KJ BATEMAN

2010-11-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

sketch for new fencer painting ©2010 kjbateman

I am exploring possibilities for a new fencer painting. This pose has some nice foreshortening challenges.

Sheep are up

2010-09-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

The sheep are up and have their own page. Three of the sheep appeared in "The Good , the Bad and the Ugly" show.

Life on the Myth of Pippi

2010-04-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

The Edible Book Festival is over for another year. The title of my entry was "Life on the Myth of Pippi".

The image is drawn on edible rice paper with markers that contain food coloring. I love going to the Home Cake Decorating Supply Co. on Roosevelt. Who thinks up all these great tools?

2010-02-27T15:42:00.000-08:00

I finally finished the second bee painting. It took months. I used gouache and watercolor, neither of which I am comfortable with and I don't really like the look. This one of the earlier tries. The final composition is different and the color are muted. I am still not sure about the result but I am moving on to the next illustration.

I have been thinking about mediums. I majored in printmaking and exposed myself to far too many toxic substances. I have some chemical sensitivities I suspect came from this.

Acrylics seemed like a good non-toxic substitute. We don't really know what the long term health consequences of them are. And the clean up with water maybe be better for the individual artist but the effect on the water is obviously not good.

I was so pleased to learn how to paint with oils without solvents. Maybe that can be a green choice. There still are some disposal problems and concerns about flammable rags.

What is a green alternative for an artist? Graphite? Colored pencils? What kind of substrate? Paper, canvas?
It's hard to work out a balance between these concerns and the kind of medium that sings under my hands.

2010-01-13T11:01:00.000-08:00

In October I had a show at Grimaldi's Coffee Shop in Issaquah. It was a great place for a show. The earth toned walls set off the paintings nicely.

Gradually working

2009-05-26T19:13:00.001-07:00

I have indeed been working. Two week-ends ago was the SCBWI conference and I entered the juried portfolio show so I was frantically getting work in order. I put in the fencer paintings, some of the sheep and created new pieces like this one.

This just past week-end was Folklife. I tried drawing a guitarist but it's hard to pay attention to the music and draw at the same time.

Autumn Quartet

2009-03-25T19:17:00.000-07:00

This piece is pastel on paper, part of a series exploring motherhood. I love pastel but like many mediums it can be scary. In art school I inhaled and absorbed far too many toxic ingredients. Now, I am very careful. When I moved to Shoreline and set up my studio in the basement, I stopped using pastels. I felt it would be too difficult to keep it out of living areas. My favorite mediums are pastel and lithography, both of which I no longer use.

Little Pink Dress

2009-02-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

Christmas, fruit cake, the big snow all gone. The Box Show didn't happen but I did almost finish the box. I am going to work on it this week. The dress is made of drafting paper. I have rolls of it from when I worked in the little art supply store at U.S.C. Employee discounts are a wonderful thing. I sewed the dress by machine and hand and painted it with layers with acrylic glaze.

Christmas, fruitcake and cards

2008-12-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

Again with the not painting. But I am writing. I have almost finished a picture book. It is at the point where I can start on the illustrations. And it is time to make the annual Christmas card and fruitcake. Past time some might say, but I say if it all goes out before Tweflth Night I am right on time.
The poor kayak must sit for awhile alone. It is too cold now to work with epoxy in an unheated garage. There are ways around this. It is actually too cold fo ME to work in an unheated garage. I know. I've done it.

painting again

2008-10-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

I've done a few more things to the kayak, saturating the deck and laying glass tape on all the seams. And I've started painting again. I didn't paint at all for the past year.

I think it had something to do with losing both my parents. My mother died on October 17, 2007 and my father died on January 2, 2008. I don't know what the connection to painting is. I didn't stop doing anything else.

I am working on a fencer painting I started last year. I thought it was almost done. It had a beautiful passage that I saved almost from the beginning of the piece. It's gone now, completely obliterated. The background colors are very different.

No show, back to the kayak

2008-10-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I almost finished the box. However, the gallery where the show was to be held closed. I've been working on the kayak. I rarely remember the camera until I am at the garage so alot has changed. The outside of the hull is glassed. The deck is assembled and glued. It was easier than the hull. I only had to take it apart once.

And, no, I haven't been painting.

Reprieve

2008-08-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

Box in its unadorned state.

I put the first saturation coat on the kayak yesterday. Today I am putting on the layer of fiberglass, another learn as you go experience. I expect it will take hours. But I have some good news, the " Think Inside the Box" show is actually in October. I have a whole month more to work on it. Yay!

The Pygmy kayak, Arctic Tern

2008-08-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to be a relaxing summer. I was going to take a few weeks off from work but I am busier than expected. In 2002 I bought a kayak kit from Pygmy Boats and it sat in the basement until last summer when I started building it in the garage of our Ballard house. Our long time tenant moved out in the Spring and our daughter moved in.

As noted last time I was also painting the mural for the pre-school. Then my mother had two hospitalizations and I didn't get very far before the temperature dropped below the optimum for working with epoxy.

This summer I was going to start in June and work on through. It has been the coolest, wettest summer in my 25 years in the Puget Sound area. I finally started working on it again. It actually looks like a boat now. Here I am at the end of August with maybe a month left of workable time and the work goes so slowly.

Plus, I am putting a box in the Gallery OK's "Think Inside the Box" show. The box is due Tuesday night. Wish me luck.

2008-07-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

Last summer I painted a mural for a local pre-school. Follow this link to see it start to finish. http://www.flickr.com/photos/moggydog/

2008-07-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

I reached an impasse in drawing the poses from sketches and photographs so I took a fencing class. It was held in a community center. The instructor provided the equipment. The students were all quite young. There was one other woman there about my age. She was there with her son.

2008-07-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

©2006 KJ Bateman
When I latched on to fencers for the 30/30 project I was excited because it is a theme I was working on anyway. The fun thing about this project is that all the artists' work is shuffled and put up on large boards. The show was hung at Gallery OK where they are sold for $4o each. It is a crush of people looking and grabbing. I sold several pieces and bought a few. You can see how they all looked before the people were admitted. http://www.galleryok.com/archive06.html

30/30 Challenge

2008-07-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

© KJ Bateman 2006

In the fall of 2006 I participated in the 30/30 Challenge. 30 8"x10" painting in 30 days. It was so hard to come up with subjects and finish one a day. It's good way to let go of perfectionism. I did several fencer paintings that I will post over the next days.

2008-07-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

This is the first in the fencer series. The mask captures the anonymous nature of the figure.

For years I painted figures without features . I am not sure what that means.

©KJ Bateman

Fencers

2008-06-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

This is part of an on-going series started from a fencing class I observed.

Have you any wool?

2008-06-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

©KJ Bateman 2008

©KJ Bateman 2008

Top: "Baa, baa, Black Sheep" Bottom: "Sunset Sheep"

Then there were two more sheep. There are so many types of sheep, some bred for wool, some for meat and some a combination of both. Imagine if sheep really came in all different colors like the wool in yarn shop.

When shopping for paint I can't see really what the color is like on the little spot on the tube. Yarn stores have stacks of hundreds of colors and I want to buy it all.

2008-06-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

©KJ Bateman 2008

These three paintings were part of a show in July 2007 titled "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" held at three different Pioneer Square galleries. The good theme was at Corridor Gallery, the bad at Gallery OK and the ugly at Mnemonic Gallery.

©KJ Bateman 2008

©KJ Bateman 2008