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Monthly Archives: June 2013

What I Do For Love

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I began tonight’s blog far from my usual spot. Most nights I am sitting in front of my home computer while my dear husband is falling asleep on the couch waiting for me. Tonight I began writing at a local bar/restaurant. Actually, I did my little sketch for tonight’s post sitting on a bar stool. We hadn’t planned to go out this evening, and I hadn’t even begun to think about what I wanted to create for today. We went for a nice long walk this morning, came home to finish a marathon viewing of Top Chef season five, and then I made an attempt to straighten up my studio which thanks to my productivity as of late is a disaster. Top Chef inspired our cooking a lovely New Orleans inspired dinner together. I figured that as usual I would sit after dinner and decide what I would do. However, the Chicago Blackhawks are in the NHL Finals, and though I may have mentioned it, I’m from Chicago. I’ve lived in California long enough to begin to consider myself a Californian (10 years), however, you can take a sports fan out of Chicago, but…No! not me, but Dan. I grew up going to Wrigley Field, I lived in the neighborhood. I have a mild interest in how the Cubs are doing. Dan on the other hand is a fan of Chicago teams, mostly the Bears, but also the Hawks and Bulls. When we realized that tonight’s game wasn’t available on our television I suggested we find it elsewhere. I knew I hadn’t done my project yet, but I can honestly say I have the most wonderful, supportive husband a woman can ask for, so going in search of a game is the least I can do.

So I sit here looking around this very noisy place for inspiration, and quite frankly it isn’t coming. I personally cannot get enough quiet, particularly when I am working. I, in a desperate attempt to find something, began looking through our phones at our photos, and then it hit me. Why not just create the place I’d like to be? I had only a pencil and a small sketch pad so I did a little drawing of a quiet meadow in the countryside. Just a quick post, and quick sketch, gotta get back to the game and my date. In case you are curious, Hawks win!

…Back at home…While unloading my camera I came across some photos from the other day. I’m a good photographer and love to take photos. My son called me out into the garden to see a dragonfly. It was a particularly friendly dragonfly that seems to like our garden. I took quite a few shots and from very close up. So, here is tonight’s sketch, and a few shots of a very cooperative dragonfly.6 6IMG_9747IMG_9797IMG_9717

Tearing Down Road Blocks

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Still on the mend, but very happy with myself this evening. Three months ago, six months ago, or a year ago, actually for the last twenty years I have been putting myself off. Finding every excuse in the book to not work, putting up self-built road blocks, telling myself that I wasn’t good enough, or focusing on the “can’t” instead of the “can”. Putting myself in the position of having to answer to others, some I know, obviously some I don’t know, and most importantly to myself, has forced my hand literally. I didn’t feel like working again tonight. Still have an earache and a headache. I gave a fleeting thought to hanging a shingle up here on the blog declaring, “Blog closed due to illness”, but I am so committed to this project that I couldn’t do it. Not only did I work, but I confronted my biggest artistic hurdle head on. Perspective, it’s a dirty word for me. I pull out the ruler, I study the angles, it just doesn’t work for me! It isn’t perfect, which is OK, (because we all know I am leaving perfect behind) but I do love the finished piece.

A little about the subject matter. I have boxes of paper in my studio. Photos that I tore from magazines over the years because I liked a color, or a shape, or a face, something that appealed to me about each and every one. Then there are the computer files of the thousands of photos that I have taken, all with the intention of drawing or painting them some day, or using them for inspiration, but never actually doing anything but collecting them. I did attempt something from time to time, but as I have mentioned before when it wasn’t fitting into my idea of what it was supposed to be, I walked away from it, leaving many, many orphaned, half-finished works of art hidden away in my studio. In the last fifty four days since I began this project I haven’t abandoned anything. I do have a few works in progress, and I fully intend to finish them. I also intend at some point to go in to my studio and free the orphans. Take a good look at what I have that is already started and decide what needs to be finished. As for tonight, I made a decision. I will be recycling a great deal of paper. I don’t want to look to anyone else for inspiration. That doesn’t mean I won’t be moved or inspired by a painting, or a photo, but I want to rely on myself for a while. Tonight I looked through my photos. I took this photo in San Diego a few years ago. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I loved it so much, but I think Dan hit it on the head tonight. It has a certain nostalgia to it.This photo certainly gave me what I’m looking for, it is my photo, and it is certainly a perspective challenge. It is done in watercolor, ink and pencil. I will say again that I am really pleased with the piece, and myself for not giving in to the temptation of throwing up a road block, despite how I’m feeling.Image

In Sickness And In Health

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6 4 (2)Tonight’s post will be a short one. I started antibiotics last night but right now I can barely keep my head up. Enough about that.

