Heather Syren, Artist of Sorts

One of the best things about this endeavor has been the freedom of experimentation. I learned so much by playing with food colorings, including the fact that blue food coloring hates sunlight and would rather not exist than hang around with it. So I’ve started my search, grand and wide, to find a lightfast way to color the glue.

I started with ink. I thought of how beautiful it looks on rough paper, like milk on a tongue. I thought it would be transparent. Turns out not so much…

Stretched Out, Ink test one

Here you can see one of the suncatcher designs, Stretched Out, with a nice purple ink tinted glue. You can also see how much i care if my nail polish has chipped. Anyway… You can see that there is some amount of light getting through but nothing like what I was getting before with the food coloring. I wanted this shade, which is good, it means I understand how the ink mixes, but the solid particles of the pigment block out the light.

Stretched Out, backside

Here i was looking to get some of the splatter and bleed effect i got previously from flicking droplets of food coloring onto the glue’s surface. As you can see here, the pigments don’t bleed. I’m guessing it’s from the solidity. It just rests on top, flecks here and there, without spreading at all.

Angel's Morning, Ink test one

Here it is even more evident. I used straight white glue for the wings then dragged a little of the blue tinted glue through it to attempt a shading technique. As you can see, the blue pigment reveals itself as specks.

Angel's Morning, wing test

Fortunately, for me, it works quite well on this piece. Both of these techniques will not be thrown out completely. I think it’s wonderful that now i know how to create these effects should I need to!

Chani, Ink test one

Here on Chani you can see where gravity has decided to instruct me as well. I can see that if I would like thin layers of pale colors then i can utilize the inks just fine. Too bad I love the intensity that color brings.

I have also tested two different types of watercolors, to be expounded upon soon. After that I’d like to see what black ink does…

SO for the next round of paintings i decided to not be so willy nilly about the whole thing and, oh, I don’t know… Maybe actually PLAN a little? HA! So, first thing’s first. Line paintings in the new studio space. None of these have color schemes yet, just lines…

Dryad, approx 3'x4.5'

This is just being called Dryad for now. The drawing pad beneath it is 2′x3′ so the measurements above may be off. This is being made out of two panes of glass and I plan on framing them together. I just love the tree reflected in the glass in this photo. I know you can’t see it all too well but, have faith, you will soon enough.

Bored Boy, approx 1'x4'

Again, temporary title. Bored Boy was something I sketched out of my head… I love having the center of focus off center. I am telling you this just in case you’ve been reading and missed the obvious. (Just teasing…)

Chani, 4" square suncatcher

I am going to be doing a series of sun-catchers. Alas, in true Syren form, they will not be for everyone’s kitchen window. I’m doing a series of nudes first and maybe later I’ll consider something G rated. This is from a doodle from about 10 years ago.

Flight, 4" sun-catcher

Another one from the same day’s doodles… At first I thought she was falling. Today i saw the direction her hair was going…

Girl/downup, 9"x12"

From a speed sketch I did today. I’m testing new brushes and the non-concrete form of the sketch let me play a lot.

Lonely, 9"x12"

This is a teeny tiny painting on a 9″x12″ piece of glass, off center of course…

Cliff Tree, 9"x12"

Now this one I’m incredibly excited about. I plan on blowing the sketch up and making it into another two panel 3′x4′ like Dryad. I plan on experimenting with a bunch of different color schemes so you can expect to see this one a few times. I really like the way this medium is set up because I have the freedom to experiment with the same image, over and over. Also, if someone wants one that’s sold or wants something in a different color all they have to do is ask and 9 times out of 10 I will be able to do it.

Angel's Dance, 4" square sun-catcher

Another nudie sun-catcher. Funny thing, once I had a not-so-sober epiphany during a barbecue that if you watch the way light hits our skin you can see how it actually penetrates a few layers making us all into giant sun-catchers who dance in the light we make. It was an awesome barbecue.

