Where did this come from?

Surprise!  I know -- it has been many moons since I've sat down to actually do a blog entry (as opposed to thinking about doing a blog entry).  Last winter I broke my shoulder, actually gumming up the rotator cuff, and causing it to scream some of the most obscene obscenities.  The result has been the better part of a year with no production.  The first quarter of the year I was stumbling around with a blank mind -- absolutely nothing going on up there. The skull functioned purely as a place to stick my face and place a gob of hair on it.

Finally, at some point in the Spring, the urge to sketch and think about getting back to work happened. Maybe it was Maria's Peace Puzzle piece arriving and needing to have something drawn and carved, or maybe it was the longer days and more sunlight.  Maybe I was suffering from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Whatever it was I started sketching every evening while propped in front of the TV.  Mostly it was Zentangle type things, but then children started entering the scene.  I have no idea where they came from, but more and more of them kept appearing.

 And then, the strangest thing of all happened, they started interfacing with the medallion/mandala drawings and the next thing I knew there were children playing in the Giant's Garden.

One of the galleries where I show my work has a Salon group which meets once a month and anyone having any questions, or just wanting to socialize, can bring a work needing a critique.  So, one Sunday I took my sketchbook and asked the group what they thought of my kids.  Maybe they were just being kind to an older person with her arm in a sling, but they all encouraged me to go on and see what I could do with them.  And this is what came of that.

Many more sketches ensued and finally I got up enough gumption to actually place one of the kids on a Solarplate and make an intaglio print.  And so here we have the result of that action:

It is actually on BFK and considerably lighter and more black and white than this, but you get the idea; fairly boring and not all that much fun. Mostly a gabble of lines and confusion.  So, we add a little color.  Considering the cost of plates and making one for each color, more or less, I opted for hand color.  What I didn't consider when making that decision was that it would have to be done with a brush with three hairs and would take all day.  Other than that everything was perfect.  Here's the result of one day of coloring, more or less:

The Giant's Garden:  Tea Time

6" x 8"

It will be a very small edition - depending on how long I am willing to sit and color!  Many activities have been taking place in the Garden.  The Giant must be a very gentle and generous being, but it has told the kids that they can play as much as they want.  And, they will! And, they are!

Change of tune

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I change my tune every time I turn around.   And here we go again.  No sooner than the last entry had been posted I had changed my mind about the imagery to use on the heart.  I'm sticking with the girls dancing through the woods releasing birds with reckless abandon, but they will be more on the order of Procession of the Birds:

 And, somewhere along the line, probably on the reverse, will be some expanded version of Keepers of the Flame.

Both are small intaglio prints I did last year using Solarplate™and inking ala poupeé.  Way back at the beginning of time I made little daubers from scraps of an old chamois stuffed with a cotton ball and secured with twine.  They look like simple little dolls in long dresses, which is the translation of poupeé: doll.  They are used to dab the different colors of ink onto the plate before wiping very carefully.  These little dolls have served me well - and, I trust, will continue to do so.  They sleep in an old coolwhip container when not in use.

It will be interesting to see how these women translate into painting.  Well, we should be finding out soon!

A little distraction

Flags have had to go on hold for a couple of days.  A deadline of Apr. 15 descended upon me with gusto - no, not taxes this time, but another project.  The Peace Health Southwest Medical Foundation is conducting an auction to raise funds to add space and upgrade imaging equipment for their most fragile heart and vascular patients.  25  three foot fiberglas hearts will make their way to Vancouver and corresponding artists studios where they will be painted and towards the end of summer be put up for adoption by the highest bidders.  After that some of them, if not all, will be exhibited as public art around the city.  The sketches of what I plan to do with my giant heart are due tomorrow and never wanting to be ahead of a deadline I have valiantly upheld my tradition of being right down to the wire.  As I was singing along and getting ready to scan the images and printed forms and actually send them off A DAY EARLY, mind you, the scanner won't work.  I've tried everything: turned everything off and back on a couple of times (this is my cure-all and generally works, but not this time), downloaded a driver, tried to re-install the software, kicked, screamed, cried - well, not cried, but almost.  Nothing works, I just keep getting a notice that says, in a very cranky and irritating tone, "this is no longer supported --".  Can they do that?  Just order their machines to quit and not give a person any notice?  Probably yes, because they are the Computer Gods.  I have a call in to my favorite of all time Guru, but he is out of town until tomorrow afternoon.

