8″x4″ oil on panel

Early spring, still cold.

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” -Percy Bysshe Shelley

There are still a few spots in my oil workshop next week!

7″x5″ oil on panel

The middle school flooded and was temporarily closed, and I got to enjoy an unexpected spring day with 2 of my kids. If you look carefully I captured my son and his fishing buddy on the far shore of the pond. I felt old fashioned saying “do whatever you want, as long as you are outside.” It was a gift, and I am grateful to have received it.

I have a couple spots left in my plein air oil workshop next week.

Pastel painting break for the nurses of 2J at Baylor Hospital, Dallas.

Arts and Medicine went on tour to one of the busiest units in the hospital. I was asked “can you come up with an activity that could be done in 30-45 min?” You bet I can!

I arrived with my supplies and the nurses trickled in a couple, then a few at a time. They learned, the laughed, they painted, and they all left with a finished pastel painting. 💯 % of these outstanding nurses made time to participate.

As I left, I spied a display being made on the floor! Here are a couple of their paintings:

I had a professor once who took students on study trips all over the world. He was very wise. He suggested packing for a trip, then taking your suitcase for a walk around the block. Don’t use the wheels, walk in the grass, and then carry it up and down a couple flights of stairs. If it is too heavy to manage, go home and take some stuff out of your bag!

Too much stuff is a terrible burden when traveling. Not having what you need is also a problem.

I also set up before plein air trips. Painting outside can be tricky. The seeing and painting part is hard enough, you don’t want to be fussing with your easel.

My solution: set everything up in the comfort of your home. Then imagine painting. Don’t set things on your counter, you won’t have your counter in the woods or on the beach with you. Then repack and do this process again in your yard. Paint a painting. Make a note of what you wished you had. Do you need a clip to hold your value study, a bungee to hold your paper towels? This is a frustrating feeling when you are out painting and you need something at home in your garage or junk drawer.

I once got a brand new easel for a painting trip. It was a slightly shorter version of this easel I had used for 200 hundred paintings. Did I follow my advise and set it up before I left? NO, it was the SAME easel right? I set up on a very busy beach, within 10 seconds a crowd of people were asking if they could watch me paint. Did I say “sure, come back in 30 min?” No I said “sure!” Then I proceeded to scramble and fumble. I failed to get the easel set up. I was dropping nuts and bolts everywhere in the sand. Later I rode my bike into town and looked up the number and called the company. “Did you watch the video on assembly” they asked? Some key pieces had been reversed for shipping! I could have avoided this headache by following my own advice.

Plein air painting might not be your thing, but the advice holds in other situations. I pack and then set up outside my studio before doing a demo. Do I have everything I need? Have I thought this through?

If you need a plein air trip to look forward to, I have an oil and pastel workshop coming up! Sign up here

There are a thousand roads to Rome, this list is just one list of workable supplies. I have used other supplies in the past, this is what is currently in my plein air oil painting backpack:

A field easel.  I am currently using “daytripper” easel and a Dolcia tripod. It has a wonderful large pallette and is super simple to setup. I have used: a Jullian easel, and several different pochade boxes. Like most plein air artists I am always looking for the perfect setup. Trade offs are size, weight, and ease of set up.

Apron, and sun hat, sunscreen, bug spray, water bottle, packaged snack.  Layered clothes to keep warm or cool. It is MUCH harder to paint if you are uncomfortable so I work hard to keep myself comfortable.

Flat bristle brushes sizes #8, #10, #12 – Rosemary flat classics are my favorite A palette knife.

Paint – a minimum viable set would include a large tube of white, and at least (red, yellow, and blue)

My colors vary. My staples include: aliziran crimson, cadmium red light, cadmium yellow light or azo yellow, cadmium yellow dark,  Burnt Umber, ultramarine, cerulean blue, sap green. There are many Optional colors, If you buy one more I would buy orange, and king’s blue. Then turquoise blue, quinacrodone rose, greenish umber, yellow ochre.  I usually use Rembrandt or gamblin brand.  Van Gough is passable.  Pliers to open paint tubes.  I use mine almost every day.

ODOR FREE mineral spirits and a jar or something to put it in- I use gamsol and a turp jar made for cleaning brushes, it has a wire insert to allow paint to settle to the bottom and give you something to clean your brush on.  You can also use gamblin solvent free gel, and you can fly with the gel (I use both the gel and gamsol to wash my brushes).  

Paper towels, or Kleenex, or rags (i use a chord or bungee to attach to my easel – a good thing to figure out in advance).  Some small bags to put trash in, I use a pop up trash bucket that I hang from my easel.

I like to wear disposable gloves

I use linseed oil soap to wash my brushes.

I use something called a palette garage to preserve my paint.  It saves paint and time in the field. No waste, and it allows me to pre squeeze my paint before starting. A Tupperware, or Saran Wrap would also help keep paint fresh.

Panels and wet panel carrier to fit those panels.

I like working small and doing many paintings, rather than fewer large paintings.  I am currently working 8×10, 8×8, 6×8, and 4×8 size.  I can store them all in the 8×10 panel carrier made by raymar.  I work as small as small 5×7.  A really good painting day for me is 4 paintings a day.  The most I ever Painted was 12!  I love raymar panels, but they are expensive!  I usually use something cheaper like Centurion.

App: ‘Notanizer” $2 for android and iOS 

I carry notecards and markers for value studies. They are also useful for making painting notes (time, location, title etc) I use blank Notecards, a black and grey marker, and a pencil and pen.  I also keep a small roll of tape to tape notecards to the backs of panels. 

I put all of this in my Kelty backpacking pack. I like having a big enough pack not have to cram. I also like having a good waist belt to help me carry the load down the trail.

