oil pastels, colored pencils, and acrylic paint in moleskin journal
last week i started working in a new moleskin sketchbook. i was anxious to start working in a journal again... i wanted something that i could put muslin pieces in, or doodle in, or draw... something easy and portable. no, i still haven't finished the last homemade journal i made, but i couldn't bring myself to cover any more pages in it. i can't cover up a whole journal's worth of st. armand paper with gel medium and muslin. just can't do it... and as much as i love Barely There Books, i like working on individual pieces of muslin more.
the muslin face on the left is glued to the backside of the page above... i may cut rectangles out of most of the pages in this moleskin, but that i can do!
watercolors, oil pastels, , colored pencils, and acrylic paint on muslin
caran d'ache crayons, colored pencils, gesso, sharpie poster paint markers
I have managed to open some windows onto this world. How I have managed it is difficult to explain. It certainly wasn't by force, not by selection, not by intelligence, not even exactly by intuition, but almost by a kind of sleep walking. The work of an artist is very difficult, precisely because it cannot be done by force, with diligence, or with intelligence. I mean, you can do everything else in life using strength and application and intellect, but in art these things produce absolutely no result.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser
i've been reading my new hundertwasser book and am smitten with the man and his art... and i'm reading carl jung's memories, dreams, reflections... and the outsider art sourcebook. it's like having a bunch of kindred spirits move into your home. it's exciting...
some observations from the 'outsider art sourcebook':
a. most of the people started doing art after they retired or an event forced them to stop working at their 'regular' job.
b. most of the artists are reclusive, even anti-social.
c. they all create vast, HUGE quantities of work. they're obsessed with creating.
watercolors, oil pastels, colored pencils, china marker, and acylic paint on muslin
i'm playing on another piece of 8" x 10" muslin... i sprayed it with fixative today so i can start another layer without messing up the watercolors...
in case it's helpful i thought i'd pass on a little of what i've learned about using blending stumps on oil pastels and colored pencils... because the muslin is so 'toothy' i have to use them, otherwise my fingers would be worn out. it seems good to keep two stumps for black - a smaller one for around eyes, noses, etc., and a bigger one for general, big smudging. i keep the others clean by rubbing them on muslin - that way i can use a stump over and over on any color... the muslin cleans them right up. i also put a piece of muslin over the stump to wipe off oil pastels if i don't like what i've got going. the muslin is coarse enough to take the surface back down to where you can start adding color again.
and i took a pic of three of my favorite colors of oil pastels - golden brown by portfolio/smith binney - great for skin when used with white; bordeaux by sennelier - a saturated, delicious color that puts zing into everything instantly; and white, any brand - for skin.
~ Messers. Andre Breton, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Paulhan, Charles Ratton, Henri-Pierre Roche, and Michel Tapie(1949)
We are looking for works of art such as paintings, drawings, statues and statuettes, objects of all kinds that owe nothing (or as little as possible) to the imitation of works of art on display in museums, exhibitions, and galleries. On the contrary, they should draw upon the basic human experience and the most spontaneous personal invention.... Works of this kind interest us even if they are crude and clumsily executed. We do not set great store by manual dexterity; most of the time it is used to imitate works created by others and disguises the creator instead of expressing himself through it... We seek works in which the faculties of invention and creation that we believe to exist in every human being (at least at times) are manifested in a very immediate manner without masks and without constraints.
from, Outsider Art Sourcebook, Raw Vision Magazine
colored pencil, oil pastels, crackle paint, and watercolors on muslin
it appears that life has gone from 'slowed down' back to 'speeded up'... each week seems to last about three days, and in those three days all kinds of change happens. after deciding to sell my lampworking equipment, and then not to, i proceeded with the plan i'd been hatching for a couple of months of opening an online store. slowly, slowly it's been incubating, until all that was left was to create the store front and actually do it. which is what i've been doing this past week. i didn't think the store would be hard to create using big cartel, but it was, uh, time consuming... i blithley told my sister it wouldn't take long to create the store or a banner for it - HA! it reminds me of when i got my first tattoo and someone in the car asked if i thought it would hurt much. i said no, it couldn't possibly hurt that much otherwise so many people wouldn't have them. omg, did i really say that?! an hour later it felt like someone was sawing my foot off!!
