Thoughts on Painting
Posted on 9/13/2024 5:24:30 AM
By Christine Marx
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I have been having a lot of fun playing around with gouache in my studio. It’s a very different kind of medium. It’s kind of like acrylic and watercolor paint had a baby. It can be used like watercolor, put on in a transparent glaze and runs like watercolor. When it’s used in a thicker consistency it is much more opaque than watercolor (I think because of white added to the pigment in most cases.) And it dries kind of chalky. At least the type I’ve been using. I think you can get an acrylic gouache blend that stays wet a little longer and is less chalky. All things I am exploring and will be sharing on my youtube as I do!
Here is link to a demonstration of my new Winsor and Newton gouache paints on fall pumpkins. Hope you enjoy!
Posted on 9/9/2024 6:06:10 AM
By Christine Marx
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Whispers of Fall in the Garden
A hint of Fall is in the air. It barely hit 70 degrees here yesterday, but will be back up in the 80’s all week. I love the subtle change in the weather. Hydrangeas and yarrow are in full bloom and begging to be painted along with the grasses that all in their full glory right now.
I am simultaneously painting fall flowers and end of summer wildflowers. Beauty is all around right now!
I would love to have you join me in painting the first of many fall arrangements. This one is easy and very loose. Click on the link to my YouTube channel below and let’s paint!
Posted on 8/22/2024 5:30:21 AM
By Christine Marx
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The End of Summer
So, summer is winding down. It’s the first cool down of weather here in Pennsylvania. It will warm up again in a few days but it’s the first touch of fall in the air, and I love it! I love summer but autumn is my favorite of all the seasons. I have been really enjoying this summer painting flowers from my garden. I am lacking in an abundance of sunflowers that I usually have. But I am overrun with zinnia and cosmos and hydrangea, and a few other new flowers from perennial plantings last summer. And I have been really enjoying painting these bouquets in watercolor. It’s a fairly new medium for me, but one that I feel like I am gaining a little bit of control in my work finally. Here is my latest piece:
The End of Summer - 12” x 9”
I have been creating a lot of more abstract pieces but thought I’d like to try a bit more realism, and I’m happy with the results. I have had so much fun creating work on youtube, some tutorials, some just demonstrations, and am still finding my way in how to present my content. And this summer has been full of distractions outside of my control, and very limited time to work. I am hoping the fall is not so busy outside of work!
Here is a link to my youtube video on adding gouache over watercolor….enjoy!!
https://youtu.be/l1Z8LD5N6lM?si=GF2JMhxN275yyj58
Posted on 7/13/2024 7:16:32 AM
By Christine Marx
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Autumn's Gourd-geous Bounty
My husband makes fun of me, rightfully so, for being sooooo directionally challenged. As does my family. Again, rightfully so. I have a 50/50 chance making a left or right turn to get me somewhere and I generally pick the wrong direction. I guess I am “The Road Less Travelled” poster child. Which is not a bad thing. I get to see a lot of things I wouldn’t have seen had I gone the most direct, shortest way from point A to point B. I generally take the scenic route, when I can.
But in my art career, slow growth is frustrating me. As is, which direction do I go? I am having a terrible struggle between the medium I first learned 15 years ago, and my new medium, watercolor. I don’t even know why in my head I feel like I need to decide between the two. Maybe because I feel like there are not enough hours in the day to do both, or realistically even ONE. Painting requires a great time and mental dedication that completely absorbes me when I get started. And I am not great at time management, and have an adult daughter with special needs who lives with us and will probably forever, so my time doesn’t look like most of my friends who are empty nesters. But I am able to work at this as a full time job, and my husband has always been my number 1 fan and encouraged me to paint, paint, paint so I am extremely blessed with him in my corner, and cheering me on.
Lately, I am getting a lot of interest in my oils, out of nowhere. Phone calls from old collectors about new work. And I have to say, the call of getting back into oil painting is very strong right now. I also am enjoying the heck out of painting in watercolor, and appreciate the healthier studio. I don’t know if painting in watercolors was a way of avoiding the mental block I had reached in oils. I also didn’t like the solvents I was using, and really dislike the water based oil paints. I didn’t like the way they moved, or the chromas, or much about them at all. But solvents have improved, and are not even necessary if you use the right paints. I am wanting to paint like this again:
I also want to continue exploring watercolor, and I also want to continue my YouTube channel, and worry about losing my watercolor friends because it’s such a different audience, in most cases. I am loving my friends I am meeting on my channel and sharing what I’m doing in my studio! So I am going to give it a whirl, posting videos about both mediums and my work in both, and hope for the best! I hope my YT art friends continue to join me on my journey with painting! Thanks for listening to me vent, and let’s paint!!
