Art is Life/ Life is Art

I have been working on getting some things together for the "Breastplates and Other Artful Armor Against Cancer" show this past week.

My breastplate form is now completed, but needs some reinforcement, and I have begun my drawing plans for the final breastplate project.

I am working on a painting right now that I may try to use for the show if it turns out the way I want it to. I may use it to flesh out some ideas for the actual painting to submit for the show, but at this point, I am trying out some things to make this window look like healing light. At this point, I just have a partially developed underpainting, so it is still rather dark, and is looking a bit on the spooky, rather than ethereal side, but I hope to remedy that with additional work.

I have also made some time to participate in this weekend's Weekly Drawing Event (WDE) on the WetCanvas website.

Actually, the reference photo for the painting above was from last week's WDE- Norman Priory.

This week, I have tackled one of my usual favorite subjects, a dog named Mat. After I got going with this painting, my husband started falling in love with it, as it reminded him of the dog he grew up with, Puddles.

This was a fun little painting to do- about 12"x12", acrylics on watercolor paper.

One of the good things about having computer problems is that it gave me more time to draw and paint!

I got a bit behind in posting my Moleskine sketchbook entries, so here is the latest drawing I am working on- one of my daughter, having a dreamy moment when we were on our last vacation in New England.

The rest of the images are a hodgepodge- some done from photos, some done from life, some drawn, some painted. The dates are all out of order because my sketchbook is a bit disorganized, like I tend to be!

Actually, the dates get out of synch when I decide to work single page sketches in to my sketchbook, and I do not publish the journaling pages that have no images included with them, so they get a little out of order.



The collie sketches were part of a WDE event, and I limited my time on each sketch as an experiment. I ended up doing the watercolor afterwards, based on these small studies:

The last two-page spread in my Moleskine sketchbook shows a little charcoal drawing I did while we sat waiting for our table at a favorite local restaurant. Opposite it, in acrylics, is a portrait I did from this past weekend's WDE event on WetCanvas.



I am currently working on the first drawing above, in my Moleskine sketchbook, an acrylic semi-abstract piece, based on a WDE photo of a gorgeous light-filled priory, and the breastplate that will be touring with a show that begins November 2006.

More to come on all that!

Computer Woes

Not happy... not happy!

My computer is causing me fits- shutting down without warning in the middle of working, and I have lost files and work while this has been happening. I have to get it in for service, and luckily, it is still under the extended manufacturer's warranty, but it will mean (alas) no computering for about five days while I send it away for them to work on it.

I guess I should be happy that I still have it under warranty, but I will be incommunicado until I get it back. I am trying to decide whether I should mail it out Friday or Monday. I might wait until Monday, so that I can try to do the WDE this coming weekend.

I guess I should take care of this before it dies for good!!

I Love a Good, Rainy Day

Here is something that you might not know about me. I LOVE rainy days, and I seem to have passed on this genetic predisposition to my nine-year old daughter as well.

Why do I love them? Because rainy days give permission for us to take the time to go inside ourselves- to be contemplative- to make art.

If it were rainy day every day, I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about them, and they have spoiled many a plan, but when there is no plan, or one that is not firm, a rainy days tells me, "You can take some time for yourself." "You can wallow for a little while in your art-ness."

When the sun comes out, it is hard to want to stay inside. There is a lot to relish in being outdoors, and art can be made there too, but there's nothing quite like a good, rainy day to help you decide to pull out some art stuff and get at it.

I am putting art first this morning, even though there are a hundred more "productive" things I probably should be doing. If I start with those, the time to do art will dwindle away, and my mind will be filled with the busy-ness that comes with all the tasks at hand. So for two hours, I am not going to answer the phone, and I will indulge myself. In honor of this rainy day....

What I'm Working on Today

Sunday, I finished a digital manipulation, made up of four photos that were part of this past weekend's WDE on the Wetcanvas! site.

The four pictures were of a real lioness, a boy hugging a bronze lion statue, a blonde girl viewing a gorilla behind plexiglass, and a panoramic vista of the Smoky Mountains.

I put them all together with a Narnia-ish nod, and called it "The Lion, The Kids, and the Smokies!"

I think I will use this as inspiration for my rainy day art morning, and I want to finish my sketchbook page that featured my Rosetti interpretation.
More later, once I have something to share.

This the start of my drawn version of the above photo creation.

Beginning with a gesture study of the movement in the drawing and finding the positioning of the basic shapes. I have now started to develop the drawing, by adding somr of the features, mainly for positioning at this point.

I have spent about 15 minutes on this so far, and am working in graphite.




In this next step, I have another half hour or so into the drawing, adding color and definition with watercolor pencils. I am using the tiniest bit of moisture to smudge the color of the pencils, rather than trying to do a wash at this point.

Water beads up on the Moleskine paper, which won't work well for this part of the image. It would obsure the detail in the face and hands.
I will probably use a wash for the mountains in the background, though.

Here, I realize that some things are not quite right with my lioness: when I made her head smaller, I somehow elongated her neck. Well, I suppose it is OK, since this is fantasy, and just a study (which is why we do studies!!)

I have started adding in washes, and am still using the watercolor pencils on top. I have about 2 hours total into the drawing so far. It looks to be a little over halfway finished to my eyes, so I will keep plugging along, but need to get to some of my real world household tasks today, so will have to come back to this later on. Until then....



Here is the final sketchbook version. I tried to fix some of the proportional issues, and gave a lot more detail to the lioness, the boy's shirt, finished the girl's clothing, and scenery. Maybe this will make it to a final painting when I can get back to it.

A Peek Inside (My Moleskine, that is)



So..... this is supposed to be a blog about art, but so far I haven't made any art today, since I have spent so darn long trying to figure out how to set up my blog about art!

I am hoping to head over to the Wetcanvas! site and work on something new, inspired by this weekend's WDE- if not this evening, then tomorrow.
If interested, you can check out the WC! event by clicking on this link to the All Media Art Events forum and reading about how the Weekly Drawing Events work:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=133

Here are a few of my art journal entries from my Moleskine sketchbook, done over the past few days. They are all done in pen and watercolor, with watercolor pencil, and on the first one, a bit of added gouache.

Connor is my great-nephew, and is such a joyful little guy. We had all of the family here over the past weekend, and he had us smiling, even when we didn't feel so much like it.

The abstract journal piece above was something I did to help me express some of the feelings I was experiencing, just a week after my mom passed away. I am keeping that one a small size so that it won't be easily read, because the writing feels a little bit too personal to share, but I thought I'd still share it for its design, and just so you can see what I've been up to lately.

Here is a quick little watercolor of one of my dogs, Sofie, in her usual lazy posture. Sofie epitomizes a couple of the "seven deadly sins," mainly slothfulness and gluttony. She is a bit on the portly side, due to her counter-surfing ways, but she's pretty darn irresistable, too.

Finally, here is a work in progress, started yesterday, and still incomplete. It is a modern take on one of Dante Gabriel Rosetti's paintings, titled Beata Beatrix:

There are parts I
like about her and parts that I don't.
I wasn't really striving for a likeness, but I don't like what happened to her chin, and I'd like to warm her up a bit, and increase the darks. Still this is just a little watercolor and pen sketch in my sketchbook and has its limitations, I thought she looked like an angel, and that was why I was drawn to this painting to work from.

I was leaving the bottom left corner for some writing, but might wash over that part first so that it is not so stark.
More later this weekend!