Monday, June 29, 2009

gwp

graffiti wall project

i cut the 2' x 3' floor cloth that was covered with pieces of collaged paper from seth and julie into *mostly* 6" x 6" pieces -- turns out the floor cloth wasn't really 2' x 3', so these four pieces are smaller than the rest. they're my trial run...


i added paint


stencils


and oil pastels...


i attached


40 gauge copper sheeting with brads and eyelets to the back of each flag, after i embossed a design in it...


not only was the copper karin's idea, but so was the flag idea! thank you karin! i was gonna make a book out of the pieces (shocking, huh?).


i ran the wire through the rope (will use lighter rope the next time) so that the flags wouldn't slide to the center.


definitely smile making!! thanks seth and julie!

i'm thinking the next ones will be individual flags; maybe heavy copper wire in the eyelets to hang them from (so they'll swing). ribbons, ripped up fabric hanging from the bottom... definitely want to put some in the forest for the trees...

must cut new stencils before proceeding...


i spent a lot of time last week fooling around with paper clay. first i made molds with it using things i already have. here are three pieces that i made from a sterling hand charm, a milagro, and a doll arm. once the mold was dry i just mashed a gob of paper clay into it, after i'd covered it with badger balm. what took so much time was experimenting with ways to make the paper clay look like, well, something besides paper clay. i'm still experimenting... oh, and the matchbook is another idea i'm messing around with. i liked the milagro piece here...


at some point during the week i picked up a piece of muslin instead of a paper towel to wipe off paint... good-bye paper towels! the pieces are perfect to use as the base for another painting, or... the round marks are from a stencil dauber.


this is my version of a card... i got a bunch of brass (or maybe they just look like brass) safety pins on ebay for a dollar or two. they seem so useful.


been wanting to do this for a while...


it's warm! i can play in the creek! the holey rock usually goes somewhere where water can flow through the hole, but when i picked it up this year it'd cracked. so now it just sits there looking beautiful...

one more thing! a big 'ol wave to roxanne who had a group of us at her home on saturday for art and drumming. thank you, roxanne!!


XO

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

mt. shasta


i woke up on sunday morning thinking that it would be our first non-sunny solstice in 15 years of life in northeastern california... i decided that it'd have to be a day for a BIG campfire instead. but late in the morning the sun started to peek through here and there, so we decided to go to mt. shasta, hopeful for the presence of sunshine. the pic above was taken about half way there. incredibly beautiful clouds and sky stretching to the horizon... sun was visible!!


at the far end of the road is where mt. shasta sits, but it's still hidden in clouds. i'm hopeful though...

usually we stop at the 'seven suns cafe' for coffee and the worlds best scones when we get into town, but they'd closed early for father's day (what?!). so onward we went to the food co-op, where we bought enough treats to last us the rest of the day. the main delicacies were a piece of chocolate cake from the deli, a pint of ice cream, veggie rice rolls, and a micro brew -- they had so many!!


a gorgeous label wins every time, right?

after further messing around in town doing stuff like buying prayer flags and listening to the quartz bowls at the crystal shop, we headed up the mountain with our portable feast.


we can almost see the top!


the road is still closed at 'bunny flats', so we walked from there.


oh what a view this home has...


we got off the road at panther meadows, which was under a couple feet of snow in most places. the snow melts in patches, and in places you can see streams of snow melt racing to the bottom of the mountain. the gurgling of the water echoes under the snow (the water is under the snow in the upper part of the pic) and sounds loud... panther meadows is a lovely, lovely place, sacred to several native american tribes in northern california. it's a place where one walks very quietly.


i left a flag near the meadows... that's the silhouette that karin sent me, in action again.


now we're headed back down... this is the very top of the mountain and it's completely clear. sooooo quiet and beautiful.


we drove a ways down the mountain where we'd have a view of the sun while we ate our supper (the ale was damn good). we sat in the car because it was getting cold -- i took this a little after 8 p.m. and the light was brilliant. i'd gotten out of the car to take a pic of the light on the trees, but this pic of the car turned out best!


now we're back in town getting gas -- no clouds in sight!

of all of the wonders of the day, drawing the lid of the ice cream container provided the greatest revelation. first i drew the rim of the lid and then started on the writing. well, duh, the writing's not gonna fit in that space, but i kept going. afterwards i thought about how crazy it is to start a contour drawing by drawing in the boundary first -- good grief! you limit yourself right off the bat! this was followed by the even greater realization that this is what we do when we define our lives by the boundaries that we already know, or what we think we want, instead of living each day from the present moment -- from the center...

to the beautiful mount shasta, i give my heartfelt thanks...

XO

Saturday, June 20, 2009

monkey me


somehow this piece sums up how i'm feeling these days... having had a bad case of Art ADD for weeks now, i'm feeling pulled in ten directions when it comes to projects. and the weather -- it's so crazy!

below are most of the pieces i've done in the last two weeks. i didn't do much art when i was gone, and then i was resting up from the trip for a couple of days... boy did i miss stenciling when i was gone! i've always loved to travel but now that i can't carry all of my art stuff with me it's losing some of its luster...


there's a full face under here - i finished covering it up when i got home. several layers of acrylic and watercolor here and there. had to get some stenciling in, you know...


i bought a book about marc chagall's art and life at the used book store on my trip. maybe it influenced these pages? oh how i love his paintings...

"he distrusts the word symbolism as much as the word literature. he never stops repeating that all he wants is to paint."

uh huh!!!




the once radiant (and giant) christmas cactus bloom with the last of my scaped off paint pieces...


a stenciled postcard i made when i got home.


i got a book called 'the natural way to paint - rendering the figure in watercolor simply and beautifully', by charles reid in the mail last week (see, i keep adding fuel to the AADD fire). the author encourages the reader to do contour drawings, so i was practicing that here.


believe me, neither the buddha head nor jimmie look even remotely like this!! but it sure was fun...


i've been out walking once since i got back. i sat on this juniper tree and painted for a while. this is the trunk you see here -- it's grown horizontally out from under the rock on the right, and to the left (outside the picture), it turns skyward and looks like a regular tree. i don't think my arms would wrap around it, it's that big.


before i got to the 'laying down' tree i saw this. i dearly love dead standing trees for the home potential that they are...

happy solstice to you -- may the sun shine on us all tomorrow!

XO

Sunday, June 7, 2009

devil angel me


prior to painting this page i thought that devil lynne sat on one shoulder and angel lynne on the other... angel me on one side reminding me that everything is a reflection of me, so why get upset; why shoot the messenger? (metaphorically speaking, of course...) on the other side devil me quickly responds with the same thing every time -- shoot the messenger! NOW! oh it's funny the way they go back and forth, back and forth... well that's the way i *thought* it was. now i know that they're one and the same person! the things your art shows you... ; )

i painted her with watercolors (twinkling H2O's and caran d'ache crayons) on a piece of muslin that i glued to the page. i love muslin... the next time i paint a face on it, though, i'm going to work more quickly and with less precision. that'd work better...


this is a roll-up jewelry case that i made a few years ago. i painted the bone and lotus with caran d'ache crayons on muslin, then ironed it (to heat set the crayons) and threw it in the washer to see how much of the paint would survive the washing machine. i was amazed at how much of the image was left. caran d'ache crayons are pretty miraculous...


by the time this post goes up i'll be long gone down the road to visit friends. thinking about what i wanted to do with my last hours before leaving (besides pack), i decided to do some stenciling on fabric flags i made a while ago -- guerilla art for the road, you know. they're on my art table here, waiting to have the ties run through the top. this stenciling, i'm tellin' ya, is so practical!!

happy week to you!

XO