One last thing to mention: I can’t seem to find a proper stat counter! If you know of one that lets me know how many hits I am getting, please let me know in the comments! Heck, comment anyway!!

You can also be a fan on Facebook now! I try to update as much as possible with photos of my studio, works in progress while they are still in progress, and status updates whenever I can.

So, yeah, you should go do that, be a fan!

http://www.facebook.com/heathersyren

Also, if the above link doesn’t work yet, it will soon so just check back in a bit!

Well, I’d love to tell you that this is about a new painting but it’s actually just about all of them I’ve done so far. Jonathan Eagan was wonderful to come and take pictures of the show. We were blessed with sunny weather, unfortunately this meant that the only thing that came out in the pictures was the art itself.

On another note, I have my spare room turned into another studio! This means I can work on 10 paintings at once! Twenty if I’m doing the sun-catchers! I’ll post pictures of this soon. I just have a couple of finishing touches to attend to…

I’ve also been working on a few large paintings and I’m experimenting with inks instead of food coloring. So much amazingness to share with you. Well, that’ll teach me to get behind on posting!

I apologize for some of the sidebar menu thingy being covered up. I just couldn’t bear to crop Eagan’s work.

Without further ado, I give you Syrentology…

Woo hoo!

Bubbles

Touhy Ave Two Step, Sold

Lone Tree, Sold

Woman on Fire

Young Lover, Sold

Distant Shore

Michael, Sold

Pooled

Pooled and Michael together

Walking Home

Dorothy, Sold

Bloom

Long Winter, Sold

Bloom and Long Winter together

I love these photos so much. The paintings take on so much more life when suspended, busy street moving behind them, and the sun pouring though. Thank you so much to everyone who took one of my pieces home and thank to you to all my friends, new and old, that came through that night. It was the best birthday I could have ever dreamed of.

Hello everyone!

Sorry it’s been a couple of weeks but life gets in the way sometimes! However, I have been working hard and I can say that everything will be ready for tomorrows show at Jake’s Cigars and Spirits on 14th and P St in Lincoln, NE!

To tide you over here’s an article from the Journal Star!

This painting has evolved in meaning for me in quite a few ways. At first it was a celebration of beauty of the female spirit. Now it is that as well as a celebration of the freedom of self.

My very first model was Kitty, one of the coolest women, mothers, gardeners, hairstylists, and all around kind human beings I have ever met. I used to teach an after school program (albeit not well, nor happily) and she is the mom of one of my best behaved and talented students. When we first met I was struck with her grace like a bouquet of roses to the face. She carries herself with such strength and dignity, she is the woman everyone turns to see. Even after a couple of years we stay in touch as best as our busy lives allow and when I started painting she was one of the first people I asked to pose. So she came by and did yoga for a while and I snapped away.

Now if you don’t know me (or maybe even if you do) you know I was raised by a painter. This means I was raised with complete and utter love for the human form. I took the picture and decided to make it a nude.

Here you can see the digitally altered image and the contour line painting.

One of the things about choosing the colors on this one was that I really wanted to reflect her personality. I chose vibrant purple for the royal way she carries herself with green highlights to infuse the way it comes to her naturally. Plus Kitty makes me think of gardens and rock show lighting when either situation is in full bloom.

Skin....

Then came the hair.

Knowing Kitty is one of the best stylists here in Lincoln, NE, I really wanted to do it justice. I started with what I thought was a deep, bright red. It turned out to be a glaring hot pink. Now, in the original picture you can see why this just would not do. I figured, what the hell, I’ll try something new. I dragged some black through it, just tiny drips with tails, like night itself was turning into comets. Within the time I placed the black and found my camera (about 5 minutes) the black had spread leaving only highlights of the pink…

Funny how art and life make up their own rules...

