Illustration Friday: Contagious

There is nothing more contagious than the giggle of a little girl!

I am using the IF topic as a prompt to do small oil sketches, as I am hoping to be able to paint daily through the summer to challenge myself to improve.

This little sketch is about 6x6", painted wet without any drawing. It is a very loose intrepretation of a photo of my youngest grand-daughter, who will be 3 in several weeks.

Back home... and gone away for good...

I am home again from a week with my parents, which included a quick trip to San Jose to the Connections opening. While I was gone, two of my early tapestries sold at the local Art Auction, to benefit the Western Colorado Center for the Arts. With times so difficult for Art organizations right now, I couldn't say 'no' to their plea this year. It is an auction to benefit the center, but it benefits the artists as well, as 60% of the sale comes back to the artist. The tapestries were beyond exhibition age, and I decided I would rather have them on someone's wall, than rolled up in my storage closet for who-knows-how-many years, so I was willing to risk a bit of a loss on them. They did OK for themselves in the auction, though they did not, of course, sell for full value.

They are "The Hunt" (above), which I wove after a series of work that was so colorful, I just couldn't deal with color for a bit. So this was a 'de-sensitizing' piece for me, I guess. I also was playing with using lazy lines (un-sewn slits) as a design element in this piece.




This piece is "The Yellow Canoe." It is from a camping trip with my brother's family at Kentla Lake in Glacier National Park, in Montana, where he lives. My husband and my brother are in the canoe, so now, in addition to selling my son, my parents, my siblings, myself, and my daughter-in-law, I have sold them too! In my house, pretty much everyone makes it to the marketplace.

Packing and shipping....

I am leaving tomorrow for the opening of the Connections: Small Tapestry International exhibit in San Jose, CA. So today I'm getting my things ready to go, and the house ready for me to be gone a for week, as I'll be visiting my parents as well.

Before I can go, I also have to get the tapestries shipped to the Fiber Celebration exhibit. Shipping is not a small job, as I've mentioned before. One of the pieces that is going is flat and is mounted, and the other is large, but can be rolled up, so they will probably be in separate crates, which is best for insurance anyway.

When I get home, I must begin a flurry of studio work. I will be showing, beginning June 1st, in the Blue Pig Gallery in Palisade, CO. It is the nicest gallery in this area, so I am excited to have been invited to show there. The summer season is very active in Palisade, beginning with a huge Bluegrass Festival, then a Peach festival (Palisade is where the wonderful Colorado fruit orchards are), a Wine festival (ditto for Colorado vineyards, which are becoming legend), and with concerts along the Colorado River and Farmer's Markets several times a week just across from the gallery all summer long. So I'm hoping the summer will find me in the business of keeping my space stocked, in spite of the poor economy. But today, I must pack and ship....

I do hope to see that some of you find your way to San Jose.... la, la, la, la la la la la la la! (And if you know what that refers to, you're probably as old as I am!)

Illustration Friday: Hierarchy

In my experience, there is nothing and nobody that has a higher rank in the world's hierarcy than a naked baby.... Especially in terms of being able to have your demands immediately met by all the underlings in attendance (and isn't that everybody who is there?)!

This is a watercolor sketch (from back in the days when I did watercolors) of my first grandchild after her bath.

Finishes...

I DO complete things, although it often feels like I do not. These days I am doing things in 'fits and starts,' as my grandmothers would have said. I do a bit of inside work, then a bit of garden work, then I attend to some needful tasks for the Connections exhibit, then I spend a few stolen moments in the studio. So working any of those things from start to completion just doesn't seem to happen very often. But, as a tapestry weaver, that is not uncommon for me. I know a started task will eventually find it's way to the end.

Several things seem to have found that state recently. The alpaca scarf I was knitting is done, and put away in the 'gift' stash.
And I have completed (I think, but changes might still be made) these three paintings:

"Mon Vieux Lucien", which is the song the lady on the left was singing on the streets of Quebec, (Oil, 16x20")
"Interlude" (oil 12x16"), of Penn Cove off Whidbey Island, Washington,
and "Memories for Sale" (oil 9x12").

I have also completed the swapping of my heavy winter clothes for my spring/summer ones. So happy to see those cropped pants and T-shirts, after all those weighty sweaters and jeans!

"April is the Cruellest Month..."

Well, that is the only line of poetry that I remember that mentions April, tho' I'm pretty sure Wordsworth wrote one, too. (The line is from TS Eliot's "Wasteland", which my favorite bit of poetry at one point in my adolescence.)

Actually, I'm posting about poetry because OzWeaver has several good posts on April being poetry month, which I didn't remember. I should have remembered, because one of my favorite bookmarked links is to The Writer's Almanac which Garrison Keillor does for NPR. In fact, today's poem is about April, and is a very good one!

Also on her ArgoKnot blog, Brenda has posted some great paintings of poets, so I decided to post this at-best-adequate little oil sketch of Lord Byron that I did when I was experimenting with the oils I use. I used only burnt sienna and a bit of white and black, at the end. I painted the whole thing with burnt sienna, then wiped out the light areas, then added touches of white and black in a few little places. Painting from a photo of someone I never knew personally helps me 'distance' myself from needing perfection, and, oddly enough, those paintings usually turn out more satisfactorily than those I am worried about 'getting the mouth right' on. It really is delightful to do a small portrait this way - with no drawing involved at all!

Illustration Friday: Theatre

I did this little 5x7" oil sketch of my grandchildren's feet from a photo my daughter-in-law posted on her Facebook page. I think the shoes were in their Easter baskets, new Croc sandels for the spring and summer. I thought it was appropriate for the IF topic of Theatre, because these two, at 3 and 5 years, already are choosing roles they want to play for this stage of their life. My grandson's shoes, though I can't see the details closely in the photo, surely must have Spiderman on them, and my grandaughter's will be either fairies or princesses.

I also love that my grandson has on mismatched socks. His father, from the time he was allowed to pick his own socks until now, I believe, never wore matching socks. I think they both have always had a bit of Dobby the House Elf in them, who is sure wearing matching socks is a boring oversight to be avoided.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
 Wm. Shakespeare, As You Like It