it always seems like a big step to get back into blogging after being gone for a while. here i am... taking the plunge!
i've seen so much in the last couple of weeks. so much art, beautiful scenery, people, great food. i'm full... now i'm gonna stay home for a while and digest it all...
my favorite 'mound', on the way to roxanne's. i've posted pictures of it here a couple of times before. i just love it...
roxanne and i had a great time together. we did a whole lotta talking and laughing, and took a whole bunch of pics. this swan didn't want anyone near his family!
the next few pics were taken in ashland. we went on a snapping frenzy. two people looking for shots can come up with a whole lot of shots. it's interesting to see what each person notices...
roxanne...
i'd like to say a big thank you to our mutual friend, anna, who put us up for the night. we each knew anna before we knew each other; roxanne since high school, and me since the late 90's when anna and i helped start a women's art group here in northeastern california. years passed and anna and i lost touch, only to be reunited again by roxanne, who i met through the blog world! anyway, anna is a crazy talented artist whose work roxanne and i adore... thanks, anna, for everything.
the piece at the top of the post is the last piece i painted before i left. since then i've been stitching, and i don't have any pics of the pieces that i've left behind. this is a piece i just finished yesterday - the words "all you problems are taken care of" are stitched on the back. i like the idea of leaving pieces like this on restaurant tables (or maybe checkout counters)...
a friend gave me this box last week - a bar of soap came in it, and it's a perfect thread and needle container.
i'm working on this now. it'll be the second tie that i've completely covered with stitching. i'm fascinated by how the stitching changes the nature/energy of the fabric. it becomes something very special once it's covered with stitches. this piece also has spots that i burned with the magnifying glass. muslin and silk...
this was laying beside our doorstep a couple of days ago. a pinecone flower... what perfection. i'm enjoying these late summer days so much. i feel like i want to soak it all in....
one thing that i did last week was pass on twelve big boxes of teaching material from my days as a special education teacher. it was time for them to go, and it feels great having empty space where boxes used to be. just before i left to deliver the boxes, one of my first students called me to say "lynne, i've gotta joke for you."
i didn't paint much last week; it was a week of selling stuff that i no longer use. on the one hand it seems almost miraculous the way money just appears in your paypal account, and on the other, you know you've spent a lot of time doing stuff to make it happen!
i think that my creek painting days are coming to an end... it's getting shady out there and the temps have really dropped. so these may be the last of the creek people. i guess then they'll be art room people. ; )
i have been stitching a lot. when i can't focus on painting, i love to sit and do the running stitch. i've finished the heart since i took this, but i still have more to do on the tie. this is silk from recycled saris on walnut ink stained muslin. one thing i've learned this summer is that walnut ink quickly fades in sunlight. it won't take long before this will look like plain 'ol unbleached muslin...
isabel ~ watercolors and oil pastel on muslin
back to painting... i used the paint that bled through the page from chloe for much of isabel. i like this idea. working on muslin is surely my first love... i love the way it looks so much!
dana ~ watercolors and oil pastel on old book page
here's my whole set-up for painting creek people. everything i need fits right in the watercolor case - daniel smith travel brush (the black thing), paper stump for blending, and a piece of oil pastel.
i also painted a creek person in this book. i got it on my trip - it's the sweetest little book of line drawings by matisse. i'm not going to paint on all of the pages - just some of them... it's very interesting doing this...
watercolors and oil pastel on book page
i like most of the drawings in the book way too much to paint over them...
i'm going to change the way i respond to comments... i'm going to e-mail my response to each person instead of posting it here - unless someone asks a question, and then i'll post the answer here. just so you know... : )
i'm going out of town again this week! roxanne and i are going to ashland tomorrow to play, and then later in the week i'm going south to visit friends...
i hope you have a beautiful week!
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A crazy life, what! Particularly in view of the fact that I was supposed to be at work on the great American novel. Now and then, of course, I did write a few pages... My dodge now was watercolors. I dabbled in them, as the expression goes. It was a joy to go on turning them out like a madman - perhaps because I didn't have to prove anything, either to the world or myself. I wasn't hepped on becoming a painter. Not at all. I was simply wriggling out of the straitjacket. ~ Henry Miller, 'To Paint is to Love Again' XO
Saturday, August 14, 2010
leo ~ oil pastel and watercolor on old book page
i had such a great time on my trip... i feel like i'm in love with this summer weather. with the trees, the plants growing in vegetable gardens; berry bushes and fast moving water -- everything! on the yardstick of the trees around me, i can see the sun getting lower and lower each day. i want to soak up every bit of these last summer days...
on my way, i sat here and painted 'leo' with water from the river...
the trees were big - i was happy! i left two stitched 'flags' here. when i packed up to go there was a heart rock under my bag...
seven days later, on my way home, i sat by this river and gazed at the wondrousness of this clean, green water...
the sky! it took an hour to go three miles at one point, but everyone seemed to have a great attitude. maybe it's not possible to be grouchy and impatient under a sky like this...
i drew some in my moleskine, too, while i was gone - this was an experiment using oil pastels and colored pencil. i found out that oil pastels don't smear around well in moleskine sketchbooks, especially darker colors...
i did look for more old books to paint in, but none seemed as perfect to me as these pages. and i asked myself why i'm looking for more books when i still have a couple hundred pages left in this one...
when i got home there was a book about the life and art of ben shahn waiting for me. i love his paintings; i love that they tell a story. and he paints wonderful beasts, which made me want to paint my own.
i have a lot of ideas about things i want to make. a few days i bought my first sewing pattern since high school. i want to use muslin and do some stitching, maybe use some silk sari ribbon... this jacket by agnes richter totally sends me (thanks, kathy). and i'll continue getting rid of stuff that i no longer need or want, which i've been doing for most of the summer. and until the sun gets so low that the creek is in deep shade, i'll keep sitting in the creek and painting...
