Is there anything better than new art supplies? Recently, in Toronto, I had the gift of free time in several art supplies stores. What a treat! I browsed. I played with all the brushes. I touched all the papers. I went through all the paint and the drawing supplies. I felt like a kid again, anxious to draw pictures of flower-laden princesses. And now, feast your eyes on my new pencils:
According to places like Canadian Tire and Walmart, the Holiday Season is barrelling at us like a runaway locomotive. I must confess, I am not a big fan of this time of year. That's an understatement. I will spare you the details and my reasoning. Know that I prefer to avoid Christmas activities. Charitable giving, though, is of course encouraged.
I have a friend who puts her tree up immediately after Remembrance Day and turns on the revolving Christmas tunes. Six weeks of Jingle Bells. Sigh.
I have been wanting to try my new set of Prismacolor pencil crayons. Introducing...Candle and Cranberries. This, therefore, is my contribution to the Holiday Season.
Bah Humbug.
(Is it January yet?)
I was asked to do a portrait of my aunt and uncle who have both passed. I find portraits can be a frightening task. The prior knowledge I have of the subject (in this case my own relatives) is always reflected in my work and that may or may not please the person requesting the portrait. Do they see the person the way that I do? The answer is: of course not. And that's okay.
I recall my aunt quite vividly; I could hear her voice and her laughter as I put pencil to paper. Memories of my uncle were not available to me, so I relied as best I could on old photos. They were lovely, hard-working, creative prairie people. Above all else, I wanted them to look happy together.
Soon I will be travelling. It is the delight of my life. Living on the prairie is all well and good, but I am a gypsy at heart. When the opportunities arise to move around, I jump at the chance.
I have purchased a new journal, consisting of mixed media paper (120 lbs) enclosed in a stunning leather cover. It will become my travel journal of drawings and watercolours. This fall, I attended a Studio Trail and one of the artists I visited had on display her travel journals. I fell in love.
I cannot pretend that I can create something as outstanding as she has. But I look forward to building it: finding coffee spots and vantage points that inspire me, sketching them, applying simple watercolour to flush out the vision, adding the odd script note. I am sure I will want to rip out some pages, but I am not going to. I will take the good with the bad. I know there will be some of both.
In preparation, I took a photo from my last trip with my sister in April, and simulated what I wanted to do. It was quick, and I wasn't terribly careful, but the photo below is my practice page.
I can't wait for lift-off. Physically, emotionally, creatively and spiritually. That is what travel gives me. A much-needed lift.
The last couple of weeks have been an exercise in frustration. I decided to tackle sketching portraits and figures and have been attempting to get face shapes and body positions down on paper with limited success. Usually fine detail work excites me but lately my pencil sketches have fallen flat. I look at the results and my people look odd to me. Eyes are skewed, lips are droopy, noses too large. I recognize I have a long way to go here, and it is daunting.
So today, I tried something else. Finding my surroundings less than inspiring, I took a look through my art books and other materials for something to duplicate, thus taking the onus off me to create the subject and allowing me to focus instead on the artist's technique.
And Voila, there I am again, the world narrows and the edges get fuzzy and I am lost in what I love to do. I chose to duplicate John Singer Sargent's 'Simplon Pass: Reading' which I found in the pages of a calendar. I love working with gouache paint. It give you the filmy and loose transparency of watercolour but allows itself to be controlled. And then there is the benefit of opaque white, which isn't available with watercolour. Gouache is chalky and a bit grainy, but I love that feeling of having something you can control and lift.
It is a work in progress, but I am loving the result. Happily, I feel some success again. Attempting to follow the way Sargent moved his brush and to re-create points he emphasized humbles me. What at first glance looks like it is haphazard and accidental is truly purposeful. So, Portraits: you can wait a bit until I am ready to bang my head against a brick wall some more. I am having too much fun here.
It has been a struggle to get into my artspace and produce anything. I have been sent on farming errands, and distracted by many ridiculous and meaningless things. While away from my artspace, I have been recording ideas and methods I wish to use. Today, I am going to take supplies with me wherever I go. If I end up in a tractor cab, I am going to draw in the tractor cab. 'If the mountain won't come to Mohammed....' While I have taken my art supplies on scheduled holidays with me, I haven't carted them around on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps this is something others already know and do. I realize I am now late to a lot of artistic parties, which burns a hole in my usually punctual heart.
I have found an article on the internet, 8 Exercises That Every Artist Should Practice. I love the simplicity of the ideas, some of which have been touched on by my USCAD instructors, and the simple examples shown. It is inspiring to see practice boiled down like this!
On another note, I was at a showing of our local art club, at a local gallery that sits within our local library. The show consisted of reproductions of recognizable pieces done by famous Masters. It was time well spent. We have many local talented artists. Each piece was displayed beside a photo of the original notable piece. While I enjoyed the work tremendously, and found it interesting to compare the fresh with the famous, I have always wondered about the ethical practice of doing these types of pieces. While you learn a tremendous amount when using famous work as a reference, is that not effectively copying the work? I admit to doing this on my own, but I have been reluctant to actually show those pieces out in the big world. I will have to do some research on this topic, and perhaps, be open to a change of opinion.
