pearl ~ watercolors, oil pastels and gouache on old paper

looking at pearl i'm reminded of the words of henry miller in the video 'to paint is to love again'...

i look at it and i say "did i do this or did somebody else do it?" ... i say often about my writing, i read certain passages and i'm impressed and i say "henry, did you write this?"

lulu, pearl and jeweliette

i haven't been able to get a good pic of jeweliette by herself, so i'll show her as she sat near my chair with pearl and lulu. and yes, with jeweliette too, i could say "lynne, did you paint that?!"

hee!

a belated happy birthday to you, henry - born on december 26, 1891.

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lulu ~ watercolors, gouache and oil pastels on old paper - approx. 3" x 4 1/2"

it looks like lulu might pick a fight with the next person that wanders by! i've painted ten faces on these cards now and they've all been a joy, even feisty lulu...


on december 19th the sun shown in my art room windows illuminating it entirely. the same thing happened yesterday as the sun was in the same position it was in before the solstice. i know, i know, the sun's not actually moving, it's the earth - but it certainly looks like it's the sun! i love to watch the movement of the sun, especially at this time of year...


the wall behind my chair - that red thing is a blanket on the back of my chair...


i snapped a lot of pics, ha! this is what was on the table. it's a 7" x 9" sennelier journal that this lovely person gave to me. i'm really enjoying working on a bigger page... and i'm getting close to finishing another pocket moleskine, and still painting on the cards. i like the diversity of it all...

i don't have a link to the sennelier journal - i'm not sure if they are available online. i've just discovered stillman and birn journals, though, which seem very promising. click on 'paper specifications' (top right on the home page) to quickly see what kinds of papers are used in their journals.

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the golden light girl ~ watercolors, gouache and oil pastels on old paper

i wish you all a joy and light filled holiday season!

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“Art happens – no hovel is safe from it, no prince can depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.”

~ James McNeil Whistler

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holy dolly ~ watercolors, oil pastels and gouache on old paper

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paul klee was born on this date in 1879. i thank the fantastic tumblr 'ordinary finds' for this quote and image...


“Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour.”

~ Paul Klee

rose ~ oil pastel, derwent drawing pencil, graphite on old paper

with faces like this i learn so much about the power of line; about darkening parts of the outline of the face, eyes, etc, to pull the eye here or there. in this case i used an 8B pencil for that. i love these pencils - i now have three of them! one for every spot where i might sit down and draw...


everything that i used for rose's face... the oil pastel is a cream caran d'ache neopastel.

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"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. ”

~ Pablo Picasso

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harriet ~ watercolors, gouache and oil pastels on old paper

taking these pics outside in direct sun makes them appear brighter and harsher than they really are. harriet's a little softer in real life...

those bits of light brown/tan on the inside corners of her eyes are raw sienna. that and raw umber have become two of my favorite colors. her eyebrows and hair are raw umber.


getting ready to cut out a card... as you can see, i'm gluing the bits of paper to pages from 'the merry men'.

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lunette ~ watercolors, gouache, oil pastels & matte gel medium on old paper

sunday??? i thought it was saturday until an hour ago...

the faces have come back 'round, as has paint in all its glory!

delight, delight!

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Respectfully— R. Rauschenberg

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prismacolor pencils and matte gel medium on old paper

oh how i do appreciate the simple joy of pencils...

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watercolors, gouache, colored pencils and matte gel medium on old paper

this hexagon is one of the many things that have come from my exploration of hexagons/honeycomb, which started here. at the time i had no idea that synchronicity would present me with so many opportunities to learn more about them! one of the latest things i read is that some scientists feel that it's the frequency (i.e. resonance) of the hexagonal shape that calls bees back to the hive - it's what they hone in on. i don't seek these things out - they just pop up out of (seemingly) nowhere! before this all started i'd never thought about the fact that there is a star tetrahedron inside a hexagon...

in case you're wondering what i'm using for a template for these cards, it's a card from the rumi tarot deck. it's about 2 3/4" x 4 1/2". the artwork is by nigel jackson, and there are a lot of great images in the deck.