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'spring' ~ ben shahn
"Those who take it upon themselves to minister to the human spirit shall themselves be moved primarily by things of the spirit." ~ Ben Shahn
XO
Monday, August 2, 2010
some people have asked how i get the pages to lay flat... the answer is that they just stay flat. if i really use a lot of water they start to buckle a little, but not much. the other amazing thing is that the paint doesn't bleed through to the other side except around the edges of the page.
to create some shading i put the watercolors on the oil pastel (say, on the cheeks, or on the edges of the face/neck), then i rub the paint in with my fingers. if there's still water on top of the oil pastel after i get all of the color i want, i wipe it off with my finger. it's sort of hit or miss and detail is out of the question, but i like it...
i also used some shiny mica powder on her face. i've had this stuff for a while but never use it. now i have the whole set out on the table so i can use them more often. that sparkle is nice...
this is rhonda sheila, secretary by day, linebacker by night...
yes, enough with the hair!!
in my muslin journal... i got my twinkling H2Os out for the watercolor part... i have, uh, a lot of twinkling H2O colors; it's a real luxury to have all that color already mixed up and ready to go.
these are done in the same way as the faces on the old book pages; oil pastel and watercolors...
all of the shading on 'waving man' was done with quinacridone gold and paynes grey from my daniel smith set.
a little stitching... i'm headed out of town tomorrow, and my plan is to take the flags with me and leave them here and there. they're hanging in various trees now, awaiting their true mission...
thanks to kelly, i found out about david choe's new book, previewed here. and on amazon, here.
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have you seen stevie ray play a double necked guitar with his brother, jimmy?
now THAT's smile making!!
thank you everyone for your nice words about the creek people! i'm taking my computer with me, so i might be around!
i have been without words lately... without words to others, that is. oh yeah, i have plenty of words for myself; words about what to keep and what to get rid of mostly, both internally and externally. but the one time every day when the internal dialogue is silent is when i sit in a chair in the creek and 'paint' these faces. i use oil pastels for the skin and watercolors for everything else. i like that they repel one another...
she's the only one i added oil pastels to after i came in from outside. you can see it on her cheeks, neck, and hair...
otherwise it's just pencil, creme oil pastel, and daniel smith watercolors in a little travel set.
one thing that i want to say is thank you all for your comments and support. i appreciate your words immensely... and i hope you're all having a wondrous summer (or winter, as the case may be). even in my state of social wordlessness and big inner change, i am...
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"Since I can't read music and everything, I find out that I do the best when I just listen to where I'm trying to go with it; where it can go, and not try to rush it, not try to make up things as I'm going necessarily, just let them come out. Then I'm a lot better off. If I start trying to pay attention to where I am on the neck and the proper way to do this or that, you know, then I end up thinking that thing through and instead of playing from my heart I play from my mind, and that's where I find I get in trouble. If I just go with what's in my heart and let it come out, then I'm okay."
dewey was drawn on an old envelope given to me by julie prichard... i am smitten with the idea drawing on old stuff! this envelope provided an exquisite background - all i had to do was draw... it's postmarked 1945, and besides the great stamp and gorgeous handwriting, it has little airplanes on it as part of the postmark. thank you, julie...
marvin - pencil, colored pencil, oil pastel
this is marvin... he was born albert, then he changed his name to edgar, and finally to marvin. the last thing I told him yesterday was that i was gonna give him horns and call him el diablo if he didn't settle down. (marvin thinks this is hilarious because he knows i would never tell anyone to settle down)
i finished this today...
when i started stitching a month ago i had no idea i'd keep going. now i don't see myself stopping. i like that i can be abstract with cloth. i don't seem to be able to do it with painting - i always want to add a face or an eye or a heart. something... but with cloth i feel comfortable not telling a story. although i did stitch words on this one.
i've been happily drawing again... instead of thinking about what i can't do, i thought about henry's words: "paint as you like and die happy". everything gets pretty easy then...
i'd like to thank marilyn rockfor inspiring me to draw faces on old book pages, and pablo at the 'museum of pablo' for giving me the idea of drawing faces from old yearbooks. pablo, i can't find your blog - are you still out there?! anway, this face is from an old photo of one of my aunts. it's a lot of fun to do this - i highly recommend it!
pencil, colored pencils, oil pastels, inktense pencils on muslin
in my muslin journal, an imagined face...
i stuck this here so it'd be ready to work on the next morning. it looked so good! like a tree apron! (except this isn't a tree. i know...)
i decided i needed to start putting some 'secret words' on the back. : )
and now, some links and info that i've come across lately...
on roz's blog i read about places to get sample packs of paper. the sample packs at legion paper look fantastic. i love the idea of trying out a whole bunch of papers...
and finally, in bratislava, slovakia this is the year for INSITA, an international triennial exhibit of naive/outsider art. i can't find much about it on the internet, but it runs from july 3 to september 26. from the article in raw vision, it sounds like it's well worth investigating.
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Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness.
watercolor and oil pastel in muslin journal
