Illustration Friday: Breezy

Having other things to do this week (more about that later), I was going to skip the IF topic. But it seemed the perfect topic to do something playful for, so I decided to spend a few minutes on it this morning, as I haven't played for a long while, and it seems that it might be what is missing in this grey-winter's-end-time. So I did this little sketch in my sketchbook with watercolors and ink, then scanned it into the computer and played a bit more, adding the text and the spiral at the top. Even though it just took 'coffee time' to do it, I did enjoy the play, and the lack of expectations or demand for 'product' on my part!

Seasonal light...

I love how the light changes with the season. The winter light is slowly becoming spring light. I am walking three times a week with a friend, here in my old neighborhood and downtown. The lace dress in the photo is one I got on one of our walks. The local Hospice re-sale shop had just received a number of vintage pieces of clothing, and I got this one for the coffee money I had in my pocket. I just wanted to hang it on my closet door in the sitting room, but Gussie tried to climb it, so I moved it to a window out of his way. The next morning, the light coming through it was too lovely to ignore!

I am still not sure what I will put on the loom next. I am just 'collecting images' and waiting to see what floats to the top!

Killing, uh, I mean Filling Time...

I have been pulling out old paintings and playing a bit - or working a bit?- on them, to see if I can salvage the canvas, if not the work itself. Yesterday I worked on the Amaryllis painting, which had an incomplete background. I did as much as I could with it. It may be worth the Bargain Bin at an exhibit now. It is oil on canvas, size is 11x14" and the working title is "Grand Opening." (The photo has a wet painting sheen on the right side that isn't really there.)

I also worked on this painting, of my oldest son and his twins (my grandchildren) and Telly, their dog, making home-made ice cream. The problem with this painting is that it is on masonite, and I don't remember prepping (gessoing) the board. It has been very hard to paint on, and I'm not sure it can be salvaged. It is 16" square, and is my first attempt on masonite. Not sure I like masonite, but I wanted to try it. I have another one begun on it as well, and am having the same trouble with it - the paint doesn't sink into masonite, as it does on canvas, so it builds up quickly, and also dries very quickly. It's almost like working with acrylic again (which I hated, in this dry climate.)



I'm also still indexing my knit magazines, and have found a project I want to begin - several, in fact! Yea! I can't stand to sit in the evening with empty hands.

At loose ends...

I am literally and figuratively at loose ends. Having finished the "September" tapestry, my loom now has just a short dummy warp on it, to which I can add new warp. But I don't yet know what I'll be doing next, so I can't really even warp it up yet. There is a potential commission 'in the wings' and I'm still thinking of another Heritage tapestry - though I still haven't found the photo I want to base it on, so my weaving is 'on hold' for now.


I also have finished the baby blanket I was knitting in the evenings. It was a log cabin blanket, from Mason-Dixon's first book; a pretty fun project. But now my needles are also empty. I have been going through my huge wall of knitting magazines, indexing them, and hoping to find something that will excite me enough to become my next knitting project.

Ditto for the empty easel. I have been pulling out old paintings that were unfinished or not liked enough to finish and dabbling a bit with them, but they were mostly abandoned for a good reason! And I don't have a painting that is crying out 'paint me' yet either.

I hate these times of creative emptiness! I have come to accept them as inevitable, and probably even necessary to the creative process. But it feels like it is time to 'fill my cup' - to get out and see something new and fresh. I know that there are probably ideas germinating somewhere in my seemingly empty mind, but I am impatient for them to come to the surface. In the meantime, I am working on the Connections catalog, baking bread (a rather fattening creative outlet), indexing my knitting magazines, and looking through my old photos. Something is bound to inspire me soon!

Wooster at Vega...

The Illustration Friday topic this week is Instinct. I am posting this oil painting of Wooster at Vega Lake, where our cabin is. It is Wooster's favorite place in the whole world, and that is because his instinct is to check out every plant and tree there, to see what's been there before him. He smells deer and fox, elk and possibly even moose, bear and opossum, porcupine and grouse, mice and chipmunks and snakes, and who knows what all else. Pure heaven for a dog's nose! The old dog becomes a pup again up there... and pays for it later.

My instinct this week has been to drag out some unfinished paintings and either finish them or pitch them. This is one I guess I finished, though it may still be in the pitch-able category, too. What I don't like about it is that it looks like I painted every shrub and leaf. I didn't; I painted large areas, like the foreground was just one large mass of darks, then I put some lights here and there. Also, it's just too homogeneous. But that is what the lake looks like in the summer; green, green, and more green, with a few areas of other colors. It is 16x20 inches.

'September' tapestry

Here is the completed "September" tapestry. It is 19x19 inches, so is not large. It is blocked, slits sewn, etc., but is not yet mounted, as nobody in town carries 19" stretchers, so my husband will have to make me some. For those who didn't see (or can't remember) the maquette, it came from 4 small oil paintings that I pieced together in the computer. Here it is again:

As you can see, it did not translate directly, but has some modifications. What I like about the comparison of the two is that the paintings feel very 'painter-ly' to me, while the tapestry does have a very 'weaver'ly' look to it. And by that, I mean that the paintings have marks that could only be made with paint, while the tapestry has marks that could only be made in the medium of tapestry. I like that kind of thing!

Been feeling quite beige...

Well, after looking in absolutely every spot I could think of and still not finding the photo I was searching for yesterday, I decided to quit looking and just let it 'come to me.' Sometimes that will happen; I'll quit looking and then will suddenly remember where I put it, when I'm thinking of something completely unrelated.

So, since I have been feeling quite beige lately, I decide to paint something colorful yesterday. I had bought the three most colorful pears at the market to take to use as a still-life when I painted with the Alzheimer's patients last week. So I decided I would paint them myself. I had set them on the top of my flat-top stove, which is black, and it made such lovely reflections, I just used that for my set-up. The painting is in oil on canvas, and is 9"x12". I don't know what it is about pears that makes me want to paint and weave them lately, except maybe just that they are not beige!