I am creating a series of “picture poem” posts…sections of my “Sky Paintings”, which I have been sharing on Facebook.
My Mom does not “do” Facebook…so I am putting this series together for her to be able to see the Sky Paintings. Here’s to you, Mom…enjoy.
Sky Paintings I: Hollywood
Sun and Rain: The Magic
Picture Poem: Palm Balm When the Rainbow is Enough
Hollywood magic after the rain…looks like a stage set…appropriate
Sunset over Wilshire, Santa Monica
From a greater distance…the clouds are lighting up, it’s showtime
At an earlier moment in time…under a cloud-swept sky
Long-flowing cloud stretches over palms standing out against the sky in stark relief, silhouetted by the brilliant sun
Palms frame the main attraction, a tree’s filigree network of leaves and branches set off by the backdrop of sunset-painted sky
Poised…so many Palms…so much dignity
Drifting off into the clouds..the other side of Wilshire! (Santa Monica, CA)
Heading East up Wilshire after a rainstorm…and seeing the magic of light impacting water
Double Vision
Double Vision…stretching all the way across…such a privilege to witness this splendor
Seeing Red…Santa Monica
Surreal, and quintessentially Los Angeles
Ceilings: No Limits for 2011!
As we enter the new year, let’s take a minute to consider not limitations, but possibilities!
The ceiling, or “fifth wall”, imposes limitations of height, size and shape upon the room it covers. A defining factor of any interior space, the color and treatment of a room’s ceiling can profoundly affect its ambiance.
Whether you wish to warm up or cool down your interior spaces this year, create more spaciousness or intimacy, or add formality or whimsy, try taking a fresh look at your ceilings, and pondering their creative potential. Consider the ceiling a blank canvass with unlimited possibilities. After all, the ceiling is our interior sky…and you know the old adage…”the sky’s the limit!”
Here are a few ideas to get you going…
Some folks like it hot…hot color, that is. Like washes of strong hues on all the walls , and gradated color glazed on the stairway ceiling to express the warmth of a luminous sunset!
The gradated sunset colors overhead flow from yellow to orange to red to violet, as we climb the stairs and turn left into the second floor hallway. Adjacent is a yellow and black deco bathroom, with a glazed ceiling that matches the walls.
The theme of sunset also inspired this ceiling treatment. The young girl who lives here requested a purple sunset cloud and sky treatment. Five glazes in hues of blue, purple, plum, pink and fuchsia are blended in several layers over a ceiling surface that curves down to meet the wall’s crown molding.
This kitchen tray ceiling seems made for a multi-color glaze treatment that enhances and accentuates it, adds warmth, depth and interest, and reflects the copper accents throughout the room. The folks who cook here also appreciate the appetite-stimulating effect of the treatment’s tones of coppery-orange.
Baths and powder rooms are ideal for imaginative, mood-setting ceiling treatments. The only rules: prepare the surface to be treated properly, and protect it with the appropriate varnish upon completion. On the recessed ceiling of this bath, blue and pearl glazes are blended together to create a dreamy evening sky punctuated by stenciled silver stars.
The light fixture was the inspiration for the ceiling design in this colorful entry. The stencil based on it is set off by sponged and stippled glazes which wrap the entire room. Mysterious decorative shadows are cast by the light shining through the ornate fixture, adding to the effect!
How about a little gleam and glimmer? Three successive applications of gold and silver glazes lend depth, shimmer and texture to the entry ceiling of this designer showcase home. The treatment adds elegance and glamor, and doesn’t compete with the light fixture.
This octagonal domed breakfast room is treated to successive applications of custom metallic gold and silver glazes which create an effect of both subtlety and richness. If metallic finishes are applied with a light touch in the right room, they add a bit of magic, and don’t overwhelm the space.
In another domed breakfast room, the ceiling’s architectural details are brought out by the application of three soft-colored glazes, applied and blended with sea sponges. The treatment also warms up this fanciful room, one of many jewels in a magnificent Spanish Revival home.
Two young brothers inhabit this room where rockets zoom, and stars and planets glow from the ceiling above. Two glaze colors are color washed over the ceiling’s surface, and custom stencils based on the boy’s bedding design are used create a fantasy tableau of outer space.
Have you been moved to create a fun and fabulous ceiling treatment, color choice, texture or application? If you feel so inspired, share it with us here. We love to hear from you. Remember, we are all in this thing called Life, together.
All the best for 2011!
Color Muze Quarterly: Our View on Hue
One of the things we discuss often during our Color Muze segments on Artistically Speaking Talk Show is how we can make our lives just a little bit easier as decorative painters, faux finishers, muralists, artists, artisans, and “atre-preneurs”. Learning and experiencing more and more about the function, properties, and effects of color can help us in this endeavor, which ultimately will support not only our bottom line, but our ability to offer more effective service to our Clients, as well as enhance our creative efforts. Color know-how is another tool in the kit we can bring to our work, our art, our business, and our Life!
