Kat Johnston

Tag: Canvas

  • Painting: A little something in progress

    A painting I currently have in progress. Giraffes are cute!

    This is a little something I’m working on at the moment. I’m happy with how it is progressing, but it still has a bit of work left to go!

    I’ve only been home a bit over a month now, having returned from living and working in Tokyo, Japan. It was definitely a different experience from living at home, especially when it came to my capacity to create. While sketches and drawings were easy enough to do, I lacked a good workspace to paint in, and I must admit to missing my computer at home quite a bit. While the laptop did work well for simple things, actually working on anything graphics-intensive was a little difficult… which is why I didn’t produce much in Second Life while I was over there.

    Good thing I’m home now, huh?

    There is a lot I already miss about Japan. How couldn’t there be? Convenient and delicious food, fantastic fashion, a public transport system that is second to none… it was awesome. There’s nothing quite like waking up in the morning and deciding, ‘You know what? I think I’ll pop on down to Harajuku today and do some window-shopping before I head to work.’ It is an incredible place to live and work in, and I was blessed with a fantastic company to work for and people to work with. But I’ll tell you a little secret: I’m glad to be home again too!

    Oh the land of meat pies… the land of sausage-rolls, decent sausages and houses that have more than a couple of rooms. I have my studio back, and for that I am grateful. So what better way to make use of it than by getting some painting done? Admittedly, one would think that my first decent painting after getting back would be of something related to Japan, or to Tokyo, but this one has a theme that is a little bit more offbeat. I hope it turns out well!

  • Painting: Some more of my bunny in progress.

    [image title=”Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be…” size=”large” id=”1387″ align=”center” alt=”Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be…” linkto=”viewer” ]

    A little further along, I’m continuing with the progress shots of the other day. I’ve been doing a bit more work on my bunny here and there, and thought I’d better put up a couple more pictures! In this particular one, the bunny has become a bit more refined and I’ve done some rough sketching of the viney curly things for the background. When I do this, I do it in water-colour pencils, so that I can easily remove and rearrange the marks as I need to. I find this, for me, to be a better way of doing it than lead pencil, or pastel, which seem to be a bit harder to remove completely, especially from darker surfaces. Water-colour pencils in a light shade provide enough of a mark without any view to permanency that might occur with other mediums. A simple smudge of the finger or a tiny bit of water and a smudge, and the marks disappear. Perfect for sketching straight onto a canvas… and we all know how I like to sketch!

    Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: cute cute bunnies, just as cute as can be.

    And now a little further along again – I’ve used a fine brush to describe the curling vine-like growths behind the bunny here with a darkish shade. The painting is not yet done – the curling viney thingies are far too precise around the edges – very sharp. I’m thinking that I need some purple, some orange, some vibrancy… I still need to lift out pieces here and there, and, well, I dunno! I’m still working it out. In other words, stay tuned! There is more to come.

  • Sketch: Lincraft responds.

    Kat Johnston Sketch – look… I’m running out of witty lines. Or even smart ones. You’re just going to have to deal with… this!Kat Johnston Sketch – look… I’m running out of witty lines. Or even smart ones. You’re just going to have to deal with… this!

    None of this has anything to do with the sketch – we’re ignoring it today and moving onto the other stuff.

    The other day I wrote a bit of a rant about Lincraft regarding the state of canvasses they sold me a few weeks ago – an annoyingly sticky, gummy residue was left along with cardboard when I pulled away the packaging, leaving the rather unpleasant job of having to do more work to prep the front of the canvas for painting. Although I did pick them up on sale, it still left me feeling rather grumpy over it all. After all, you buy a pre-prepared canvas, you expect to be able to use it straight out of the plastic without having to worry about doing more work or worrying if it is going to work at all. I may have been a little harsh, but I do tend to get that way when it comes to being overly annoyed over things that are as they should not be.

    So this morning I awake and undergo my regular daily schedule: reluctantly open eyes, crawl from under the covers, go downstairs, check e-mail and so on – my rant already quite forgotten. I have a fairly short memory at times and there were more concerning things to worry about… like who was going to make me a peppermint tea for breakfast. With barely contained surprise, between the spam and Facebook notices I noticed a contact form result in my inbox… from Lincraft.

    I have a new-found respect for Lincraft now. There are a lot of businesses not yet utilizing the plethora of opportunities currently available to monitor the buzz about their company online, let alone respond to it – Lincraft has. With a sincerely worded apology for the faults of the product and an assurance that it was an old line, the whole experience feels a lot… better. As if going back to get a canvas from Lincraft again tomorrow maybe wouldn’t be as bad an idea as it would have been yesterday, and as if they do take the whole customer satisfaction and product quality thing seriously (at least on a corporate level).

