Ask the Experts, Episode Three: Painting

Lena Rodriguez is joining me now. Lena, how are you?

It’s always a good day when I get to talk with you, Timoteo.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. All right, before we get to all of our wonderful listener questions about painting, can you give us an introduction for people who don’t know you, haven’t heard you on the podcast before? Can you just tell us who you are and what your art teaching experience is?

Yeah, totally. Like you said, my name is Lena Rodriguez. I have been painting, gosh, since I was a child and got my BFA, studio art, graphic design, and all of that. I’ve been teaching now, I would say about 16, 17 years now. I helped open a really awesome school in the suburbs of Dallas called the Grand Prairie Fine Arts Academy, where I am the high school painting and drawing director. I’ve been doing that for the last… This is our 11th year. And it’s literally, doesn’t even feel like a job until you do the paperwork, because the actual work is awesome.

That is fantastic. Your kids do some amazing things. I’m always inspired by what they’re creating, and yeah, you’re obviously doing some great things. So I figured you’d be a perfect person to talk to about painting. Are you ready to answer a bunch of questions?

I’m totally ready for this.

All right. Our first question is from Philip in Nevada. Philip says, “I’m opening a new school next year.” Congratulations, Philip. Good luck with all of that. “And I have the chance to buy a lot of supplies to get the year started. What would your dream setup look like for painting? What should I buy?” Lena, recommendations? I don’t know. What would your dream setup look like in a painting room?

Funny you ask because I actually got to draft up plans for my painting studio. But we weren’t included on the school bond, so I never got it. So I’m actually working out of a dark room, a photography studio. I have many a plan of what I would love. So if I got this opportunity to create my own space… We’ll get to the buying of the supplies but the first thing that I would really push for are some deep basin sinks. I don’t know what level you teach, elementary, high school, collegiate. Some nice, big sinks that run hot water, because public schools these days, they skimp on the hot water. Natural lighting is a must if his space is obviously already probably built. He doesn’t have a lot of natural lighting. I like using natural lighting, like lamps, and things like that to really help with color mixing. And then any type of storage that he can start to invest in, if it’s not already built in. Things that he can stack, things that he can easily label.

I am the queen of organization when it comes to my classroom, because it gives me an idea of what I have and what I need. Now, when it comes to supplies, obviously, all the paint, depending on his level, some people like to start with tempera. I usually go straight into acrylic. And whatever colors you buy, whether you decide to go the CMYK palette, RGB, or just do the kits with the purples and the secondaries and all of that, that’s great. But always order triple the black and triple the white than you think you’re going to need, because you will run out. I would actually stick to just the primary colors, and save as much of my resources to go towards black and white.

And then of course, great brushes and creating systems in place to take care of those things. I like using little plastic portion cups.  The lidded palettes don’t really work well for us. But as far as palettes, I like to get the cookie sheets from Dollar Tree, or as we call it, $1.25 Tree. They’re little aluminum cookie sheets and we just use freezer paper as our palette cover. And so they only pour the amount they’re going to need that day, and then when they’re done, they just roll the paper, trash it. No water anything is involved in cleaning those palettes. So then they’re just really responsible for brushes.

Yeah, that’s perfect. I love that idea. I always use old magazines and we just put whatever paint you need and then you just tear off that top page and get rid of it. However, magazines are becoming more and more difficult to find, so may need to dive into this cookie sheet and freezer paper idea. I know, it’s rough. It’s rough. But to answer Philip’s question, I would say yeah, you can never have too much sink space. You never have too much storage space. I don’t know what types of organization plans he has in place, but I would just say figure out exactly what you need to do with organization. You can never be too organized.

My dream room would have one of those beautiful white pegboards with all the individual tubes of paint, just clipped onto there. If I always wanted one of those, I feel like that would be my dream. I have no idea if that would stay organized in a classroom, if that’s feasible, but I think it would be beautiful. I would say definitely spend your money on some nice brushes, for sure, if you can find those. My kids always love the really fine detail brushes. If you can get some of those, they can really improve technical skill, working with some nice tools like that.

