'quiet, pale girl with a green hat' ~ albrecht durer watercolor pencils and gouache in my daily book

i painted 'quiet, pale girl with a green hat' for norma's drawing challenge, which was to draw something with your nondominant hand.    well, ya know i love to do that...

i was going to post more pics of nondominant hand drawings (per norma's hint), but i decided that i didn't need to do that because you can click on any post before 2012 if you want to see more.

'pale girl with wings' ~ watercolors, albrecht durer watercolor pencils, and white signo pen in my daily book

(these pale girls are hard to photograph)

'pale girl with wings' is on the opposite page, and i drew here with my dominant (right) hand.  i thought i'd draw a similar kind of face with each hand and see how they compared.  i like the green hat girl the most, but then again it's hard to say because i was feeling completely different when i drew them.

   sometimes when i'm reading a post by someone who's drawing with their nondominant hand, i get the impression that they think it has to be a wild, assymetrical drawing that they can't revise or that they have no control over.   i've never seen it that way...  i erase and am just as particular about getting things the way i want no matter which hand i'm drawing with. the thing that's most helpful for me (when drawing with my left hand) is to have my (left) forearm resting on something.  if i don't do that it gets pretty crazy...

apparently norma is ambidextrous because her drawing is truly stunning.

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"Paint as you like and die happy."

~ Henry Miller

wow!  i had no idea there would be so many responses!  thank you!!  therese arsenault, you're the winner of the stillman and birn gamma!  

the pic above is of all my finished journals since 2006...  i've tried many a technique in these books;  i've gone through *all* kinds of media, stamping, stenciling, and collage, as i slowly figured out that my 'thing' is painting...

side view

there are three or four books in my closet that i started but didn't finish...  i haven't always persevered.

bookmarks on blank business cards ~ collage, stamping, and paint

but i have been inventive when the need arose...

these are bookmarks that i made and stuck in small pockets taped to the last (blank) pages of a journal.  i was determined to finish it even though i dreaded working in it near the end.  my solution was to stick these bookmarks in vellum pockets on those pages.    yes, yes, art can make you resourceful...

i've learned a lot about books, book making and paper in the last six years, which is why i appreciate the stillman and birn books so much.  when you've tried a lot of different books, you know a good one when you find it.

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XO

 i'd like to give away a new 4" x 6" stillman and birn sketchbook.   it's a 'gamma', which means that it has 100#  ivory paper suitable for just about anything in it.  i've happily used watercolors, casein paint, gouache, ink, and colored pencils in mine.

to enter your name in the draw, just leave a comment, and international readers do not be shy about leaving your name!  this'll fit in a small flat rate box that i can send right off to you!

 here are some recent pages in my daily book, which is also a gamma.  i adore these books! 

i think everything here was painted with albrecht durer watercolor pencils.  i love them too!

the inside front cover - for a long time now i've left the inside front and back covers as a place to add miscellaneous bits as i go along. 

inside back cover

when i look back at the books later, these pages somehow tell more about me at the time than the rest of the pages put together...   and somehow they always get covered completely by the time i'm finished with the book.

my daily book and the new gamma...  i've taken the centerfolds out of two signatures in my book to help accomodate the bulk of so many pogo prints.  

this is where i go when i tell my dh i'm going to my office...   i was working this morning. ; )

i'll draw a name sometime within the next week; please feel free to ask questions!

edited to add:  wow!  i usually reply to comments via e-mail, but i'm going to just say one big thank you here!   

re: where to buy stillman and birn journals...  here's a list of both online and retail (brick and mortar) sources.  

all other questions i'll answer in the comments section so that everyone can see the answer.

XO

wild rose

from my heart to yours, i wish you all a happy solstice!

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Nature does love me! She consoles me and makes promises to me. On such days I am invulnerable.  Outwardly smiling, inwardly laughing more freely, a song in my soul, a twittering whistle on my lips...

~ Paul Klee  diaries, 1890

 albrecht durer watercolor pencils in my 'daily book' ~ 4" x 6"

i just haven't been painting that much...

i do keep up in my 'daily book', putting in pogo prints and then painting around them, but barely.  i'm behind with that...

i've done quite a bit of covering up of what i have painted.  i glued a painting by bonnard on top of the face on the left page, and i don't remember what was under the flower painting that i cut out of a catalog and glued to the right.  but i like it much better than what was there before!!

my heart is with this

and this

and this.

for now...

edited to add:  since i didn't make myself clear, i must say that i cannot take credit for these flowers in any way!   the only things that grow in my garden are peppermint and some struggling lettuce plants!  these are wild flowers that i've seen on my wanders.  my preoccupation is with wandering and gazing...

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 "Drawing is the simplest way of establishing a picture vocabulary because it is an instant, personal declaration of what is important and what is not."

~ Betty Goodwin via tumblr

'free bird' ~ albrecht durer watercolor pencils in my 'daily book' 

i've come to think of the spring of 2012 as The Days of High Exuberance...   at first i thought High Birdness, but wait, what about High Flowerness and High Butterflyness, and, and...?!!   

i've seen so, so many flowers and taken pics of so, so many flowers.  i chose this one to show here because well, look, it's growing in rocks!  if that's not exuberance i don't know what is!

every year i see a lot of shooting stars, and this year was no different.   i'm showing this pic so that you can see what they look like if they don't grow where you live...  they're pinkish purple...

until this year... when i saw two white ones.  if i had stumbled on the white buffalo him/herself i couldn't have been more surprised and delighted.  i was in a state of deep amazement for hours...

to add to the wondrousness of this, tammie lee of spirithelpers also saw her first white shooting star (in montana - i'm in northeastern california) this spring.  you must go here to see how beautiful they are.  as beautiful as the ones here were, the ones that tammie saw are even more mind blowing.

i've drawn on a lot of sticks

and rusty stuff.

i now know that the color doesn't last much more than a year, and you really can't go back and add more color (on top of the old) because the surface is too waxy - the color from the prismacolor pencils fades, but the wax remains. 

it's worth it though...

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words by allen ginsberg, written in my 'daily book'

XO