I suppose the quest to paint an unselfconscious bloom starts with paying attention to detail, sketching all manner of blossom and leaf. I’m letting myself do some of that this spring, along with occasional bouts of practice painting blooms from a combo of memory and imagination with strokes and puddles of saturated paint and water. . .hopefully to lose the selfconsciousness!
These three are some of the “detail” studies showing up in another accordian folded book 5.5″X7.5″, enough space to get some details but not too much or any background. Good for concentrated study of plants, which in the aggregate are overwhelmingly complex.
And then there’s the small studies, here a bunch of alstroemerias, a tulip, and invention, all small studies to practice wet blending, like that of watercolor artists on Instagram like Janette Phillips, whose reels and video demos I’ve been watching.
I tell myself, no finished painting needs come of all this experimenting, practicing, and I mean it. Discovery happens in small pieces of wow! that you can’t get on purpose, but can stumble onto with enough paint and water and time.
Long ago I discovered that movement to music unleashes the wild and elemental nature which is so crucial to our artistic freedom. It was at a recent session of Sweat Your Prayers, Gabriele Roth’s Five Rhythms dance practice that I got charged up about painting the rhythms in my Muse Group again.
Using contemplative and movement prompts from Roth’s book Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice, The Five Rhythms of the Soul we painted along with a piece of music from each of the five rhythms; flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness, about 4-5 minutes each.
There was no time to do more than dive into the physical movement of painting with no planning and minimal mental effort, instinctually, in other words, with all senses activated! The music was compelling enough to get us going! We also had a seven year old granddaughter joining us for this and she modeled the behavior beautifully!
The following were my paintings, though I wish I’d had the presence of mind to photograph all of the works!
Flowing: fluid acrylic and acrylic ink on w/c paper 10 X 11″
Flowing
dance on a turntable hula lala hoopa lala watch the world spin, break up you’re in outer now not astronaut space but with a ticket to ride into the free zone ring around the world and all fall free
Staccato
Staccato
this EKG knows where it’s headed it doesn’t care what you think
sta ca ca caaaa toe knees and elbows strutting bony shoulders sharp and jutting
bump along clunk sta caca caaaa toe
Chaos
Chaos
been jagged lately all stops and starts going off half cocked and fully loaded
Spring does this busts out one day and stalls the next pops out the blooms then drowns them in a gullywasher
I prefer my Spring in slow motion not this heater skelter kill me with your beauty then wake me up the next day with a carpet of spent pink blossoms where the grass should be
makes me fragile like the tulip petal about to drop
Lyrical
Lyrical
obstacles gone now downstream with the current sparkling streams merging
go sprightly seaborn go lightly airborn the earth is but a jumping off point
Stillness
Stillness
eddies converge
ride the waves ashore linger in the shallows find the toe holds and listen lap lap left lap lap right you in the center where all comes to rest
And so the 5 rhythms Wave comes to rest with Stillness.
Want to try your brush at this? Find some music that speaks to these 5 rhythms and do a painting with each. My music app Spotify even has a playlist for each rhythm! Imagine you’re a 7-year-old painter. It always helps.
A merry band of nature journalers showed up at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma onThursday to see what was happening with the buds and blooms of spring. Some of us had our mini accordian sketchbooks and all were ready to enjoy one of those all-sunny spring days in the park. We refreshed our memories about John Muir Laws‘ three principles/steps for entering into a dialogue with nature: 1) I notice… 2) I wonder. . . and 3) This reminds me of. . . which got us ready for what was to come.
At Point Defiance Park in Tacoma you are first greeted by the ducks in the pond. Turtles too, but they were so still that I mistook them for copper sculptures. Crows too, or maybe they were Ravens, definitely the big noisy, formidible sort that could shame you into handing over your last bit of sandwich. And all of this was punctuated by a noisy blend of lawn mower, honking Canada geese, and a variety of exotic animals from the zoo “next door” that whooped like they were enjoying a really good joke. (I imagined baboons)
I had a solemn purpose which was, by hell or high water, to fill one side of my mini accordian folded book with bud and bloom sketches. (see my post about preparing for this)
Off we went beyond the pond, to find our buds and blooms.
Golden ink and watercolor on 3″X8″ double page in accordian book
My plan was a simple line sketch with 2 or 3 watercolors and to keep track of the time/temp/other meta indicators. 30 min max per sketch.
So as not to lose time looking for only the most spectacular new blooms, I stayed in the same place for this second one, an abundant groundcover in the grass beneath my feet, which involved leaning way down to examine the micro-view. My leaf snap app was not specific about this rugged form of daisy underfoot. Certainly it’s a distant relative to the showy summer daisies in my garden bed. Fleabane was one possibility and the word calls up images of fairy incantations, which I like! Not very scientific, I know.
Next I walked through the rose garden, discovering that of course it’s too early for roses here in the PNW. But the next garden included tulips, and we were in luck.
