Missing Freesia

Somewhere there are two 8X10 Freesia stem watercolors in black frames. I thought I had all the boxes with artwork in them gathered together already. My Roman column with the fruit capital is gone too.... I'm sure they will turn up. I just expected to find them already.

Also... anyone out there use the photoshop cloud service? I am not sure that I am ready to spend 20.00 a month on the software yet. Maybe this Winter when the work load is lighter. Wondering if the font choices are as limited as they are in the new Word bundles.

Gallery

This is a lot harder to build than I thought it would be. I've got the new page and the photos loaded but when you click the button it sends you to the last post I wrote. So I am trying something wildly unhelpful and making a new post to see if that makes a difference.

I suspect as I have already published many of the pictures it is defaulting to previously published imagery. Grrr.......

Itching to Work

All of this retrospective unboxing is all well and good. But I am itching to get started on the new work. I keep telling myself I need an uncluttered start so that I can dig in and get messy. But... I found two of my favorite tools and now they are nagging at me to get to it.

I've had word that a new album is coming not this fall but by next. And Sting is releasing a new one in September. I really need to get the work out that Unendlich has inspired before there is new stuff to muddle the senses. Well... they don't get muddled as in confused. But muddled as in changed. Unendlich and Unverwundbar have been the Albums for this Summer. Last Summer it was Reim 3.

This Summer it is Unendlich.... the "we will go on", "for King and Country" and "these are the shapes of my soul" kinds of songs while Unverwundbar is the "everyday armor" I've been wearing so that I do not get duped again. Unverwundbar is a rockin' metaphor of Ephesians 6. I would not go so far to say that singing these songs like a talisman against false security is EXACTLY like wearing the "Full Armor of God" (maybe Indy should go looking for that next). But it is close in sentiment.

And with this music there is a certain color scheme that comes with it. While I am feeling the colors, sensing the lyrics as it applies to this time in my life, the time of hearing, I need to be working. I don't know why  I am hung up on the mess. I will thoroughly destroy the studio space while working anyway. It's part of the artistic frenzy. But I suppose I need the space to start clean so that my mind is clean. If only it didn't smell so much like a basement!

It looks like the next few weeks are going to be busy. I've got canvases to splash with paint and a print company in town to find. I swear that place is as hard to find on purpose as an entrance into Narnia!

Box Number 4



 

Among the blanks stands a few gems:

 

 

 Three: in numerology three signifies a communicator. One of the defining numbers or my life, communication is essential to my overall well being. I must speak. If I cannot speak I must create. If I cannot create I must write. If I am left without an outlet then I become disconnected with reality. I begin to die inside.... it's very much a Holmesian problem.

One of the things I was exploring before the chaos that ensued after dad's passing: textural pastes. I really love how this layout lead from one thing to another. The amphora as a desert traveler needs something dark grounding it in that lower right hand corner to balance the 3 purple dots. And I need to wash the background colors smoother.... there is no transition between orange and yellow. It wasn't finished before it was boxed so I am not upset that it lacks some important details.


And another collaboration. I wonder where the rest of his art is that he did leave me before he left.

Start to Finish: Box #3

And the jewel of box number three...

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. The preliminary sketch. On the left is a box of Tazo brand tea with the late 90s packaging design, a Martha Stewart mug from K-mart, the bowl to the Martha set and a dollar store vase that I thought was kinda cool. This is the most factual representation of those four objects. The "draw what you see not what you think you see" portion of sketching.

To the right is the homework assignment. One of the casualties of the box, this somehow was folded over and bent into an ugly curve. This was submitted for the monochromatic project. As you can see, I changed the packaging and made it anonymous, added fruit to the bowl which decided the color tone, eliminated the dimensional designs on the case and kept the mug about the same as the original sketch.

It made for great homework but not for frame-able art as in the picture below. Four is really not an ideal number of objects for a still life. It is generally accepted that odd numbers make a perfect composition. I won't bore you with the scientific reasoning. It is just so. Thus, I decided to pull a grape from the bunch and bring it far enough forward to be it's own object to give me five. The composition also needed more diversity in sizes. The other objects are too similar in size to be interesting without a straggler.

I especially like how the details in this close up turned out. And I love the macro function in the camera. Have I mentioned that lately?

The eyes don't always have it

Sometimes one encounters problems with art that are subtle and easily overlooked. And sometimes they are glaringly obvious.

Meet the glaringly obvious:

 

 

 

 This is my first attempt on the Italian vase. I saw this and remembered how excited I was to have successfully captured the painting on the vase, the dimensionality of the fruit and branch and the reflection of the vase in the whites. The whites are so hard to capture. But then when I stepped back I saw the gloriously epic FAIL!

The left side of the vase is squished and again the cherry right next to the vase is competing for the same space! Agh!!!! IT's a thing!!!!!!!!

Oh plus I hate the bright azure blue. It is too lapis. and the green doesn't even begin to match the intensity of the blue and none of them are the right tone for the colors in the vase.

Meet Artie: the inscrutible Miss Tessa

 
 
 



Because every warehouse has to have a supervisor stuck in the dark ages of technology to keep an eye on the minions, keeping them close but not too close, making sure they don't screw anything up... there is this gem of feline superiority.

My roomie's cat, Miss Tessa. Sometimes called Bugs, mostly she avoids me. I am not her favorite person only because, in true cat fashion, she only likes her human. And I am not her human. When I am in the basement she is always there. I think to make sure that I don't mess up anything that she has gotten accustomed to. And today.... I messed up her life.

I've moved a few things that I think she might have been using as cover to hide from the kitten. He is still a furry ball of furious energy and likes to torment her as all little brothers do. But he doesn't like to be where the action is. He'd rather critique after the fact than supervise during. Anyway, it took me a while to realize that I was being watched. For the longest time I thought that uncomfortable stared at feeling was coming from the lone window to the outside world. But no... it was a cat.


She was watching me unpack and photograph box number three.

The unfinished (obviously) start of a watercolor from about 2002 or 3. And a page from a block of water color exploring the technique of multiples on a theme. I think that it could be a successful trick for people who like to work in miniature. This learning experience taught me that I get distracted by the other blocks when I am working in another one. I do like the one top left. It is my color way. The bottom right is too jarringly bright. The red block? I got bored drawing those sunflowers.

Oddly though.... I don't get bored with stargazer lilies. Of course I grew them for my reference materials. But again... stargazers have a special meaning. And the sunflowers were to be marketable.

My great take away from this set.... I wonder if the masking tape will ever come off. It's been there for a decade.

A DECADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!! Really where does the time go?