Wednesday, August 26, 2009

powerful hearts


last week i received a beautiful package from teri mahl of working the earth... there were miscellaneous treasures in it, but the most amazing one


was a bag that she made for me... for the front flap she used a piece of fabric that i sent her a few weeks ago in a package of tree flags. i thought she might be able to use the fabric (barkcloth from old curtains a friend recently gave me) -- i had no idea that she and her daughters made bags to sell, or that she even sewed! i just liked it so i stuck it in there. she not only made the bag, she painted the crow and other gorgeousness on it... i call it my 'soul bag' - you know how some people have soul mates, well this is my soul bag. the middle pic is me wearing it just after i got it. it goes with blue jeans *perfectly*.

thank you so very much, teri...


this doll was part of my sister's birthday present, and what i spent a good part of last week working on. here she is sitting amidst the mess at the end of the process, a mere few days ago. (can you hear me telling her to watch out for wet paint?) my sister *totally* ignored the instructions on the box and opened the package today, four days before her birthday!

i also worked in my Barely There Book...


the lines of this face were already on the page, i just filled them in with paint and oil pastels. it was so rewarding that i kept going in that vein...






it didn't work on this page so i set the whistling dogs to it!


finis - the front and back covers... i waited until the end to paint the small front page so it'd 'fit in'...

and then i started in a new muslin book...








it took me until this page to figure out why i wasn't liking the surface of the pages... at first i thought i'd used too much acrylic on them, but then i realized it was because this book was made from a different batch of muslin which has a looser weave, which made the surface rougher. so much for that muslin when it comes to books... i'm gonna add a note to the step-by-step about this - small differences in weave make a big difference when it comes to drawing and painting on it. the tighter the weave the better, unless you want a rough surface.

so i 've made another book with the Nice Muslin... : )


this is what happens when you go to michael's because you have a 45% off all paint, pencils, oil pastels (etc. etc.) coupon. you come home and use all your new stuff one page!! i got some new oil pastels, soft pastel pencils, and, and...


i found another gregory grenon face in a magazine this week. i'm crazy about gregory grenon's faces...

i'm all over the place with the quotes i'm ending with lately, but i guess that's okay. i read these words by annie dillard this week and they really resonated...

Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used. The work's possibilities excited them; the field's complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.


Annie Dillard, from The Writing Life




if you have a few minutes...

XO

Monday, August 17, 2009

open up


is there anything more satisfying than going to bed having finished *three* art projects?! a journal page, a Barely There book for roxanne, and a flag to hang at the green shrine tree. yeah, i had to take a picture of them...


roxanne came to visit last friday and i must not be able to talk and take pictures at the same time, because i did a lot of talking and not much picture taking. here she is ahead of me on the way to the green shrine tree. before we left to go walking we shared our recent art discoveries with each other. she told me about her workshop with nick bantock...


she gave me some stamps and showed me how to make a (small) landscape with them. you have to stand way back to see the landscapes in mine, but i still like them! we virgos love this kind of thing, hee! she also gave me a cool *old* metal tool caddy that i just remembered i forgot to photograph. we had a good time!!


the next day i walked up past the green shrine tree and checked out a part of the creek i've never really explored before. i found this tree and took about 50 pictures of it... the grain spirals around the tree...




on the back side this looked like insect asemic writing to me. i left the pic big -- click on it for the full effect!


you've gotta click on this one too... look for the tiny white dots to the right of the tree. these are very small insects about 80' above the ground, flying around. hundreds of them... what do they do up there?!


a 'forest' of horsetails... oh i love horsetails...


this one was downright ethereal.


i finally sat down to paint here. the water cascading over a rock shelf - it was one happy spot...


this moss was happy!


as i was walking away i saw this shasta lily - usually there are 3 flowers on each plant, but this one had seven. and the pods are so healthy and gorgeous. this wasn't a good year for the shasta lilies -- they came on strong but many of the buds succumbed to disease. anyway, i walked up to the road after i saw this lily so i could figure out how to get back to them next spring. and then headed back home... i went to bed early that night - i swear i think i had to rest from all of the amazement and wonder.

i'm still working in my second Barely There book. still loving working on muslin...




most of the shading of this face (and the one below) was down with portfolio watersoluble oil pastels. it's such a different effect than watercolors and i'm pretty thoroughly fascinated with it.














i've been reading 'dear theo', vincent van gogh's letters to his brother theo. oh my... so much i could say, so many passages i could quote. i've read that he sold only one painting while he was alive... and of course he only drew and painted for seven years of his brief life. for the first two of those seven years he didn't paint at all. he wanted to perfect his drawing skills before he began using color. the following words were written not long after he started to paint...

