Photos and Sketches

Spent the morning at the library with the BF. He did his homework and I spent the morning taking pictures for the Unintended Tour photos. During the shoot I came across a smallish maple dripping heavily with the clusters of helicopter seeds. No better time to practice with the macro setting. 

It was a slightly windy day so there was a a lot of waiting. And while I was waiting for the clusters to quit swinging the camera focused in the macro setting and presto-westo! A perfect macro shot. 

 

Then there was this gem of a cluster in pink. It took a few minutes to get them to be still but I got my shot. 

Of course there  was still some time to kill. So I sat down across from the BF and started sketching. Totally ruined two micron pens to make it happen. Of course, they were old and weren't going to last much longer anyway. 

And the final result.....

Something totally blog worthy. :)

Breaking Through the Blocks

There is this thing that happens to all artists when creative periods ebb and flow. We  get a bit panicky, we want to rush to create a huge body of work and we lose the focus of the experience for the perception of success in having a quantity. Art is one of those things, like wine, craft beer, catching fish that can not be rushed. And forget the hand painted mass production. If one painting takes 40 hours and you need one hundred to make a profit that is 100 weeks of the same painting. No one has the werewithall for that!

The problem of ebb and flow doesn't just affect the quantity of works. It affect each individual piece. That is some thing that I had not thought possible since I love to paint as much as I do. I know that there is the period between works when the energy has ebbed and starting again is hard. But to have the excitement dissipate mid-work.... that is newer to me. With moving and taking on a new position at work I thought that my dry spell was just because I needed some inspiration. Which I did. I thought it was because all of my creative wells had been neglected... which they were. So I did what I always do. I stuck my head in some books and got myself motivated again.

Or so I thought. I had a stack of periodicals to help me jump start some ideas over at the geeks blog. And then I found a travel magazine that hit on almost all of my interests. And I thought.... I have to paint that. So I started.

And got stuck. It is a new technique. I have paints that I haven't worked with as often as I would have liked since my preferred blend was accidentally left behind in the move. And I was breaking open a pad of watercolor paper that I had not really used a lot. It pills, sadly and that has cause a bit of frustration as I am unsure how to correct for it or incorporate the pilled area into the texture that I am looking for. So I have set it aside so that I can let my subconscious brain have a go at the problem solving.

And I stepped away from the work to do something entirely different. It is a glorious season for photography as you have seen. And anywhere the boyfriend and I go I have my camera with me. There are day trips almost once a week where we explore his old haunts and I am able to go back and take pictures of places that mean something to the family. But I still can't figure out this piece. I am stuck somewhere that I don't know how to navigate.

So I painted something else in a different style from one of our day trips.

And one day while waiting for schedules to gel and deadlines to happen I popped into the library for some instruction and inspiration.

I found a few volumes of Splash. And in volume 2 I found a few answers to the dilemma at hand.

• Step away from the work and get outside
• paint something else and let your subconscious work on the problems. 
• seek advice

And that is just a bit of the advice from artists who have been featured in the yearly anthology have offered for encouraging breakthroughs. But the biggest help is knowing that the kind of struggle that I am going through in this piece means that there is a breakthrough waiting for me on the other side, perhaps a quantum leap in understanding or skill if I will only be patient with the process. 

This 

is the confounding bit of art taken from a NatGeo travel mag with a new technique for me.

With some distance I can see a lot of places where this is working. And still a few places where I am terrified to continue for fear of losing the strength of the line in the underpainting, which was all done in Prussian Blue. The book called for Cobalt but I don't have any in my stash. Indanthrene might have been better but it stains too so I don't know about that anymore.

In a few days I'll be able to sit and paint again.... waiting for the rain to go away and the road tripping to be done for a bit. 

Organizing

I'm laid up for a while again. Hamstring again. But at any rate, while I am laid up I am working on organizing my Pintrest™ boards. While I was working on the boards, I came across a new artist in the illustrations pins.

Her name is Irina Vinnik, a Russian illustrator. Her work is remarkable. I will let her work speak for itself. This is January from her new calendar.

 

 



It is amazing how much there is on Pintrest. Its a great way to spread the love around. Especially since the thing is so random. Everyone anywhere can post things. Slide it under a header and the whole world suddenly has access to people and places that otherwise would remain unknown.