If you have the space and want to work with them, canvases or canvas panels. And then, like you said with paint, I love acrylic too. I don’t even use tempera, but some good student-grade paints, maybe move up to professional if you have some kids who are ready for that. I like Liquitex Basics and Blick student grade for beginning. Windsor and Newton are good for something a little bit nicer. And then Lena, you talked about black and white and I would say a high quality titanium white. It works so well for highlights, for blending. If you want to spend a little bit of extra money on a really high quality white paint, even though you’re going to go through a lot of it, I think it works really nicely.

And then if you’re doing a lot of watercolor, I love the tubes and the plastic pallets for watercolor. Just individual tubes you can squeeze out a little bit of paint. You feel like you’re getting fancy, anything that’s a step up from the Crayola set of eight. I think those are always good. And if you are doing watercolor, get some good watercolor paper, because that really, really helps. I think those would be my main ideas. But yeah, just figure out your organization no matter what, and that’s going to make the entire space work a little bit better.

Okay. Next question is the opposite end of things. This is from Emma in Iowa and she says, “All I have in my room is watercolor paint and some old tempera cakes. What kind of painting projects can I do?” Lena, suggestions for limited supplies, just watercolor and tempera cakes.

Like I said, we have a mural program at our school, and I think with any level, you can have a mural-type program. And what does that have to do with tempera and watercolor? Well, tempera is great for painting on windows and glass and mirrors, so that’s a really good place to start. You can have these so-called basic materials and do cool things with them. I also like using the scientific method in my classroom. Cross-curricular stuff. Having them actually dig deep and research on their own, the differences between the watercolor and the tempera, so they can also formulate ideas on how they can use them differently. With color mixing, it’s like, “Okay, let’s start trying to see how bold of a color we can get with watercolor. Now let’s try it with the tempera.”

And they’ll see that the tempera is going to work a lot differently because it’s going to be a lot more opaque than the watercolor. But really and truly, watercolor and tempera is actually more than I had access to when I started painting and drawing as a teacher for a middle school. So she’s actually pretty set up to be able to start some pretty cool things right away. There’s so many techniques you can use with watercolor, like using salt. I like putting Saran wrap and bunching it up and letting it dry and peeling it off and making awesome textures. To me, it sounds like a great opportunity for some mixed media. Most kids have access to markers and crayons and things like that from their basic school supply list. And being able to utilize some of those materials with the watercolor and tempera, she should be able to create some really cool projects.

Yeah, absolutely. My advice would be, like you said, Lena, just to experiment with them. Watercolor can be great for just about anything as long as kids know what you can do with it, as long as they don’t have expectations that it’s going to be this big, bold, bright stuff. Because that’s just not how it works. Figure out exactly what you can do with it. And you mentioned all those cool effects that you can do with salt, with Saran wrap, everybody’s gone through all of the different watercolor experiments that you can do. Have kids do that. They love that. And work on layering. What does it look like if you let it dry and then paint over it? Figure out how it works and what you can do with it.

Same thing with tempera, like there’s a lot you can do. I love the idea of window painting or mirror painting. I think that’s great. But you can do plenty of just regular painting on paper. Mixed media suggestions are great. I love, with tempera, just working on simple stuff, like experiment with texture. What can you create with it doing movement? Or just think about other elements and principles if you don’t know where else to start and what else you can experiment with. We can also, Emma, link to a bunch of lessons in the show notes from our flux curriculum and give you a good idea of everything that’s out there. But I would agree with Lena’s advice that you don’t really need to feel limited, when it comes to the supplies you have, because there is so much you can do even with just those two types of paint. Just find some cool stuff and dive in.

So all right, Lena, next question. This is from Cassie in Mississippi and Cassie asks, “Is building your own canvas worth it?” All right. Is that something that you have your kids do?