I find these kinds of lists interesting and helpful. Perhaps it will inspire you to go out and paint!

50’x19′

Those are feet not inches. Those specs by the ladder are my daughters and I. We are small, but we are not “Honey I Shrunk the Kids Small.” This is a giant work of art.

I love my church, and they are doing something HUGE. It is a journey to the Cross. I am charged with painting the Centurion soldiers. My part of this project is a small piece of the whole, and a really huge painting. My friend Kevin, a gifted theologian, helped guide me in getting my head around who these guys were. I spend a couple weeks studying up, and I have started painting. There is more information about what Journey to the Cross is below. I think it will be Holocaust museum impactful. It is for all ages (English and Spanish), and will be free but you need to reserve a ticket. If you are an artist or someone who wants to be artistic and in Dallas and want to come spend a couple hours helping me, I would love to work with you. I just have a couple weeks to get this done. Message or email me for details. Julianacrownover@gmail.com

Dallas, TX: Church of the Incarnation will host Journey to the Cross, a special experience: an interactive art exhibit open to the public April 10–13. The exhibition will draw believers and non-believers alike into the compelling story of the central figure of the Christian faith and his final days on earth before his death, burial, and resurrection. In these larger–than–life art installations, scripture is experienced in new ways, offering more with which to wrestle, beyond what we’ve ever read or been told.

The artistic vision for this experience has been led and cultivated by renowned local artists Pamela Nelson, exhibited in more than 100 national venues, and visual artsinnovator, Aaron Bensko among others. With a team of artists and partners from area churches, they have worked together for more than two years to deliver the beauty and power of the Easter story in this way.

There will be age-appropriate guidance for children to receive this story in a safe but impactful way, as well as Spanish translations for all ages.

About Church of the Incarnation: Church of the Incarnation is an Episcopal church in the Anglican Communion located in Uptown at 3966 McKinney Ave.The church is rooted in ancient faith and makes worship accessible to modern life.  incarnation.org

Sign up here

18″x24″ pastel on sanded paper

I spent the day on the Pikes Peak Trail today, and I brought the people in the Sammons Cancer building with me.

I was surprised how many people who walked by commented on this painting. I loved the trail stories, Colorado stories, mountain stories, and even beautiful cloud stories. I felt like we all got to travel somewhere beautiful together, through memory and imagination, if only for a moment or two.

I hiked this entire 26 mile trail with my family last summer. It was epic, especially for my youngest who is with me here in this painting. She was 8. The storm hit while we were on the summit, and we had to make a call on what to do. We tracked the storm carefully and found a window we could drop off the summit and (hopefully) make it to tree line before the next wave of electricity. This little girl proved to be a strong and calming leader. It was a strength we wouldn’t have known about with out a challenge. Sometimes hardships, although difficult, let your true colors shine.

I love to paint western clouds and landscapes. If you would like to learn to paint them with me, consider signing up for my Ghost Ranch pastel workshop.

Yesterday I went to paint at Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas. When I arrived to set up, I realized I left my paint in my studio, my studio at my house, 30 minutes away. I had a 16″ square canvas, and almost 4 hours to do a demo. What to do????

First I assessed what I did have: I had a giant tube of white paint. I also had my Pallette garages. A pallette garage is a brilliant way to save leftover oil paint. One has globs of all of my basic colors (unfortunately not freshly reloaded, but it was something), and one had all the leftover paint from my last painting, a landscape. Lots of sky blue left.

So…I made a plan. I planned to paint an aerial view of a cactus in bloom. I decided to make the painting very high key, which is mostly light colors. This would utilize the large tube of white. High key paintings also appear cheerful, which is appropriate when painting in a Cancer wing. Then I decided to do a loose underpainting on the whole panel. I premixed colors to see what I could make work. I decided my cactus would need to be more turquoise than green, and my flowers more pink than red.

Lastly, I decided to work all around the painting, so if I ran out of paint before I was finished it would feel more like a study, or really loose.

“Kaleidoscope” 16″ square oil on panel

And…it is one of my favorite cactus paintings to date. I was able to paint calmly, and not seem frazzled.

Here is a detail, notice those two red circles in the middle are from the underpainting, that part never got finished. I love how the thick and think paint interact.

I made a plan of attack, and then I had a great day painting.

As people walked by it was fun hearing how they interacted with my art. One woman was back in the Southern California of her youth. One woman was taken back to her wedding day, I’ve never seen cactuses those colors, they are the colors of my wedding! One guy sang me “Every Rose Has it’s Thorn” and talked about how that is so true. He know it now that cancer had come into his beautiful marriage, my rose he said. I am so glad I stayed and painted.

I shop from a list. I pack from a list. I even read the book “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”

Everyday checklists save lives in operating rooms and on airplanes. They also help you to remember that your daughter needed a piece of poster board while you are still in the store shopping. They free your brain up for other important things like making art and day dreaming!

You would think I would have a checklist for my plein air supplies. You would think…but I didn’t before this afternoon. So when I arrived at the hospital today to do a painting, I was so surprised to find everything in my bag except my newly organized and reloaded bag of paint.

Now I have this:

The ideal checklist is less than 9 items long.

I will hang this beauty from the top handle of my plein air pack, and hopefully avoid doing what I had to do today. What is that you might wonder? I will tell you how I handled my problem tomorrow with another art habit.

5’x4′ mixed media

I started this commission that I am super excited about. I made a time lapse video, which makes this slow progress kind of fun to watch. Under everything is a layer of collage from the family: their wedding vows, feeding and diaper notes from when their triplets came home, and preschool papers. It is so special and sweet when those papers hide and seek through a finished painting.