Painty

I broke out the oil paints today and made an unholy mess.

Pear 2

Pear 2
oil pastel, acrylic, and collage on canvas
6 x 6 inches

Pear

Pear
oil pastel, acrylic, and collage on canvas
6 x 6 inches

Vessels: 3 x 9

Vessels: 3 by 9 (with detail)
mixed media on paper

This is the latest installment in the Vessels series. It's a combination of Pitt pen, Koh-I-Noor watercolor pencils, Neocolors II water-souluble wax crayons, and collage on yummy Cartiere Magnani paper. I'm much happier with this piece than #17--not so much because I think the final image is all that much better, but because the process of getting to the end result was more satisfying.

I'm especially happy with the leaves. I usually don't enjoy the process of cross-hatching. It's a bloody pain in my behindermost parts to get the sort of result I want. It's a little difficult to tell, even from the detail, but there there are layers upon layers upon layers of cross hatching, which gives a velvety depth to the drawing. The paper held up very well to this sort of abuse.

Vessels: Conceiving the Plan

Vessels: Conceiving the Plan
mixed media

I called my mom this morning and spent three hours talking to her. Where does the time go? While I was on the phone, I took another look at the watercolor I did a couple of nights ago. Ugh. It was just as bad as I remembered. I figured, since I was gabbing and my hands weren't busy, I may as well try to salvage what I could. I diluted some gesso and splashed it over the paper, let it sit for a bit, then blotted up the excess. That lightened everything and left a milky, mottled cast to the image that I quite liked. You can see the remains of the effect in the lower left-hand corner.

I then got out my Pitt pens and played with the shading. I did some cross-hatching, which helped, but not enough. However, I made a discovery. I was using my grey brush-tip pens and decided to do some washy shading on top of the cross-hatching. The under layer of ink melted and smeared. Hmmm. Pitt pens are permanent when water is applied, but apparently the carrier in the pen itself will melt already-dried ink. That makes sense (otherwise the ink would dry up in the pen, right?), but it hadn't occurred to me before.

So then I played around with laying down dark areas and using the lightest brush tip pen to melt and redistribute the ink. Oh frabjous day! I really like how the final image turned out. It's not perfect, but I'm pleased that I was able to salvage it. I think it'll make a nice addition to the Vessels book.

Blue Horizons

Blue Horizons


Cave

I had to use Flickr again. I like how easy it is to upload and manage images, but I'm not happy with the thumbnails it generates. They're a little too small, I think. I prefer 120 pixels instead of 100. Hrmph. So, I decided to use the next larger size as thumbnails. (Yes, I really do obsess about these sorts of things!) Anyway... Both of these collages are destined for the Vessels book I'm working on.

Blue Horizons: As always, I turned to Mr. Dictionary to see if there was anything I was overlooking. One definition given for "horizon" is "The limit of the theoretically possible universe." I like that. It speaks to exploration and a potential to be fulfilled.

Cave: This image came from a scenic/touisty type magazine. I tore it into vertical slivers, then inked the margins (my hands are still stained black) and used a Q-tip soaked with ink to color between the torn pieces. I like the way the vertical black lines echo the errosion lines in the rock face.

In mythology, caves are places where the underworld and the real world meet. The cave, like the cauldron, cup, and chalice, also echos the womb. It is the place from which things are born.


Conceiving the Plan

This is a piece in progress. I'm not happy with the way it turned out (watercolors drive me insane), so I'm probably going to either use the painting in a collage or collage over parts of the painting. We'll see.

Happy I Found and Finished the Sky

Happy I Found and Finished the Sky
acrylic and Faber-Castell Pitt pen in composition book journal

Happy I found
and finished the sky
cleared up as I
have been toying around with
the spine
I swear counting backwards
in control of the wind
I was named after him
hidden and harder than anything.

Spent an hour down
with the dogs
all underfoot and more
from the digging
half a red letter tall
a storm day of woe
when it is warm
leave the baker alone
the same hope does not seem to keep us.

I've been dwelling too much on the weather. I saw a glimpse of sun as I drove home this afternoon and it made me think of optimism and expectations, which made me think of the story of Pandora and her jar of woe, which made me think of the dual nature of hope. How hope can inspire both dreams and nightmares.

I went to the grocery store Saturday morning and bought a cartful of veggies. Babbs has the yummiest veggies. (Though the cashier was confounded by my sack of fresh brussels sprouts. "What are those?" she asked.) Their radishes are especially good--crisp and sweet and slightly sharp, without the excessive bite that radishes can get. Oh yes, and a hint of garlic, too.

I washed and halved a baggie of them to bring to work today, so I'd have something to snack on. I overestimated as I was pulling them off the greens, so it's a very large baggie of radishes. I was distracted by the dogs underfoot; it never fails to amuse me as they snatch the flung roots and tops and gobble them up. I've trained them well to intercept random veggie missiles.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my little late-morning snack.

Spring Flowers

Spring Flowers
composition book journal

I went shopping yesterday morning and picked up some new cheap, metallic gel markers (RoseArt). They show up nicely against dark colored backgrounds. They also blend well if you work quickly. Inspired by the warm sunny day and by the memory of drawing with similar markers when I was young, I decided to draw a bright, childish landscape.

I had pre-painted the paper the night before with metallic blue and periwinkle paint. The left-hand page stretched slightly, causing minor wrinkling. In person the wrinkles are minimal, but because the page is painted with metallic paint, it is extremely reflective; the scanner accentuated the wrinkles.