Every group gets a demonstration on how to build a canvas and they’re not even… They’ll help with the stapling and the stretching and stuff like that, just because I think it’s still important for them to see how you can build one. A lot of times, college programs will still require you build them. But I don’t think it’s worth the investment if you don’t already have accessibility to those things or if you’re having to choose that over something else.

That’s a good way to put it, yeah.

It’s a good option. But you can stretch more than just canvas. I’ve gotten tapestry and different types of things donated to me, and if you can get the wood, the brackets, the frames, especially being able to use raw lumber and things like that and cut it down yourself, totally think it’s worth showing the kids. But if you’re having to really dig deep into your budget to make something like that happen, they can watch a video, if you really want them to see it. But it’s more practical to just wait for the arts and craft stores to have their big sales, stock up, and get those things in.

Yeah, I would say when I first started teaching, I was big on that. I was like, “Kids need to know how to do this.” And so we’d break out the tools, and it’s cool to have kids working with tools to cut the furring strips to whatever length and then get the drill out and put that together, the staple gun, make all… It’s cool. It’s a good thing for them to learn. But then, when you really think about it objectively, I just read the question, is it worth it? And my answer is, not really. It’s really not.

There are so many alternatives of things you can paint on, like you said, whether it is just cheap canvas that you can buy from the store, or my kids work on cardboard all the time. I talk on the podcast a lot about getting old political signs and just slapping gesso on them, and there’s a new surface for you. Whatever street signs you can find, whatever ads, you can just paint over that. And there’s so many alternatives that are cheaper and easier, so I would say it’s a cool thing to know, a good skill to have. But yeah, if you don’t already have the stuff for it, then I would say, no, it’s not worth it.

You don’t know until you try, really. Some of them will really surprise you. I know for me, personally, I’ve had some that are just like, “Yeah, we’re going to use these in a mixed media painting or something and just going to glue them onto a canvas at one point.” But I’ve had some success with some Windsor Newton… There’s a bottle of brush cleaner and restore that works really well, and I’ve soaked it in for a few hours, and it just does great things. Now, sometimes, depending on the cleaner you get… I thought I was smart one year, and actually it was just this last year, and my daughter [inaudible 00:15:27] and I thought, “You know what? Forget the few hours. I’m going to leave it in this restore for Christmas break. And so then it’s going to be so much easier.” It literally melted some of the plastic handles of the brushes and it was just gobbled and gooped up. So don’t do that. Follow the instructions.

Honestly, sometimes a little Dawn dish soap and some water goes a long way. And a lot of times it just comes down to getting some type of needle or thumbtack or something, the sharp point, and after the paint has softened, starting to brush out the bristles and clean them. If you do all of these things and they’re still hard as a rock, then it’s time to cut your losses. Now, I’m a queen of measure twice, cut once, so of course putting systems in place so it doesn’t come to that is really good. When I taught middle school, kids could not leave until they turned in their brushes to me. I would stand by the door, it was like their exit ticket. And if the brushes weren’t cleaned properly, I would send them back.

Now, that’s a lot easier with middle schoolers because many a high schooler would just be like, “I’m not going to be late for this. Give me detention.” And then just dip. So one of the things that I like to do is assign studio managers for that week or for that particular day. And their job is not to clean a single thing, but to stand by the sink and make sure that they’re holding their classmates accountable. That has helped a lot. I’ve had some colleagues that assign… Toothbrushes. Some of them need that. That will assign paint brushes and materials, palette knives, things like that to the students for the year.

Yep, that’s my system. I like, here are your three brushes for the semester. Take good care of them. Otherwise, you’re finger painting. And it’s more effective than you might think, to be honest.

Do you let them keep them at the end of the year or do they turn them back in? Because that could also be an incentive if they budget allowed, I guess.

