pen and watercolor (sketched 5 years ago!)
This is where I’m headed tomorrow, for a week in upstate British Columbia where my friends Judith and Ed live. I’ll be staying in a log cabin on this lake with the ducks and moose and bears. . . and sketching, sketching, sketching! So, I’ll be back in a week. Hope you’re having a great summer.
Happy 4th of July!!
Aluminum foil, gel medium, acrylic, ink, and collage on paper
On the theme of “reworking history”, another way to get a weathered, antique look is to paint on aluminum foil that’s been adhered with gel medium to the paper surface and dried. I like the idea in this one of going back into Arabian nights in a red party dress!
WAtercolor, brown Sharpee pen in Arches Travel Book
Lake Utica, June 27, 7000 ft. elevation, 4pm. A long drive to our piece of Sierra heaven. Isabelle and I find a whole island to ourselves – for just us and the Pussy Paws (wildflowers) and the family of geese and humongous ants. We swim in warm enuf water.. . .a magic portal promises a secret treasure long hidden.
collage with dried wildflowers and a mosquitoe that tried to bite me
Who put the cooler on my Pussy Paws?
10pm Cozy in my tent – a chorus of frogs, a bright moon sliver shining in, guitar and song drift softly across the lake – air still warm – and wondering if the boys found their bug spray, caught any fish, fit together in their little tent. . .peacefully. It’s not my business tonight though. Will any bears find our little island tonight? Find our food sack hung on a low branch, because neither of us know a softball throw, just girl-throwing that doesn’t go high enough. Will the bear understand this and have mercy on our meager rations?
8:00am June 29 A sketch before breakfast of the the distant lake shore.
Wildflower identification: Sulphur flower, Pride of the Mountain, Aster Fleabane, Mountain Pennyroyal, Brewers Lupine, Sierra Onion, Golden Triteleia, California Harebell
and Mergansers. . .
Me, Isabelle, Ben at Lake Utica in the high mountains in California
We drove 5 hours to get to this little bit of heaven, crossed the great dry golden stretches of the the cental valley shimmering in 105 degree (F) heat, loaded our kayaks and canoe with camping stuff and headed out on the lake to find and claim an island of our own to camp on. Isabelle and I found one that suited us and my boys headed off for another one to do their own version of Robinson Crusoe.
Our version was all about sketching, and swimming, and identifying new wild flowers and watching the geese and Mergansers and napping and gentle paddling out to find the flowering lily pads. It was all pretty heady and I did some of the usual sort of sketching. But the granite rock formations and the twisted trees kept turning into faces and weird creatures, so I decided to give that a try.
Elegant Writer pen in Arches Travel Book
It was really easy to imagine that the indigenous peoples, who spent their lives outside (rather than primarily inside like most of us) so close to nature, would see their ancestors in the rocks and trees and cloud formations.
The ants were large and black and so gentle that they were not the least bit bothersome as they traipsed across the leg or sketch pages. And the electric blue dragonflies seemed to be in an almost constant state of bug-love, mating in heart shaped rings.
More sketches tomorrow, and Isabelle’s blog has captured the essense of our trip.
Sharpee pen
Maybe if I do enough of this quick sketching of people I can get a job in a courtroom? JK! I don’t know about that, but it sure helps the spirits when you’re on the go in the summertime with no time for paints and palettes. I was waiting for Andy in the car while he was waiting outside the fair office for an interview. Another perfect set-up – like the DMV – for figure sketching. Three 16 something boys, wearing the collared shirts they never ever wear (here in no. Calif at any rate) except for job interviewing because their fathers told them they had to. Not saying a word to each other. Texting of course, or waiting for the response. Moving enough to be a challenge to draw, but hey! it just takes more lines, that’s all. And me, unnoticed in a comfortable, shady spot in the car. Can’t beat that!
graphite
As we flew out the door for Andy’s “behind the wheel” driver’s test I grabbed my sketchbook and pencil. Good thing. By the time we got to the DMV, I was a bundle of nerves, having taken on every ounce of stress he had been feeling about this big day. We stopped on the way for french fries and coke so I could stuff my face and hopefully calm down. It didn’t work.
