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Andy and I used to live in humid in Miami, Florida. The average humidity in Miami is between 50ish% - 70ish% year-round, like in Ojochal, Costa Rica where are living. The HUGE difference is that Miami has air conditioning everywhere. In Costa Rica, air conditioning is rarely found or used, no matter how hot or rainy. Air conditioning acts as a dehumidifier as it allows the air to dry out. Since there’s no air conditioning…the air stays humid…and… Andy and I are renting a house that has NO glass in the windows. The windows have a decorative and practical ironwork and screens. We have lots of fans to keep the air circulating in our home. The fans keep things dryer and us cooler: double win. The bad is that we also have a lot of humidity, no matter how many fans move the air around…so we use a lot of Ziploc bags to keep things as dry as possible. Sadly, many things stay damp…and there isn’t a way to dry them (no oven, no iron). One of these things are the watercolors that I loved to use with my sketchbooks. I learned that watercolors melt. The binder (glue), that holds the pigment (color) melts when the paint is kept in humid conditions. It takes just a couple of days for most of the colors to turn runny. I’m writing this not to complain but more to laugh. Laugh because no one ever mentions melting watercolor paints. I did Google this…and found only One artist writing about it. In the meantime, my sketchbooks will only have blue or brown line drawings and little if any color. My next post will be how I can maybe fix my watercolor kits…maybe….  I opened this kit on Christmas Day as a treat. By New Year’s Eve, it was a taffy caramel mess. These are “pills” or “cakes” of watercolor paint. I’m sticking the individuals down to the bottom with a double sided foam. Once the paint goes on the canvas, the grid disappears. These cats are done in my “goofy cats” style, meaning I use collaged acrylics to draw them. So how do I use a grid when the original penciled in grid is gone? Using one of those quilting rules, I drew up grids with a permanent marker on cut down pieces of used laminating plastic sheets. I hold up my plastic grid to my painting and compare my painting to a digital photo with a grid on it. As I compare my painting to my digital photograph, it’s easier to fix lines and colors by flipping the plastic grid sheet on and off my painting.  I use the app Grid# to add a grid overlay to pet photos. I have to adjust columns and rows to the size of the canvas. If you’d like to see some of the custom dog and cat paintings I’ve done, please visit my webpage about them. Click on these sentences to see and get a free eBook of how to work with me for your custom pet painting.  Holding my clear plastic grid against my cat painting in progress helps me check the drawing. Read more about why I began cheating while painting custom pet paintings by clicking these previous blog posts:
I Cheat When I Paint Pets Using the Grid in My Painting Studio How I make grids on canvas I now begin every custom pet painting with a grid as I learned from painting dog Nakita. The ruler is a quilting ruler, if you’re wondering. If you need straight lines for any project, this type of ruler beats the school ruler hands down for ease of use!  1. After adding my own layer of gesso, I take out my ruler and pencil in one-inch squares. 2. Using an app, I add a layer of squares onto the digital photo of the pet I’m painting. 3. Once the grid is penciled, I can draw the cats onto these canvases. The unique part of these cat paintings are that they are going to be done in “goofy style,” not “realistically.” The lines will blur when I add the acrylic skins and papers. The grid will still help as I paint and collage in the cats. I’ll show you how I keep using grids in later blog post. If you’d like to see some of the custom dog and cat paintings I’ve done, please visit my webpage about them. Click on these sentences to see and get a free ebook of how to work with me for your custom pet painting.  Two custom pet paintings have their grids penciled on their canvases!  This is the 2nd quilt ruler I have because my blue one was in storage. As you can see, it doesn’t have the lines across in grid style, which makes using this particular ruler very difficult when measuring out smaller than an inch increments. It’s in my studio…but it will spend more time hanging out than being used. If you want a quilt ruler, try to find a version of my favorite one!  Nakita’s face angle was tricky to capture, but it’s true to her photo. I repainted this cute dog a number of times to get her smile right. Nakita was the last custom dog painting I ever drew free handed. I spent extra hours repainting her doggy smile. I learned quite a lot from painting her…including that
Cheating with a grid is ok!
I now begin every custom pet painting with a grid. If you’d like to see some of the custom dog and cat paintings I’ve done, please visit my webpage about them. Click on these sentences to see and get a free ebook of how to work with me for your custom pet painting.  Savvy Blooming Free Lucky Cat Picture by Angeline Marie Martinez Well, dogs and cats are loving. They want to be adopted into safe and loving homes. When they are, these dogs and cats guarantee that you will be loved. Every dog and cat have so much love to give! El Refugio is a very special place for dogs and cats in Costa Rica. Some of these dogs and cats are truly rescued from very sad experiences. Volunteers work from behind the scenes to in person to help and support every dog and cat possible. El Refugio holds spay and neuter events as they try to educate the communities that this is the best way to control the numbers of roaming dogs and cats in the rainforest jungle. As foreigners move in and out of the communities, El Refugio provides resources to help dogs and cats find and keep homes in and out of the community and Costa Rica. El Refugio truly is a special and unique dog and cat shelter. Andy and I love dogs and cats. We will be adopting new family members from El Refugio, but in the meantime, we enjoying supporting them! El Refugio’s official words: 'The goal of El Refugio is to improve the welfare of dogs and cats through rescue efforts, low-cost spay/neuter and vaccination clinics, education programs, and community outreach, with a focus of rescuing and rehabilitating homeless, abandoned, and injured dogs and cats." For more visit this link: elrefugiocostaballena.com You can see some of their characters Instagram @elrefugiocostaballena 5% of my painting sales go to support El Refugio. The dogs and cats send their thank yous!  Cooperative Gilded Adventure Lucky CatPicture by Angeline Marie Martinez |
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Drawing, painting both analog and digital, and other artsy things while living in Costa Rica.
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