One thing I really want to impress with this last picture is how the order of events can affect the way it turns out. I started with the body but did not do the face. Sometimes the dried glue helps create the borders for the next layer. I realized after I had started that the hair really should have come first. Painting on glass with any medium consists for painting backwards. With paint on canvas one usually paints from the background, middle, then foreground. Glass is reversed since you’re looking at it in reverse. The hair is the thing that would be closest to the viewer, then face and body, then background. After I had seen my mistake I stopped painting the skin, finished the hair, then added the face.

Close up of the finished figure.

I was very fortunate that my plan worked and it all came out relatively seamless. Now i just had to think of a background.

Since the colors on the figure came out so wonderfully bright I wanted something duller to offset the whole thing. The color wheel dictates that yellow is the opposite of violet. Hmmmm… background, yellow, dull… The only thing I could think of was Mars, the planet… I started in with the yellow-gold shining down upon her…

Yeah, so it's a little dark but you can see what I was getting at...

At this point I could really feel my expectations of self letting go and I just started to have fun with it. Since the yellow was like so much light from above I decided the next colors should become darker…

What is that? Pink? Orange? Who knows!

I had fully decided that I wasn’t going to worry about how the end color came out. I mixed what ever tickled my fancy. The yellow base, a little red, touch of green here… After it had set for a minute I swept my brush through the two colors to make little drags here and there. Some of the unmixed red exploded to create their own striations. Then, seeing I only had enough room for one more color, I grabbed brown from a previous painting. What could be more dull than brown?

Messy love....

I wasn’t really trying for neatness as you can see by all the drips, drags, drops, and squiggles. So far the painting has mostly painted itself. Why stop now?

To emphasize the ray of light idea I decided to do another experiment. With Woman on Fire I saw how Elmer’s Glue straight from the bottle spreads to create cracks. I wondered what would happen when I did tiny lines from one of the itty bitty bottles?

What's the point if you're trying something new?

The next day I was elated to find out that playing is the best way to learn. All of the experiments I had tried led to this, and I couldn’t have been more pleased. Now it just needed a name.

Like I said, the meaning of this work evolved to me. At first it was just a celebration of beauty and femininity. When I saw the finished piece I could see how the figure was walking into the light, hand sweeping to the side as if waving off some trivial thing, a journey began through a trial ended. Walking Home to me means walking into the home of self, the real person each one of us constantly strives to be.

Walking Home, finished, unframed. Thank you, Kitty.

When I first started this I was so worried I wouldn’t have enough to paint. I want to paint some of everything. I want to do a series about love, one about pets loved and lost and loving and living, about mistakes, I want to paint a whole series of yoga poses, of herbs and fruits and vegetables, and one of children. However, I have no idea how many of these ideas will work. I decided to try out a few for the first show. This is about my first painting of a child.

Babbles is the daughter of my friend and fellow musician, Ian. It came about when he was showing off pics of her one day and I told him to send me one to paint. She’s a doll with dark, crazy, curly hair and eyes that make Disney animators jealous they didn’t think of them first. The picture he sent me was a deadpan look at the breakfast table. It killed me.

Babbles, contour painting

When I started painting this one I didn’t even realize there was a mess from a previous painting in the lower right corner. I wasn’t sure that I cared yet either. Kids are messy, why should the painting be vastly different?

As I began painting with the glue I noticed one thing: it’s kinda creepy looking for the first couple of layers. When you have blank dried white eyes and blobulous, wet, pink skin staring at you it’s a little unnerving.

Dry eyes, wet skin...

Now you see here how this skin is pink, right? Like a little kid? Well, this painting is the one that taught me that the glue and food coloring are the things that decide the final color, not me.

Dry skin, day one.

This is after the first day of drying. Now, I hope you’re paying attention because by the end it’s totally different.

Well, this is the point where this becomes a Mother’s Day story. To hear Ian talk about his family is wonderful. His wife and daughter changed his life in the biggest of ways and he couldn’t be happier about it. It was March when I started Babbles and I had a great idea: Ian could give this as a Mother’s Day gift! I immediately asked him about his wife’s favorite color so I could incorporate it into the painting. I was told lavender and yellow. This is awesome. I am good with yellows.