Except I think watercolor is my last choice for trying to get a natural red. So my choice of the flippin Miss Flippins tulip soon turned into a humbling lesson. I mean, how many different pigments do you need to make a convincing deep red in bright sunshine? Well I never found out, and then my 30 minutes were up.
Right around this time I started to experience the familiar sun-blindness where the light dims and shapes become be less distinct. But there was still time for the white bleeding hearts!
Then we had our picnic lunch back at the pond, where the turtle sculptures were in slow motion, the raven showed up for a handout, and we shared sketches from the day.
I hadn’t quite succeeded to fill my sketchbook pages on location, so I snapped a picture of the show stopper crabapple tree and finished this at home.
But the book is only half done! Time to turn it over and continue on the other side. My white irises just bloomed and it will be a steady flow of blooms in the yard until the sunflowers and lavenders do their final show and. . .
ink, watercolor and white gouache in beige toned Nova sketchbook
Who goes to a nursery to sketch in the spring, and instead of sketching blooms heads back to where piles of soil, bags of compost and trucks are? But there was just something about all that beautiful soil! And Bob and I had been talking about the need to buy soil for our vegetable garden at The Barn Nursery and have it delivered. And then there was the steady chorus of birds to entertain.
Olympia Art League and South Sound Urban sketchers meet up
Happy faces to be (just barely) warm enough that day to enjoy sketching outside, what we’ve been waiting months for!!
What little girl doesn’t want to be a mermaid at some point? Well, clearly not all little girls, but really, who wouldn’t want to explore the ocean with built in flippers and breathe without a tank? Last week I met some grown up mermaids, and saw a fire dancer and aerial acrobats and even unicorns at the International Mermaid Museum Festival in Aberdeen, WA.
Five of us were there to do some sketching, but were pulled into the festival drama as soon as we stepped in.With
We were greeted at the door of the Mermaid Museum by Olive the Alchemist Mermaid on her throne. Instantly she started to beguile us, mermaid style, with her oceanic, alchemical charms, inviting us to sit with her on the shell strewn shore.
With so much to see we soon moved on, determined to catch the performances on the garden grounds.
Across the garden we found the unicorns, dryer under their tent than we were. . .It was one of those cold rainy days where the precipitation never lets up.
And watched the children enjoying a steady stream of bubble magic to rival any seen in ocean waters!
And as we found shelter in the open barn, another spritely performer entertained us with her fire dance. Remarkably the steady stream of rain did not put out the fire. The cold which had us shivering didn’t seem to faze her at all. Neither did her long hair catch fire though it swung in a constant arc as she moved. And she ate the flames repeatedly, dousing them in her mouth without the slightest cringe. . .while carrying on a monologue with the wincing audience.
Next from inside the barn where they’d set up their trapeze triangle, we watched the Aerial Acrobats at the silks from almost close enough to catch them if they fell. At times my hands twitched in preparation but they were spectacularly relaxed and synchronized.
Our last stop outside was to see Una the Mermaid who performed several times a day in a tank not much bigger that a gypsy caravan and very like that in appearance, with an awning attached so that we could stand with a bit of shelter from the rain. She was magnificent, blowing her starfish kisses and her seaweed appendages and flipper, undulating with each dive and turn. No oxygen tank here. No gills. Just athletic breath-holding ability and performance magic.
ink and watercolor in beige toned Nova sketchbook
But, yes, we were there on a sketch-venture! So back in the museum, where it was warm and there was lots of mermaid movie memorabilia, we took some time to sketch and to learn a bit more. The International Mermaid Museum describes itself as dedicated to teaching ocean ecology from seashore to sea floor, immersed in mermaid mythology unifying oceanic cultures. The festival provided ample opportunity for us to immerse ourselves.
Back in another tent, where the mermaid and ocean arts and crafts were located, I met Caspian, king of the sea! By that time we were all wondering if there were mer-men and I was glad to find him. With ocean colored pants but no tail, it was still easy to imagine him on a throne beneath the ocean. A very jolly king indeed!
Next to Caspian and nestled in between the booths selling shell earrings and mermaid hair (sparkely streams to braid into your own) were these lovely beached mermaids, willing to bare skin on this damp cold day to celebrate the ocean mystique and show off their spectacular custom made skins!
So that was our day. We walked next door where the restaurant served us seafood with a view of the garden, wet but lovely. We’d save the winery for another day.
Sometimes a memory from the past comes into focus irresistibly. It was April 2021 and I was under tremendous pressure to find a house for us in Washington after we’d just sold our Sebastopol home of 21 years. My friend and helper, Janet and I took an afternoon off from house hunting to explore Point Defiance park in Tacoma. I’d not found a single house that would fit Bob and I, but I was being steadily wooed by Pacific Northwest land and sea and especially the explosion of buds.
I hoped to come back some day, unencumbered by the house hunting trauma, to sketch the shapes and colors and spring blooms so abundant in this park. So that was the memory, and now I’m inviting my sketch cohorts here to join me for a day of nature journaling in a small book I’ll call a Bud Book, on April 18 in Point Defiance. If you’re able, meet us near the park entrance at the Duck Pond/restroom area at 10am and bring a lunch if you want to be leisurely.. .weather permitting of course. The forecast is bonny.