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watercolors, prismacolor pencils & matte gel medium on old paper

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shaman today after eating two carrots

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prismacolor pencils and matte gel medium on old paper

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“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”

~ Ursula K. LeGuin via tumblr

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prismacolor pencils on old paper covered with matte gel medium - approx. 3" x 4 1/2"

not long after i did the piece in the last post, i started making cards by gluing down pieces of old paper to pages from 'the merry men'. i've been drawing and painting/coloring on them since.

blank card before i draw on it

i love the idea of cards - i have for a long time, but have never found my way to making ones that i like. a few months ago i saw - and fell in love with - the collages of tom moglu on tumblr, and, long story short, my construction idea for these cards began to form.

below are a couple of example's of tom's work...

Hêtre by Tom Moglu

Soloré by Tom Moglu ~ 180x180mm

he has another tumblr called the bread quilt, and that's where i found this interview with him. here's his answer to question # 6, "can you describe your process?"

"Sift through huge pile of scraps of paper, hack a few large pieces about and glue them down as a ‘background’, drink coffee, find more pieces to shape the composition, cut and glue, destroy/obliterate non-working parts, cut, glue… repeat for hours."

the interview's worth reading...

thank you, tom...

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untitled ~ thread, watercolors and casein paint glued to a page from 'now we are six' by a.a. milne - approx. 5" x 7"

i first stitched and painted the figure on a page from 'the merry men', then i tore the page out of the book, and finally i tore the figure out of the page! the page from 'now we are six' had been beside my art table for months, and when i laid the pieces on top of it so i could clean off my workspace, i knew they'd found their final home.

for now i'm going to work outside of 'the merry men'. thinking of working inside it just stops me cold, so that's that. if you've worked in books you know this happens. in the past i have forced myself to carry on in a book that i no longer want to work in, but it's not pleasant. and i have way too many pages left in 'the merry men' to even think about doing that (not to mention that i'm just about incapable of forcing myself to do something, especially if the muse is in opposition to it), so outside the book it is for now.

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i watched this video in september and the journals in it spoke to me on a very deep level. you probably know how it feels when you see someone's work and all of the sudden what you're doing seems ridiculously insubstantial; well that's how the art in leigh mc closkey's 'codex tor' series affected me. there are links here to the art in two of the 'codex tor' books - once you click on a page, click on the expansion thingie in the lower right corner and the image will get huge.

and so yeah, onward...

Flying Lotus - Inside the Codex: the Art of Cosmogramma

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'maud' ~ watercolors and oil pastels in 'the merry men'

i don't think we should try to pull the wool over maud's eyes... i don't think it would work one bit. ; )


i was going to stitch maud on a page from 'the merry men', but the paper was too fragile and wouldn't hold the stitching. so i took the thread out of the machine and kept going. then she had a perforated edge so i could tear her out and glue her to another page. the page on the left is the one i tore her out of. the paper's darker because i put walnut ink on it first.

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expertenough.com

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'eunice' ~ casein paint, watercolors, thread, embroidery floss and seed beads on painted muslin

eunice is an experiment with thread, paint and beads. it's a combination that's been calling to me for a while but i've been waiting for it to sort of firm up. well, it hasn't firmed up, so i decided to just mess around with it. i especially like her lips, which i stitched with embroidery floss and then painted. the stitching really gave them some nice texture and depth.

unfinished pages in pocket moleskine - flowers colored with prismacolor pencils and an 8B pencil

i was going to put eunice in 'the merry men', but then i remembered some 4" x 6" frames in my closet, so i put her in one of those. that's her in the pogo print on the right. the left page is me drawing with my right (dominant) hand, i think - i can't remember... i just don't think i could've drawn anything that symmetrical with my left hand!


prismacolor pencils and 8B pencil in pocket moleskine

some pale, quiet girls... drawing them is kinda like putting on quiet music... ; )

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'enid moves on' ~ watercolors, casein paint, gouache, oil pastels, colored pencils & beeswax in 'the merry men'

so i did take a chill pill, ha! and our son was here visiting for a few days... i started this early in the week and finished it at the end. i'm not totally happy with it, but enough to leave it alone...


in case you're interested, this is what the wax looks like before i smooth it out with a quilting iron. i like using a quilting iron more than a heat gun because i have more control over where the wax goes.


i also painted on top of the wax - the tubes are some of the paints i used (ignore the soft pastels in the box - the picture just looked better without them cropped out). if you click the top pic you can see most of the places where i painted on the wax. also i used some oil pastels on it - i put the stick of caran d'ache turquoise in the pic because it was one of the colors i used.

i still feel like some new thing is brewing art-wise, and maybe i'm getting closer to it.... two people whose art is inspiring me now are: ani at 8 1/2 x 11: thread reading and marti somers (click on 'galleries' at the top of the page). total love for what these women do!