The shirt came first, then the chair and the dishes.

Every color required a day to dry before adding the next.

Now the brown hair was a problem for me. I didn’t want to chance getting it either too green or too red or too mud. Browns I am not so awesome at making. Brown too often means mud when I’m painting. I went with a pre-made brown from Wilton’s with some black added to it. I left some bubbles in her hair, like some stars got caught there and she hasn’t combed them out yet…

Now I have a girl.

Now came the background…

See, for this whole series the background is the hardest part. It takes the most creativity as I’m trying to incorporate part of the subject without distracting from it. The figure is fairly simple in comparison. I mean, I’m just trying to stay in the lines, right? I knew I was going to keep the messy splotch on the front. So I sat, and thought, and came up with a bunch of nothing. As I mentioned previously, Ian is a fellow musician. So I grabbed the two albums I have with him on it and set it on repeat and just started going. It was somehow helpful to have him ‘here’ while I was working on this.

Kids are messy, so am I. Best painting mantra ever.

Since I was doing lots of layers of different colors I could experiment more with the fan. I left it on for the first half of the blotch layers and then left it off for the rest. I noticed on Michael that when I turned the fan off in between layers the glue became very rippled. I formulated a theory: When the surface dries faster than the inside of the glue it then buckles. If the glue is dried at a constant rate it dries smooth except for where it is pulled taut around a previously dried section. I wanted to see if I could get some of those ripples to stay while keeping other parts smooth.

Wiggles here, ripples there...

My theory seems to be correct, at least in practice. I’m not a science major or anything so I can’t tell you why the chemical properties create these effects but I can tell you that it works!

I couldn't wait for it to dry to take a picture!

As you can see, the blobs that were exposed to the fan have a deep ripple to them and the rest was allowed to dry naturally giving it a smooth texture. Also, you can see how impatient I am because it was only about 3/4 dry at this point. All the milky parts dried clear, just as Elmer’s Glue All is determined to do. Also, notice the skin tone. It’s gone from pink to tan to this. Oh randomness of the universe!

Now the next part I am sorry to say I never got a really good picture because of the same impatience. This was my first piece to have framed. It was a gift and couldn’t be allowed to be left undone in any way. Andy Essink (see link to the right) of AE Custom Guitars was kind enough to do a 48 hour rush job. It took him less than 24. I took the picture that night using my ceiling lamp for ‘sunlight.’ Then the next day there was great light but I was in too big of a hurry to clean off my fingerprints and water splotches from the front part of the piece and then touch up the contour painting to have it dry in time for Ian to pick up while he was in town. I promise a good picture with the frame properly lit from the show in three weeks.

Babbles, framed and in the light

Today I got a few texts from Ian. The first one read, “She. Loves. It.” Another one said, “You didn’t sign it!” Argh! Oh well. I will.

So to Ian’s wife and all mothers everywhere (especially my own), Happy Mother’s Day. I am truly glad you like the painting. Thank you for letting me paint your precious child. I am honored to be a part of your day.

That’s right! It’s all confirmed and barring some unforeseen misadventure (aren’t all misadventures unforeseen?) or devastating event Jake’s Cigars & Spirits and I will be hosting Syrentology, my first solo art show and celebration of my 32nd birthday as well.

Syrentology flier, courtesy of Beth Sachtjen

Thank you to Beerorkid.com for coining the name and to Beth Sachtjen for the poster design.

Everyone has that one friend who they have a deep, personal connection to that defies explanation. It is instant, intense, and irrevocable no matter what happens. You may not have much in common, if anything, and you may not ever really see each other but that connection is always there. They’re the one face you look for when you get to the party and the last hug you get before you leave. This connection doesn’t have to be romantic and it’s quite often befuddling but you can’t deny it.

