Painting (as a hobby)

Oh yeah, I remember seeing your sketchbook at brunch when we met. Good stuff! Hey, why don’t you post a few of them here? Show us some! :slight_smile:

So that shop’s not on Heping, but is on Shida road, in a lane between Grandma Nitti and Heping – is that right? I haven’t gone looking in those lanes yet, just on Hoping, and frankly, I’m a bit disappointed by the selection as well as the professional knowledge in those shops. In one, the only acrylics they had were in little student kits, with crap quality 15ml tubes. In another (which is generally the best shop I’ve found, 大時代美術設 Da4 Shi2dai4 at Heping E. Rd. Sec. 1, #109-1, ph. 2341-0083) they had only an unheard of brand name of student-grade paints, ‘alpha’, made in Korea, and the adjunct media (gesso, gel medium not labelled as to gloss vs matte, modeling paste, pumice gel medium and acrylic retarder) were all made in China. The shop next to that, 漢文 Han4wen2 (#111-1) had Winsor & Newton Galeria (higher-end student grade) acrylics, but was out of white, and didn’t have any retarder or any of the gel media (and didn’t know what I was talking about either).

I had been expecting the shops to carry at least ONE line of artist-quality stuff like Winsor & Newton’s Finity, or Golden or Liquitex, but NOOOOO. :s

I am finishing up a painting trip in New Mexico and will be arriving in Taiwan in late August to do more painting. I recently switched over to Acrylics from oils. I have discovered that I like the convenience but the dry times really killed me in a desert environment(not a problem in Taiwan). I love golden acrylics they are the best quality in my opinion. I have used Dick Blick paints and Utrecht premium they are okay. Student grade, Liquitex and Winsor Newton finity colors lack a richness and will become chalky. Use cheap paints until you see the lack of quality yourself. When you become unhappy with the results of your paints, then you know it is time to upgrade. If you don’t see it or notice it why upgrade?

I love both liquitex and golden fluidity mediums, glazing mediums, and gel mediums.

I miss the richness that can be derived from oils but I don’t miss mixing mediums and having oil paint get all over the place. For finished paintings that run between 33000 NTD and 66000 NTD I will go back to the oils. Plein Air(open air) paintings i like to do in pastels and acrylics because they are easy to transport.

If you want to paint old master style use a glazing medium. Always remember when glazing that you can only go darker in color and value.

If you are working with acrylics and can find a Masterson wet palette I would suggest getting one. IT will keep your paints for a long time. It saved me a lot of paint in a dry climate and in my home studio. I prefer wood gesseod panels for outside painting.

A great site for art supplies is www.dickblick.com they will ship to Taiwan, however the cost maybe expensive. You can always check with them they have great costumer service.

A contact for me in Hualien said I can get art supplies there, however, I am not sure of the quality. I sell my work so I believe in buying the best materials. I may have to mail order when I run out of my supplies I am bringing with me. Happy painting everyone.

If anyone is interested I can show you how to stretch and prepare your own canvases, give drawing tips, material tips, etc…

I have been teaching and selling art professionally for a few years. Just pm me or put a question up in the forum.

Cool! I’d love to see some of your work. Do you have a website? Or perhaps you could just post a few pics here.

Yeah, I did some reading on a couple sites like Wetcanvas, and heard a lot of good stuff about them, but damn they’re expensive! I’m just learning, so that kind of money would probably be wasted on me, but I did decide to get a little starter kit of 1-oz. bottles just to try them (Golden 10 Prof’l Fluid Acrylic Set Ten - 1 fl. oz. US$34.26). I want to try a portrait of Dragonbabe using them. :smiley:

Sounds like sound advice! I’ve already tried the little student kits (20 no-name 15ml tubes) and was not happy with the consistency of the raw sienna (like chalky thick toothpaste) or the coverage power of the white. I tried Alpha brand (Korean, about US$2/tube), and the pigment load was a bit better, but the brown range is a bit dull and the pigment in the Yellow Ochre wasn’t ground finely enough – I could see the particles! Sigh. So I’m mostly using Galeria now, and they seem ok to me, although I can’t for the life of me seem to get some colors to come out (there’s a particular shade I want in the turquoise range, and I want it to be pure and brilliant; I’ll bet I need a different blue and/or green to work with to get that shade). It’s fun playing, though.

I’m doing part of my piece by starting with a white base, and then putting thin layers of gel medium with a bit of pure color added (so it’s translucent) on, letting that dry, and then adding another translucent layer on top of it so the light bounces off the white ground and goes through the layers – this is for where I want rich, glowing areas. That’s essentially glazing, right? Is there a difference between using a ‘glazing medium’ and using the gel medium like I’m doing?

I did a little reading online and then set this up: a cookie pan, with 4 layers of paper towel, wettened, then a sheet of oven paper (paper impregnated with silicone resin, similar to waxed paper). I put the paints out in small amounts atop that, and then every few minutes I use a fine mist sprayer to keep them moist. So far that’s working really really well, and I can paint for hours without them drying.

