JANSYL RETURNS And the Circle Goes Round

.     JANSYL RETURNS AND THE CIRCLE GOES ROUND

Winter Cardinals   Medium Round

Well, never say never as the saying goes.   I have been staring at my little pins called Jansyl and decided to try to sell some of what is left.  Those were such good years, so very busy with good sales and lots of good times on the road.  Now, not wanting to be away and no longer able to have a company personally press my own porcelain recipe what remains is the end of a productive and profitable part of my past.

My brother in law's new wife Heather is insisting that I remove myself from being Queen Midas with my hoards of handmade items and get my product out on the web.   My first experience with this will be with my Etsy site- Just Pretty by Jansyl.   I decided to give it a whirl with Jansyl and today my first order appeared.  OH my Virginia, there are sales on the internet after all.  So, I thought that maybe I should give it a little boast with a blog entry.  So here we go!!

Just if you have any interest.  Jansyl came to pass almost 20 years ago when my husband got out of the Navy.  It is a pretty little pin for almost any occasion and is made from very fine translucent porcelain and then glazed to a shear glass.   At that point a decal is placed on that glaze and it is completely melted into it  giving it a wonderful reflective look. To finish it off, each piece was edged in a 20 carat liquid gold that came to it's luster during the final firing.   Jansyl was a very busy business most likely due to the end result being a product that is truly a wonderful little gift for any lady any time and any holiday that is still well priced.

I have posted on my esty site 10 Christmas and holiday pins.  Here are pictures of each.  Enjoy.

 Cornucopia Large Oval

 Currier and Ives   Round

 

Holiday Bow  Medium Round

 Holiday Holly  Medium Oval

 Santa and Staff  Rectangle

 Santa and Tree   Small Oval

 Snowman Birdhouse   Round

 Snowman Friends   Small Oval

Snowman Couple    Round

I hope that you have enjoyed the little travel back in time with me to the Jansyl years and if you think you have a holiday outfit that needs a Jansyl pin try my etsy site- Just Pretty by Jansyl.    Thanks again for stopping by and if you are just passing by let me give you a big wave. 







Relearning Watercolor - Value Studies

It appears that I enjoy the beginning of things, as here I am again at the beginning. I was enjoying the application of color onto paper and allowing the color to swirl in and out of each other doing what color does. At that point, I was unaware that I knew nothing about how colors react with one another or did so instinctively, but never gave it any thought.

At times, when lucky, I can command the backgrounds of my pieces and find a feeling of calm and peace within that structure. The images were created by using different colors and very few values. When I got to the foreground, nothing- no sense of direction, no understanding of what comes next.

Well, when texts do not satisfy that need of understanding one must find a human who can demonstrate these things so that they can become knowledge. In so doing, they become skills that naturally flow easily from mind to hand to brush to paper and enable the creator to further the story telling. The solution to this situation- a beginning class in watercolor at the Peninsula Fine Arts Museum under the instruction of Bill Holber.

We began with lesson one-usually a good starting point -learning flat and graduated washes- and then with a painting of the Great Smokey Mountains in Mist. A single color painting.

So, how do I begin - I believe it all begins with one color working with itself to speak through the visual image. Single color telling the story.

The eye must know how far that color must reach to give depth and clarity to the piece. It must be thought out - knowing where to begin a painting is often only found when you have seen the entire painting. Values within that color must represent the entire story when using a single pigment or enhance each part of any pigment. Well, of course if anyone is reading this already knows this, but I did not and finding it has given my self critic a bit of joy.

First of all, the painting must be sketched to produce a value study. After procrastinating this in detail, I finally stumbled my way to the paper and went to work. It was developing - yes I can see it now. Let me count the values - could it be as many as - 9 and then perhaps a touch of yellow for some green.( I do believe in my next piece, I will do myself the favor of not having to do this step but do a gray tone scale of the jpeg in photoshop and study that.)

"Oh my," she exclaimed as she thought, "Now where do I go from here?"

I attacked the problem as any good potter would do and set out to make my "paints" the proper color and amount for each of the paintings I wanted to attempt. I added so much of this and so much additional water and there were little math problems to help recreate each value. After admiring and trying to use this new procedure, it was rapidly abandoned for what now seems so natural. Get that first value down and then work them up.

It is fun to paint.
"Oh, my!" she exclaimed again. "I can see."

These are the 3 pieces that I presented for my value study.