    So I guess my post today is about giving credit where credit is due. Thanks Lincraft, for harnessing the power of ‘teh internets’ (and probably Google Alerts) to respond so quickly and personably to the problem I had with that product. It is appreciated.

  • Sketch: Note to self, don’t buy canvasses from Lincraft, even when desperate.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: a boy, with quite a haircut… or lack of it. That is all, move along, Sir.

    I’ve come to a few conclusions today. They are as follows:

    1. I just cannot paint with the tv going. Or with a dvd playing. Or anything else that requires more concentration than good ole fashioned music of a variety that makes me smile. There are many things I can do with the background noise of a good cop tv drama. Painting is just not one of them.

    2. I find it devilishly hard to work on a painting while my husband is home. It just doesn’t work. He wants to ‘watch’ or ‘be in the room’ or… well… something. Something loving and kind and adorable, but nonetheless frustrating (even if he’s doing absolutely nothing at all). Love you sweetie, but somehow, it just doesn’t work.

    3. Even when desperate, despite the fact that they’re on special for half off and they are just the size I need, I should not purchase canvasses from Lincraft. What in the hell was I thinking anyway?

    Lets continue the rant about the third item there, shall we? Yes, I admit it – I often buy my canvasses because due to a combination of laziness and lack of an electric saw capable of perfect mitre cuts, I don’t make my own. That said, I don’t generally make the mistake of buying them from Lincraft of all places – and for good reason. A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through the city, headed to Lincraft to pick up paint. I was out of a couple of colours, and lets face it, paintings are generally pretty hard to do without black and white. Mine are, anyway.

    I decided to have a look throughout the whole store – lo and behold, the canvasses were on special. Funnily enough, I needed some, so thought ‘what they hey? They’re half off, surely that is a deal I can’t pass up!’ How stupid am I? And more importantly, how stupid are they? Who in their right mind uses a stupidly gummy adhesive (for its purpose) to affix a piece of glossy paper to the actual front of the canvas? Uh huh folks, you heard me right. You can’t pull away the stupid piece of paper without leaving a sticky, gummy, obstinate bit of residue behind on the canvas itself.

    Now I realize that the people who generally buy their canvasses from Lincraft are more than likely not in the game of producing fine art (no offence to those who do, mind you), but come on! From the very second that someone tries to tear away at your piece of useless self-promotion, they’re having to rub away at the canvas to get rid of adhesive that shouldn’t have been on that part of the canvas in the first place. Even the people producing dollar store canvasses have worked out that you can affix a piece of paper with the relevant details by folding a few corners, and if necessary, affixing to the edges which aren’t generally used as a display portion of the paintable surface.

    So I post this now – as a warning (and as a general rant. I like to rant now and then). For god’s sake, go to a cheapie store and buy your canvasses there over getting them at Lincraft. At least you might start off with a fully paintable surface when you do.

  • In the Studio.

    Kat Johnston - A work in progress is always fun, isn't it?

    I decided that I would throw up a work in progress for you, since I have been throwing up sketches left and right recently. Unfortunately, due to study commitments, the ability to find enough time to go and paint at all has been difficult. Nevertheless, before the work-load got too over the top, I was able to get started on this piece of work.

    A while back, I did a series of artworks which involved a lot of experimentation… some of it worked, some of it didn’t. What I did find during that series, however, was a technique I think I will be coming back to again and again since the results were so ideally perfect that I was literally bouncing up and down clapping my hands after I put the final coat of glaze over the piece. Long story short, the technique is just a particular method of building up colour and producing a fine texture across the work.

    When I discovered this pre-stretched canvas along with all the rest, I knew it was a perfect opportunity to play with something along those lines again. The canvas has a rather pronounced imperfection which makes it unsuitable for ‘regular’ artworks. There is a huge gouge in the smooth surface of the canvas which just makes it unworkable for me (which can’t even be seen by this far-away shot of the canvas… its there, trust me). When I see something like this, however, I can’t help but feel that it is an opportunity to play with it, to turn this imperfection into something beautiful rather than shunning it for marring a perfectly otherwise-useable canvas. Its a canvas that is going to make me work around it, rather than the other way around. Quirky, but fun, because I think we’re going to be challenging each other a bit along the way.