I so loved the effect of the wood burner on the table that I decided to play with it again today. I looked in my studio to see what was on hand and found a small wooden box that was painted white. If I remember correctly I was trying to decoupage something on it a few years ago. I did a sketch of some Irises on the lid. When I started to use the wood burner I got a different reaction to yesterday. When I burned the design in yesterday it gave the impression of inlaid Mother of Pearl. Today because there were a few layers of paint on the box, and I think maybe some Modge Podge residue, the design began to rise up on the surface. It still has a beautiful effect. I definitely want to continue down this path and experiment with the technique. I am posting a photo of the unpainted box, and then a second photo where the box has a single coat of paint on it. There is still much work to be done on it. I want to touch up some of the burn marks, as well as add more paint.  I’m not sure if I want to keep the background painted with the same pearl paint as the flowers, or if I want to doing something a little different, possibly black to make the flowers pop. I really wasn’t up to the task today, but I refuse to lay down and not create. Maybe I need a slogan like the post office…through wind and rain, and sleet and snow…I think I’m getting delirious with fever. Better things tomorrow .

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Shedding Weight

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Just 24 hours ago I was writing this blog and poking a little fun at myself. One day later and things aren’t so funny. Nothing terrible, but I have strep. I wasn’t feeling great last night, but I worked anyway. Terrible earache and sore throat. I mention how lousy I felt because despite the way I felt last night I made many plans for today. I wanted to work on Jessica’s portrait as well as my table. I didn’t get to the portrait, but every now and then I get really excited about a project, and I felt that way about the table. As I mentioned last night, with many furniture projects I can see the finished piece in my head even before I begin. However, there are those occasions where the finished piece turns out even better than I had hoped. That is definitely the case with this one. With the little bit I finished last night I could see where it was going. So, despite how I was feeling today I finished my table and I really love it.

Therein lies another issue that I am sure every artist runs into from time to time. I love it too much. It is a piece I did to sell, and it will be difficult to let it go. As you might recall the point of this entire project was to gain my identity as an artist, but also to use up the multitude of supplies I own. Art supplies aren’t the only thing I have too much of. We have two garages, one is a single, the other a two car, and they are both full, furniture, unfinished wood, canvas, and various vintage junk that I always planned to do “something” with some day. As much as I love this table it can’t stay. I feel burdened by “stuff”, and am more than ready to let go of it and a lot of the negativity that has been weighing me down not only as an artist, but also as a human being.

The table. I finished burning in the design on the other areas of the table, put on a light coat of stain, and a single coat of Modge Podge for furniture. It isn’t quite dry yet, and will definitely require another coat, but that is for tomorrow, as for now my sore throat and I are going to bed!

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When Have I Suffered Enough For My Art?

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It’s OK to laugh now. I mean at me and the things I am about to reveal about myself. In the several weeks of blogging that I have done it has mostly been confined to my artistic troubles. I have let in little glimpses of myself beyond that, but it occurred to me that maybe people might want to read something a little more uplifting, well not exactly uplifting, but it might just give you cause to do that laughing I deemed permissible. For today’s project I decided to work on a small table. I’ll go into the details of it momentarily, except for now to say  that it involved using a wood burner, and it inspired tonight’s blog.