It was a busy weekend. My husband's birthday came and went (he was surprisingly emotional about the painting of our dog, so that hit the intended mark). I ran a 10k marathon. Lots of family and friends descended upon us. Farming continued. Yet, I still made time to paint.
I went back to the lemons. Lemon Study is not something I am thrilled with, but it was a good exercise in brushwork. I have determined I need new brushes. I keep gravitating to the same three brushes and I am not satisfied with the results. I will put that on my shopping list when I go to visit my son in the BIG CITY next month.
But here they are, in all their lemony glory. My mom thought they were oranges. I didn't correct her. That's the beauty of art. You see what you want to see.
Last night, I was jabbering on the phone with a girlfriend. I had a piece of paper and paints infront of me and so as we talked I began to work, scratching and poking away at the paper with gouache paint. I finished the painting while we were talking (it was a loooong talk), and this was the result. I zoomed in with my camera on a portion of the paper for a detail pic. A wee bit blurry, perhaps, but I think it is dreamy.
That brings me to today, where I am starting to work on a plein air painting of a vine-covered fence in our backyard. The vine is turning brilliant crimson, as it does every fall. Virginia creeper, for those of you horticulture types. I know some see it as a weed, but I have always thought it was beautiful, hanging red in the fall. I'll see what I can do to bring it inside.
We've had a lot of rain in the last few days. Although it is not the best weather for our farming operation, having grown up on the rainy BC coast, I find this weather soul soothing. Over the last two days, I have spent a lot of time on my artwork. Intensely creative times like this are cherished. Real life falls away and I dive into colours and lines, and deliciously lose all sense of time.
Today, I started with lemons. I created a four-series set of simple gouache paintings. It was something I did for an exercise and, as my instructor at USCAD said, "do not be afraid to create crap...not everything has to be worthy of hanging on a wall". The lemons were not worthy. Will try something else lemony tomorrow.
After the lemon failure, our weekly vegetable delivery arrived. A local family operates a market garden and delivers a crate of gorgeous veggies to our door once a week. Pure heaven! The veggies arrived, delicately sprinkled with rain, and the colours and shapes screamed to be captured in paint. I grabbed my camera, snapped some photos, and have spent the rest of the day working on watercolour veggies. And then I sliced some up for dinner. The best of both worlds.
Another cool fall day. The perfect sort of day to practise hibernation skills, sequester myself in my artspace and finish my Abby drawing. Although every inch of her was beautiful, I somehow made the decision to focus on her face. She was always great at talking with her eyes. As I worked, the piece just evolved into a pencil drawing with a hint of colour; soft, gentle strokes, just like her. I have framed it already and am giving it to my hubby for his birthday. She worked beside him all day, every day and is greatly missed.
Next up: LEMONS. Oddly, I have been craving lemons. Not to cook with or eat but to draw or paint. I bought an armload of them yesterday. I can always make lemonade if it doesn't work out.
I lost my dog a little over a year ago. Man, it has been tough.
If you aren't a dog person and you roll your eyes at the above comment, I am sorry you've never felt connected to a dog. You don't know what you're missing. If you are a dog person, you get me.
Abby was my girl. For 12 years. I held her while the vet injected her with medication to stop her heart. I won't forget it. Ever. I still feel her around me. She left a big hole in my life. Get another dog? That's like saying, "have another baby" when you've lost a child.
I have wanted to honour her with some sort of art piece. Cruising through photos of her, I have been trying to get a feeling for what would work best, what would make me want to work on it for hours on end. I want to capture her spirit somehow. I don't want it to be just another dog picture. I'm going to do some gesture drawings, contour drawings, and see what I can come up with. Hopefully, she will be sitting with her flowing coat covering my toes while I work.
I couldn't sleep so I was up in the night working on a new watercolour of blueberries. Rather, I was creating the background for blueberries; there is not yet any blueberries on the paper. I often find with my art that I am torn between realism and abstract work, pulled first one way and then the other, mid-painting. What is best, of course, is to let the work take me where it wants to go. Life imitates art, however, and admittedly I have never been good at letting go and trusting the ride.
I have spent a good portion of today trying to upload images to this Artsite of my previous work. My internet connection does not want to cooperate. I am almost to the point where I am yearning for dial up, it is that slow today. I am persistent, though, and I keep trying.
And when I've had enough of the struggle, I will go upstairs and return to my blueberries. And practice letting go.
How fitting it is that it is my youngest child's 20th birthday. Today, I bring forth something else: my own Artsite. I embrace it, too, with love, knowing that I will need to nurture it well. There will be times of frustration and doubt. But, that's part of the process, isn't it? There will also be pride and joy and care and attention.
On with the adventure!
