Author Archives: Grivante

About Grivante

I am a 38yo Writer, Artist and by day salesman. I live, work and am learning to play in beautiful North Idaho. Each day is a new adventure and I am enjoying exploring all of the colors around me.

New Project and Palette Book Update

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Two things cooking at the moment. The first is I met with Chris from Just Canvas this week to see his prototype for my canvas sketchbook/palette color book. He had a great start and it was very close to what I had in mind. He is going to retool it and have a new version ready to look at sometime next week. As soon as I get it, I will of course post some pictures. I think the idea will work for many other artists well beyond what my concept is for.

The second thing is I had an image pop into my head that I want to paint, but I suspect it may be more of a challenge than I can manage. One of the biggest challenges with Scyring is the inability thus far to produce purposeful detail. I can do accidental detail and vague detail, but when I want to do something on purpose, at least on a small canvas scale it is near impossible, so I am trying to envision images that can be done with what I know works so far.

I think this might work, but I also think it may end up looking nothing like I intend it. I did the following rudimentary sketch and have started to sketch an outline on the canvas for painting. It is a spectre of the stars gazing down at something, it might be the flower as depicted in the preliminary sketch, it may be a pool of waters containing stars or it maybe something else entirely.

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Updates

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Been kind of a slow week. Painted yesterday, didn’t love the outcome and the pictures I took were too blurry, later in the evening when trying to spray one of the dogs to get them to quiet down I ended up dowsing both of the current works in progress and ruining them…so, back to the drawing board.

The one I was working on yesterday was a landscape piece, it started out with the purple spot shown on the middle right and I was going to make a Seuss type flower out of it, but instead decided it would become a moon after I used an Orange Pansy to make the mountainy scene below it instead of just ground. Later I added Purple Pansy for the sky over a mix of Orange Marigold and Yellow Pansy. Lastly I put a splash of blue from the Purple Pansies on the land to try and make a water feature…all in all it was probably for the best that it got splashed.

Sorry this picture is a little on the blurry side.

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This is what it looked like after getting splashed.

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And this is what it currently looks like after I stripped away the bottom half and then accidentally sprayed some Gaia’s Gold(a veggie wash/cleaner) that hit the top of it. My intention was to reuse the top half and do this image of a cloaked figure I have in my head, but I think I will be doing that on another piece now and will probably start fresh on this one. I don’t know if it translates in the picture, but here the spots are an almost fluorescent green.

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The other project I have been working on was my attempt to do something other than a mix of blues and purples. I used the Orange Lily, Its Anthers, Orange Marigold and Yellow Pansy for the four corners and then because it was there, Raspberry juice for the center from some berries that Lisa was working with. It made for an interesting, bright and shiny color but really didn’t do anything for the piece.

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Lastly a quick update on my science experiment for color storage. I accidentally…see didn’t pay any attention too, water the Orange Lily I bought and it dried up within a week and most of the leaves fell off along with the majority of the Anther’s drying up and becoming useless, so, I went and checked the samples I had placed in the fridge and the freezer, the Anthers were as perfect as the day I put them in there, the leave seemed to be holding up as well.

At present I can say refrigeration will certainly help prolong the usefulness of Anther’s and possibly of petals as well. More on this as time passes.

Oh and last but not least, I have been discussing having a Canvas Sketchbook made with a local canvas stretcher, it looks like my Canvas Palette Book will soon be a reality.

Green House Beginnings

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What does one do when they need more colors to work with? Buy new flowers? Yes, that is certainly an option, but better yet is to give your supplier more tools to create them for you with…ok, so technically I had already been planning to build the greenhouse to increase the food supply, but now it has even more uses.

Thus, this weekend I finally broke ground on what will be our first greenhouse. I’ll post pictures to show its progress as I work on it, which may mean about once every six months, I like to take my time since I have no idea what I am doing and really like to think about where that nail needs to go before I bother getting my hammer out.

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I have been diagnosed with…

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Lisa told me I am suffering from Klepto Flora…now she’s not a Psychiatrist, but she does play one sometimes when we do Improv and she does a great accent, so I tend to take her psychiatric advice quite seriously.

Evidently she views the way I have been eyeing gardens around town and plotting the movements of their owners for the best time to stroll by and sample their wares as a clinically diagnosable condition.

I stand by my earlier assertion, I don’t have a problem, I have a passion.

That being said…if there is someone who has a garden full of fabulous colors and they would like to invite me over to paint in it, please leave me a comment and we can talk. Anything that keeps my name off the police blotter sounds like a good idea.

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Project #6 Blue Eyed Beast

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This piece, originally seen here as a work in progress

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is now completed. While I am still trying to capture the combination of yellows and blues that I saw when I was doing my first test piece, this is where I ended up going.

I realized when I had the above that the yellow pansy was not having the same effect as the Black Lily anther, but I was enjoying the abstract cloud effect of the purple pansy. The swirling arms coming out of the mass gave me the idea of completing the piece in blue and then putting a purple creature over it.

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In the end, it was a little darker purple than I had been going for and it took some playing around to get it to where I liked it. I’d still like to see a little more definition in the beast and I have really struggled to get his blue eye to pop.

I added the planet at the bottom of the piece to give it a nice invasion feel and then I decided his creepy clawed arms weren’t enough so I started adding what I thought would be bombs…turns out I might have been slightly more influenced by our trip to see Sperm! The Musical the night before then I realized as it now looks like the creature is shooting his load at the planet/egg beneath him.

Art is always subjective, so see it as I intended or as it turned out or however you like, I just hope you enjoy it.