PS…Next week I will be doing a tour of my studio out in the garage, where my oils are set up. I hope you’ll join me!
Posted on 5/27/2024 2:46:52 PM
By Christine Marx
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I picked up this new color last week when shopping at Dick Blick with my mom and sister. Actually, my mom discovered it and pointed it out to me. It’s not a color I would normally grab off the shelf, and I’m so glad she pointed it out to me. It’s a delightful color that I find very hard to mix. It also mixes beautifully with the Winsor Newton Quin Gold that I picked up the same day, and the W/N Olive Green. I will be posting a video using these three colors together in the near future on YouTube. Hope you tune in and let me know what you think!
Here is a link to Amazon if you want to try it yourself. I am an Amazon Affiliate and a small commission is earned when you buy it, but it does not affect your price!
Happy Painting!
Posted on 2/27/2024 7:02:34 PM
By Christine Marx
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Hello, Everyone!! I have been so busy producing videos and filming tutorials that I've not updated my website blog in a few years (4!) Oh my goodness, that is FAR too long. So today, I am going to share some of the paintings I've been painting on my channel. The first one that I painted for Valentine's Day went viral and is currently at 41,000 views! That was so very exciting for me, as I love sharing my painting techniques, and have for a long while wanted to teach workshops. I am just getting back into working again, after 4 years of not working much at all.
With the shutdown of the world in 2020, and also losing my Dad, my favorite Aunt, and my father-in-law that year, within a few short months, it really took away my zest for painting or doing much creatively. It was a very sad past few years, and I am just getting to the place where I can smile and laugh when I think about all of them, and feel so blessed that I had them in my life. The things that I did creatively during that time were learning bullet journaling online, and also dabbling around with watercolors, taking classes online as well as watching Youtube videos for days on end about everything. It was fascinating to me and somewhere that helped relieve some of the sadness, and provide some happiness and tons of education about a medium I knew next to nothing about.
It still amazes me the amount of free content available on the internet, particularly Youtube, for creatives. There is so much quality content, and sharing of ideas, and I wanted to be a part of it! So last month I set up my desk with a filming station and started filming some of my watercolor paintings. It has been so fun, and there is a community of painters that comment that brings joy to me every single day.
Let me show you some of the things I've been doing over at Youtube. Here is the first painting that I posted, which was just an abstract, fun piece entitled "The Easiest Valentine Painting Ever!"
My style of painting in past years has been very Old World traditional still life painting as realistic as possible, and while I do love the challenge of painting like that I have always loved loose abstract paintings (where you can still identify what you're looking at). I love the challenge of watercolors, and at this point in my painting career feel like they are WAY more difficult than painting with oils. I also did not love all the chemicals/solvents that come along with oil painting and did not like the water based oil paints I had tried while traveling. So in my learning and struggling with oils, I felt like I had enough overall painting experience to also teach some things while I was learning.
I then added a few other color combinations to the stamped on ball jar that I did in the first video:
And then I did some sweet peas, and a heart
I have so many friends who say "I can't paint!" and I really feel that every one can paint. I am teaching on Youtube to try to help people who would like to paint and just need a little guidance, or a fun friend to paint with! I will also be doing some videos around my farm, in the garden, and out around Bucks County doing some urban sketching and painting plein air. I hope to have a community of friends who enjoy documenting this beauty and just plain old playing around with paint!
I am really having so much fun getting back into painting after such a long hiatus. I do hope you'll join me on my journey!
Happy Painting!!
Posted on 1/26/2020 4:00:48 PM
By Christine Marx
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New Watercolor Cookbook Youtube Video posted today
Hello fellow painters!! What a January it's been. Overall, it's been good. Very busy is almost always good and I've been learning a new skill: filming Youtube videos for my new channel. I have enjoyed it immensely and simultaneously been extremely frustrated! Luckily, my daughter Katie has helped me out quite a bit, teaching me new things about iMovie and some of it is kind of coming back to me. I used it years ago when it first came out and I created some videos for my parents and inlaws. Videos of their grandkids years ago, but it is like riding a bike. iMovie has improved some things but most of the basics are the same.