Oh, yeah. I did not have enough budget to let those brushes walk out the door. But I could see that it could be a good incentive if you let them keep those at the end. That’s good. Sorry, I interrupted you. Did you have more you wanted to talk about with cleaning?

No, because honestly, if we’re being completely transparent here, I’ve really dropped the ball this year when it comes to brushes. And the kids are like, “What’s going on? What’s wrong with the brushes?” And I’m doing all the things, and so it won’t be sometimes till the end of my second or third, sometimes last class of the day that I realized that only maybe one kid left a dirty brush in the sink. So then after that, everyone else thought, “Okay, this is what we do.”

Yeah, this is what we’re doing today.

Yes. And so I’m not the queen of taking care of business right now, when it comes to brushes, but I’m going to do better when I come back from spring break.

Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair. When I get into that situation where we just have a dirty sink and I just can’t deal with it right now, I just get a big bucket of soapy water and throw everything in and I’ll deal with it when I can. We’ll get to that eventually. Have one of my student aides get in there and start scrubbing. And it works. I would say when you have brushes that are damaged that have those dried acrylic, I have acetone, and that works really well. Not quite as fancy as whatever Windsor and Newton brush conditioner you have, but acetone works. It’s cool. It’ll break that up. I’ve had people tell me that they use hand sanitizer, and that works really well. I had a professor in college who used to boil vinegar, that was apparently effective, but it seems like way too much work. And also who wants to smell boiling vinegar?

No one.

I would say, as far as preventing it, I would say just teach and reteach how to clean brushes. And if they’re not getting them clean, go through it again. And if they don’t get them clean, then go through it again. I hate teaching brush cleaning over and over again, but it’s something that’s really, really important, so you want to make sure that they’re doing it well so you don’t have to sacrifice any of those to your next mixed media piece or whatever you do with the brushes that are ruined.

Next question is from Irene. I don’t know where Irene is from, but she emailed a question that says, “Is doing oil paint with my high school kids safe? Should I just stick to acrylic?” Lena, I know you have a ton of super advanced kids who are doing super cool things. Do you do oil with them? And what’s your thought process behind teaching oils?

I don’t want to teach oil. I don’t want to really smell the carcinogenics regularly. And it’s so expensive. We need Turpenoid all the time. In saying that, you can’t fight city hall. And in the studio, my students, they’re city hall. And they just love oil, and I get it. I totally get it. And so I will allow them to do oil at the beginning of the year or middle of the year, I’ll give them a demo on oil. But I never create an oil assignment. And I’ll even tell them, “Hey, we can only have a couple of y’all maybe doing oil at a time and you need to sit in this space because it’s the most ventilated.” But there’s no way, in my facilities now, or that anybody, in my opinion, should be having a whole class doing oil if there’s not proper ventilation. The exception of course, then would be the water-soluble oil paints that have been coming out.

Earlier this year, I took a class at our TAEA convention, Texas Art Educators Association, and there was a workshop on how to use acrylic-like oil using the Golden Open Acrylics and some liquid extender and retarder. And one would think, “This looks like an oil painting.” It wasn’t as smooth as using actual oil paint, but it was definitely, definitely a different technique than using acrylic traditionally. I would urge them to move into that direction because I will tell you, one thing that I do do with my students a lot, we go on college tours. And more often, I’m coming across schools that no longer have oil classes or don’t really do oil in the college painting studio because of the fumes and because of the cost. It’s so expensive. If my job is to prepare them to build portfolios for college, for me, since a lot of the schools are not utilizing a lot of oil, that’s another reasoning on why it’s not something that we’ll be doing with the big group.

That all makes sense. And I would concur. When I first saw this question, I just thought, “Yeah, you can do it safely with ventilation, with Turpenoid, you don’t need all the chemicals.” But is it really worth it when you’re thinking about cost, when you’re thinking about the mess that it creates? They’re beautiful to work with, and they’re wonderful. I love them so much, but I don’t need a whole class doing them, and I don’t need the cost of a whole class doing them. And there’s so many other options that you can do with painting that I don’t know that oils are really worth it, at this point. It’s where I come down with it.

