Sunday, January 31, 2010

the finder

colored pencil, oil pastel, matte gel medium, and acrylic paint on moleskine page

this week i did not feel 'becalmed'... i wanted to swim madly out of my little spot on the ocean and find what was calling me! was it painting with broad strokes or simple line drawings? i'm still not sure! so i did a little of both, knowing that when the time is right, it will be Revealed...

i did a lot of covering up with black paint and then wiping most of it off. the face above looked nothing like this before the black paint treatment. the black paint and 'blonde' hair treatment that is... anyway, i liked her a lot better after The Treatment.

colored pencil, oil pastel, matte gel medium, and acrylic paint on moleskine page

this page had many incarnations and i finally just left it at this. it had the black and brown paint treatment. plus several others

colored pencil, oil pastel, matte gel medium, and acrylic paint on moleskine page

more black paint treatment and then i added the little flying Being that was already sorta there. one thing about rubbing paint off of gel medium that's on top of oil pastel, is that the gel medium rubs off fairly easily. this can work to your advantage and leave some nice ragged edges like the ones on this creature's face.

colored pencil, oil pastel, matte gel medium, and acrylic paint on moleskine page

no black paint here, but i did rip the page out (and up) and glue it back down on the next page. at first i was just gonna use the dog, but then i decided on a little grass, and then a little sky...

3" x 5"

inbetween covering up and ripping up i did my first embroidery piece that i'm happy with. it's on painted and sanded muslin, and it seemed perfect for the job. inspired by jacky, this is the beginning of my slow cloth... and jude i thank you for putting the knowledge of a slow cloth in my head in the first place. i'm going to ask my sister if she wants to work on it with me (she's going to be surprised to read this here).

the finder

this is the last thing i did this week, and by far my favorite. it's just pencil and colored pencil on muslin.

i made two videos today! one is of the green shrine tree (and it's much blurrier here than it was on my computer - don't know what's up with that), and the other is me talking about colored pencils and drawing on sticks (please forgive -and ignore- me clearing my throat in the second one).

one last thing - i've switched from 'big cartel' to etsy and have just barely got my shop open. i still have work to do on it, but i wanted to tell you that i have 3" x 5" samples of muslin for $1, including postage ($1.50 outside the U.S.), so you can try it out. you might decide you want to make your own, or you might buy more of mine! i've decided to try and keep the 'muslin for you' in stock, and also add some (blank) muslin books.






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"That's the way it is with my work. Like a lot of them artists try to copy things or take pictures. That I can't do. I sit down and it just come to me. Some things I make is from memory. Some are things that you never seen. Sometimes as I'm working, things change. I start with one idea, then wind up making something entirely different than I intended. You take the people I make: Sometimes they look like certain people I know or have seen. But I can't take a pencil and sketch them. I'll just be working on a face and it will be revealed to me and I can do it. Or you take the buildings: They ain't buildings I see. It's my own development."

William Dawson, outsider artist, Raw Vision magazine


XO

Sunday, January 24, 2010

floating

colored pencils, oil pastels, and watercolors on muslin and and moleskine page

so here i am, still 'becalmed', and thoroughly enjoying it...

watercolors, acrylic paint, stencil, and sharpie poster paint markers on moleskine page

image transfer, colored pencil, and oil pastels on moleskine page

image transfer, pigma micron pen, and sharpie poster paint marker on moleskine page

the image transfers above were made with photos sent to me by a friend. the images were much nicer than my transfers, but still, some of their gorgeousness comes through... the top photo has incredible purple berries in it, and the bottom one is of dried witch hazel flowers.


what i did a lot of last week was draw/color images on muslin and then cut each one out and glue it to the page. the angel, the boat, and the star in the top picture are colored pencils and oil pastels on muslin; after i'd colored each one in, i cut it out and glued it down. same here, except i did most of the coloring with caran d'ache neocolor II crayons. i used the crayons both with water and without. the rug was made by scribbling with dry indian red and grayish black crayons, and then rubbing them in (like you do with oil pastels).