colored pencil, oil pastels, watercolors and acrylic paint on muslin
but it's done! the Brave Child Me is tickled about this and very happy to be sharing her stuff. some pieces that i do will go in my journal and some will go to the store, as the child sees fit. this is her show, doncha know...
colored pencil, oil pastels, watercolors, and acrylic paint on muslin
i'm still working on the 8" x 10" piece i started a couple of weeks ago... i like it! i have it hanging up so i can look at it!
it's just about done but this little guy needs something. i don't know what, but something...
all my pieces for the store... sigh... don't you love to look at your stuff? ; )
i've been out walking a lot lately too, as we've had warm, sunny weather again. this is a huge dead tree that i've taken many pictures of. it's a bearing tree, and i suppose that's why the forest service hasn't cut it down even though it's been dead a long time. i never feel like dead trees are really dead, though. maybe it's because so much life lives on inside them.
more dead tree love...
some of the sticks that i've drawn on...
the stick on the far left lives with this magnificent juniper. these old growth junipers are more than a thousand years old...
on another note entirely, i was privileged to be asked by alma stoller to write an article for issue #4 of her zine, 'soulcraft'. i wrote about drawing with your non-dominant hand, and i'd like to say that it was pure pleasure working with alma. it'll be out nov. 16, but she's taking pre-orders for it here - she says they sell out quickly.
i'd also like to say a big thank you to cynjon, who helped me figure out how to put imeem music here, and to grrl for telling me how to make my shop pic an active link. i wrote to them at the end of my cyber rope, and they quickly told me what to do... thank you...
i'm going to leave you with barry instead of a quote... last week i loaded a bunch of songs onto my mp3 player that i simply cannot listen to and sit still. i can attest to the fact that singing this song to the trees and sky while dancing will sever your earthly bonds, if only for three minutes and 24 seconds...
colored pencils, oil pastels, watercolor on muslin
it's been a week of reflections and revelations... i think the sale of my lampworking stuff was the primary catalyst, but also the exercises in 'the power of your other hand'. i ended up not selling most of my lampworking equipment... suffice it to say that by the end of the week it felt like my old thoughts about bead making had been snapped like a dry twig...
i realized something very fundamental about myself while doing the exercises in 'the power of your other hand'. the basic idea is that your non dominant hand represents your child self - your creative, playful, imaginative self, while the dominant hand represents the adult you. you can have conversations with your 'selves' by writing alternately with each hand - one asks the questions and the other answers. in the course of doing this i saw clearly that my brave self, my risk taking self, is the child me! omg! how could i have missed that all these years?! the adult me is many things, but brave is not one of them - controlling, yes, and cautious and quite often fearful. but not brave. how liberating it is to know that my creative self is the brave and fearless one...
oil pastels, colored pencils, watercolor and acrylic paint on muslin
and now i'll let the pictures do the talking about the rest of my week. (when i wasn't reflecting and revelating ; )
What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
we had one sunny day last week, so there was no question how i was gonna spend it. went off to see some trees i hadn't seen since last fall. this stick now lives in the tree in the top pic...
this tree flag has been out two years now. look at how bright those caran d'ache crayons still are. jeez, this impresses me!
this one has one year of service in...
so beautiful...
farther along, this is me in total sun/sky/tree bliss... eating grapes and listening to shawn colvin sing 'crazy'. there cannot possibly be a drug better than this. i'm not far from the packrat mansion in thispost from last september. it appears that the mansion is still occupied...
walking back... looking south i can see two valleys and mt. lassen, which last erupted in 1915.
i haven't done any art this week! it's come to me like a bolt of lightning that it's time to sell my lampworking stuff, and believe me, it's a lot of stuff. so i've been taking pictures and putting things online to sell. i still have my torch, oxy concentrator, and kiln if you know anyone who wants to start lampworking. i will make them a very good deal...
anyway, this is the disintegration bundle that i buried last spring when everyone else in seth's collaboration was revealing theirs. i felt so grouchy this morning (not doing art, you know) i figured digging might help, so i dug it up. no way! not nearly disintegrated enough!
oh yes, the doll... she arrived at my mother's and i think she is well loved...
i read this in 'the power of your other hand' this week...