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neil young ~ photo by henry diltz

happy birthday to one of my favorite people... 66 today!

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'eileen' ~ watercolors, gouache, casein paint, 8B pencil and oil pastels in 'the merry men'

it's taking me a long time to paint faces these days. following my one-thing-leads-to-another approach has me putting down a lot of paint that later gets wiped off or painted over. way more than usual. so i work on a piece for a few hours and then walk away from it. wait for the energy to come back 'round. it's not the easiest way to paint, that's for sure. it begins to feel like work instead of play, and for me that's a big 'ol message to chill. wait 'til things get clearer... which eileen looks like she might be doing, lol!

pogo prints, 8B pencil and primacolor pencils in pocket moleskine

so i mess around in my moleskine more. look at flowers in the dover book 'traditional floral designs and motifs', draw them, and then color them in. i love to color... i've often thought that all i really need is a (very cool) coloring book.

patrice with wax paper over her in 'the merry men'

a couple of people asked about patrice and the beeswax... yeah i did cover the entire page with beeswax, and then i took an awl and carved into the wax so i could put black casein paint in there - that's what the black outline is.

this time instead of spraying the page with PYM II as a way to 'fix' the wax, i just put a piece of wax paper over her. doing a lot of wax pages in the milton book (last summer), i ended up feeling that you really have to start taking extra care of the book once you do it. no leaving the book outside in the sun (which i did with the milton book many times), and no laying it under the woodstove to make pages dry faster - stuff like that. otherwise it seems fine to put wax on the pages...


this is what 'the merry men' looks like now. i haven't taken out many pages, but it looks like i'm going to have to start taking out more. just putting the bits of wallpaper on the pages adds bulk, and the wax pages really do.

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“The hidden harmony is better than the obvious."

~ Pablo Picasso, via tumblr

XO

'patrice' ~ casein paint, watercolors, gouache, 8B pencil, oil pastels and beeswax in 'the merry men'

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carsten schmidt photography

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'annette' ~ casein paint, gouache, watercolors, 8B pencil in 'the merry men'

annette is what became of the drawing i did (here) while watching amy's video about drawing realistic faces. i'd say she turned out vaguely realistic. the most interesting thing was that i thought her shoulders were proportional until i painted them, and then it was obvious that they were way too small. so i wiped most of the paint off of her dress to play this fact down, lol.

saturday's video was about collage faces, which is a very cool thing to do if you get stymied by drawing faces. just glue some face parts down and then paint them. it's helpful and it's fun! here's a link...

the weather's been nice! i love that and just can't stay inside when it is... if you've never made a tree love flag i highly recommend it. you can feel the tree smile when you hang it...

in case it's helpful, here's where i get my sari silk.

sari silk, piece from old doily and embroidery floss on muslin

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'sad girl with green eyes (gazes at the world)' ~ watercolors, glued down bits of wallpaper, casein paint and gouache in 'the merry men'

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'clementine' ~ watercolors, gouache, oil pastels, casein paint,bits of paper glued to page, colored pencil and graphite in 'the merry men' - 5" x 7"

there's a painting underneath clementine that i worked for *hours* on. finally i just said 'bah!' (or something like that, ha ha) and covered it up with white casein paint. you can still see bits of the original painting. what doesn't get fully covered up almost always seems to enhance the final version. i love the legs on the front of clementine's dress, but i definitely didn't plan it so they'd show up.

lately i've been gluing down pieces of old wallpaper before i start drawing. there's something about old wallpaper that i really like. it's the one collage thing i always come back to.

pogo prints in pocket moleskine

i finished the pocket moleskine that i started in late august. in it i messed around with various things, like writing the date in different ways. i decided that my writing gets a lot more interesting if i vary the width of it.


i drew with an 8B (soft lead) pencil a lot. what i really love is smudging it. i did a bunch of pencil smudging...


like here... i'm on a hexagon/honeycomb kick. i don't know why, but i'm happy drawing honeycomb!


this is what i drew today watching amy's video workshop. it's supposed to be realistic, but i did lop a bit off of her lower lip to make her a little wonky. lol, she'll probably be real wonky by the time i finish painting her. even though i don't draw realistically, i do like to try different things... thank you, amy!!

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“What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.”

~ Lucien Freud, via tumblr

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