When I was twelve I slit my wrist. Before you gasp in horror let me tell you it wasn’t intentional. Crafty, artistic child that I was, I was in the process of trying to make a present for my working mother. I don’t remember exactly what I was making, but we can all assume it was a project from Highlight’s Magazine, I was an avid reader, and for those of you who are old enough to remember, I still quote Goofus and Gallant. I was cutting a bleach bottle in half with an open blade, it got stuck on the seam so I did what any brainiac would do, I slashed hard at it while holding it in my other hand. My parents were at work, so my big sister put a rubber band on my wrist to stop the bleeding. (She was a freshly turned fourteen year-old, how would she know?) Fortunately my dad came home shortly after that and took me to the emergency room. Two hours later with a butterfly bandage, because it was too late for stitches, and an interrogation by the police officer on duty who I had to convince I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I had for the first time officially suffered for my art. I bring this up because today while using my wood burner I turned to Dan and said that I couldn’t believe my parents gave me a wood burner for Christmas that same year. They gave a burning hot, searing weapon to their daughter, the daughter who accidentally slit her wrist, the daughter who had a gap between her front teeth until she tripped over her sister and smashed her face on the sidewalk, the same girl who can’t tumble, failed swimming lessons, can’t roller skate and didn’t figure out how to ride a bike until she was nine. Did anyone ever get the toy where you poured paint on a spinning device similar to a record player? I got it, spun the paint all over my bed. Stepped on a tube of acrylic paint in my teenage bedroom and shot hot pink across the olive-green carpet. I swear I have no fingerprints, they are all attached to the hot glue that I have had to pull off my burning fingers. My dad’s favorite story to tell about me to anyone willing to listen (and even those who don’t want to listen) is that I failed Phys Ed in high school. It’s true, of course my P.E. teacher is a dead ringer for the witch in the Wizard of Oz, I kid you not, I’ve got the yearbooks to prove it. Then there is of course my six knee surgeries. Tripped over a vacuum cleaner and fell down a flight of stairs, fell off a ladder, (twice) tried to hang a kitchen curtain, you get the idea. (Although Dan said he likes to tell people I did it pole dancing. Which might be possible if I could actually get on a pole) What I want to know is if suffering makes your art better, then why aren’t my paintings at the Getty yet?

Now that you all know just how pathetic I can be, I will tell you where I’m not. I took this five dollar table that I bought at a yard sale and am in the process of turning it into something I love. (I have a before photo. I’m not sure where in my pictures it is right now, but I promise to post it when I put up the finished table tomorrow) I had two ideas for it. One would have turned it into something for a kid’s room, but I went instead with an idea based on a piece of vintage fabric. Dan painted the base black for me. On the top I wood burned a floral design that I am painting with those Martha Stewart Pearl paints I mentioned before. I love, love, love them! It looks like inlaid Mother Of Pearl. I still need to draw two more of the flowers for the top and burn them. It is painstaking and time-consuming, but I love the finished look. When I am finished with the flowers I am going to add a light coat of stain.

It’s been a good day, and I only burned myself once!

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Letting Go Of Perfection

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I never know from day-to-day what I am going to create, much less what I will blog about. Both projects are discovering themselves as my day goes on. I will have to be very honest here, both the art and the writing are on the top of my daily “to do” list, but both are the last things I do at the end of the day most of the time. Why? I’m still struggling with putting myself first and letting go of my duties as wife/mother. I’m still making sure the kitchen gets cleaned in the morning, and that there are meals on the table, and every other thing I can think of in between. I’m working on it, but without much success. I will continue to figure this out, and at some point (hopefully) I’ll learn to ignore that the floor needs to be swept. (Disclosure: I can’t eat at those restaurants where they have rude wait staff and peanut shells on the floor. I cannot stand rudeness, and absolutely cannot eat in a place that has a dirty floor. I don’t know why I feel the need to share this, except that maybe it lets you know me just a little better. One might think by reading that, that I am a neat freak. Far from the truth. My house is clean, very clean, well at least as clean as a house with three cats and a twenty-two year old male can be, but I’m messy. I think I mentioned that before, I mean the me being messy part, again for no particular reason…)

I brought all of the above up because I (as regular readers might know by now) am struggling with not being good enough or perfect in my art. Tonight I had a little breakthrough. I didn’t work earlier today because of anything more than it was really hot here today, and unusually humid. Hot plus humid equal lethargic for me. I just wasn’t in the mood. Not that I didn’t try. I made a few pathetic attempts at something with clay, and although I promised to put up all work, warts and all, I didn’t even come up with something I could photograph even as an attempt. So at the magic hour of seven p.m., which seems to be turning into my starting time, I began a watercolor painting. My breakthrough was that I didn’t sweat it at all. When I do a rough sketch for a painting I worry over every little detail. I measure and fuss over the drawing being just right. I didn’t measure tonight. I just sketched, and then I just painted. In a moment I had the thought that the reality is, unless I am painting a well-known monument, the people who see my work are more than likely to never see the photo I use as inspiration, or into my brain to see where ideas spring from there (God forbid!). I started out tonight feeling like I was doing homework again, but then I relaxed, I let the process and my enjoyment of it take over. The finished project, a watercolor and ink inspired by a photo I took in Carmel, California, isn’t perfect. The perspective isn’t perfect. I am not perfect, and I’m learning to be content with all of it.

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