Waiting for Peaches

WAITING FOR PEACHES

22"x36"

Watercolor

This is my first full sheet watercolor, or at least it's the first one that I'm halfway proud of. I've played with watercolor for years, mostly using it in my art and travel journals, and I've done other full sheet paintings but most have been torn up or washed off and the paper used for something else. This one is fine with me and I won't trash it... yet! Now I'm not looking for compliments; I see its faults, thank you very much, and it's nowhere near having the abstract qualities I'm aiming for, but it's a step in the right direction and just maybe I'll get out another sheet and do another one from the same inspiration.

After wearing only a light jacket outdoors for the last week or so we woke up this morning to snow on the trees but none sticking to the surfaces that are still warm from yesterday's sunshine. As you can see, the color in my backyard isn't reserved for summer. The coral bark maple on the left adds warmth to the garden and there's always color in the conifers that ring our property. The Japanese gardeners talk about "borrowed scenery" and we have that aplenty with pines next door and fir and cedar behind us and down the hill. I keep trying to draw this forest but its hard for me to eliminate the detail and choose just one thing to draw.

Sketching

I've been spending my evenings lately with some old photos and a sketchbook, trying to see what might be in the photos that I could use for some paintings.
This watercolor sketch is from a photo taken several years ago when we drove up the Columbia River Gorge to buy peaches. A lineup of unmatched lawn chairs alongside the shed caught my eye and I snapped the picture.
I've sketched the scene several times, doing value studies and rearranging the elements for a better composition. This is a first attempt to determine color placement, but still I'm struggling. The big red barn in the background was ready to topple in a strong wind and my drawing gives it more presence. I like that and I'll try some more drawings to see if this painting will be more about the buildings than about the chairs. And it still is too realistic for me. I think severe abstraction is the key.

Blender transfers

Elizabeth asked how I transferred the feather... here's my answer. Don't do as I did!
My copier is an old Canon which uses toner; I don't know if my method works with a laser print but it does not work with an inkjet copier or printer. I used a Design Art Marker colorless blender #311 which is xylene and which causes cancer if inhaled. Work with it only outside when wearing a vapor mask and appropriate filter. Lay the copy facedown on your substrate and go over the line with the xylene marker, working in a small area at one time. Immediately burnish the paper with the back of a spoon, lifting the paper to check that the ink has transfered, and then move on to the next area. This gives a clear transfer but is so dangerous to one's health. There are safer techniques. I tossed my blender after I did this and I intend to spend a few days playing with different methods so that I have control of a better process for the next time I want to do a clear transfer.

Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Collage painting

12" x 12"

$200.00, framed

Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

I've been thinking about hope a lot lately and have started a little series on the topic. This is the first. I used illustration board for my substrate and started painting with acrylics, adding visual texture in many ways to the large sheet of board. When I got to a stopping point I cut the big board into smaller pieces in several sizes, including this 12 x 12 piece. Then I started playing with composition and came up with this. The feather is a photocopy of a peacock feather from my brother's back yard in Arkansas where he struts around hoping that his long dead mate will show up again. I transfered it to the painting using acrylic medium, and after weeks of indecision I did the stamping of the lines of Emily Dickinson's poem.

It's offered in a black wood frame.

Jo

Blog Award

4x6 collage

Thanks to Elizabeth St. Honaire Nelson for giving me a "I love your art blog" award, my first blog award. Elizabeth informed me that I need to pass it on to seven other bloggers and though I'm hesitant to choose any one blogger over another, these are the artists I choose, in no particular order. Click on a name to visit each blog.

Leslie Miller

Katherine Tyrrell

Linda Blondheim

Karen Blados

LK Ludwig

Nina Bagley

Carol Marine

France Journal

No, I haven't been to France lately but I'd love to return. Provance is an especially wonderful and beautiful place, but then I like the countryside anywhere. I'm sharing these few pages to keep you content with my upcoming absence. My husband and I are spending the next week on the often stormy Oregon coast, watching the light change and getting some R&R. I'm taking my new easyL lightweight travel easel and will break it in by doing a bunch of oil sketches. I need to practice with oils, something which doesn't seem to get done at home. Perhaps with different kinds of distraction I'll be inspired to paint lots of water and sky.