i thought it'd be nice to just show you the ingredients instead of writing them down. i left out a crayon, though - that's grayish black (love that color!) around the edge of the rug. otherwise, everything's here...

colored pencils, acrylic paint, oil pastels, and caran d'ache neocolor II crayons on moleskine page

you can't tell from the pics, but gluing the muslin pieces down gives the page an added dimension. i like it... AND i get to work on muslin without totally covering up the paper.


the face was cut out and glued down. the ingredients on this page are the same as the one above.

colored pencils, oil pastels, sharpie oil paint marker, and acrylic paint on muslin and moleskine page

i used a template that i found here for this figure... she moves - the brads come out on the back side of the page and i just covered them up with ripped pieces of paper.
. . .

"When you become a lover of what is, there are no more decisions to make. In my life, I just wait and watch. I know that the decision will be made in its own time, so I let go of when, where, and how. I like to say I'm a woman with no future."

Byron Katie, 'Loving What Is'

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(turn it up ; )


XO

Saturday, January 16, 2010

galluping

watercolors, oil pastels, colored pencils, and acrylic paint on muslin

this is the last drawing that i did last week... after that i decided i just didn't have the drawing zing. it became clear that my little boat had floated into the creative doldrums. usually when this happens i fret and fuss (and fret and fuss some more), but this time i decided to just do whatever the heck came to me... no worries about it 'looking good' or being 'a painting', or anything...

acrylic paint and oil pastels on muslin

first i got the stencils out...

acrylic paint and caran d'ache crayon on muslin

this one was done with extremely diluted acrylic paint on a wet page - everything suddenly becomes mysterious! the brownish lines are from a dripping wet caran d'ache crayon...


i wrote down words that i read or came to me... (parts of two pages here)

oil pastels and acrylic paint on moleskine pages

i did a painting thinking about the way jeane paints...

acrylic paint and glued down image on moleskine page

more words and i used that nice picture that had been laying around.

image transfer, acrylic paint, colored pencil, and oil pastels on moleskine page

words, an image transfer, and a pogo print of my pink grapefruit/cranberry juice.

acrylic paint and oil pastel on canson mi teintes paper

and for the collaborative project i'm doing things i wouldn't do otherwise - like use this shoe stencil...

so here i am, galluping right on through my moleskine. after taking out the centerfolds from the last two signatures (to make room for the muslin), i'm not that far from being done, which (as those of you who could watch the video know), i'm happy about.

stonehenge paper - a couple of people asked me about it a while back. roz has done a nice review of it here.

beautiful week to you!
. . .
seated woman with bent knee, egon schiele

"i am so rich that i must give myself away."

~egon schiele


XO

Monday, January 11, 2010

catching up

acrylic, oil pastels, colored pencils, magazine image, and matte gel medium on muslin

whew, i thought i'd post last week but then i got sick... now i'm better...

one of the things that i've been doing is learning to make videos. nothing complicated, but i'd like to be able to edit them - combine videos and add text. windows movie maker doesn't seem to want to work with the video converter i'm using, though, so no movie editing for now. any suggestions re: your favorite format for saving videos (so far my fav is mp4) or video editing software (PC) would be greatly appreciated...

i've been taking it easy, reading a lot, painting some, watching a few movies. being quiet... last week i watched "in the realms of the unreal: the mystery of henry darger". the trailer is here, if you're interested... it really made me stop and think about many things, one of which is how a person can live in this world (in a city) for more than 60 years doing art without anyone knowing about it. it also made me think about my art in a way that's hard to describe. it made me slow down and *look* at what i do. i highly recommend it (the film that is)...


so here's my first video; it's about the art stuff i've been doing lately... it's me trying not to ramble too much and saying some pretty silly things in the process... ; )
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"Actually, the main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be or, at least, to become an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. Not only to master life in practice, but to shape it meaningfully within me and to achieve as mature an attitude before it as possible. Obviously this isn't accomplished with a few general precepts, but grows like Nature."

Paul Klee, from his diaries, quoted in 'Paul Klee, Selected by Genius', by Roland Doschka


XO