love

watercolor and colored pencil on kraft tag

my tag love continues... i got some large (3 1/4" x 6") kraft tags here, and they are a joy to work on. right away i tried watercolors and they work great - very little buckling.

watercolor and oil pastel on kraft tag

my plan is to put them on book rings, which i found here for a very reasonable price. this is about as complicated as i want to get with book making these days!

watercolor and oil pastel on kraft tag

a big fat stack of them on a ring... and i can make covers if i want.

watercolor, colored pencil, gouache, and oil pastel on kraft tag

the great thing about working on kraft paper is that the brown background does a lot of the shading for you. all you have to do is not cover it too heavily (and this piece is not a good example of that).

gouache, watercolors, pencil, colored pencil, and casein paint in 3" x 5" journal

in my zecchi (aka pen and ink) journal... picking it up and painting another page when i feel the urge...


and wood burning! did you know it's called pyrography? i had no idea! this magazine practically jumped into my hands last week at barnes and noble. if you have an inclination to learn more about pyrography, i *highly* recommend it. it covers everything a beginner (like me) might want to know. it appears to be a one time issue - a supplement to 'scrollsaw' magazine...


you can imagine that i was practically drooling in the store as i looked at these examples of patterns that can be made with the three basic tips (which i now know about). i left this especially huge so you can click and read...


i came home and got my woodburner out (trying not to covet the $200 'machines' - that's what they call them - in the magazine). i filed my fine 'writing' tip so it worked better and burned the lines on the bead (only partially colored in with colored pencils here), her face and clothes... her head is a knob and her body is a sawed off piece of stick. the other side of the knob and stick have another face and body on them. the knobs are 12 to a bag at michaels...


and blocks! also from michaels - 13 in a bag. i was going to burn them but oil pastels, ink, and inktense pencils are so much easier! i got the idea for this from robyn's tumblr... she posted an image of a stack of painted blocks, and i thought it was such a fabulous idea; thinking about how you could switch them up and have a different 'painting' every day. i've slowly been working on them - i added the heart today. these could be a form of journaling...

tim holtz distress inks work great on these. the red behind the heart is the color 'fired brick', and the heart is caran d'ache creme oil pastel. i'm not putting a varnish or finish of any kind on them. i like them just as they are. i do take a blending stump and push the oil pastel in, though, so it doesn't smear as easily...

i continue to go back and forth, back and forth, about blogging, so i'm going to take a break for a month and see if that brings more clarity... i want to leave you with a few links, though... some of my favorite new artists from the last couple of weeks. but before i do that,

happy valentine's day!

dominique goblet

dominique goblet (click on 'peinture' at the bottom of the page to see her paintings)

inez storer ~ a warrior of unknown origin

inez storer

alice leach ~ momentary anger...

alice leach

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"Dare to be naive"

~ Buckminster Fuller, via tumblr

XO

tags and pages

i don't know which i was more excited about last week - painting on tags or the fact that the thin pages in 'war and peace' can stand up to watercolors...


this is the back side of the page, and, as you can see, there was practically no bleed-through, not to mention buckling. i had stalled out on working in 'war and peace' because i really wanted to use watercolors, but i thought the pages were way too thin. a few days ago i decided to see exactly what would happen, and once again i'm impressed beyond words by the paper that's used in books (at least some of them). it's like magic paper...

big if you click

here's most of what i put on the page - the water bowl is in the shot because i used *a lot* of water. besides using it while painting the face, the last thing i did was dip my finger in it (over and over), and smear everything around. and still the page lays almost perfectly flat. i also used oil pastel and colored pencil. just amazing...

casein paint, watercolors, gouache, colored pencil and oil pastel on mail tags

the other thing i've been delighted with is painting on tags, an idea i got from sarah wallis. thank you, sarah! i believe i have a tag addiction now... i love that they're practically indestructible and useful! perfect for leaving them around out in the world, or for sending with packages. i'm leaving them leaned against the back of my watercolor box because it seems a perfect easel... (and they can talk to me while i'm painting)


on tumblr i found the art of ilka gedo. i don't think there's one piece that she painted in her life that i don't love with every fiber of my being. this sketchbook drawing is from her childhood, and there are many pages of them to gaze at here.


her oil paintings are here...

and 'colour patterns' here...

the quote below seems to me to apply to art making as much as writing.

i love it...

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“Kierkegaard said, ‘Drink from your own well.’ And I like that, taking it to mean that each of us has an individual source for our best work, and that to reach deliberately elsewhere is to neglect something essential in our writing.

So when I get up in the morning and settle down to write, I do not reach for what is timely or in style, but for something that suggests itself to me right at the moment. It can be any trivial word or even syllable, or a sound from the tree outside, or what day it is, or that the sun is about to come up—anything. And sometimes I feel that the more trivial it seems the better, for with nothing to live up to I can relax and catch onto a current within me.”

~ William Stafford, from his brief essay “Reaching into the Well” in Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Writer’s Vocation (The University of Michigan Press, 2001), via tumblr

XO

alala

my friend, kathy dorfer, is giving away an alala painting on her blog. alala is the raven, and kathy has painted her many times...


these are my alala paintings, given to me by kathy since 2007. they're beautiful, just like her...