Next question. This was a tough one for me to think through. This came from Omar in South Carolina. Omar said, “What are the three or four most important technical skills you want your students to learn and how do you teach them?” Lena, as far as technical skills, what do you want your kids to know or what do you think they should know, when it comes to technical skills and painting?

By the time they come to me as a painter, I want them to know how to draw. And I know they’re like [inaudible 00:24:36]. The drawing is the basis for absolutely everything when you’re working, talking about art. I want them to be able to look at things and be able to draw them. They don’t have to be exact, but I want them to be in the practice of looking and drawing and then making loose marks. Not having a firm grip on the tool will automatically render better results for them, as a painter, and not being so stiff and understanding that photorealism is not necessarily an indicator of a good painter. That’s the first thing is them being able to draw.

One of the other most important things, for me, is understanding the importance in the uses of good value, making sure they are getting those dark darks, those light lights. And especially if they’re translating color to color, the values may not always come so easily for them. I frequently have my students take photos of their work in process, turn it in black and white, and I’ll ask them, “Do you see the darkest darks, the brightest brights? Do you have at least five or six gray values?” Even if I have to pull out a value scale… I actually have some taped to all of their tables. A value scale in black and white and a value scale in color, so they can see those differences. I think that makes a huge thing.

And another thing that’s important to me, too, and some people would disagree with this, I’m big about craftsmanship. Being in the habit of cleaning your materials, taking care of them, being good stewards of the things that they’re allowed to use. Because I always tell them, “Listen, a starving artist isn’t starving because they cannot sell their work. Most any artist can sell some work, but a starving artist is called a starving artist because the materials are so expensive.” So take care of what you have been allotted to use and don’t be wasteful. Sometimes less is more. You don’t have to feel like you need to just throw down six pounds of paint on this canvas. I would say those things. Drawing, understanding and using value effectively, and then craftsmanship and being good stewards of the product and the process.

Excellent. Yeah, those are great answers. And this is why we’re friends, because you mentioned drawing skills and then understanding value. And my notes. Number one, foundation of drawing skills, and number two, understanding value and color.

Yeah, that’s where they are. And you explained those really, really well and why. And I would say with color, I like kids to understand hue and value and intensity and learn how to blend colors, how to mix colors, how to layer colors. I think those are all important things. I also put that knowing proportions and knowing how to see things correctly. I really want kids to establish the idea that we’re not looking at our painting from the same spot every day. Step back, look at it from a distance, flip it and look at it in a mirror, look at it from a different angle. Does it still look correct? Are proportions still right? Does it still look how you want it to look when you’re seeing it from different angles? And we talk about the importance of that. I don’t know if that’s a skill, necessarily, but it’s a habit that I definitely want them to get into. The ability to see proportions and see things correctly, which I think is good.

Then once we’ve established that, then we can get into brushwork and we can get into different techniques and we can get into whatever else they may want to explore. But I think that’s a good foundation. Now that I hear you say craftsmanship, taking care of tools and materials, I think I would probably add that to my list, as well. We’re on the same page with all of those things.

Then the last question, and Lena, this is all you because I have no idea on this one. Jensen in New Jersey said, “I just had a local artist donate a bunch of materials for doing encaustics. Do you think they’re worth using? I don’t know much about encaustics and don’t know where to get started.” And Jensen, and I’m with you. I don’t know anything about encaustics, I don’t know where to get started. But Lena, you are a resident expert when it comes to encaustics. Any advice you have would be appreciated.

I say totally do it. If they donated it to you, first of all, that in itself is a miracle because-

I know how cool is that?

How does that happen? I saw that question and I thought, “Is this a real person? Is this a cut up because y’all know how much I love encaustics?” And there is, I believe, a PRO Pack.