There was no choice, well - truthfully, their was a choice - I could have bundled this all up and trooped down to Kinkos and had them scan everything, but I chose to photograph the sketches, write the little bio, and send that much off today with a note that the thing I really need to scan will follow tomorrow, one way or another.  I'm really, really, hoping that my Guru will tell me to click this and click that and the scanner will work again.  If I have to buy a new one I am going to be a wee bit upset, (translation: mighty pissed.)

Anyway, the sketches I submitted were:  my dancing women and children - kind of an old stand-by that I've done a million ways if I've done it once, but it is still fun to do:

The plan would be to have the girls dance all the way around - birds and butterflies in abundance and frogs and turtles, ladybugs and snails in the foliage.  Pure fun everywhere.

Or, I could do this - a kind of Remedios Varo type of image.  I've always been fascinated with her work and have many sketches of my own versions of which this is high on the list of favorites.  I could see this on one side of the heart with the tapestry going around to the other side where the rivers and oceans would be made.

 Unless someone makes the decision for me I will vacillate from now until the moment to actually start painting.  Which do you think is the more interesting?  Please help me decide!

Lisa and Her Inner Child

Well, before I get carried away with the current woodcarving project, there was one more thing that had to be done before February 1.  That was a portrait.  There were hundreds if not millions of ways I could have gone with this assignment, and any of them probably would have been easier than the one I chose.  The paints, brushes, easel and a spanking clean canvas were sitting right there next to my drawing table and they shouted louder than anyone else.  My guess is that they were feeling neglected and wanting attention.  It worked.  Before I knew what had hit me I was smearing paint around on a small 20" x 16" surface.  Some bubble wrap was handy so it was smeared and pressed onto the other smeared pigments. A small piece of netting - the kind produce sometimes comes in - found its way to the canvas and paint was brushed and smushed over it leaving a delicious texture.  I just painted, smushed, smeared, crushed, smashed, slapped and slumped almost everything I could find onto that surface.  Basically, I produced a monotype without the transfer from matrix to intended surface.  Again, those printmaking skills were saving my derriere.

Then it just had to dry for a day which I spent cutting word stencils from heavy paper.  I had asked Lisa for some words she would use to describe herself and some she thought her friends and family might use to label her, too.  She sent a list to choose from.  I started with curious, then caring and creative, honest, and lastly: kind.  The idea was to use different fonts and sizes for each, but I didn't have a huge surface, so fortunately there was a limit built in.

When the first layers were dry enough I stenciled the words in a more or less random manner.  The idea I had in the back of my mind was to create this richly textured surface with the words woven in and a simple line drawing of Lisa over the top of everything.  So far, the work was going according to plan.

And, then it came time to add that line drawing idea.  It looked like it didn't even belong in the same room, let alone on the same surface.  I had made the background too dominant.  Rats.  Two choices: glace and tone down the background or just fill in the line with a grisaille rendering.  I settled for the grisaille because, here again, a deadline was nipping at my backside.  (Grisaille is a monochrome under painting used mainly to establish darks and lights and shadows for modeling.  When this method is used the artist generally goes on to then put in all the flesh tones, eye color, etc.  But, I stopped with grisaille.) 

This exhibition was originally to be a portrait exchange.  Each of us would choose another artist, from our group, or not, and we would each produce a portrait of the other person.  About half of us did the exchange thing,  some did self portraits.  There are some wonderful portraits in this show!  Anyway, it was a delight to meet Lisa, look at her work, and I had much fun attempting her portrait.  In Lisa's work she uses a lot of animals and especially a rabbit, very much like this blue one, that she had labeled her "inner child".  Every portrait should include one's inner child, don't you think?

Lisa and Her Inner Child

The opening of the exhibition was Feb. 1 - this had to be done, dry and delivered the middle of the week prior.  Another deadline met!  The exhibition is at Northbank Gallery, 1005 Main St., Vancouver, WA and will be up through Feb. 23.  The year was off to a very good start.  Except.

Except that last Oct. First it seemed very reasonable to sign up for a print exchange requiring 31 prints on Feb. 1.  I must have been in some alternate universe for this to seem like a good idea, but it did and I did and now the prints were due and all I had was a drawing on a block of wood.  Oh dear.  The woodblock print from hell will be the next installment.