celebrating joy-full things
Earlier today I scanned an iris I’d sketched a couple of years ago. I didn’t realized the paper wasn’t perfectly flat until the first scan showed slight variations of light and shadow. The effect was unexpected and interesting. I re-scanned the sketch, using books to flatten the paper.
I titled the sketch “Abriendo,” which is Spanish for Opening, which seems fitting for spring. Soon, the sun will warm the earth and bright green shoots and buds will begin to emerge…
Imagine what it’s like to stir the liquid center of the sun and you’re pretty close to what it’s like to dip a steel rod into a crucible filled with glass bubbling at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (over 1,000 degrees Celsius). Molten glass is surprisingly heavy. Here’s a video of gathering molten glass.
Our first project was to make a paperweight. Molten glass has the consistency of honey. Making an even sphere was more difficult than I’d anticipated. I chose to use swirls of oranges.
Now that our class of three showed we could roll and shape glass into a solid form, we were allowed to try glass-blowing. If you’ve ever made balloon animals, you know how difficult it is to blow up long, thin balloons. Now imagine those balloons are at the end of a steel rod and they’re hot enough to set your clothes on fire if they touch your clothes. I made this deep pink vase. (There is real gold in pink glass.)
Several steps later, you use wet newspaper in one hand to shape the fiery glass’s sides smooth while turning the steel rod with your other hand. You then use a wet dowel to shape the inside. When you insert the dowel into the piece to smooth the insides, you can watch the flames and sparks fly.
I found the molten glass mesmerizing and nearly forgot about the heat. I’m glad I took the class!
After my return from Nova Scotia, my thirst for mastering the fundamentals of watercolor grew. One of the more difficult exercises we did was paint skies and clouds. Being too impatient to wait for the skies and clouds books I ordered from Half.com and Amazon, I picked up a book from our local Barnes and Noble: Complete Book of Watercolors in a Weekend, by Frank Halliday.
I set up a folding table on the patio and started in on the first exercises of the book. They’re simple, elementary skies and clouds, but they’re a beginning at working with landscape painting.
Wind Clouds
Storm Developing
By the time I got to the bottom-left-hand corner of the stormy clouds, I was winding down and overworked part of the clouds. ”If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” And so I shall.
Happy Painting!
I’m in love with the Northern Atlantic Coast. When I learned of a watercolor workshop package with artist, Evelyn Dunphy, at a remote historical lodge, including accommodations within private cabins on two lakes in the southwestern wilderness of Nova Scotia, I signed up for the adventure.
The drive from Halifax to the lodge wound through lush green, rural landscapes from Nova Scotia’s east coast to its western coast. Famished and sleepy from leaving home at 3:00 am to catch my flights, I was thrilled to find a Tim Hortons along the way.
The cabins, while certainly rustic, were surprisingly appointed with firm mattresses and lovely Lands End or LL Bean style bedding with plenty of good and plump pillows. There was an abundant supply of crackling dry kindling and quartered logs on each porch. Each cabin had its own dock, just feet from its front door.
The lodge offered the American-plan dining experience as part of the watercolor workshop package. We enjoyed our meals and each other’s company in the bright, airy room: breakfast, lunch and dinner. The dining hall was painted a beautiful, celery-colored paint, with sky-lights, hanging quilts and a canoe or two as part of the decor.
The lodge’s entry contained Stickley-style rocking chairs, a Victorian-style sitting room and an eclectic library off to the back with a screen door opening out to a flower-bed adorned with brilliantly red wildflowers.
The workshop was held on the screened-in veranda off of the dining room. From where I sat, my view was across the lawn with the first lake in the near distance. The beautiful breeze blew, sometimes softly, sometimes stronger, while we painted.
Evelyn Dunphy is one of those rare, wonderful instructors. She’s also a fantastic artist who’s won more awards than I can recall. She was patient, thoroughly answering our questions and giving personal attention. She provided us with a most comprehensive folder and live demonstrations chock full of tips and practical information.
The last day, I had to leave by 7:00 am for the drive back to Halifax to begin my return journey home. I doused the last burning embers in my fireplace and set off down the dirt road. As I left, the night-time mist was still hugging the lake as the dawn’s early light began filling it with sunshine, one shimmering ray at a time.
What better time to revisit the glittering aspen of Rocky Mountain National Park than a gray January afternoon? As I sit here writing and sipping dark roast coffee while slushy snowflakes fall, I wrap myself in a warm Rocky Mountain reverie.
Combine one artist-in-residence, his artist wife, several oil painting students and one watercolor student (me) on an en plein air adventure and you have a week of glorious autumn afternoons in Rocky Mountain National Park. Toss in a couple of bears and elk to top it all off!
The aspen are unpredictable. They can turn golden any time between late September and mid-October. The brilliant colors of the aspen of the West delight like the Northeast’s intense red maple trees. There’s nothing like a few days of Colorado’s bright blue skies, short-sleeve weather, and a group of artists to seal the deal on a perfect Rocky Mountain memory.
Happy Daydreaming!
What alchemy: from darkness, courage speaks through beauty and color!
Years ago, I discovered beautifully vivid folk-art wall hangings, arpilleras, at Le Feria, a Peruvian restaurant in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh: three-dimensional, intricately hand-crafted artwork displaying scenes of life like no quilts or hangings I’d seen before.
Fascinated by them, I inquired and learned the story of their origination was even more fascinating than the picture stories of village life they display.
Under Pinochet‘s dictatorship, women began sewing arpilleras (burlaps) with three-dimensional appliqued pictures in which they could hide notes those on the outside could receive safely past the guards. How ingenious to deliver messages within such beautiful artwork! How inspiring to have the perseverance and courage to stay strong and pull such beauty forth from one’s weary soul! Lines from Invictus come to mind…
The arpilleras are still hand-sewn, no longer by Pinochet’s prisoners, but by those who live in conditions of poverty most of us could not fathom. What a testament to the human condition that from suffering and lack, beauty and sunlight is born. (For more information: see The Folk Art Gallery, Lucuma, and Food For Thought Book Collective.)