The Bud Book is a memory too. And if you’d like to sketch along with us, here’s the idea and some simple directions to get prepared.
accordian book with two covers, each of which is attached to only one end of the accordian, 3″X4″
an accordian bud/bloom book slipped into an homemade sleeve until being bound
Nature journalers sometimes focus on the intracasies of plant life. Having a tiny book appeals to me because it helps me focus in a smaller area. If I don’t know the name of a plant, I look it up on the Leaf Snap app and can write it on the sketch immediately, even making the lettering part of the design.
This was my Shroom Bud Book. I just flipped it over when I changed the focus. A whole book made from less than half of a full sheet of watercolor paper!
These on the other side! A different season of course, but the book waited.
Here’s the shroom side again, just to give you a better idea of how it works and the end paper gets glued to the cardstock (cardboard, mat board, whatever) cover.
The diagram shows one full sheet of watercolor paper and how to cut and fold and glue together your book. You could put the end covers on right away to have a stiff surface to support your sketching, or just use clips to attach each page or spread of two pages onto a small support board, or make a sleeve to slip the end pieces into.
Have fun filling it with all those lovely buds and blooms you’ve been taking pictures of. And add little bits of poetry every blank page or so! Allow bud rhapsody to emerge!
fountain pen and watercolor in beige toned Nova sketchbook
Urban sketchers tend to be very adaptable folks. When I arrived in the wind and cold rain last Saturday the Tacoma UsKers were all lined up warm and cozy at the windows in the student union building where there was a decent view of the buildings and landscaping.
Coeds were going about their business of visiting, eating and studying their smart phones. The other kind of study was probably going on in the library? A pod of girls were nesting in a group of sofas by the window where they’d piled up delicious plates of hot food and coffee, warm clothes and other items of domestic coziness to facilitate punctuated chatter about people who were not present. We couldn’t help trying to remember what we sounded like back then a hundred years ago or so in college.
Googleyes has many questions They fizzle, fume and pop Each question just leads to another And the dots never get connected His problem is you see He wants to know the point of, well Everything!
So better watch out. Don’t get too close Looks like his potato head is about to. . . .
(loud combustion sound here and a bit of a stink!!!)
You may be aware, because I write about it a lot, that I have an issue with my eyes. Consequently whenever a face emerges in a painting, I want to put glasses on it. So I can totally relate to this potato head fellow who can’t see well enough to get the answer to his questions and doesn’t realize it’s the fault of his questions being far too general, rather than his eyes not seeing well enough. I can after all see the dots here, even without my glasses, as I’m sure you can!
This Thursday was another world tour from the comfort of my studio, led by the delightful hosting pair of urban sketch teachers, Eleanor Doughty and Jenny Adam, with a special appearance and demo by my old friend Oliver Hoeller. If you had to miss this one, you can always watch the recording and make sure you’re in the Zoom room with over 100 urban sketchers on the first Thursday of the month. Check it out here. The theme this month was statuary and we “traveled” to Europe, the Pacific ocean, Asia and Africa, changing location every 20 minutes.
. . .starting with a 10 minute warm up on Easter Island.
Next Oliver did a demo sketch of a statue on top of a building in Austria. I’ve taken several workshops with Oliver and always learned something not only useful but also just plain fun.
This is my drawing along while watching his demo, copying his one-warm-and-one-cool color combo. I liked the way he used a white Posca paint pen to lighten up areas and lose edges at the end. You can see his demo sketch on Instagram
All that was in less than 90 minutes, and with lots of great dialogue about all those things urban sketchers geek out about when they get together. . .art materials, travels, workshops, techniques, etc.
Both Oliver and Eleanor will be teaching workshops at the Sketcherfest in Edmonds, WA in mid July, and they will be showing their sketchbooks and be available to talk with participants at the Sunday all-day event. It’s not too late to make plans to come!
Muse Group demo: acrylics and collage on gessoed w/c paper, 10 X 11″
The guardians of the planet arrive from all directions with unique stories we’ve been waiting to hear!
Listen without fear join forces try swimming in whale waters gliding on eagle updrafts riding on elevators that touch sky
I just started another six-class session of The Playful Muse workshop. For most of the students it is just a continuation of the every other weekly Muse group experience. But I like to keep going back to practicing all the various ways we put paint and other marks on the paper, working with wetness and dryness and a host of different tools. This piece demonstrated some simple ways to create texture.
So I made a list of as many ways to apply paint as I could think of and named it Creating a visual dictionary of spontaneous mark making with paint/ink and water. I stopped when I got to 12, but then realized I’d forgotten one of my favorite tools. . .fingers and hands! I did two demo pieces, saying that I was not going to try to finish them, but just use them as samplers. But then this one started to talk to me, so I embraced serendipity and finished it!
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