My first video with a demonstration is an entry for a family cookbook that I'm creating with watercolor pages that I hope end up being beautiful and different from off the rack cookbooks. Years ago I created a cookbook for the family for Christmas, but it was long before I ever picked up a paintbrush and I also didn't have a huge arsenal of recipes that I cooked at that time so this one will be much different. And if you're someone who likes to cook a lot and try new recipes you could create one of these a year, easily, to keep ahold of your favorite new recipes. I know, I know, you can save them in your phone in an app, but this is such a more appealing way, I think, to keep your recipes.
So, my first post is Beef Barley Mushroom soup. The link is not working here but if you go to YouTube and search Christine Marx it pops up. I will work on getting the link working here!
Posted on 1/14/2020 8:34:56 AM
By Christine Marx
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Fonthill in Snow
Happy New Year, fellow Painters! I hope you had a nice relaxing couple of weeks of down time over the holidays. It’s always a nice time to recharge my batteries and enjoy so much eating and drinking and merriment with my family. This year seemed particularly enchanting as my grandson is almost 3 and my granddaughter is almost 1.
It’s a magical age for little ones and Christmas. I loved seeing the wonderment in Mason’s eyes over just about everything. “The lights are so pretty, Grandma!” everywhere we went would come out of his little mouth. It makes an adult look with new eyes at everything, even an artist. It’s a view from a child’s eyes that seems to get lost as an adult in the humdrum of every day life of bill paying and responsibilities. It’s a view that I struggle to maintain: one of pure wonder and adoration and awe over the simplicity of a house covered with lights, a light snowfall, or seeing Santa at the mall and having him give you a candy cane when you’re done pouring out your heart about what special thing you’d like for Christmas. The wonder, for me, when I was young and we got to stay up until midnight to go to the candlelight service at the Episcopal Church in Almaden. The beauty of the light and smell of the candles still makes me teary as an adult. And the excitement of staying up so late was unparalleled. Getting to do that and come home to go straight to bed, without having to stay awake for several more hours stuffing stockings and putting toys together is something that is not fully appreciated until adulthood. And while I thoroughly appreciate and love parenthood and my (grown now) kids, the holidays now are a different kind of feeling. More melancholy and less uncontainable excitement at the holidays for sure. Still magical at times, but different.
To maintain this appreciation for these things can sometimes take work as an adult. I am not great at compartmentalizing things that bother me and they can leak into my otherwise happy day. There are always bills to pay, always doctor’s appointments to be made, grocery stores to go to, and piles of laundry to do. There are always people who will say or do mean things, some days outnumbering people saying or doing nice things. My goal for the new decade is to enjoy simple things, without letting the ugly things that happen in life disrupt beautiful moments. This is not an easy goal. It’s right up there with in difficulty with weight loss, quitting some bad habit, or getting healthy. Maintaining appreciation for life’s small pleasures takes work and focus if you’ve gotten into the habit of not doing that. That’s why there are aisles and aisles of books trying to teach humanity how to do this. Because it’s not easy. But it’s an essential skill as an artist. And one that, for few, comes naturally.
It’s really the artist’s job every day, to look at something, perhaps something mundane, and make it something worth value, worth taking another look at through fresh eyes. It is an artist’s job to create something others want to gaze upon with awe and appreciation. It is not an easy thing to do. It’s kind of like assuming the role of my grandchild. Pointing out that on this gray, overcast day with potholes everywhere in the road, that there are things that are casting light and beauty that one might drive right by without the adorable narrator in the backseat. The artist needs to become that adorable narrator. Sometimes the narrator screams in delight, sometimes it’s just a whisper of awe. I think a good painting is the embodiment of this childlike perspective. It brings the viewer to a different place, away from their everyday woes. It reminds us in the dead of winter that somewhere else it is somebody’s summer.
So, here’s to 2020! May it bring new focus and perspective and paintings that help viewers reconnect with a place of awe and wonderment long forgotten.
Keep those brushes to the canvas!
