certain extraordinary

inktense pencils, acrylic paint, colored pencils on muslin

last week was a time of inner change... not change felt or realized so much on the surface, but deep within. i tried working on a light background but couldn't get anywhere. so i started slathering on black, greys and browns...

inktense pencils, acrylic paint, oil pastels, colored pencils on muslin

i wanted to take my new inktense pencils out for a test drive - see what i could learn about them. i feel like i've only scratched the surface, but i really like what i've seen so far. what i've been doing is drawing the figure/face in with them; getting that wet and using them until i want to move on, adding colored pencils or oil pastels. they can add some punch to the more subtle watercolor effects of the inktense pencils.


my favorite colors so far (i left out tan, which is similar to amber) -- sepia ink, oak (brownish green), red oxide, paynes grey, amber, and mustard. mustard!!

colored pencils, oil pastels, acrylic paint on muslin

i did this face before the pieces with the dark background - it wasn't satisfying, something had to change...

inktense pencils, acrylic paint, oil pastels, colored pencils on muslin

so all of these are in regina (for new readers, regina is the muslin journal i'm working in now) - she's 5" x 7", and i turned her sideways to do the top two pieces. here i'm back to working on a single page again...

inktense pencils, acrylic paint, oil pastels, colored pencils on muslin

this is the last page that i've done in regina - it looks like i'm coming back to light backgrounds...

colored pencil, pigma micron pen in moleskine sketchbook

and in my pocket moleskine, some 'zen doodling' inspired by janine. the ink doodling on the left page was done with my right (dominant) hand. the right page was done with my left hand. my first thought when i was done with them, was "wow, this is why i draw with my left hand." to me the energy (and look) of the two 'doodlings' is completely different.




sticks! i haven't forgotten about them! way back in february i drew the 'face stick', or what i later called 'the mother stick', which got me thinking about having an installation (ha!) of sticks that i've drawn on. a grove of sticks, you might say. well, i started to do that but quickly realized that it would involve digging fairly deep holes, and i am not a hole digger! i'm a putter-of-stuff-around, not a digger-of-holes. then this weekend i saw a stick sculpture made by a neighbor, and viola! i knew what the solution to my stick installation dilemma was!

most of these sticks don't have any drawing on them, but they can be taken out and drawn on. my dh and i had collected this stash of 'drawable' sticks... since this 'sculpture' i've started two more - they're addictive!


the 'mother stick' does not live here, but near ashland, oregon with two beautiful guardians...


we've had a wee little bit of sunshine and i've been out in it... if you click on the tree you'll see some rusty MJB coffee can art... the bottom of the can was barely hanging on, ripe for drawing...


this is how far our trees have leafed out. it's not easy to believe that the summer solstice is a few weeks away...






oh my...

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"This much is sure, a picture interests me to the degree I succeed in kindling in it a kind of flame -- the flame of life, of presence, or existence, or reality, depending on what we take these words to mean. To be sure, it often happens with me that my picture lacks this quality... In any case, I go on working, I add and I take away, I change, I revise (notice that I work empirically, like a blind man, experimenting with every kind of means), until a certain extraordinary release occurs in the picture, and from then on it seems to me endowed with this very life - excuse me, reality. How can this be accounted for? I have no idea. I never know how I produced it, or how to repeat the same effect. It is a mysterious happening, and because of its very mysteriousness it drives me again and again to renew the experience each time I make a picture."

~ Jean Dubuffet


XO