For me, that connection is Mikey.

Mike did his shoot in between school, work, family, rock climbing, and ping pong. Yeah, he’s a little busy. We met at work and although he’s too terrible busy to stop in much, or for that long if he does get the time, I love it when he’s here. I only took about ten photos and it was actually hard to choose which one I wanted to use. So far this whole thing has been about experimentation, small figures on large abstract backgrounds. I wanted to break out of that.

I tried to capture the shape and shadow of his neck at first...

So I chose a photo of Mikey’s neck and tried to focus on the shapes and shadows therein. Just one problem…

Oh hollow. Without detail I have no detail...

See, the way this whole series has been set up, indeed the media itself, it that all detail comes from the black acrylic outline. Without this I am solely dependent on my knowledge of the glue paint. My knowledge=not a whole hell of a lot at this point. I wasn’t confident I could achieve the shading necessary to complete this painting as it was in my head. I’m ok with admitting I don’t know enough. I will someday and I’ll come back to this concept with my own soul cheering me on.

Ok, so now what?

I used high contrast lighting thinking I would be able to utilize the shadows.

Like the caption says, I thought I’d have the shadow thing figured out fairly quickly but, alas, I did not. However, this was a figure I could use, in it’s entirety, with a large background therefore keeping in with the format I was already using.

Yeah outline! And yes, his hair really does do that in real life.

This is the first take of Michael's body...

Now this is where it gets a little odd. I know I took a bunch of photos of the progression of the figure but I can’t seem to find them. As you can see here the original plan was to have a nice plum colored body with green shadows. Well, when it dried it was more mud brown than plum and the green had vanished. Yeah, I wanted to start over. Not that I didn’t want to continue with the Zen concept of accepting mistakes it was just that I was looking for something very specific and I didn’t get it. I was ok with accepting this dissatisfaction instead and accepting the fact I was starting over. In fact, I was excited to learn how to erase!

Now that may not sound hard, I mean, I’m working with glue, right? Well think about this: remember when you were in grade school and at the end of the year you had to clean your desk? Remember the dribbles of glue on your desktop? The tiny deflated circles? Ok, now do you remember chipping it off with your tiny little fingernails, pushing until it gave way, jamming into the soft part where the nail and finger meet? Well, imagine a HUGE circle and instead of a Formica desktop you have a piece of glass. Yeah, erasing is not easy. So I put a towel over it, soaked it down, and waited two days until the glue was reaquafied enough to scrape, peel, and scrub off. After a little work with glass cleaner (Seventh Generation All Purpose, baby!) i mixed up a different batch and got back to work. I used a tan skin color, dark brown with black strewn through it for the hair, and gave him a pair of green khakis. Oddly enough it was the spitting image of Mikey.

One thing I learned with Touhy was that when I photograph someone I know, love, care about, admire, etc, I really want to capture a piece of that person, even if it means you and I are the only ones who know what it means. Mikey is a rock climber and to me he has always represented that bit of outdoor adventure I’ve never really had in my life. You should see him, really. You can watch a guitar player and admire the nimble fingers, look at a painting and see the detail, watch a perfect pass in a football game and see the artistry in the snap. Well, rock climbing is just that art-like when you watch Mike do it. So in my head he had conquered some cliff and was standing defiant above it. I thought of the bold sun and the heat and life that radiates from it. I thought of the green of the wilds and its purpling shadows. I thought about how Mikey always radiates love and caring and how thin he spreads himself in order to try and accommodate all that he loves. The only answer to all of these things was to start at the middle and work my way out.

Radiation...

I started with plain Elmer’s Glue All, used a warm yellow next, then started adding a bit of green between each layer. I had the fan on it the whole time and waited varying amounts of time between rings. For the edge I still wanted to include the original plum color idea (I have no idea why but I was obsessed with finding a place to put it) so I mixed up a bit and slapped it on. Also, since nature is messy, I purposely added a messy edge by adding extra water and dribbles.