Thanks, I’m already doing that.

By then I’ll probably have mail ordered a few times so maybe we can compare notes on suppliers.

[quote]If anyone is interested I can show you how to stretch and prepare your own canvases, give drawing tips, material tips, etc…
[/quote]

Cool! I may need to do that when I decide to depart from the proportions of the ready-made canvases available down by Shida (they’re all 4:3 rectangles).

Awesome, thanks! :smiley:

Have to run out, but two great places in the US to mail-order from are:

Cheap Joe’s Art Supplies…I have the catalog at home (I’m in Hawaii teaching at the moment)

Jerry’s Artarama.

Both have Web sites, and usually one or the other is pretty much the cheapest for supplies in the US. Certainly if you get a whole basketful of stuff, either one will come out much cheaper than getting things from a shop. (With apologies to the nice folks who run art shops…I do love the folks at the one in that lane near Nitti$. The sign is one of those ones with four or five reddish-orange squares vertically, one character per square. Sorry I’m giving typical foreigner-too-long-in-Taipei directions…)

You can see some of my “artwork” as I laughingly call it on waltz dot
smugmug.com

(don’t really want a lot of, erm, other visitors…so don’t want to post the proper URL in line)
Be prepared for poor perspective and distorted human figures, though!! :wink:

I do like to try to paint things that are typical in Taiwan, the things you don’t think of but which are what make you like the place.

Cool! I’d love to see some of your work. Do you have a website? Or perhaps you could just post a few pics here.

Yeah, I did some reading on a couple sites like Wetcanvas, and heard a lot of good stuff about them, but damn they’re expensive! I’m just learning, so that kind of money would probably be wasted on me, but I did decide to get a little starter kit of 1-oz. bottles just to try them (Golden 10 Prof’l Fluid Acrylic Set Ten - 1 fl. oz. US$34.26). I want to try a portrait of Dragonbabe using them. :smiley:

Sounds like sound advice! I’ve already tried the little student kits (20 no-name 15ml tubes) and was not happy with the consistency of the raw sienna (like chalky thick toothpaste) or the coverage power of the white. I tried Alpha brand (Korean, about US$2/tube), and the pigment load was a bit better, but the brown range is a bit dull and the pigment in the Yellow Ochre wasn’t ground finely enough – I could see the particles! Sigh. So I’m mostly using Galeria now, and they seem ok to me, although I can’t for the life of me seem to get some colors to come out (there’s a particular shade I want in the turquoise range, and I want it to be pure and brilliant; I’ll bet I need a different blue and/or green to work with to get that shade). It’s fun playing, though.

I’m doing part of my piece by starting with a white base, and then putting thin layers of gel medium with a bit of pure color added (so it’s translucent) on, letting that dry, and then adding another translucent layer on top of it so the light bounces off the white ground and goes through the layers – this is for where I want rich, glowing areas. That’s essentially glazing, right? Is there a difference between using a ‘glazing medium’ and using the gel medium like I’m doing?

I did a little reading online and then set this up: a cookie pan, with 4 layers of paper towel, wettened, then a sheet of oven paper (paper impregnated with silicone resin, similar to waxed paper). I put the paints out in small amounts atop that, and then every few minutes I use a fine mist sprayer to keep them moist. So far that’s working really really well, and I can paint for hours without them drying.

Thanks, I’m already doing that.

By then I’ll probably have mail ordered a few times so maybe we can compare notes on suppliers.

[quote]If anyone is interested I can show you how to stretch and prepare your own canvases, give drawing tips, material tips, etc…
[/quote]

Cool! I may need to do that when I decide to depart from the proportions of the ready-made canvases available down by Shi-Da (they’re all 4:3 rectangles).

Awesome, thanks! :smiley:[/quote]

I will be putting up some work in the near future. I will pm you my site.

Hey DB a gel medium will give a little glazing ability but to get full on transparent colours you will want to pick up either golden or liquitex glazing mediium. Gel medium will provided some translucency but in my expereince the glazing medium is fair superiour for transparency.

Thanks djkonstable! On your recommendation I’m picking up just a few Golden colors (the 1 oz. bottles are sort of affordable when on sale) and the glazing medium to try.

BTW, some Liquitex arrived yesterday, and the pigment load in them is really excellent. You can thin it with gel medium and the color stays strong. Can’t do that with student stuff. Also, the “real teal” and one purple are stunningly rich and translucent. I could paint stained glass with that level of paint quality and it would turn out beautiful.

Man, acrylics are GREAT! You can screw up an unlimited number of times and just keep painting over it. (Ideal for me, as I do screw up a lot! :smiley: )

Is it called 大八 ? One lane north of Grandma Nitti’s, on the same side too. The sign may have changed; it’s just a vertical rectangle now. Or perhaps I found the wrong shop? But when they asked who introduced me to the shop I mentioned you (a foreign lady who speaks excellent Chinese, does sketching and watercolors, and moved away a number of years ago) and they seemed to remember you.

