art

Sleeping Son, in Graphite

sleeping boy
This is the only finished artwork I have of one of my children that was done completely from real life. It is considered preferable to paint or draw from a real subject, as opposed to using a photograph. But how does one get a child to sit still, even for five minutes? This son in particular was an extremely busy four-year-old, the age he was when I did this drawing. So I captured him asleep. And as one of his teachers reminded me recently, he still has a hard time sitting still.

Havdalah in oils

havdalah by Leora Wenger, oil painting
I did this painting about two years ago. The subject is havdalah, the ceremony after the end of Shabbat that we do every week. After saying the havdalah prayer, my husband pours a little wine (or grape juice) unto a plate, and I put the candle in the liquid to extinguish the flame. Can spot the two little cloves, symbolic of the besamim (spices) that we smell so we should have a good week? (Shavua tov = good week)

The havdalah in oils painting has a Rembrandtesque quality that I love.

My Wandering Eye

four cupsI tend to be fond of blogs with visual content. Not surprising, as I am an artist. So here’s where I’ve been recently:

  • Batya posted scenes of spring last week. It is fun to compare spring in one part of the world to the other; at first I mistook her grape vine shot for forsythia, but now that I can compare the two photos I see that grape vines are much woodier.
  • Poor Batya! It seems that her monitor is broken, as she again reported here. Do you think she can find one in this office of monitors? Meanwhile, Pesky Settler starting naming her photos, and my favorite is the fig.
  • I’ve been noticing that A Simple Jew has simply great visual taste. Take a look at this landscape painting, by Rhode Axel who I think is really Meir Alexlrod(1902-1970), a Russian artist who may have never even seen the subject of the painting, namely the Golan. Note the use of cool, distancing blue in the background against the complementary warm fiery orange in the foreground. Another interesting visual choice by A Simple Jew: a bearded father reads a great big book, presumably a gemarah, while the little boy in a cap plays the violin. Contrast it with the subject matter of the post; in the drawing, it is the boy who yearns for the father’s attention. In the post, Chabakuk Elisha asks how can we get kids attracted to Yiddishkeit.
  • Finally, I posted a comment to this post on Iconia, and I got an email back asking me about my artwork in connection to religion. Like my four cups or candles. Stay tuned for more at a later point…

Salty Sponge Cake Painting

Sponge Cake
You have two choices. You can either clean or paint. Which would you pick? This past Sunday I did a little of both. I got the painting finished, and my freezer is almost all cleaned.

Here was the creative process:

  1. Come up with an idea. It’s time for the latest KCC, a blog carnival overseen by this creative cook, and I want to submit my sponge cake recipe. But whenever I submit a recipe, I photograph it. I only make sponge cake on Passover. Who has the patience to separate all those eggs the rest of the year? So I decided it would be easier to paint a sponge cake (this is how my mind works).
  2. Fine tune the idea and find a method. I email Jill: how do I do that salting watercolor technique again? We end up with a lovely post and include a painting by Jill sort of like a Van Gogh, that I call “Salty Night.”
  3. Make some sketches.
    This was my first sketch:cake sketch 1
    My husband said it looked like a cake. But on the other hand, he said, one might mistake it for a hat. Sort of like the famous drawing by the narrator of the Little Prince, I said.
  4. Second sketch: I go to Google image and look up sponge cake. I’m inspired to draw this sketch:
    sketch of cake, 2
    Can’t mistake this one for a hat. The cake plate helps, too.
  5. Set up my space: I print Jill’s email with the salting watercolor directions, tape the watercolor paper unto a piece of masonite, and draw a final sketch. I purposely placed the subject matter slightly to the left, instead of in the center, to increase interest. Note in this photo how I put in arrow to show the direction of light. I later erased the arrow.set up area
  6. Wet the area. One usually starts a watercolor by wetting the area that you want to paint.
  7. Apply the salt and paint. And I painted. I made one side a little darker. I added bits of alizarin crimson to my shadows, for fun. My son says it looks like mabul cake (you have to know both English and Hebrew to get this joke: mabul means flood and sometimes I make mabul cake for Parshat Noach, you know, the one with the flood). My husband says it looks like pound cake. OK, I’ll take that.
  8. Review the painting. Did the salt technique work? I brought it over to Jill this morning. We agree that the painting worked over all, but the salting works better with: 1) more paint 2) darker colors 3) larger area.

Stay tuned for my sponge cake recipe. Coming soon. At least, before April 7.

Salting In Watercolor Painting

Jill teaches art in Highland Park. Stay tuned for Leora’s attempt at a “salty” painting.

Salting is a fun technique for adding texture to your watercolor painting. It works by absorbing water and pushing away the pigment around each grain of salt. You just use regular table salt, but the larger grain Kosher salt can offer you further texture possibilities.

Salting works best on darker and fully saturated color. You lay down paint on the area, then throw salt where you want the effect while it’s still wet. Working quickly is of the essence, so have all your paints and tools ready to go. The secret is too not over do it with the amount of salt. If you put on too much you won’t see where the individual grains have absorbed the water and pushed away the color around it.

It looks particularly nice for representing snow or ocean spray in a seascape, but also just a good general textural device. You can experiment with larger amounts of salt just to built various textures. Fun stuff.

Salty Night

Enjoy, and I’ll post more techniques soon.

Art Teacher Jill

Garden Watercolor

garden watercolor

It was one of those days. So, to make myself feel better, I uploaded a watercolor I did a few months ago. See the original photo here.

My friend who has graduated from my stage in life (her youngest is twenty-years old, and she has 5 daughters) said she remembers when her kids were younger: if she was working, she felt like she should be with her kids. If she was with her kids, she felt should be working.

Today, when I had the opportunity to do some artwork, I felt I should be working. And when I went back to working, I wished I could spend more time doing artwork. And I’m with my kids… my mind is on art, work, blogging…My daughter is calling me now…

Artsy Links

Broccoli Drawing

broccoli
Here’s a drawing I did for a post I am planning. The post is going to be about getting kids to eat healthy. Or about giving up trying. Probably both. See “Broccoli for dessert“…

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