Oh, there is. I just looked this up. Getting Started with Encaustics.

Yes. That is a really great resource to fall back on and use. There’s a lot of other information you can find online. What I like about that PRO Pack is that I explained to you how I did it and ways to make it classroom-friendly. Encaustic is going to be one of those things like oil, that it’s a nice perk, bonus type of material or technique to have in the class. And as we were talking earlier about nice, acrylic paints in your pegboard. I like having VIP areas, Very Important Painters. Having a little corner. It’s like, “You know what? You’ve been doing great at this, so if you want to play with the oils today, all the stuff is over there on my fancy pegboard.”

Or if you want to use the bougie acrylic paints today as a perk or an incentive, go ahead and use that stuff. And I think encaustic is one of those areas that can be that perk for those kids working really hard to get some kids invested. I think it’s totally worth it. One of my tricks is I go to thrift stores and I’ll buy the cheap griddle flat top like Presto pancake breakfast cook top thingies. You can get those pretty cheap, even brand new at the store or online. We use those to melt down our paints.

It’s definitely doable. Again, though, you need to have some decent ventilation. I never have more than two or three kids painting with encaustic at a time. I definitely would say, go for it, even if you are a novice at it. Play with it yourself and do some experimenting. To do it, to know it, is to love it. And honestly, I welcome anyone to reach out in my inbox. Let me know if they have additional questions. But I highly encourage digging into that PRO Pack because I go into all of the basics. But it’s totally worth knowing. It’s super fun. It’s a very archival weight of paint. And I don’t know. It’s one of those things that is super old, but it has come back in prominence and importance just recently. But not very many people know about it, so it’s kind of cool that she has access to those things and now she has no excuse but to dive in. And I love that for her.

Yeah, absolutely. One thing we talked about in the photography episode is just don’t be afraid to experiment. Don’t be afraid to learn along with your kids. And that’s probably the situation here. Just tell your kids, “Hey, I’ve never used this before. Let’s see what it’s all about.” And as long as you can do that safely, yeah, dive in. I think there’s a lot of potential there. I think that’s some good advice. All right, Lena, thank you for all of your advice. Thank you for giving us some time, some expertise, answering all these questions. As always, it is great to talk to you.

I love being here. I love being part of the Art of Education University community. And so any opportunity I get to talk to my old pal Timoteo, it is an honor. So thanks for having me.

Tim:

Thank you to Lena for her expertise and for answering all of our questions.

If you want to continue your learning, I want to highlight a few of the links that you can find in the show notes.

The first will be the encaustics PRO pack that we just discussed, where Lena guides you through everything you need to get started with encaustics.

We will also link to three additional PRO Packs–Tempera, acrylic, and watercolor. These have so much important knowledge, ideas for your art room and how to teach those ideas, and some great resources that you can use and some that your students can use. A great place to get started with ideas for any painting medium you might encounter.

We are also linking to 2 collections from AOEU’s FLEX Curriculum. There is one on acrylic still life, and that collection does some great work on making still lifes enjoyable. There is a second collection called watercolor and everyday life, and I’m a fan of those lessons as well. These collections include videos, lessons, planning sheets, assessments, other resources for students, artist bios, career cards, and so much more. 

We also have some additional resources that you might find helpful, or that might pique your interest. We’ll link to some articles in the magazine, some additional podcasts and we’ll jump into the NOW Conference archives for some presentations that can help your learning.

Finally, if you want to start on or improve your own painting practice, we will link you to the AOEU Graduate courses for both Studio Painting: Watercolor, and Studio Painting: Acrylic and Tempera.

Please explore, enjoy, and find the resources that are right for you and for your students.

Thank you for listening to Ask the Experts. 

The show is produced, edited, and engineered by me, Tim Bogatz, and is part of the Art of Education University podcast network.

Stick with us through all of our episodes as we explore photography, ceramics, painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and more. Thank you for listening!