XO

a burning love

prismacolor pencils and woodburning tool on western red cedar branches

that's what i've got...

this is huge if you click

i finally got jiggy with the woodburning tool on branches... experimenting with different tips and just generally learning how to do it. this is a montage of (some of) what's on the sticks above, as well as another long one that i'm about halfway through. i (evidently) am unable to not*completely* cover each stick.

wild turkeys by my 'stick sculptures'

some pics from the last few days... it's been mild and mostly sunny. been out wandering with my dh; stick reconnoitering and general gazing...

juicy fuji apple and my trusty knife

sky, rocks, tree.

wet weather waterfall

jimmie holding a heart rock he found

thank you to new followers and to everyone... i am thinking a lot about blogging these days. ways to continue on; whether to continue on. and tonight i do not want to end this post without saying that my heart is with the people of egypt...

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prismacolor pencils and woodburning tool on western red cedar

"Don't repeat, don't copy!" We have heard that statement over and over. We assume that to repeat a subject is proof of our dullness and our lack of inventiveness.

On the contrary, it often shows sensitivity. When you paint an image or a color that has great feeling, it is not only natural but perhaps essential to repeat it. The more powerful the image, the deeper its root, and the greater the likelihood you will have to repaint it. As you do repaint it, you are exploring different aspects of the feeling, with all their subtleties, from every possible angle. The image will come back as long as it is needed to fulfill its role."

~Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley, 'Life, Paint and Passion'

XO

practice

milk white horse ~ gouache, watercolors, oil pastel, pencil and casein paint in 3 1/2" x 5" hand book

inspired by a children's poem on natalie merchant's CD, 'leave your sleep'. the CD is very good and very inspirational. it got me thinking about how many ideas and images there are in children's poems and fairy tales...

gouache, watercolors, pencil, colored pencil, and casein paint in hand book


colored pencil in hand book

pogo prints...

and in my 3 1/2" x 5" zecchi journal,

red and green map

i'm painting 'maps'. the zecchi journal appears to be the same as this journal (the sketchbook with 48 sheets). and speaking of journals, i've written to moleskine asking about the carcinogenic plasticizer in the covers thing. a friend sent me an article by someone from moleskine that says they stopped using it in august, 2010. if i hear from them, i'll post their response here.

mauve map

these are all done on white casein paint that i've tinted with tube watercolors. i'm putting these 'maps' on the backs of all the pages. it's a great deal of fun...

celestial map (for star travelers)

i usually smear soft pastels on the page to get some more color action going. i rub them in well so they don't smear onto the opposite page.

sunday map


this is a bigger version of the pic in the pogo print above. we went to redding last wednesday, and i snapped *a lot* of pics of mt. shasta coming and going. this was one of the first,


and this was the last...

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“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”

~Kurt Vonnegut, via tumblr

XO

hand book, etc.

oil pastel, watercolors, colored pencil, gouache and casein paint in pocket hand book

i finished my pocket moleskine a couple of weeks ago, and have been working in a pocket sized hand book since. i went to buy another moleskine, but saw that they have a prop 65 label on them because the covers have a known carcinogen in them. good grief! i love moleskine sketchbooks but i feel a responsibility to support businesses that aren't using stuff that harms people and the environment, so i bought a 3 1/2" x 5" hand book instead.


this is what it looks like - very much like a pocket moleskine except with a cloth cover. the paper has more tooth that the sketchbook paper - no comparison there. i like it for watercolors and colored pencil, but wish that the pages were a little thicker. paint doesn't run through to the other side, but you can see where dark colors are on the other side of the page.

colored pencil in hand book journal

watercolor, colored pencil, and gouache in pocket hand book

because the sun is so low and it's often cloudy, it's not easy to take photographs that actually look like the original. sigh... especially of images like these, which are barely there to begin with.

watercolor, colored pencil, gouache and casein paint in pocket hand book

i put a layer of white casein paint down on this page first. love doing that...

watercolor, colored pencil and gouache in pocket hand book

watercolor, gouache, and casein paint in pocket hand book

most spreads are something like this - a mix of pogo prints and paintings. the page on the left has a layer of casein paint laid down first, and then i painted on that.


the little table to the right of my art table used to be covered with containers of acrylic paint; i've put those away because i'm not using them now - i feel like i can get the opaque color that i want with gouache and casein paint. this makes me happy!

tom ~ oil pastel, watercolors, gouache, and casein paint on old book page

tom was painted on black casein paint - his skin is oil pastel, and i added some watercolor and white gouache on top of that, but if you click you can see brush marks left behind on the casein paint. as a ground, i can't say enough about white and black (or any color!) shiva casein paint.

here's a link to a page by john molnar, who painted with shiva casein paint. there's a video too that's not especially informative about casein paint, but it does show his casein paintings.

a couple of other things...

this is the week that michaels has the 40% off coupon for your total art supply purchase... if you don't get their coupons, you can go to their website to sign up. the coupon applies to everything in the art section - the one with paints, pencils, pastels, etc. in it.

anne bagby now has a blog! she just put up a video about printing stripes with acrylic paint. and she's been talking about working on yupo - sharing her discoveries. i'm a tremendous admirer of anne's work and would read what she writes/watch what she does no matter what medium she's working in...

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mlk arriving home after receiving the nobel peace prize in 1964. via tumblr

"I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go."

~Martin Luther King

XO