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1,2,3,5 What?

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One might wonder if I am simply bad at math or if something sinister is afoot…I would have to say the latter.

Consider it more a lesson learned in what the sinister effects of leaving a window open with art on the table might be when the sprinkler is set on a timer and you are up on top of some mountain picking Huckleberries and well, here’s the lesson…

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I had been working on the above and the below, two separate pieces, one of 5 tiles and the other of 3. One was for Lisa the other for my mother. Essentially the same concept, letters on canvas squares to spell out Vixen, my nickname for Lisa and of course, Mom.

I was most of the way finished, with the one’s for Lisa, they were made up of Black Hollyhock and the yellow from the Black Lily anther, a coat or two of this makes the most vibrant yellow I have been able to find thus far, plus it’s dry powdery consistency makes it blend with other colors better than moist colors.

The first picture above shows what happened to most of the pieces. I had to essentially wash the canvas off and start over at that point and it was towards the end of the Black Lilies life, by the time I went to pluck their anthers to redo the yellow…well, I was too late, and thus, project #4 is unfinished until either next year or until I find something else to use in its place.

Here is a picture of the mostly reworked E as well as a spot that got hit by it being in the kitchen…

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The moral:

Most important, probably best not to store your artwork in the kitchen…but we live in a small house…so I’ll continue to live dangerously for now.

Second, don’t get an unfinished piece of Scrye work wet, not even a little. Water will instantly damage the integrity and in some cases completely wash away your work. It might add some interesting effects, but unless you are wanting to explore that as an option, keep your work safe until it is completed and you get a chance to coat it.

Color Storage Experiment

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Today I began an experiment with the orange Lilies’. As I do not have any use for the colors they are giving at the moment, I figured now was a good as time as any to see if harvesting the essential parts and saving them in various means might yield fruit.

They have to retain their moisture so until I learn of some other possibilities I have placed a few anther wrapped in a leaf into both the refrigerator and the freezer and will take them out in a few weeks and see how the colors are holding up.

It is mostly the anthers that I am concerned with as they tend to lose their gusto over time as their pollen is harvested or just dries out.

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Red & White Petunia’s hijacked from a gas station

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Last night on our way home from seeing Sperm! The Musical at the Panida in Sandpoint, ID, I raided the Petunia’s at the gas station on the way out of town.

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While my criminal ways may be increasing, it is all in the name of art. The white flower was like most and did nothing other than leave a dirty smudge on the pages of the palette book. The red however left a decent purple, with a strange silver/grey spot at the center. I am not sure what part of the flower caused it, but I hope to get some more samples to try and see if it can be isolated. As of yet I have not had any luck in finding a color such as that.

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Palette Book Reveal

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I went to the store today in search of the holy frozen Pizza grail and found it, but along the way I found something else that was yellow and orange, kind of like cheese on a pizza.

As I pulled in to the parking lot, I saw a woman carrying out a bright orange Lily. It wasn’t a Day Lily either, which I have had no luck with yet, but the asian kind, like the Black Lily that has great purples and that fabulous yellow. I went in and went to the flower section.

Bursting from the shelves were bright orange flowers and huge anthers loaded with pollen. I immediately wanted to load them all in my cart, but I was after pizza and I was also on a budget. I picked out a medium sized one that has lots of blooms left to come on, but that also had a few open and ready for sampling.

I was happy and excited until I looked up and saw the even bigger purple and white Lilies, with bulging dark orange anthers, the orange Lily had a brown anther that I wasn’t sure what color it might give.

I plucked a couple of the anthers off the other plant and dropped them in with mine, grand theft anther…all in the name of color.

I decided now was as good a time as any to put the samples in the current Palette Book and take a few pictures to show what it looks like. This is from one of the orange pages, the book is separated in the old grade school ROY G. BIV format.

Here you can see the color results from the Orange Lily, the first is from the leaf, it dries a little on the peach side, with streaks of purple in it from somewhere.

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The anther gives a nice burnt umber brown that will go really nice doing dirt, forest floors and maybe tree trunks. Unfortunately, though I love yellow, red and orange, I am definitely in something of a blue period. They give me calm.

The next picture is the whole page thus far. In addition to the orange Lily and Anther, you see Orange Marigold and the Anther I borrowed from the white and purple Lilie’s.

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It is important to note, this palette book is more of a thick card stock paper, what I picture a water color painter would use. I have yet to try these out on canvas. Someday soon I hope to find a canvas paged book to start a canvas palette book with.

If anyone knows of something like that that exists, please let me know.

I’ll do more palette pages over time.

Project#5 Purple Sun, Purple Flowers w/Purple Pansies, Yellow Pansies & Black Hollyhocks

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This is the first piece I am considering completed of sorts. I again set out to accomplish the vision I had of mixing yellow’s and blue’s and seeing what I could do with it, only to put the Black Hollyhock into play and changing the scope of the piece.

Most of the painting is done with the purple and yellow Pansies to create the blue atmosphere, there is a strip of Black Lily along the bottom and then the sun and flowers were done with Black Hollyhock.

In the end I think there are some really cool aspects to it and I am starting to learn more of what certain flowers are going to do, plus I think it shows the potential of the medium to do more than abstract hues and tones.

However, my thumbs were thoroughly sore afterwards.

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The hazy butterfly shape is from a Yellow Marigold, I plucked from the parking lot of Best Buy in Coeur D’alene, my son shook his head when I stopped and opened the car door, reached out, grabbed it and drove away. I don’t have a problem…just a passion.

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