I'm on Instagram!

 

Well, I'm on Instagram.....and I like my tablet very much. Just search for Harry Stooshinoff......I post very regularly there.

 

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paintbox.etsy.com

www.harrystooshinoff.com

My Brushes

These are the brushes I use every day. They are not special, and they are not expensive, and they are not new (for the most part). I'm used to them and they do a great job. If one gets loose and wobbly, I wrap a bit of masking tape around it, so that it's right again (maybe just like my uncle used to tape his eyelid to his brow when he got old and his lid didn't work quite right any more). Well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get my drift. It's really only the last 6 brushes or so that I use every day, and the small house painting brush is used only to spread my left-over paints onto thin papers for collages later. It's not necessary to spend a lot of money on brushes. I can't recall the last time I bought a brush, and when I do buy a new brush, it's usually just a tiny sable brush for little details. Don't feel that an old, gnarly, messed up brush should be thrown out...it will work just fine for a number of things. You just have to watch what it will do...and what it will not do....

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paintbox.etsy.com
www.harrystooshinoff.com 

Harry Stooshinoff Exhibit at Buckhorn Arts Festival 2017

It was a lot of work putting all this into place, but I enjoyed the overall effect. The festival fills the Community Center and many outbuilding galleries with artist displays in late August. I love the setup of this gallery campus; it's unique and very appealing. The town should think of making even more use of their valuable and rare asset.

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paintbox.etsy.com
www.harrystooshinoff.com   

Framing Masonite Paintings in Float Frames

I am also making float frames for many of my small panels and am using 100% silicone adhesive (5 small dots...one in each corner, and the center of the panel) to firmly glue the panel to the frame support beneath.  The process is completely reversible...the painted panel can be safely removed without damaging the work. You never know when someone down the line may want to rework the presentation. Made with clear pine,  painted satin white, wired at back, and ready to hang. The reveal on each side is 1/8 inch, and I chose to keep everything white for a simple, clean look. I will also be finishing some with just clear minwax, which leaves the pine very pale. I used Jon Peters' excellent video to guide me in making this.     https://youtu.be/AB-L65xO0Pg    I used  a thin nail set to counter-sink nails and filled with wood filler.

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paintbox.etsy.com
www.harrystooshinoff.com

Colour Notes

 

Here is list of some of the main colours I use: ultramarine blue, permanent blue light, cadmium red middle (sparingly, and good for mixing), cadmium yellow middle (sparingly, and good for mixing), naples yellow, titanium buff light, or unbleached titanium, titanium white, prussian blue, chromium oxide green, hookers green, sap green, viridian green, ultramarine violet (great for cutting the saturation of greens, and for achieving more variety with blues), burnt umber, raw umber, I also use a variety of mixed colours,packaged in tubes, often not expensive...like light portrait pink, greyish blue, light blue violet, neutral grey...(they are great for tinting other colours). carbon black (great for mixing greys and allows to you easily achieve both warm and cool greys). The dark blues and greens are great for mixing the equivalents of black when mixed with the umbers.

 

I use the carbon black mostly to mix greys, but for a variety of extreme darks in the painting I use my darkest blues and greens mixed with the relaltive complementary....I love mixing darks! So for dark green masses I might use hookers green + prussian blue + burnt umber.

 

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www.harrystooshinoff.com

Country Living

 

I love walking these roads in the evenings.The roadsides are well treed...I hear the wind move through the foliage and all kinds of little animal life in the hedges. The crows are always squacking about something or other. The light seems to change by the minute, and there are open views as well as more crowded-in areas where there's less breeze....you can smell the summer growth. And I love being away from everything, and still hearing human life on the edge. I'm far up in the hills, and I can hear single cars winding down the road miles away. It makes me happy knowing they're there. I can hear cars coming from either direction for 15 seconds before I see them...tractors, ATVs and motorbikes I can hear for way longer before they pass. Often, on weekends, I can hear the rock band practicing, next to the horse farm and chickabiddy's....it's nice hearing them from this distance, but I wonder what Boris the horse farmer thinks...they are right across the road from him. I like stopping and talking to Sally the pretty young mare with the star on her forehead...she likes me and always looks up and approaches the fence when I get close....her horse buddies follow her. I keep meaning to bring them cut up apple bits. Recently I've seen a pair of coyotes ranging in the fields, close to the hedgerows, crossing at 10....they like being out the same time I am....getting close to dark...but not quite....

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paintbox.etsy.com
www.harrystooshinoff.com

Buckhorn Arts Festival, Preparation of Work, Continued.....

I ended up using clear pine 1" x 2" to create an indented box that stands 1 inch off the wall, rather than 2 inches. And instead of using small screws and wire to hang, I just notched the  top of the backframe with a 1/4 inch drilled hole. It works great...much less fuss and it's much easier to store and transport these many works safely. The painting panels are attached to the backframes with 100% silicone caulking which can be removed should someone wish to frame in a different way. I like this non-frame method because it pushes the work forward nicely, with no competition or interference from the frame. Now I'm going into production mode, and preparing a whole lot of painted panels this way....I haven't counted but it's well over a 100...we'll see how many I can do in the next month or so.

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paintbox.etsy.com
www.harrystooshinoff.com

Buckhorn Arts Festival....Preparing Masonite Paintings

I'm preparing a whole lot of small paintings on Masonite for the Buckhorn Arts Festival. I started by putting them on these larger blocks with glued card flanges, which worked very well. But I made some modifications along the way......

To Lake Ontario, On Location, June 25

To Lake Ontario

Painted from the front seat of may car.

 a very beautiful and gently unsettled evening....it started off almost perfectly clear, but within 20 minutes came a variety of quick showers. The sky was repainted right at the end. Acrylic, pencil, on thin gessoed panel 7.75 x 8 inches. I always like the idea that every single little touch is important...there is an energy to the quality of mark that often shouldn't be tampered with. I like that the lowest part of the grey cloud is the first big brushstroke that went in...and it wasn't touched afterward....

I like this spot...one day I walked right around the whole field. just north of Port Hope, Ontario...above the lake, the land is hilly and beautiful. Here, I'm about 2 minutes north of Garden Hill.


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www.harrystooshinoff.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuHuLWsq7LQVYbd616Wzz2Q