Our small arpillera (pictured above) is a shining light in our home. It sings brightly from the wall that no matter how dark some hours might feel, we each have a well of strength, fortitude, courage and Joy from which we can draw and Live!
This evening I was talking with friends from the wind-blown mountains where we met, at the edge of the high plains snug up against a mountain range where 50 mph winds are status quo. Where from the same spot you can watch the sun set over the mountains in the west and the moon come up over the plains from the east. No buildings or houses — or anything — to obstruct the view.
How I loved the feeling of freedom the invigorating wind evoked as it rushed through the grasses, projecting tumbleweeds like cannonballs. The land is semi-arid and for lack of water few folks live there. It’s so bare. So elemental. There’s a purity in wilderness, in wild landscapes. The wilder, the free-er.
One lazy day, moseying about in a bookstore, I happened upon a copy of Painting Greeting Cards in Watercolor. Inside, I discovered miniature painting sketch exercises, which I thought were perfect to warm me up for painting something larger. The exercises are terrific for days when we need immediate, simple, creative gratification.
One of the miniature sketch exercises reminded me of that fantastic landscape where the high plains and the water-less mountains meet. Talking with my friends tonight reminded me I’d painted it so I dug it out of the corner of a bureau drawer to share here (posted at actual size of the painting sketch). It’s a crudite. A little appetizer whetting my desire to paint that windswept land.
“It is a world of startling possibilities.” ~ Charles Fletcher Dole
Ten years ago, I thought I could only draw stick people. Portraits? No way.
I don’t recall how it happened, but I came across a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It changed my creative life. To my surprise, what I drew resembled what I was trying to draw.
Excited, I decided to try a portrait. I found a thumbnail of Louie Armstrong and bravely gave a pencil sketch portrait a try. The thumbnail image is long-lost, but I still have the photo of my sketch.
A few months ago, I thought I could only paint landscapes and flowers. Portraits? No way.
Inspired by the watercolor portrait portfolio a dear lady and artist friend shared with me, I signed up for a watercolor portrait workshop.
I didn’t have the slightest expectation that whatever I produced during the workshop would resemble the person whose portrait I wanted to paint. My idea was that I’d have fun painting with kindred creative spirits and if none of my portraits resembled their persons, at least I’d have a great time painting them.
The first portrait I attempted is still unfinished. However, every time I look at it I can hardly believe I painted it. I attended a workshop taught by the talented teacher, Jane Angelhart’s, and with her instruction and encouragement, as well as the encouragement of an amazing hostess and artist friend, I learned how to paint watercolor portraits.
Ten years ago I didn’t think I could draw. A few months ago I didn’t think I could paint watercolor portraits.
Never say never.
Always looking to expand my repertoire of creative options, I signed up for a summer workshop at R & F Handmade Paints in the Hudson River Valley. The building is in a rough area of Kingston, NY, but you can find it easily due to the colorful array of wildflowers blooming across the front length of the building.
The first part of my workshop was a short history of encaustic painting and a tour of encaustic cakes production. Because each pigment has different qualities, the pigments are individually milled before combining to make blended colors. Watching them flow like liquid silk between and over the rollers is mesmerizing.
After hours of being tended to by the paint makers, the pigments, beeswax and resin are poured into molds. Once they’ve cooled, they’re popped out, like candy molds releasing their succulent treasures. Then they’re tested by the paint makers and if they pass inspection, they’re labeled and either put into segmented wall units in the studio, put on the shelf for sale, or packed and shipped to eagerly awaiting artists.
Next, I watched demonstrations of basic encaustic techniques: surfaces and how to prepare them; painting cold; painting warm; collage; fusing; imbedding; mixing; layering; buffing; and more. Then the artist told me the studio was mine to use as I wished, to create my first encaustic piece. I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store!
I decided to try collage and layering as a foundation for some mixed media pieces I’ve been thinking about creating. I quickly learned that each pigment has its own personality when it comes to being heated. Some separate, some granulate, some rise to the surface through other layers of color, and you can create new colors by layering them, an option to mixing them. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination.
Here is my sample, below. I didn’t try to create anything specific, though interestingly, I’ve been told it’s reminiscent of Starry Night, or the deep-sea. For me, it was experimental fun!
There’s something so sumptuous about rich pigments mixed with beeswax and the way they melt into an encaustic painting and softly glow in the light. (R & F also makes gorgeous oil pigment sticks, which I look forward to experimenting with in encaustic painting, and, on their own.)
The folks at R & F are fantastic, helpful, knowledgable and friendly people. Stop in and explore!
I was in the midst of preparing a post about playing with paints when one isn’t feeling up to starting a full painting, when I received my email newsletter from Robert Genn’s site, Painter’s Keys. Genn writes a witty article about the reasons we give ourselves, and others, for why we can’t paint.
Continuing with my thoughts about playing with paints, I thought I’d share a playful exercise I learned in a class Martha Kisling taught last year. I daydream often about arctic skies and the Northern Lights. Below is an arctic sky that resulted from experimenting with using twisted paper towel on a still-wet sheet of 140 lb. cold press.
I cropped the bottom third off the painting for posting. My trees and mountains aren’t quite right, but I love the way the sky turned out. I recall a successful professional artist who commented that he threw at least half of his paintings away. If we can’t produce a masterpiece — and who can do that consistently! — we can have fun playing with new techniques. No excuses!
Now, if only I could follow that advice on a regular basis!
“It takes a long time to become young.” ~ Picasso