For everyone’s reference, here’s the address:

EDIT: Bada has moved as of Sept. 2009; the new address, below, is about two alleys south of Grandma Nitti’s, and one alley to the east (Long2quan2), right next to a small park, on a corner.

台北市龍泉街87巷6號 Long2quan2 St., (one alley east of and parallel to Shi1da4 Rd.), Lane 87, #6. 2363-9307.

They have a very good variety of stuff, most of which is at reasonable prices (cheaper than mail order, after you add postage). A lot of the details here are for djkonstable’s benefit, so you know what NOT to buy in the US to bring here:

[color=blue]Acrylic paints:

Professional grade:
[b]Golden heavy 4 oz /b NT$420-1020 (then minus 20%), i.e., starting at NT$336, which is US$10.23 (at 32.86 NT / USD).

Golden Fluid 1 oz jars NT$120.

Liquitex 2 oz NT$110 (US$3.35) for most colors, $250 for specials (iridescent, metallic etc.)

Finity 59 ml tubes NT$130 - $200; compare to NT$128-$185 at AllArtSupplies.com, but after shipping that jumps to something like NT$180-NT$324/tube – so Daba is much cheaper on average. They don’t carry the larger size of Finity though.

Good quality student grade:
Winsor & Newton Galeria 60 ml tubes $80 (best choice for serious beginners in terms of quality vs. affordability, IMO)
Galeria 500 ml Titanium white was only $200, I think.

Also Rembrandt, Louvre (crap), and Holbein, with some mediums, retarders etc. in various brands, although perhaps not necessarily a complete range in every one.

glazing liquid (you have to ask for you4guang1yi4) by Golden.

gloss varnish for acrylics: has small bottles (256 ml?) of Golden for about $550, and 500ml of Rembrant brand for about $500, or something like that. [/color]
[color=brown]
Surfaces:

They carry both cotton and linen pre-primed pre-stretched canvases in a good variety of sizes. Something around 40x60 cm (roughly) might cost about $150 in canvas and $600 in linen. I’m pretty sure they have unstretched stuff too.

They have ‘canvas board’ which appears to be a very heavy cardboard or perhaps masonite covered with canvas. I think they had wood too. [/color]

[color=red]In pastels they have Van Gogh and a number of other brands. [/color]
[color=green]
In oils they have Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Holbein, Shinhan, Maimeri, Winton, Old Holland, Louvre, and Kusakabe.[/color]

They also have a wide range of brushes, acid-free papers and sketchbooks of every kind, and so on. This is a MUCH better shop than the ones on Heping (Hoping) road across from Shida. I don’t think I’ll be going back to those, nor will I be doing any more mail ordering.

I asked who their main clientele are and they said professional artists, as well as the college art student crowd. I can see why. GREAT shop – thanks Ironlady!!! :slight_smile:

[quote=“Dragonbones”]

Is it called 大八 ? One lane north of Grandma Nitti’s, on the same side too. The sign may have changed; it’s just a vertical rectangle now. Or perhaps I found the wrong shop? But when they asked who introduced me to the shop I mentioned you (a foreign lady who speaks excellent Chinese, does sketching and watercolors, and moved away a number of years ago) and they seemed to remember you.

For everyone’s reference, here’s the address:

台北市師大路83巷8號 Shi1da4 Rd., Lane 83, #8. 23639307. [/quote]
My Gawd…they have an address? I never knew… :smiley:
Yep, that’s the one. Great, aren’t they?

Here a three paintings from my trip to new mexico. They were all done plein air (in the open air, in one sitting). the images look a little dark on my monitor. I am having problems with images distorting on my computer when I flip vertical style images from horizontal format. I haven’t fixed the issue yet. Anyway here they are. I use these style paintings as studies but sometimes I sell them too. Just depends on how they turn out.

flickr.com/photos/47019613@N … otostream/

There are some old sketches of my darker work too. I don’t post anything I am going to sell or care about people using without a copyright and intellectual property of: on my other work. So at least you get an idea of some of my work.

I like the color in the NM landscapes a lot. They look so fresh. And I’m particularly envious of your 30 min figure drawings.

Thanks ironlady I appreciate the nice comments. I have been doing figure drawings since I was 16 but I haven’t done much in the last 3-4 years because of lack of access to models or programs that offer open figure drawing. Models are expensive too and I used my money for other stuff. If you want to see some other stuff just pm me and I will give you a link to my regular site.

There are zillions of nude photos on the web you could work from – and many are very tasteful, artistic shots. Check out places like nudes-gallery.com, and http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1813. An hour or two browsing should pick up some good material for sketching and painting. :idunno: Ok, so it’s not quite the same as live, but with a big monitor it’s not such a bad alternative. Or get a local SO who doesn’t mind posing. :wink:

Or start up the Forumosa Nude Painters Group, during which everyone takes it all off after putting a nice point on those brushes, and paints each other (scary thought!) :smiley: Well, it would keep the Temp Forum full of images, at least…