You will see that I am not afraid of a bright green or a soft blue, and the thousands of different greys, for there is scarcely any colour that is not grey -- red grey, yellow-grey, green-grey. blue-grey.

As far as I understand it, we of course perfectly agree about black in nature. Absolute black does not really exist. But like white, it is present in almost every colour, and forms the greys -- different in tone and strength; so that in nature one really sees nothing else but those tones or shades. There are but three fundamental colours, red, yellow,and blue; 'composities' are orange, green, and purple. By adding black and some white one gets the endless varieties of greys; to say, for instance, how many green-greys there are is impossible.

But the whole chemistry of colours is not more complicated than those few simple rules. And to have a clear notion of this is worth more than seventy different colours of paint, as, with those three principle colours and black and white, one can make more than seventy tones and varieties. The colourist is he who, seeing a colour in nature, knows at once how to analyze it, and to say, for instance, that green-grey is yellow with black and hardly any blue. In other words, he who knows how to find the greys of nature on his palette.


from 'dear theo', by irving stone, 1937

one complaint about 'dear theo' is that the letters have been too heavily edited by irving stone. this site claims to have his complete letters, as well as those of his mother, sister, and theo.

in contrast to the above passage, in later years vincent speaks of buying many colors of paint. i think that most of us just can't resist...

XO

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

la la la


i think i'm rested up from my trip... rested up and back in the groove - wanting to paint again! thank you for your kind and supportive comments about the muslin pages tutorial. it was my pleasure!

before i left town last wednesday, i was in an obsessed frenzy finishing this doll. earlier in the week i took jane des rosier's online cloth and clay doll class, after which i quickly cut out the doll pattern and got to work. alas, the stuffing part proved tedious so i left most of the pieces sitting, unstuffed, until the day before i went out of town... then i decided i wanted to finish the doll so i could give her to one of the friends i was going to visit. here she is sitting in the cup holder in my car - practicing keeping her arms down. they wanted to fly straight out to the sides!


what i mostly wanted to learn from jane's class is how she combines cloth (muslin, heh) and paper clay, and i certainly learned that. i also wanted to watch her sculpt a face. i tried (more or less) to mold the eyes and lips the way that she does, and you can see what i got -- a very, uh, attentive look, and lips about 5 times bigger than usual, hee! but onward!


she went to someone who loves the color orange and plants...


the back was my favorite part. i ended up using everything from colored pencils to watercolors to acrylics. definitely going to use *everything* on the next one. working in the muslin books has resurrected my love for oil pastels and colored pencils. i'm reaching for them more than watercolors these days...


speaking of muslin and watercolors... my sister made a Barely There book! that made me smile!

if you've done a painting on muslin or you made a book, i'd love to see pics... if you're willing, i'll show them here (or post a link to your blog) so we can all be inspired...

i haven't painted much in my own Barely There book... i can say without hesitation that they're great for traveling though. perfect, in fact...












some pics from the last week...

the moon coming up on wednesday evening. i stopped to take this - is it possible to *not* take a pic of the moon when it's so close to the horizon?


earlier in the day, this is the top half of a smoke plume from one of the forest fires burning west of here. it was huge. i thought i'd be able to get a picture of the entire plume from this spot (near burney, california), but i only got the top part.

from the same spot, looking east instead of north i could see most of the fires burning last week.


and yesterday... even though we're a good 50 miles away from the fires, our air was super smoky. it turns everything orange...


i bought the latest issue of raw vision while i was out -- oh! i love that magazine! i love outsider art! i thought this 'sourcebook' looked fabulous...

there were several artists in this issue whose work moved me, but none more than ted ludwiczak's stone faces. he lives on the hudson river in new york state, and brings the rocks up from the river himself. there are many many of these faces in his yard. this is what he said when told that his work will occupy a prominant place in a new hudson valley cultural center:

I'm just happiest - and i feel the most at peace and the most connected with this river and this place - when i'm handling and carving my stones.

XO