This article is a round-up of sorts, a quarterly review of Color Muze since its debut in May of 2010 on Artistically Speaking Talk Show, powered by Rebecca E. Parsons, creative entrepreneur extraordinaire, and master decorative artist, Lyna Farkas.
In May we discussed ways to add ease to our glazing life!
By keeping base coat and glaze colors close together in hue (color), we can effect easier, smoother blending of the glazes over the base coated surface. This can make any joins, overlaps, or other undesirable drama created by drying glaze edges less visible.
In order to create the sunset sky requested by the Client for their daughter, the ceiling below received five successive application of colorwashed glaze. The base coat is purple, and four of the five glazes are hues of purple, including the almost white clouds, with a fuchsia pink added for intensity. Because all of the glazes were related in hue to each other, as well as to the base coat, they blended easily, and created the sense of depth and airiness desired by the young inhabitant, and an immediate tie-in to the rest of the purple painted room.
Sunset Sky, Purple Style
We talked as well, about using the base coat color itself as one of the glaze colors, which was done in this breakfast room. What could have been a daunting challenge: blending fast-drying latex glaze over a domed ceiling that sloped into wall sections, became a gratifying creative endeavor by tinting clear glaze with the chiffon-colored base coat paint, and using it as one of several glazes blended together with sponges over the surface. Use of the base coat color softened the mix of the other glaze colors, so that the treatment texture and color flows smoothly over the entire surface with no breaks, streaks, or heaviness to mar its subtlety.
Breakfast Room Dome Flow
Perhaps inspired by June’s golden sunlight, we talked about gilding, and how we can make our leafing lives easier by choosing our base coat color with care. Whether we are using “schlag (combination metal leaf), or the real thing (gold), we may be working under time restrictions, material limitations, or other challenges on a site. By choosing a base coat color related to our leaf color, we can camouflage any tears or holidays in the always precious metal leaf we are applying. Here is the original Cross for All Saints Episcopal Church in San Francisco, which was stripped down to its original wood, primed to seal the surface, than base painted in an ochre color, to coordinate with the 22 carat gold leaf applied over it.
Simulating Clay Bole
Clothed in Gold
Ochre , black, and red are some of the colors of “clay bole”, used historically as a surface preparation for gilding, “There are many shades of bole that may be used including ochre, red, black, orange, blue, and green, imparting various tonal affects under the layer of gold leaf. “ — CHARLES DOUGLAS GILDING STUDIO, (Please click for further information on GILDING).
Celestial Gold
July found us Muzing about the Color Wheel, and some of its many applications to the work of the decorative painter. “As the Color Turns” , Color Muze article #1 in Cre8tive Compass Magazine discusses primary, complementary, analogous and “neutral” colors, how we can use them, and why “neutral” may be a relative term! Please read the article here.
In August, we heated up our Muze, with a chat about how to use tints and shades to create highlights and shadows.
A tint of a color is created by adding increments of white to it, and a shade, adding black.
Tints and shades were created from the wall color and used to highlight and shadow a subtle “Mid-Century Retro” design in a guest room.
Tinkertoy? No..."Mid-Century Retro" Style
In the color-saturated logo below, a tint was mixed from the white, red and yellow used in the rest of the painting, while just a pinprick of black was added to both the yellow and the red to create shades of each. Creating even a hint of highlight and shadow can create dimensionality to make your treatment, design, image or mural pop, and add life, and even drama to your walls, ceilings, furniture, and floors!
Top 1 Oil is TOPS
We offered up some advice on how to use color “tactics” in laying out your website’s image thumbnails, in order to catch the eye of visitors and surfers.
In this set of 7 thumbnails introducing decorative treatments on a website, a balanced, yet not symmetrical distribution of hue (the “color of a color”), value (lights to darks), intensity (saturation, or concentration of color), texture, and detail creates a pleasing composition which catches the viewer’s eye without giving away too much about the image as a whole. Create thumbnail images and layouts that entice your site visitors to click to see more. Compose your webpages, like you compose your canvasses, walls, rooms, and everything else you consider Art and Design!
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As always, we continued our Muze on the relationship between Color and Light, with the help of Donald Kauffman and Taffy Dahl, creators of Donald Kauffman Color, and their beautiful book: Color and Light: Luminous Atmospheres for Painted Rooms.
Say the authors:
“Glazed walls refract the light—bending each ray as it moves through two different mediums, from the translucent layers to the more opaque undercoat. (Whenever you glaze a wall, if you make the undercoat lighter and warmer then the topcoat, it will create a more luminous effect.)”
What a luscious, luminous world we have as finishers, decorative painters, muralists, artists, artisans and humans, to explore!
Please join our Color Muze exploration on Artistically Speaking Talk Show, and Cre8tive Compass Magazine, “where we honor your passion, and your vision, in this community we are co-creating”– Rebecca E. Parsons
Here’s to a Color Full Journey!
And thanks for visiting…we are all in this thing called Life, together.
Artissima - Blog of ArtiFactory Studio 