...all progress must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion, wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating. There is no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide.
mostly oil pastels and colored pencil, some acrylic, and a very little watercolor. 5 1/2" x 6 1/2"
i painted a few faces last week but mostly i worked on The Doll... i'd wanted to send her off last tuesday but she just wasn't ready.
i put her on the easel to pose about halfway through... her face was mostly painted so i wrapped it with saran wrap to keep it from getting messed up. what? you think i've got issues with this doll?! hee! i'll wait until my mother's gotten her before i post a finished picture. i wasn't totally satisfied with the way she came out, but mostly...
this is an image transfer of my mother's senior picture from high school - it's on a card that i made for her. i looked in this book at barnes and noble last week and picked up a few pointers about paper and gel medium transfers. the first one was to sand the back of the paper once the gel medium is dry, and the second was to spray it with a mister before wiping the paper off (i had been getting a piece of muslin wet and wiping). the mister idea coupled with sanding works well. the other thing that i did differently is that i sanded it with a piece of 400 grit sandpaper after the image was dry (after taking the wet paper off). this left me with a smooth, clean image. so, i really feel that progress is being made on the image transfer front...
mostly watercolors with a red acrylic background. i used a black colored pencil to outline the face and eyes... approx. 4" x 6"(oh, and pieces of old wallpaper under the squares of muslin)
oil pastels and colored pencil with a very tiny amount of caran d'ache crayons and koh-i-noor pastel pencil. 5" x 7"
i've been having a good time with oil pastels. this face and the top one were done almost completely with oil pastels. on both faces i only used watercolors in the eyes and lips... i also drew this face with the china marker first so i'd have to stick with what i drew - i want to loosen up more and erase less. i just got 'the power of your other hand' (thank you vivian for the heads up!) which is about drawing with your nondominant hand. i am so interested in this as this is the way that i usually draw.
i've only been out walking one day in the last week - i think it was maybe the day of the moon bombing, and between that and feeling generally tired and quiet, i didn't walk far once i reached the dry stream bed i'd headed for. walking upstream was out because it was uphill, and downhill was good but then there was walking back... so i went a few feet and laid down and looked up at the trees.
i took a picture of my traveling colored pencil kit for you. pencils, a paper stump for blending, a 'blending pencil' (i use it on the cheeks if nowhere else), a pencil sharpener, and a piece of muslin. the muslin is great for wiping off the wood before you draw on it. it works like a very fine sandpaper.
i drew the face and then this heart on a log. while i was drawing the heart the tiniest jumping spider i've ever seen jumped on me. he was the size of the head of a pin - oh he was adorable and what a jumper! each jump was about 5" long (!!!) - i wanted to take picture of him but my camera was laying on the ground near the trees. in the course of trying to make sure i didn't squash him
i dumped the pencils on the ground and he got away!
on my way home i stopped to feast on the scent of lichen on juniper, and oh what a feast it was.
other pics of the week... the bright white is the moon and all of the other lights are from a sawmill. i was snapping pics right and left - this one was the result of hitting a big bump in the road, which i thought was particularly serendipitous...
the candle by my chair... i'm fascinated with taking pictures in low light settings...
i took a pic of my art room from another angle... i measured it so i can tell you exactly how big it is - it's 4' x 6'. that's smaller than i thought! the biggest painting on the back wall is jesse reno's 'we must reach for what we cannot see' (yeah, i'd probably buy it for the title alone). i left the pic big in case you want to click and have a look around...
my easel now... i've got an 8" x 10" piece of muslin on there and it seems as big as a billboard! but i'm feelng the need for more room... the purple squares on the left are pieces from an old yoga mat. i put them under the legs of the easel to keep it from scooting around... those oil pastels require a lot of smushing you know...
and finally, thank you for your thoughts and suggestions a couple of posts ago - i appreciate them!
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. Edward Hopper
watercolor and acrylic paint, colored pencils, magazine scrap, oil pastels on muslin; approx. 4" x 6"
Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheels still in spin And there's no tellin' who That its namin'. For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There's a battle outside And it's ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'. The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan
have you heard that NASA has sent a 'bomb laden missile' to the moon? yes, they have... you can read about it here, here, and here. and here at the NASA website... as you can see, the "projected impact at the lunar South Pole is currently: Oct 9, 2009 at 4:30 a.m. PDT."
if you want to join me i'll be sending out extra lunar love in the next few days...
oil pastels, colored pencils, and acrylic paint in moleskin journal
watercolors, oil pastels, , colored pencils, and acrylic paint on muslin
caran d'ache crayons, colored pencils, gesso, sharpie poster paint markers
watercolors, oil pastels, colored pencils, china marker, and acylic paint on muslin
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