I wish she had a blog. But maybe I can get a widget for her Behance page. Until then, here is a link to her shop.

Random sketches

Some more ideas to go with the Egypt thing and the sketches for the chakra series of acrylics. I think that the only one that stayed as planned was the sacral chakra. I really like the idea behind the lekythos but it needs to be reworked. That top olive branch needs to be a bit more droopy with the weight of those fruits.

Love it!

I really like the look of this. I think that I am going to redo it and use more precise blocking lines than just the main horizontal and vertical axis. There is way too much going on in this sketch to not use them. Things get off balance quickly.

#5 second post

Bottom right, look who I found peeking out at me when I took the lid off of this box. Perhaps I should quit saying that I can not draw people. I don't prefer it. But I guess I can do it. When I have tons of time. Of course what you don't see is the mistake I cropped that makes me say I can't draw people.

Another mannequin angel, a stained glass idea inspired by Michelle Ward and the stained glass windows in the old churches. I think I was reading Iris Johansen at the time, Beloved Scoundrel, a pomegranate and fig sketch.

Artifact box #5

Among the mess I started unpacking I found a box of Somerset Studio magazines and sketch books. Some were filled, others were only partially full and one was almost embarrassingly bare. the good news there is that I don't have to shop for more sketchbooks.

Here you can see two examples of why twitter knows me as @glyphgeek, a sample of my fascination with all manner of earthen vessles, the beginning of some kind of old engravers styled corbel design (middle bottom) and a sketch for a mannequin angel. If I had to guess I would say it was from the period when I obsessively watched Stargate SG-1 and continued through the point in which I moved out of my fathers house to begin this crazy 8 year quest.

When the jar and papyrus sketch popped out at me I kinda swooned. Sometimes I have some really good ideas. And that was one of them. It started an idea for a series of rubber stamps. Seriously need to get back on that track. Just have to figure out how to get around a couple of speed bumps.

My Own W13

I just uploaded a bunch of stuff to facebook. My sister is back online and I wanted to shove a few things at her in preparation for the onslaught of her baby pictures. Plus.... facebook is quicker and I get to try out the funny on them before launching words at you guys.

So here we go....


From the W13 Artifacts Vault, First Box:
Among the Chagalls, Degas and Victorian Cats, in a Rubbermaid repository lies tiny treasures of past artistic adventures and experiments. Unlike a real W13 artifact..... none of these things possess weird powers that warp reality or bestow superhuman powers.
Too bad.





The vault is open........

 

 



The top layers are laid out on the floor. From left: Italian wall
calendar 1998, watercolor exercise from Watercolor Magazine
of pears, 2 Chagalls from a wall calendar, 1992 Gates McFadden
portrait in colored pencil, Dover Collection Degas wrapping
 paper, college project "Product Announcement" 2001, watercolor
of a random hill in the middle of a farm in Port Oneida in
Leelanau County in the Fall.
 

Charcoal drawing from Glee Fenby's class 2000.
Study in textures and shadows.



Prelims for rubber stamps sold to A1 Stamps. The collection
celebrates my home town.

Trying to be Degas with ink.... not sure how
successful I feel about this one.



Left: Censer for Christmas maybe 1999? Right: Imagining a Woodcut or Lino-cut badge
of an artist in the service of his or her queen.

Grammpa Gerbstadt and the unfinished portrait
1998 or 99

THe NatGeo cover that started a thing with cacao pods sitting
alongside a watercolor exemplar of the Hebrew alphabet.

Practicing a new wet in wet watercolor technique on the left
and exploring cacao on the right.

One of many partially used watercolor pads in the box. I opened
this one thinking it would be the fifth empty book. But no. This
one had a surprise inside......
A mostly finished stargazer lily.
 

Unresolved

When you set aside a painting for a long period of time to be able to come back to it with fresh eyes you gain perspective. When you set it aside and years pass the chance of gaining perspective or insight diminishes. What you end up with then is more like an artifact dug up from the depths of an Egyptian sand dune.

Each work is an archive of the time in which you are creating. Who you are in the moment, what you are feeling, the tensions or joy that are a part of your life inform the work and every stroke involved in creating it. Step away for a few days to let a problem resolve itself. Step away for years and there may be no resolution at all.