You can see my little clip fan and workspace here...

Then I had to wait… again…

Michael, finished...

As you can see it was worth the wait.

He usually is…

Touhy Ave Two Step was my first painting done from a photograph. I’m not a good model director (well… not YET anyway) and Ben was my first. He wasn’t sure what to do and neither was I. I told him to sit, stand, go over there, hold this, ok that’s it. Then I saw his shoes…

"Your shoes are so gross they've crossed into awesome."

They were grungy, to put it politely, but with use. I hate all the crap in the stores with the holes, tears, fake stains. Those are synthetic representations of what should be naturally occurring: Love with a capital L. Ben’s shoes are not gross. You can see the smudge from the hiking trip last spring, the tear from the side of the mountain. You can see the funny stain from where some food was spilled onto the left foot that one time he was making dinner for that big thing, the one on the right from when he dumped a bunch of soup at work. These shoes are infused with Ben’s history and the love that goes with that. No machine should ever be created that fakes these things. Ben’s shoes are heart achingly beautiful to me because he is completely unaware of their beauty. They are simply his shoes, quietly gathering history one nick, mark, smudge, and stain at a time.

So once again, I don’t have every step of this painting available because I wasn’t tracking things as I should. The line painting was never photographed and neither was the jean painting process. I do remember being nervous about creating a denim jean color that also reflected the grungy nature of personal history I was going for. (Side thought: I know how pretentious and arty I sound right now. I usually dislike when other people go off like this but now I see it was because I didn’t understand. Lyrics can explain themselves sometimes, paintings are wordless. I apologize to every painter I snickered at, to their face or otherwise, when they talked about making a color reflect an emotion or thought they were having at the time. I get it now, I truly do. I am humbled by your ability to articulate it better than I through so much practice and exposure to others who do the same. I am honored by your explanations. I will listen better next time.) I was afraid the blue would appear too county kitsch powdered blue so I dragged a bit of brown through it.

Bleeding is the new shading.

You can see here that I also was a bit impatient, as per my usual, and only waited for the outside edges to dry before adding more colors. (Missed the boat on the orange shoes though… bummer. I really wanted to smudge the crap out of the saddle part of the shoe) This worked to my advantage as I used the same brown to shade the shoes. Now, I had no intention of there being any color but brown. However, life has a way of changing plans without telling you it’s going to. Especially if you have no idea what’s going on to begin with.

So apparently colors can separate when they feel like it...

Here is where the photos stop for a bit. I had my good friend Kalee over for tea and conversation while my husband had his head shaved for the first time in 20 years by another dear friend, Matthias, in the kitchen downstairs. I was excited to have someone to show the whole process to AND super curious to see what hubby dear would look like. With all the happy chatter, excitement, and bouncing between floors I didn’t take any pictures at all! Kalee, however, did and she has promised to sent them as soon as she remembers. I think she took a few of me painting and a few of the studio at night as well. We’ll see.

I can explain what went on. I painted the background a nice yellow with a touch of green and a little extra water. The whole thing. Then after a little bit I drizzled a pale leaf green all around. Since I couldn’t decide if it was done I ascertained it wasn’t. I didn’t want to mix up any more colors (I did have company after all) so I just grabbed the school size bottle of Elmer’s Glue All from the stand and drew light little lines all about. I turned on the fan straight away and went downstairs to make another cup of tea.

The next morning I learned a few things.

Wiggle room...

First thing I learned was that when you set a fan and leave it on a background it creates ripples around the dried objects that look like motion lines. Second thing was straight glue from the bottle makes ‘cracks’ that can be controlled, sort of, that spread depending on how thick the line of glue is. Both good to know.

Touhy Ave Two Step on a cloudy, cloudy day...

Update: Sorry I’ve been gone a week. Life has it’s own ideas of daily agenda sometimes. Should be back to the first week furor now!