Ellen Jean Diederich Studio

I’ve been busy completing several works for shows.    I will be adding to the blog soon additional images that were photographed together.
In Pastoral, I had an immediate good start to the piece. My under-painting was heavily textured and very pastel in tone.  It did not add much contrast to the painting but did give a healthy mood to the painting.  I left some of it exposed.
I turned the piece upside down right away and painted the patches on the cow first.    This was a great way to get into my right brain and see shapes and my drawing was adjusted.  Things looked so good at first I was afraid to tackle them. —so I left the painting for a while.  After 2 weeks I was able to diagnose some key areas I wanted to work on and to go for the highlights.
Sitting this painting next to my other paintings, I realized they all had the same green tones.  I was using permanent green light with my blues and yellows.  Because of this I have decided to pick up some more variety of blues and a couple of different greens.  I will experiment with them soon.   I do like the greens in this painting but look forward to getting a variety of green tones in future paintings.

HI there , I have had some excitement here.  Three of my paintings this one “Dakota Pride”  hare included in a new book  BEST WATERMEDIA ARTISTS OF AMERICA.  I also have two other paintings included.  In this watercolor I used watercolor pencil tod raw out a grid as an irregular fence.  I painted the buffalo into it and used the gird to scrub out shapes or  change colors.  I did some etching with the watercolor pencils and painted over it— a cool  effect.  I just received my book last week and it looks great!

I have been working hard to create new watercolors  and acrylics for the art crawl for the upcoming weekend October 2-3.  Their iis more information under events on my website www.givinity.com

I have several pieces almost finished.  Four acrylics on canvas and four watercolors.  This is a very challenging phase of painting.  I did however sit down with my journal and make decisions regarding the direction I would like these paintings to take.  I feel good about my plans and hope to show you some new paintings soon.

Sincerely, Ellen

The watercolor on the the left is titled “The Fargo Blues” the Acrylic on canvas on the right is titled “City Scape 2010″ I hope you enjoy these two paintings.

In the past I used a variety of under-paintings in my watercolors.  I decided to experiment with them in Acrylic.

These two paintings both employed a grid as an under-painting.  An under-painting   is simply overall design plan balanced in the simplest way possible tying the finished painting together.  In “The Fargo Blues”(left), a painting done using watercolor,  the gridded under-painting is more obvious due to the transparency of the medium.  In “Cityscape 2010”(right),a painting done with acrylic, the opaque paint can completely blocks out the grid.  As you can see, the different mediums with the grid technique can form a completely different look and feel to each painting.

There was a little surprise with my “Cityscape” under-painting.  To first step to starting this painting was to apply very thick gesso was applied with a piece of mat board in a grid like pattern.  Since the acrylic under-painting would be covered up,  I used intense color and smeared them on to the grid shapes.  Soon I realized I couldn’t see my pencil drawing.   So I redrew it using a sharpie marker instead.  I painted around the windows first and suddenly had very dramatic reflections.  My family was at the lake with me and they all started telling me not to cover “that” up. What do you think?

Hi there,

I have been so busy painting ,ordering frames and matts for the upcoming exhibitions.  I have the 8th Street Fine Art Show & Sale on 8th Street in Fargo, July 7- 8 “Wednesday- Thursday” 11:00 to 7:00.  This isto  followed by the Downtown Street Fair in Fargo the 15-17.  Anyhow I have finished  some beautiful watercolors  and am working hard to pull together and reveal my first acrylics.  I don’t know at this point if I will show any but  I’m pretty sure I will.    I’m a bit unsure of myself as I keep learning new things as I go and suddenly a small change can throw everything.  It frankly surprises me as it is so  much easier to cover up something  with acrylic versus watercolor .  However, in my acrylics the brushwork is really on display as I love the freshness of it.

I am working on the following paintings.  White Daisies, Zinnias, Belgian Horses, and a vegetable garden.  So far the mos likely to succeed are the Daisies and Belgians.  I did finish today the most fabulous watercolor of Dinnerplate Dahlias.   I recommend you stop by and see it while you can

Well I went wild with the Zinnia painting.  I guess I needed an attitude adjustment about the gold gesso.  It was so pretty  and I kept trying to expose some of it, only to nearly destroy it with destructive attachment behavior.  It seemed like a duh. Their are some basic of building up paintings that need to be thought of differently in a different media. Nor does acrylic paint  blend itself easily like watercolor and their are  different time expectations for specific areas.  I will slow down as  I got impatient.  Currently,  my background on my Zinnias is all wild and messy and way too loud but it is a   new point to work from.  I detached from and nearly covered all of the gold.

Acrylic and watercolors require entirely different timing in more ways than I ever knew. I now understand why I have been so busy discovering grounds to paint on. Large areas of paint see to require significant more attention despite needed  simplicity.  In response to this knowledge,  I started another ground to work on.  This time applying Utrect heavy gesso with a piece of mat board on top of a primed canvas.  I moved it and scratched it with a stick for texture.  When that was dry I rubbed my under-painting into all the crevices.  I was especially excited to realize, as I looked through my sketch books,  that my subconscious mind  said “this would be good in acrylic”.   It felt like a breakthrough as I haven’t been seeing my work in my mind with acrylic as of yet.  So today I’m working on drawing this piece out  and  continuing on the wild and messy zinnias.

Good news! I did  finish an acrylic of Belgians and really like it.  Now I have to learn how to sign my name in this media.  Also I’m working on a beautiful watercolor of pink Dahlias.  So far it’s “scrumptious” plus it was relaxing to be more familiar with my painting techniques.