I look at this vessel and see where I was going with it. I see that I did learn quite a bit about how the pigment floats through the water and settles itself. I learned how to let things manifest organically within a structure to essentially let the medium do all the work for me instead of tediously nitpicking each grain of solid within each molecule of liquid.

And I see an artifact. It is part of the past. It is a part of self discovery within the theme of the human body as a vessel of the spirit, human clay molded by experience and divine influence. I see something that I do not want to finish.

There are many bits from the past studio experience that surface as I excavate the vast amount of supplies in storage. I almost feel like I've cracked open Tut's tomb. But really, I've cracked open the resting place of an older version of myself. I think that I would like to collect all the bits, trim them down to size and arrange them somehow to be a cohesive display. Tut's treasures ask as many questions as they answer of the inquisitive mind. The bits in the studio seem to do the same with me.
What was I thinking? What were my influences? What was the grand scheme intended with all the pottering and producing? Did I have a goal in mind or was I going to work until I was done feeling the need to explore the theme? Were these works a statement on my life as it was or as it would be? Or... as I hoped it would be and knew it could not?

Ponderous. And unresolved.
For now. It could very well turn out that what I think is too much time to begin again is not enough. Only when I get to the End of Everything in My Life's Work will I know if this represents a thing that is resolved or forever a mystery.

And that it the nature of the artistic life.

Coming Soon: ezsett typograohic project

Of course now that I have gotten set up to work in my little room there is an opportunity to move back into a house with enough space for a studio of the caliber I've had in the past. So, while I am packing and moving and unpacking and stocking the new studio, I leave you with a teaser for the mini project that I am working on.



Water color on 96#/160g weight Royal & Langnickel paper

Preliminary

or drafting is not my thing.

from the skethcbook

I love architecture of all kinds especially Baroque and the more organic work of my current muse Antoni Guadi. Rocco had its place. Traditional Greek design and the gothic megaworks of Europe boggle my mind. The scope of those projects....

And then I remember all the math and drawing involved before a sculptor ever gets a chisel to marble or an iron smith gets to crafting the mould. And it is the drawing that gets me every time. Rather the draftwork involved.

There are special considerations for vertices and arches. How do you support a dome without taking up all the interior space? How do you make a straight line intersect with a curves and not have the building fall down.

I am, perhaps, being too hard on myself since these things are never going to be real buildings that anyone could walk into. Nor are they going to be "real" buildings to the wee creatures I imagine would carve their own Halloween house with tooth and nail. And that really is where the idea for these came from. Imagining a pumpkin field as a city for mice, shrews and the other things we don't want living in our houses. They are fantasy.

And I think that my type A persona should leave well enough alone. Except that I can see my iron peacock over the front door is off center. And the peacock vane on top isn't really sitting on the ball for the domw too well. A cat goes stomping through that neighborhood and there goes the weather vane!  I've already started editing this on paper. As with the last one; a photograph gets you some good distance so you can evaluate how solid your drawing is.

It is essential to do this no matter what you are working on. But in this instance, because I may turn these into rubber stamps, it is more important than color. My fingers are so twitchy to get a brush in hand that I feel I really want to skip over the edits and improvements. If I do that it won't really be my best work. And that will make me feel worse than the compulsion to get the drafting right and the frustration that I am not as much a draftsman as a person who appreciates fine lines.

Kurbisshaus

India ink, watercolor, Radiant Pearls on Bristol paper.

This was the most fun I've had in studio in a long time. The rendering phase was difficult. Structurally correct, it seemed flat. When I added color I could see where the issues were. And for a  change, it turned out that I didn't have enough black in the drawing to balance out all the white areas that would get color.

And it really needed some landscaping. Like all good homes, curb appeal is key to a sale.

Now, I am not normally a cake person. I love to look at them. The skill it takes to render a 3d object in edible materials just dumbfounds me. But I do not like to eat cake...

except that I can not help thinking that this would make a great cake and I would love to sink my fang teeth into this one.

I would also like to make this Kurbissehaus (pumpkin house) with craft materials for submission for next years Somerset issue.

Flow my Tears & Bleeding Heart

a quick watercolor sketch of a closed bleeding heart

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.


Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.


Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.


From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.


Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.

