Sunday, June 27, 2010

running



stitch

i was thinking it should be nominated for the nobel peace prize. it's so calming...

i'm still stitching, and enjoying the summer weather. i don't think i've ever appreciated sunshine and warm weather as much as i am now; when it doesn't arrive until the third week in june, it almost feels miraculous.

i've been drawing a little and messing around with sticks... after the astrological acrobatics of last week, my feet are beginning to touch ground again...


a couple of days ago someone showed me how to burn into the wood with a magnifying glass (and the sun, of course). wow... it takes practice and it's definitely hot sitting in the sun doing it, but what better way to mark a summer stick?! if you want to try it, hold the magnifying glass above the stick so that the 'sunspot' is as tiny as possible - for me this is about 6" - 8" above the stick. when you get it right, the wood starts smoking immediately. and yeah, wear sunglasses!!

i'll be outside as much as i can for as long as this weather holds. if i'm not here, i'm there. : )


XO

Sunday, June 20, 2010

solstice love


i'm sending you wishes for a beautiful solstice... for me it's a time to focus more than ever on beaming love to our lovely earth, her waters, the sky above her, and all creatures who are at the mercy of the pollution and destruction caused by humans.


i've been making prayer flags...

let's beam as much love as we can, today and every day...

XO

Monday, June 14, 2010

it's the magic

acrylic paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, inktense pencils, misc. bits of collage stuff in muslin journal

this is my piece for the 2nd chakra... it wasn't an easy one. it's the chakra for self love, self acceptance. for joy... once i 'got' this, one thing led to another and i decided on a mandrake root for the body, and then the words "it's the magic, baby" came to me and have stayed...

lydia ~ colored pencils, oil pastels, collage papers, matte gel medium in muslin journal

before i did the 2nd chakra piece, who should show up but guy's wife. yes, guy, in the last post - his wife! side by side (as they are in the journal) they look so happy... quite in love, they are...

oil pastels, colored pencils, acrylic paint on watercolor paper

and in the 4" x 4" journal, i've done a couple more faces. the watercolor face below this blue acrylic went so wrong i covered it up (not that there were any mistakes, mind you). but! imagine my delight when i dug into the paint to find the orange on the left side of the face! this watercolor paper is holding up beautifully to a lot of, uh, use...

watercolor and acrylic paint, colored pencils on watercolor paper

she hasn't told me her name, but she was at one time a he with very pronounced ears. hair can be so useful!

i've had several people ask me how i add plaster cloth to the pages in my muslin journal, so i'm going to paste here the info that goes out with my muslin journals re: adding plaster cloth...
  • To add plaster cloth to a page, simply cut enough pieces to cover your page. I hold the page next to the roll of plaster cloth and cut a piece approximately the same size as the page. Then I cut this up into three or four smaller pieces – it's easier to lay down that way. I dip each piece of plaster cloth in warm water and lay it on the page, smoothing it down with my fingers. Once all of the pieces are down I smooth a little more more, and make sure that I smoosh some of the plaster off onto the muslin; my thinking is that this helps it stick to the page better. When you're done, lay the page on a flat surface to dry. I like to lay mine on a piece of glass from an old picture frame. All of my plaster cloth pages are one layer thick (with some extra bits on top to create more texture). If you're putting plaster cloth on the back side of a page that has already plaster cloth on it, put a layer of gel medium down first so the moisture doesn't go through to the other side of the page.
  • Here's what I do to paint/draw on plaster cloth: I brush a light layer of matte gel medium or acrylic paint on it and let it dry. I do this because it keeps the plaster from falling apart if I get it too wet as I start to work on it. After I've done that I treat it as I would any other surface – drawing, painting, and adding papers; I usually have at least three or four layers before I'm done...
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask... sometimes, if i've gotten really vigorous with spraying and wiping paint off, a corner of the plaster cloth will start to separate from the muslin. when this happens i just stick some gel medium on the back of the p.c. and carry on. i buy the 8" rolls at michael's for about $10; the 4" rolls would work fine too, of course.


i tried the above today on a piece of 140# watercolor paper. here it is dry - the paper buckled a little, but not much. the p.c. seems well stuck on; i think it's easy as pie!


we started a small garden last week. chard, collards, kale, and beets... and sticks. i'm on a real stick jag at the moment...


blessing the chard...


tree love, left behind on a stick gathering wander...


the sun, the glorious sun has been shining... in the words of jimi,


"...excuse me while I kiss the sky"

~ jimi hendrix, 'purple rain'


XO

Thursday, June 10, 2010

no messing up

angelica ~ acrylic paint, oil pastel, colored pencil, matte gel medium on plaster cloth

i've been having days of furious painting and days of none. it seems to come in spurts...

guy ~ acrylic paint and oil pastels on plaster cloth in muslin journal


in the last two days i've been crazy inspired by this beautiful journal from vivian bonder... it's filled with a great watercolor paper - 4" x 4", one of my favorite sizes, and i'm lovin' it... thank you, viv!!


first i paint a face with watercolors using my left hand, which drives the right hand crazy, because if it thought i was slow and inept at *drawing* with my left hand, that is nothing compared to using a brush left handed! but, i ignore the impatient voice and keep going, putting down any 'ol thing that comes to me, no matter how goofy it looks.


then i add more color and some definition with colored pencils...


and maybe a little acrylic paint. leola had a very grey smear around her mouth and eyes where i'd put paynes grey on a wet page; so i took some white acrylic paint to it.

i highly recommend this 'technique' (ha, ha). there's no messing up, just adding to. just having fun...


i've been putting up bits of prayer flag from a strand that broke. this can take a lot of time, you know...


* * *

"Creativity takes courage"

~ Henri Matisse


XO

Saturday, June 5, 2010

the instinctive

root chakra - acrylic paint, oil pastels, colored pencil, and watercolors on muslin and plaster cloth

this week i began exploring the chakras in erin faith allen's e-course 'collaging the chakras'. erin invited me to participate, gratis... when someone offers you something from their heart, it touches you. deeply...

what i did was put plaster cloth on the page where i knew i wanted to dig into the surface to create the dark brown outline. at first i had a red lotus where the egg is, but it didn't work. what i felt i needed at the root chakra was something that represented birth, the beginning... when the idea for the egg popped into my head (after much covering up and trying different ideas), i knew that was it. the white lotus at the top represents the crown chakra - on two pages in regina.

this idea of adding plaster cloth to the muslin pages has taken me over for the moment. i love everything about it. especially that you can dig into it...

colored pencil in moleskine pocket sketchbook

this is the page opposite s. l. jones' smiling face (in the last post). i did my own smiling face, and i think she looks a little like gwyneth paltrow... but i don't think gwyneth'd like that big left ear - even though it's my favorite part. : )

colored pencil in moleskine pocket sketchbook

drawing while thinking about chakras...

* * *

i got a tashchen book about modigliani yesterday and am slowly perusing his faces... i especially love the eyes... how expressive, how pensive they are. but then his use of color knocks me out too...

modigliani

"What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race."

~ Amedeo Modigliani


XO

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

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...

* * *

"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