Musings and Quips of an Artist

Korean artist-Rim Lee-acrylic paint

Before we start anything and get the paints, palettes, canvas out. It is a fairly messy medium so the most basic fundamental thing is how to clean it up whether it's your hands, furniture etc.

This information is obvious but then elusive. I didn't think much about this topic until some real damage was done.

One cannot use regular soap and water. It will smear the mess. It is oil and oil and water just don't mix nor cooperate together. Basic concept and common sense overlooked.

My first oil painting was an assignment for a highschool summer program correspondence course I was taking I watched a 1 1/2 hr tutorial of basic execution.

I thought I was prepared. Mentally at first I was.

Dead wrong. It was a black and white value painting. Keep it simple just black and white paint is used.

Too tubes of paint and what I did was utter chaos.

It was 4 in the morning after painting for more than a few hours and I looked at myself in the mirror saw black paint all over my hands arms and my face was smeared, I panicked and trying to rub it off made it worse. I looked like one of the ladies from Rim Lee's paintings except there was no gracefullness to it. If you have seen the movie Ex-Machina (My favorite movie of the year by the way. suspenseful and I could not predict the ending.) Anyways there is a scene in the movie where the main character freaks out in a bathroom and there is blood every where. In my case just paint in the sink and anything I touched. I had to take a bath to somewhat remove the paint on myself. Not something one wants to do at 4am and you've been up all night.

My main point is one does not need to take a bath to just remove oil paint off of themselves. There is an easier way. :)

Certain things one cannot go without brand loyalty. There are some products I haven't tried so I cannot give honest opinions about them. These are things I have tried that have worked.

So Masterson's brush soap or lava soap will do

Double take they are paintings not photos.

Murphy's oil soap.
It oddly smells like gummy bears.
And it is some powerful stuff.
I mean if you put your back into it and scrubbing ability old paint stains come off in seconds and or minutes at times.

Adds a gloss sheen.

Use this on furniture, floor and a dab on your clothes if needed. I practically have paint on pretty much most of my clothes so I don't really care anymore.

Masterson's brush soap After looking it up I've been convinced it was called that until now. My life is ruined and I may have confused numerous people I have talked to about this product.
Ahem...* The Master's Brush soap.

Use on brushes for any medium to help keep the brush form and springyness, Also they have a line of their bar soap which I also carry with me if I'm painting outside of home. Minimizes mess and doesn't suds up. Most of my art teachers had this around and I do too. I have different canisters all over the place.

Nothing fancy you can find in a hardware store of the likes. Cuts out grease and has a kinda sand paper consistensy grain to help clean up grooves. Mechanics and such use this with oil too.

Out of Rim Lee's "The Mess of Emotion series"

I hope this helps in minimizing after work cleanup mess.

Random thought:

Honestly

One paradox I live by,

When you ask someone for something you are asking them to be less selfish for your selfish request. So in the end I can't ask for much.

A strange thing to think about eh?
Till next week

-K

Hihi I decided to take a Vaacccation! If only I can say it like the Mortal Kombat announcer.
Anyway hence my disappearance of weekly updates. And also going to sleep terribly early like 10pm! After catching up on sleep and being away from Musings & Quips for a week or so it made me think of some topics I'd like to talk about. In the next few weeks or so I decided to do maybe a 3-5 part blog about Oil Painting.

It dawned on me the struggles of starting to oil paint. How vast the topic is and some basic things one does not think about until one starts. Or if you are a master well I hope you can find some new trick or tip to your use. Knowledge is meant to be shared.

I'm skimping on information this week to write more for another. If I couldn't say thank you more than enough. I hope to share some part of the struggle and journey of a clueless a sixteen year old kid and seven years later have a better idea to execute and use the medium. I still create a war zone when I paint and can't keep myself clean when I paint and have frustrated past teachers and my mentor of why I have paint all over myself.
I don't care. I just love paint.

Thank you
-K

My paint box its a couple feet wide and deep. It's pretty heavy.

My basic science experiments that I'll talk about soon.

Manikin

Manikins are generally made of wood or wire.

What mankins represent is the human form simplified and broken down in simple shapes such as circles and squares. It makes an artist aware of proportion in figure study.

The wire Adam the Doodle's Man one can stand up on its own without a stand or a crutch. What a shame sadly I bought this while I was out of town before and it didn't survive the suitcase trip from the airplane to home. A screw popped out and he's been unable to stand up by himself since. I haven't gotten around to getting another one yet.

My collection of Manikins. I have a few more tiny ones around.

My dog chewed off one of mine one time!

I got my first manikin when I was twelve. and then I subsequently been collecting them when I see a new model come out.

All of mine have names.
Such as Skully(the skeleton one). Manny I, Manny II Manny III in the order I've gotten them...and all of them are Manny except for Adam the wire one and Marionette (the art S. buck grey female one) is the from the song puppet by a thousand foot krutch which I was listening to at the time.

I got a story for all of them but that takes too much time to say them all.

I have a plaster cast named Morpehus reminds me of and looks like Lawrence Fishburne hence the name.

Morpehus was given to me and it's a pretty cool story actually I think.
My sister was out of state traveling and was in Seattle with her fiance'. They went to dickblick (a chain of art stores in the U.S) called me and asked me what I wanted. Besides some of the stuff I wanted to try, liked, or wanted to restock I requested a manikin something different from what I already had. She was like I don't know what you have. I sent her a picture of what I had. And since there wasn't a new kind of manikin they got me this plaster cast.