The Gauguin and Vuillard pages were done to document our visit to Paris exhibitions of those artists work. I'm most found of Vuillard with his orgy of patterns in the wallpaper, table cover, and dresses. Gauguin didn't paint patterned dresses on his women... he didn't even put dresses on most of them! It was Polynesia, after all, and very warm.

The School of Uncertainty

Another piece in my Sermon Note series, this piece is simply watercolor and rubber stamps. I work on a 9" x 12" block of 140# watercolor paper, usually Canson Montval cold press. The block works well because all 4 edges are glued together with the rest of the pages in the block, making a very firm surface which dries absolutely smooth no matter how much water I throw at it or how many layers of papers I glue to it. And the paper takes lots of abuse.

I used paints straight out of the tube because I wanted vibrant color, indicating my ongoing current theme of HOPE. I used cad yellow light, indian yellow, cad red light, cobalt violet, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue and winsor green.

A group women at my church are getting together soon to see how much interest they can generate in teaching homeless women in the community to knit or crochet. I was asked to come up with a logo, a task which is definitely not part of my natural skill set, but I think the result will work. It was definitely a stretch for me. Perhaps it was the "logo" word that put me off; I view designing logos to be part of the job description of high paid illustrators.

Sketchcrawl

Today is Worldwide Sketchcrawl Day and I went with a friend to the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, in Sherwood, OR, to sketch in the 36 degree foggy weather. It is so beautiful there with lots of water fowl happily swimming in the huge ponds that have been created by the melting snow and rains of the last weeks. Big oak trees like this one were standing on hummocks on actually in the water and being reflected perfectly in the smooth-as-glass water.
And yes, I exaggerated the colors.

Working From Photographs

Big D on Green

$250 unframed

22" x 30"

Most people who see this acrylic painting think it's a non-representational or abstract design, simply a big letter D and perhaps they wonder why I painted it. The simple answer is that I wanted to, but that sounds a bit snippy so I go on to tell them the story.

On May 20, 2000 (I know because the date is on the photo) my brother and I were driving down a street in his Arkansas town when I spotted a rather rundown corrugated tin building painted the most wonderful green. My brother is the best person in the world to go for a drive with because he'll cheerfull stop for anything, any where, or even turn around and go back when we're miles down the road. So we came to a screeching halt, backed up and I jumped out to take some photos. I'm sure he was wondering why I would want to make a picture of that ugly building. And the simple answer was that I saw beauty there and wanted to keep it because my memory fails regularly. I wasn't sketching much at the time but I've always kept my eyes open so I collected the image, and that's the image that led directly to this painting. Here's what I saw.

Photograph of the building

Detail Photograph

This is one of the most realistic paintings I've ever done, and it was lots of fun to mix the colors and figure out how best to represent the texture. I used a piece of corrugated cardboard as my brush to indicated the lines of the tin building material and collaged 2 pieces of cardboard to the watercolor paper to indicated the patches in the metal siding.

Keep Your Eyes Open

Two friends and I went sketching Saturday and because the day was so cold we decided to stay indoors and sketch at Multnomah Art Center. We walked the halls looking for a good place to get comfortable and spied the weaving rooms. With permission we went in and poked around amongst the dozens of looms and marveled at all the tools of the trade which were displayed on the walls and counters. I took lots of photos and finally sat down to sketch... and no, you can't see my drawing. I bit off more than I was capable of rendering and the results were not so good. That happens to all of us and I'm not discouraged.


However I made some interesting photos of the tools and looms. The first picture is of shuttles standing upright in a bucket; I'll do some drawings of this shape from this photograph which is what I should have done in situ rather than tackling a complex scene in limited time.

I've learned to keep my eyes open and searching for interesting things to photograph or draw as I travel through this world of ours. I would have never imagined seeing these weaving things had I not taken time to poke around another weaving studio a few years back. This has me thinking about what I might find in my sewing tools and in my kitchen cabinets if I open my eyes to the possibilities.


Here are some other photos.

Twisted wire heddles

Individual Wire Heddles