'nola' ~ watercolors, gouache, pan pastels and matte gel medium in my daily book

truly, i'm feeling little desire to blog these days...  

colored pencil and watercolors in daily book

i'm working in my daily book - and experimenting with tracing paper, still!

and still finding a lot of great rust, and going out wandering...  soaking up as much sunshine and fresh air as i can...

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 “You study, you learn, but you guard the original naïveté.  It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.”

~ Matisse

summer joy

'ella' ~ oil pastels, watercolors, acrylic paint, pan pastels and colored pencil on tracing paper

i've been experimenting with working on both sides of tracing paper...    this pic of ella is the back side,

and this is the front.  although you can't really see it here, the expressions  on each side can be very different.   i've also been experimenting with pan pastels, which i think have great potential for faces...  

same ingredients as above

another face on tracing paper - i can't remember if this is the front or the back.  the wrinkles on the tracing paper are from me ironing it too long!  i was ironing out wrinkles left from the watercolors, and i got carried away...   she's a poor rendition of a painting by gregory grenon, who's a master of reverse painting on glass.

otherwise i've been painting in my daily book, and adding a lot of flower pictures.

oil pastels, watercolors, casein paint, colored pencil and beeswax in my daily book

i've slacked up on using wax so much, but i did use it on this page, which comes before all of the pics i took on the solstice.

like this,

and this,

and this.  i found a lot of good rust on the solstice.  : )

from another day...   it's just been a great rust summer so far!

you can see a little of my colored pencil box here - that's all i use on cans

and sticks.

these sticks and cans have been my main drawing joy for the last couple of weeks...

i've also been taking flower pictures like the state of the world depended on it...

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'self portrait at 11' ~ colored pencil, watercolors, goauche, black gesso, beeswax, and oil and soft pastels on tracing paper

i've been working on tracing paper again - this time with beeswax - and really loving it.  the possibilities are just about endless when you combine the two...

 what it looks like without a white background behind it...

'a brief moment at 45' ~  same ingredients as above

i love to scratch into the beeswax with an awl, put black paint over the scratched out places, then rub off the extra paint.    it's a lot of fun...  : )

and i've finally started a new 'daily book'...  when i left for virginia i thought i'd start a new stillman and birn 'gamma', but i hardly worked in it.   last week i decided that what i really wanted to work in was an old book, and once i made that decision it was full steam ahead.  the name of the book is 'gold dust', and there's a pic of it in the sidebar...

two summers ago i worked in an old book and used beeswax on a lot of pages...  to see how they'd held up i got the book out...   everything looked exactly as it did two years ago.  the paint on top of the beeswax has held up beautifully, and the PYM II fixative that i used hadn't flaked off or discolored.  

there's a post here about PYM II and beeswax if you want to know  more; and there are pics of pages with beeswax on them.

the other thing i did last week was (finally!) take the time to figure out how to use my canon selphy printer without having to hook it up to my computer.  it couldn't be easier!    i can print up to eight images on one 4" x 6" piece of paper, but four per sheet is just the right size.   i'm *really* happy to be printing and using pics in my daily book again!

i'd just put wax on the face when i took this pic...

gouache, oil pastels, pan pastel, watercolors and black gesso on beeswax in my daily book

this is what she looks like now, after outlining, getting rid of the hat, massive quantities of paynes grey gouache (her hair), and covering up those lovely flowers on her neck...

wild geranium

besides that i'm still going out

and seeing so much...

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 “I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”

~ Franz Kafka,  from a diary entry dated 23 March 1914

'carla' ~ watercolors, gouache, oil pastels and black gesso on heavy watercolor paper, 5" x 7"

thinking about what i wanted to include in this post, it felt impossible to leave my trip to virginia out entirely - even though it seems lifetimes away now!   so i'll show a little of my trip, and what i've been up to since then.  but before i start, i want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone for your comments on the last two posts.  thank you for your kind and thoughtful  words!

pink dogwoods in the rain

i took this pic on my first day in virginia - the dogwoods were in full bloom, and, as you can see, there's a rainbow.   i  *love* dogwoods...

just before i took the dogwood pic, carole and i were hiking and saw a lot of trees with these flowers on them.  they were incredibly beautiful and i'd never seen them before.  i now know they were paw paw trees...     i love the flowers and i love to say 'paw paw'.  according to wikipedia they have a mango like fruit. i would *so* be checking these trees out in early september if i lived there!

carole looking for shells

early in my trip my sister, brother, mother and i went to the outer banks of north carolina where we stayed in a beach house for a week. it was too cold to swim, so we did a lot of beach combing...

l to r - my brother, me, my sister

we  also looked at lighthouses - here we are at the top of hatteras lighthouse.  the park ranger who took this pic had an anemometer - the wind was blowing about 30 m.p.h....

my mom on another windy day of sightseeing...

carole and i drew on a lot of shells...   she drew all of these lighthouses - all four outer banks lighthouses are  here.

we drew on *a lot* more...  these are just a few...  

my favorite piece of 'beach art'...   carole  drew/colored the face with prismacolor pencils, and i went over the white with a signo gel pen to make it pop more.  it's on a piece of found copper and the turquoise hair is the natural copper patina.

the atlantic ocean!!

my brother and sister

back in the mountains i stayed with mom for a while and then back to carole's.  this pic was taken on a day hike on the appalachian trail.  it's so green there!

i left a stick behind...

indian paintbrush

after i recovered from a long trip home, i went out walking to see what i could see.   as you know if you've been reading my blog for long, i live next to a national forest so i have miles of walking outside my door.

i've walked high,

and i've walked low.

i've seen so much beauty,

and left some sticks, shells and rusty stuff behind.

in progress...

i've been drawing and painting a little...

one thing i know for sure

'tippi' ~ watercolors, gouache, oil pastels and black gesso on heavy watercolor paper, 5" x 7"

is that i love to paint soulful faces...

'shelter' ~ watercolors, gouache and oil pastels on heavy watercolor paper, 4" x 6"

hello friends... it's been a while!    i was going to post earlier this week, but my dh got acute appendicitis, which was followed by an appendectomy, and life took off at an accelerated pace again!  

'shelter' is the first painting that i painted after getting home.   my trip was one big whirlwind and i painted  very little while i was gone.   i worked on 'shelter' (and no other paintings) for 5 days between resting and getting settled back in.   by the third day i was beginning to question not only the process but my sanity!  it's one thing to talk about working on a 4" x 6" painting day after day, and quite another to actually do it...   *and* it's a perfect example of how art/painting helps us process our feelings - helps us understand our feelings.

 before i go off to rest some more, i want to thank joanie springer for interviewing me.  thank you, joanie, for your generous, sharing spirit...  you can read the interview here...

i'll be back...

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watercolors, oil pastels, gouche, acrylic paint and white inktense pencil on heavy watercolor paper, 6" x 9"