Chris
Posted on 1/24/2019 4:56:34 PM
By Christine Marx
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The Road Home
I am counting down the days to having no restrictions on my shoulder. At the end of August I had surgery to repair my rotator cuff, and have been the perfect patient. I have done everything my doctor told me: PT three times a week for the first 16 weeks, then down to PT two times, and now just once a week. I have a wonderful Physical Therapist and have learned much patience through this healing process, as well as the benefits of slowly nursing your body back to health. I am not, by nature, a patient person, and generally want things done yesterday. Sometimes life lessons come in the most interesting packages and this was one of them. I am happy to say that I feel better than I have in probably a decade, and am learning to appreciate the importance of slowly building up muscle strength after an injury. I spend almost two hours a day in the gym now (20 minutes of that is in a sauna LOL) and I think my painting arm might be in better shape than ever. My home studio is set up, as well as my travel easels unpacked from the moving boxes and ready to roll. I am ecstatic to be able to lift my 35 lb. grandson easily now, as well as my little 9 lb. granddaughter. Best of all, lifting my arm doesn't make me want to curl up on the floor in agony.
So that's the explanation for no new work in almost a year. It's not been a total waste of a year thanks to online content available.
The internet is an amazing thing and has helped me immensely through 6 months of no painting. I have been watching classes with Kenn Backhaus and joined Elizabeth Robbins Learn, Paint, Grow. I just have yet to participate in critiques or actual painting, but there is so much to absorb just watching them. I have time to absorb what they're saying without the pressure to try it out. It's a nice change. I've also done a ton of photography and scoped out future locations for Spring Plein Air painting. There are some locations on our new farm that are simply magical and I look forward to painting them very soon! If it would stop raining and turn to snow for a while that would be wonderful. Nothing better than a Pennsylvania landscape blanketed with fresh, beautiful snow.
Fingers crossed, next week I'll have new work to share with you. Have a wonderful week and happy painting!
Chris
Posted on 9/24/2018 7:47:08 AM
By Christine Marx
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"Autumn's Gourdgeous Bounty" - 12" x 24" oil on canvas
I am always surprised when I look to see when the last time I posted a blog was, and it ends up being over a year! How times flies. It doesn't mean I didn't start a blog post several times, and then abandon it because I felt there was not enough interesting content. With all of the excitement and changes over the past year, I finally feel like I can give a decent update on the studio and events.
The first big life event would be that I finally got my shoulder repaired, after years of pain. I had injured it falling while hiking about 5 years ago, and then it pretty much healed up enough so that I could work and have a normal life. But then I fell again in Washington DC last October and tore the whole rotator cuff completely. Talk about PAIN. It was really painful and I didn't feel like waiting 5 years again for it to potentially heal, so I ended up getting the surgery I had dreaded, last month. Since I have pretty decent insurance (very grateful for this!) I went up to New York City to have it done at Hospital for Special Surgery by Dr. Marx (no relation). I am so happy I had it done, now 30 days later. I do have to say the first two weeks was even more dreadful than I thought it would be, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. The good thing is my neck pain is almost gone after years of discomfort. I start my PT this week, and only have two more weeks of wearing a sling 24/7. That will be a happy day! Now I just need to heal and build the muscles back up, and get back to painting. I really miss it.
The next big life event would be that we moved, after 10 years in Doylestown to a small farm (11 acres) about six miles from our old house. We had talked about it for years, and finally found the perfect place. It's a beautiful property that used to be a dairy farm. There still is a very large dairy farm across the street, where we can get fresh milk and ice cream so that's convenient! Additionally, I finally get room for a nice, big studio to paint in. I love the sounds of bullfrogs and crickets out here, and the smells of fresh grass. I love that the house was built in the 1700's and has so much history contained in it's walls.
Here is the milk house where they used to sell milk out of the window
This is the barn. A few years down the road I'd love to have workshops here in the Fall.
Long term, we are looking at the possibility of growing lavender, flowers for cutting, and maybe apples, and getting a few alpacas. Possibly some grapes or hops, too. I'd love to create some lavender products (creams, oils, sachets), and apple products, and to sell the wool from the alpacas for yarn production. Our goal is to create a place where our daughter, Shannon, can work and we can employ 5-7 adults with special needs. We want to have enough profit to pay a living wage, and provide a fun work environment where the employees look forward to coming to work. We have a few years to get this started, as Shannon is in 10th grade and wants to attend college. We're happy to have taken the first big step of finding the right property to do this!
So that's the update from the studio, and explanation for the lack of new work being produced here. I am so looking forward to painting in the near future, and will continue to post seasonal favorite paintings from years past. I am still selling my work at Stone House Antiques. Last month I was getting ready to go pull a rooster that I had painted off the wall to hang at our new farmhouse, but got the email that it sold that day. A bit of a bummer, but something to look forward to painting when my arm is ready to go.
Have a wonderful week and happy painting!
Christine