John Dowland, 1563- 1626

My friends have such heavy hearts these days. And I as well. I am tempted to wrestly Sting's Labrynth CD from the bottom of the CD pile. I strive not to do so. Even though sad songs are good for the soul because they promote the cleansing tears, I have cried so much on my own that I dare not.

So many things are working themselves right from the convoluted mess that they were. And yet there is still sorrow. For myself, I feel as though I have been abandoned yet again. And as usual it revolves around feeling completely inadequate for the priviledged task of being someone's girlfriend... and now not even that mere friendship is available to me because of the damage that I have wrought. One would think I were an F5 tornado ripping through a sleeping Kansas city. I am not. But I feel as though I am. I know I am at least in the realm of a High Wind advisory when I get into the self-preservation mode. But I am not an F5. I've met women like that. I run screaming for the nearest Klingon ship when I meet women like that. Still.... to be told a thing on one day and then something else the very next. It is disruptive to say the least.

And so I am better off now with art, music, the bursts of joyful color and the reinstitition of the things I became convinced I did not "deserve". A daily fru-fru mocha, which is now as inexpensive as 1.25 a day thanks to a lovely Christmas gift from the company. Internet interactions with a world I relish thanks to inclusive rent. Music I find uplifting and inspiring and can listen to because I am not with someone who doesn't appreciate the deep melodious tones of Sting & Matze's voices. Uninterrupted art time. Candle lit baths. Nay! Candles at all are a wonder since the one I hade been with had issues with scents. Non-processed foods thanks to two wonderful friends who lent me crock pots.... all in all things are looking very well. So why am I sad?

For all there is it is not enough.
I've lost the local & physical manifestation of my tribe. It took so long to find the tribe members... member. And now... I am left to my own devices.

But I am not alone in my sorrow. Nor am I alone in the healing. Separated by space, we have facebook, texting and email. Sure, I can not go to a movie with them. But there is nothing that really lets me wallow in the sadness. And we each know how it feels to be bereft of some special person(s). We can send each other kindness and love with thought and prayer. And it is a relief to know that others know the pain. And, with Sting & Matze, there is hope that there will be a time to heal.

New Camera



watercolor of poppy seed pods

The camera is a GE X500 16.0 mega pixel with 15X wide angle optical zoom lens. It came with an 8gig memory card and I bought the case in addition to it. The whole kit and caboodle cost me less than 180.00.
This is a 3.5 by 7 inch watercolor. The shot is of just the top portion of the piece. And look how friggin cool this shot is. It shows all the variations: paper textures, the way the colors flowed across the paper for wet into wet blending AND clear pencil marks from the cross hatching I added when it was dry.

I am so excited. My next project from moo is going to be so much more cooler than the last with awesome clear shots like these. With the macro setting I was practically right on top of the paper and nothing is blurry. This will make all kinds of good things even better.

also in the sketchbook...

Truly a sketchbook page: I don't know if I want to seperate this permanently. At first I just wanted to do the crow in a 4x4 and be done with it. But the more I looked at it the more I thought this would be a good compostition as a whole.

On the crow theme, there are notes on the left side of the page. This is either going to be the Crow for Sting or the pun.... or maybe it will be more. I found this crow shape in a photograph and, true to art you have to make it your own.... the birds beak and some of the wing feathers are nibs of a fountain pen. But what am I going to do with it now? I have had a few ideas but nothing really solid and concrete.

As a growth exercise, I learned a lot about patience when dealing with this medium. And a lot about how the brushes need to work to make textures. While everything was still wet the crow looked horrible. It worried me. Once it dried it looked great.

From the Sketchbook of...

Inspired by my own projects with www.moo.com I started working on some more watercolors. They turned out way better than previous experience told me they would. So I have been living with my sketchbook at my side 24/7.

I liked the way that the cacao pod photographed. And that is the color scheme I wanted to stick with. For the last year or so I've been thinking that I need to change up the motif. But really, to keep it fresh all I needed to do was change up the colors. I've been in the orange, red, yellow with a hint o green for years. So now I'm into the Summer colors with lots of blue and green balancing the reds.

The only thing with this sketch is the vase. The structure is totally off. Can you say "outta practice"? Boy I can. Still... I like how vibrant this is. And I am really happy with the technique. It is a lot less controlled than the way that I usually do watercolor. I think this means that I an loosening up.