I harvested just one lavender plant this morning and there’s enough fragrance for dozens of sachets! And the plums!! Last year we got not more than 12 plums from the tree I planted three years ago. This year I pick a big basketful of plums each day. The Matilija Poppies (Fried Egg Plants) just lost their petals, but this sketch, which served as a lesson in painting whites with watercolor, remains.
Back to a memory of the Harmony Festival. We had sought shade and a place to sit down and rest in the Peace Dome (or some such name, an enormous white dome tent where Gabriel Cousins was speaking). This young father with the blond dreadlocks holding his baby, meditated in a crouched position just inside, with the sun beating on his back. After Bob and I had found a seat, and, feeling somewhat guilty (yet not being able to resist), I pointed my camera at them and captured the image. Just off to the left was a Native Healer who was in deep meditation with the father and babe while holding the baby’s hand in his. The scene inspired such reverence in me. The young father could have been Joseph or the Angel Gabriel and the baby, Jesus. Or maybe the Healer was the Angel. In any case they seemed incapsulated in Love. This morning I sketched them, just to hang out with that feeling again. Drawing can do that-it opens the heart to whomever we’re focusing on drawing. I imagined a whole story around this scene – my story, not theirs, one that I get to keep along with the drawing!
This model was so young and willowy, like a sapling. Something about this 5 minute sketch and its unfinished-ness, looks like she’s either clothed in white dance tights or alternately, exceedingly naked.
Charcoal and pastel on sketch paper
I went to Thursday night figure studio with some acrylic abstracts I’d painted onto the back of old watercolor paintings. Since it was our last meeting before summer vacation we did a lot of eating, drinking and talking and not as much drawing. But the model was superb and I got these two twenty minutes poses at least.
This one is abstract enough that I’ll give a hint in case you don’t see it right away. She’s mostly leg, and bending over at the hips.
This one is easier to read. It’s not “finished”, but I haven’t the time right now to work on it more.
Feeling fractured, torn in a million small pieces I placed a call to the inner artist to help me understand or at least express the impossibility of being all the different people I’m trying to be. And here was the answer.
Sumi ink, irridescent acrylic, Sharpee pen on Llama Li sketchbook paper
a fossilized creature oozing from antediluvian swamps,
a nobbly kneed, pointy nippled, jaggedy tailed spirit
answered my call in this fractured day
“There are no neat compartments with smooth edges and locks on the doors,” it said. “But there is endless fascination. . . “
So much going on lately, from graduation events and birthday parties to a family member gravely ill in the hospital. Joy and pain colliding in each successive moment. Time to sit down and do some art!
Watercolor, paper collage on 140 lb. watercolor paper
This piece came on a day when I connected up uncomfortably with one of my fatal flaws. I won’t go into details. I assume we all have them, although on the days when you connect with your own, it does seem like you’re the only one in the world with. . . The madness passed and doing this “illustration” piece helped.
Watercolor, Sumi ink, Sharpee pen on Llama Li sketchbook paper
Looks good on the outside, but with such a dark and vacant hole in it. . . why doesn’t it just cave in?
The missing piece in the center. . . do I look for one that fits, mold it out of clay, paint it in, blow what substance in to fill the gap, and through what opening?
PS. Different subject. Have you seen Women in Art, a clip on youtube? Check it out. Amazing.
Bob and I went to the Harmony Festival yesterday and partook of the 1001 New Age ways to become healthy and enlightened. By the end of three hours I was exhausted with the effort, but it was thoroughly fascinating! Not many places to sit down without being in a meditation spot or some place where sketching didn’t seem appropriate. But finally, while sitting on a hay bale at the Goddess Stage, listening to the Feisty Females perform, I managed this one sketch. There was truly no end to the variety in manner of attire and hair style- a sketcher’s paradise!
Watercolor, Sharpee pen in Arches Travel Book (watercolor)
My brother-in-law and friend, Chris Thorsen, asked me to illustrate some of his Haiku. I picked this one about a goldfinch first because I spend a lot of time watching them in my garden. They particularly like to bathe in our fountain. Chris has books worth of these Haiku and will hopefully get around to publishing them or at least starting a blog.
(All the images and poetry on this blog are my own unless I credit them directly to another artist.)
Sumi ink, watercolor, Sharpee pen on Llama Li paper
Sumi ink, watercolor, Sharpee pen on Llama Li sketchbook paper
I closed my eyes and saw circles of different sizes, and then this question popped into my head. There are so many things to notice in each moment. Which ones do we tune into? And can we tune ourselves to a higher vibration so that we can notice the ones which will lead us down some path not trodden before?
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