paint)

-Holbein (Made in Japan)

Thanks For Wasting Some Time On My Blog!

Bottom line, thanks for reading.  I hope you keep on making beautiful paintings!  I would like to hear about them so email me if you want!  Also if you find materials interesting and like geeking out over all things art!  I suggest you check out the Suggested Donation Podcast!  It is such an amazing source of knowledge and inspiration.  Better yet, listen to their podcast, while buying some new paint and making those beautiful paintings I was talking about!

Tony Curanaj and Edward Minoff-- Suggested Donation Podcast Creators

With Love- Spencer Simmons

Palette Talk 

For this first post I wanted to talk about materials.  I know that many people including myself scour the web and YouTube for pictures, videos and articles reviewing artist materials.  For as much amazing information that exists on these materials I feel there is just not enough.  As artists we want to know as much about a material or tool as we can before we lay down our money and buy it.  Taking that into consideration, we must not forget one of the most crucial aspects of creating.  Failure.  It is important we try things and learn what we do and do not want in our arsenal.

I will do my part, and show materials I have and use on a regular basis, and my insignificant opinions on them.  If this blog serves no other purpose but to make you drool over stuff like paint, brushes and palettes, I have done something right.

The two palettes I have at the moment are both metal foldable palettes. The larger one, is a Daniel Smith, twelve whole-pan metal watercolor box.

This palette is fantastic.  Rest assured that if you can get your hands on one of these boxes it is worth every cent.  I believe I payed something like sixty-five dollars on it late one night.  This just happened to be one of the best late night purchases I have ever made.  

The palette came with twelve empty plastic pans, which you can take out and organize with half pans if your heart so desired to.  Mine did.  

The palette has allot going for it.  it is actually quite small when folded up and will fit in nearly any day bag or purse.  The whole pans hold a rather generous amount of paint.  There is room in the middle of the palette which you could put an eraser or pencils, or really any thing you could fit.  I never used this feature except on occasion I would put a damp paper towel in it which would aid in keeping the paints moist.  The weight on the palette is fantastic, it actually feels like you are holding something which is a trait that many of the plastic palettes out there do not posses.  

The actual painting surface is coated with a white enamel, and though skeptical at first having painted on plastic palettes for years, I quickly fell in love with the beauty in the interaction of paint with it's surface.  

As great as this palette is, surprisingly, it is not a palette I really use anymore.

The Golden Child

I fell in love with this tiny metal bijou box and let me assure you unlike your high school sweet heart, this is True love.

"Small." "Cute." "Adorable."  I know that these are all words going through your mind, but I am thinking "compact" and "durable."  In my experience something that I could put in my pocket and always have on me is a tool that I will use.

Yellow ochre and raw sienna hanging out together in a half pan.

The boxes I own side by side with my hand for size references.  Though both boxes are sold by two different companies, I believe that these boxes come from the same Italian manufacturer called Fome.  They are built the same way, one is just a "mini-me" version.

I found that there is really no restrictions as far what you can paint because of the limited mixing space.  For sketching the palette's limited mixing space is more than enough to accomplish 9*12 inch painting.  When I want to paint larger I use a small cut in half piece of a watercolor palette for big washes.  If you don't believe me on the capabilities of this small paint box, check out the artist Tony Foster's website.  Foster paints on a massive scale on rolled paper up to 3ft * 6ft using this same type of bijou palette.   

Paint box, plus cut in half plastic palette used for large washes. 

Now that you know what kind of palette I use to paint with, maybe you would like to know what kind of paint I put in it.

Left to right; Cadmium Red, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Lemon, Viridian, Cerulean, Cobalt, and Ultramarine.

I have used many different paint brands, and many different colors but I have managed to narrow down my palette to twelve colors, which at times seems to be too much.  I will go into paint brands and colors in a future post but if you were about to order some paint in a couple minutes or go to the store, all I can say is, buy artist quality pigments.  

The image above is what you will find in my palette at any given time, and depending on if I am doing some pleinair work at night you may find a tube of ivory black and some opaque titanium white watercolor.

Hopefully this post has been somewhat useful.

Welcome to my blog!  I thought it would be a cool idea to make a blog which would keep record of my work, and offer other insightful information that will help you on your artistic journey.  Thanks for stopping by!