As Andy was waiting in line for the DMV test guy, I sat down in the shade and took out my sketchbook and tried to imagine what it would be like to sleep in that cute little trailor that was in front of us. And I started sketching. Within 2 minutes all the tension had drained out of me. And then I went inside to sketch the folks at the counter there. The theme was hunched shoulders. . .
Everyone’s a little nervous when they go to the DMV. Such power “they” hold over our lives! To drive or not to drive. It’s a big deal. So the shoulders go up and we need a good massage afterwards . .unless we take out a sketchbook!
Just as I was finishing the last of the three sketches Andy walked in the door, his face expressionless. If you didn’t know what a joker my son is, you’d think he’d failed his test. But I knew – he passed – he’s got his license – and now I can replace my nervousness about his test with a new terror. . .
“When we get home can I take your car over to Chris’ house?” Sigh. At least I know my sketchbook works.
acrylic, collage, gel pen, sanded glossy photo
I’ve been busy planning summer adventures – a paddle camping trip in the high sierras – a visit with my friends in upstate British Columbia, Canadian heaven! I find that wherever my awareness is at any particular time, it shows up unexpectedly in these contemplative sketches. So when I opened up this old cookbook from Provincial France to a page at random my eyes fell on the words “A spirit of adventure is called for in getting reoriented. . .” and I knew I’d found something wanted to use for this whacky collage. With a little cutting and pasting (words in bold type), here’s what came out :
A spirit of adventure is called for in getting reoriented. . .all parts of oneself, if cooked correctly, need not be tough and smelly. It is true that brains need not be soft, sickish reminders of our puzzling glands and cerebral confusion. Liver need not be considered solely as a revolting remedy for anemia. Housewives fixed almost any way at all, but especially as it is done in the Norman region around Caen, need not be thought of as simply the ghost from wild juices!
I can relate. I mean, being a housewife who wants to be considered the artist fueled on wild juices, and not a ghost! I know. The imagination does indeed seem to prefer the most circuitous routes – the ones that lead us through thickets of trivia and irrelevancies- a strange word here, a picture there, a color that we’ve never seen, let alone mixed before. We collect and wonder why. My answer to that question today is – to be the creator and feel the potency of that.
Sharpee pen, watercolor, leaves on soft press w/c paper
Bob and I spent the day at Point Reyes, the park and the town. A lazy, unambitious day. He wanted to play with his new “lens baby” on the trail, which turned out to be fine since I wasn’t even up for a hike. So I scrambled down to the creek, stinging myself on nettles and perching on a rock, watching a chipmunk eat a seed and perform a fastidious face cleaning, looking me in the eye the whole time. And once again I sketched a tunnel, this time using almost no green, which is the color of everything in the woods. Next time I’ll try sketching the chipmunk, if I’m brave.
Sumi ink, acrylic, image transfer, water soluble oil pastel
Pathos: from the Greek “pothos” – an indescribable longing for something beyond
It starts young and in the family way – and all the best novels and poetry and music and paintings are about it. And so, continuing the theme of rewrites on history, the word Pothos (see the ghost of it underneath it all?) painted on with a big soft Sumi type brush, was the launching of this piece- added to with some rediscovered family photos.
If you want to try some of these mixed media techniques with me, check out my summer workshop next month here at my studio/garden in Sebastopol, California.
Contemplative Painting Weekend July 26, 27 For more information check out my website.
coffee stained paper, walnut ink, stamps, dried rose petals and grasses, tissue overlay
To: Imago Amore, the image of the Beloved. A love letter steeped in personal history and smelling of coffee and rose petals! Conjuring up images of the many forms of my Beloved from the times of my earliest prayers, mad crushes, obsessions, sweet yearnings and heartbreaks to the present fullness of time. All still alive in the deep undergrowth of my mind as I arranged and glued and wrote these words with pen dipped in ink.
When turbulent emotions pinch the raw nerves of the creative psyche, there is a choice: Act on this, or act out on this. . . With art as our alchemy, the pain of the lost lover becomes the pang of the love song. . . “Nothing is wrong, nothing is wasted, everything is possible in art” must become the artist’s credo.
from Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity by Julia Cameron
I am a painter, meditator and art workshop leader. I share my life in art through these postings from my California wine country home.
