fineliner pen and watercolor in field watercolor journal
I’ll go for the tugboat to sketch any day, and this was a beaut! I hadn’t heard of the place Pastol Bay, so I looked it up. It’s up in Alaska, right across from the Russian mainland. No wonder it looked weathered and exotic to my eyes. I’m finding that whenever I’m at one of our Olympia marinas, my father, Lester (long gone since 1989) is with me, perking up, sniffing the sea air and looking for a fisherman to ask about the prospects.
So I asked permission to set up my stool outside the fuel station office next to the pumps, a good vantage point across from this tug and within earshot of any sailor/boater talk. Briefly met a young man who was employed doing an ecological survey mapping the bottom of the south sound or something like that.
No fishermen. My Dad might have moved on, but I was content to sit there sketching the boat, the background forests and to exaggerate the size of the snowy Olympic range to more closely reveal the impact the mountain make on the human observer.
The South Sound Urban Sketchers, together with the OAL Paint-Out group, will be meeting now every Thursday morning at a different location here in Olympia or neighboring towns through September 26, and I plan to be at most of them. If you’re interested in joining us, please email me and I’ll send you the schedule, and welcome!!
Oh, and since I mentioned him, here’s Lester, where he always was happiest, on a boat with a fish in his hands.
acrylic inks, tissue paper (etc) printing and collage, pencil on w/c paper, 10 X 11″
Coming unspooled The threads that hold it All Together
Life Liberty The pursuit of happiness
Grab a bag Fill it with everything You hold dear
This is your chance to escape But watch out For flying pieces
Last week the Muse Group used semi-transparent (translucent) papers to add texture and interest to our paintings.
Tissue paper and thin oriental papers with fiber texture become translucent when glued on with matte medium, adding texture while allowing the underpainting to show through.
As you see in the painting above, we also used tissue paper, crinkled up and randomly inked to print abstract patterns on the paper, and even used the dried inked tissue paper for collage!
And while all that was drying or waiting for the next step, I was adding these torn translucent papers to other underpaintings waiting for next steps. . .I find it’s always best to encounter unfinished paintings when you reenter the studio. They are more apt to reach out and engage you than a blank piece of white paper!
Finally we have a string of warm, sunny days in the forecast and it’s time to start planting vegetables! Mauricio and friend were here on Tuesday to the garden ready for planting. I asked them to leave the spring carpet of grasses and wildflowers and turn the soil in the boxes, adding compost.
the planter box was full of mushrooms and mycorrhizal fungi
pancake sized mushrooms
Walking around the yard I was struck by Mother Nature’s spring palette, which had changed from the delicate pinks to bold complements. . .
the reds and greens
the yellows and violets
This morning I spent a while nosing up into the rhododendrons with a large assortment of flying insects, most notably very large bumblebees. And yes I’m dying to paint them, but what a treat to follow their acrobatics for a few minutes.
But my art offering for today (painted from Lisa Genuit’s photo) was the bird most spotted last Monday with the Gals Go Birding group at Hawk’s Prairie Recharge Ponds, the Yellow Rumped Warbler. Although this little bird has some lovely yellow epaulets and cap, the rump part is seen only when they fly and seldom then, because they are absolutely the flittiest birds. The air was filled with their song but it took quite a while til I was able to spot a stationary one.
This beautiful eco-park is designed to filter and recharge our water!
Also home to the Fawn Lily in their ghost-like garb with delicately painted patterns on the leaves. They were the consolation when at first I couldn’t seem to get a bird sighting. Another bloom to paint. I’m way behind now!
Well there’s loads of reasons why I love Olympia. But the whacky, earthy, green spirit of the people in this small town/city when it hits the streets is a large part of it. And last weekend’s Arts Walk showcased this spirit big time. After a four year hiatus during the pandemic the Procession of the Species returned.
I participated in the ways I could, showing a painting in an art show, making a paper mache luminary, and even reading an eco poem of mine in another Arts Walk event titled “Habitat”,led by our poet laureate Kathleen Byrd. I waved my luminary from the sidelines Friday night while watching the Luminary Procession and bundled up for the Procession of the Species the next afternoon.
pens, watercolor in 9X12″ Canson Mixed Media spiral sketchbook
Years ago I might have tried to capture these events in live sketches, but I satisfy my reportage urges now by doing composite sketches after the fact.
Small wonder that the salmon loomed larger than most of the other species in the parade. We are living after all in the home of the Salmon People, on the banks of the Sound and rivers of the Salish tribal peoples. The parade was host to orcas and kelp forest dancers and numerous other sea themed creatures and environs represented.
Friday night the skies were clear and crowds were out for the Luminary procession. Here’s a peak to give you an idea.
The next afternoon I wandered around the area where the Procession was setting up. A good part of the downtown streets were closed to traffic. I knew that it required an army of people to move the creatures and all their gear from the Armory workshop to the streets, and the weather was cold and skies threatening. But here in Olympia nothing seems to get cancelled or even much bothered by the frequent wet weather. So the ladies in their sunflower dresses and hats had big enthusiastic smiles and no goosebumps in their summer attire, while I stood on the sidelines in layers of warmth and rain protection.
click to open large imagelined up ready to begin!
I’m sure there were people who stayed home, but it seemed like the whole town was there, so the parade route snaked back and forth through town and down to the water.
Everywhere here flows down to the water, which is where the parade was headed. By the time the last of the parade made its way across the starting line, the rain was getting cranked up and I was on my way home for dinner. . . and thinking, with gratitude, about those hardy souls who had such joy in their faces as I imagined the work of herding all those soggy artwork species back to the armory before their dinner.
Thursday was one of those with non stop spring drizzle days. So only Jenn and I showed up at the Capitol for sketching.
The legislature is not in session now, so the Capitol building was hosting tours for the public. The yellow school buses were lined up outside. We wandered the halls and found an exhibit of the model by Haiying Wu for his statue of Billy Frank Jr., which will be installed at the National Statuary Hall in the other Washington (D.C.) next year. Billy was a Nisqually Tribal member who fought tirelessly to ensure that the U.S. government would honor the promises made in the treaties with Washington tribes.
As I sat down in a poorly lit spot where there was a bench, I noticed a bronze statue of George Washington, eclipsed by one of the marble columns, and I happily pondered how many of our white men historical heroes are now being slowly upstaged by indigenous ones.
fountain pens (gold and black ink) and w/c in beige toned Nova sketchbook
While Jenn did a spectacular rendering of the Capitol dome from inside, getting a real workout for the neck with constant looking up, I sought the fresh air outside sketching the dogwoods and lightposts under a bus shelter overhang.
And meanwhile elsewhere outside, such scenes tempt me to come back when the rain has stopped, or to bring an umbrella set up!
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.
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