When Art Invites You In

I have been either a very bad girl or a very good girl, depending on your point of view. I have been making much art and traveling as well, but I have gotten out of the habit of writing about them. You see, I have lately been overtaken to the extreme by my new found love of drawing. They say that to get better at something you need to do it every day, make time for it just like a job, just do it. I guess I took that to heart this spring, because this "Mermaid Circus" class seems to have taken a turn for the obsessive. I draw and paint and letter and cut collage materials. I shop for new art supplies and make room for them in carts and boxes and closets and piles. I try them out in new combinations and make lists of even more colors to own. I post photos to my class group, and friend my classmates on Facebook. The photos show up on Flickr too, but because the class is not centered there, that venue has taken a back seat for now. I am, in short, in the hackneyed phrase and with no irony, living the dream!

The sketch on the right was done while watching a video lesson, then used as the basis for a painting in acrylics and colored pencil.

It all started with that first face drawing lesson (see the April 29 entry) in which I drew and painted along with my teacher Jane Davenport. I was hooked! I realized that I don't have to draw "real" people if I don't want to, I can learn to work first with stylized faces and character creation. Bingo! I am learning to love storytelling, and I really want to be able to draw a face with consistency and personal style. This second face, "The Upturned Face" lesson, was the start of a series of three successful journal story pages based on the same initial sketch.

Adding the first shadows and highlights, bringing it to life.

Portrait of a sweet young mermaid, later to be called Cecelia.

Now it was time to reuse the art. This is the crazy looking but well conceived beginning to a story of Cecelia and her goldfish. The face would be color copied but painted over, and the fish, also an enhanced version of a piece of journal art from three years ago.

Practicing mixed media tricks: the luminescent sea is created by painting  Golden Fluid Acrylic over the red/orange base, spraying with water and blotting. The hair has quite a bit of florescent orange and red paint. The mermaid's tail end is a piece of batik fabric collaged with gel medium. Matte, shine, glow, texture.

A second use of the painted face was made with a tissue transfer of the original: color copying direction on (supported) white artist's tissue to make a sheer version, which was matte medium applied over a copy of a (real) tattoo pattern (meant for an arm). Finally, paint and pencil enhanced to change the coloration and character of the girl.

This became "A True Tale of Caution" about a mermaid who went  "bad".

Meanwhile, it was time for Teesha Moore's sixteen page journal to take center ring. I decided to dedicate the whole thing to one story, the actual "Mermaid Circus," styled a bit after impressions received while reading the novel "The Night Circus." 

Learning about (and liking) folded small flaps as extra pages.

I had a mammoth collaging session during this week and painted and prepared the collaged story on all sixteen pages. It will probably take me months more to get the time to finish them all, but now the story is set for me with a trajectory and a style that will add consistency to the finished book.

Be sure to click on the images to see them larger and check out some of the pen work and shading.

Meanwhile back at the zoo, I was neglecting my original 2013 muse, the giraffe. In preparation for "Paint the Giraffe" month in June, May was a time to explore color, consider our preferences, analyze a bit, get to know something about pleasing palettes. The next three images are collaged pages from an inspiration journal I had begun about ten years ago. Strangely enough, they still inspired. Now that I am learning about mixing collage with pen work, I look forward to returning to these at some point to develop them further.

Purple and more purple for me, but deepened.

My favorite for many years, purple and green, but ethereal.

And yet again, with an interesting image of "art clothing".

Sometimes the man has a day free to spend with me that coincides with great weather and a peaceful place. Before the heat of summer, we enjoyed a hike on the beach of Lake Michigan and up to the summit of "Mount Baldy" one of the high points in the Indiana Dunes National Park.

Because the normal route up the side of the hill is being recovered from erosion, we were forced to hike all the way down to the beach, along the shore and then straight up the hill. It was a fabulous workout and proof that keeping fit makes life more fun.

Nearing the top and where, on a clearer day, you would have a view of Chicago fifty miles to the west across the lake.

Feeling happy, but with about a pound of sand inside each sneaker. Soon we were off the the outlet stores to find me a pair without holes.

Trying to establish a daily drawing routine in a journal, I prepped a number of pages in my Moleskine with acrylic paint, then started using them to inspire complex doodles or simple themed drawings. This one was about keeping occupied during a yard sale, but ended up looking like fireworks over New York City.

This one was full of affirmations to just draw what was in my heart, Teesha style.

This "fat mermaid" was a Jane Davenport drawing lesson that felt not quite ready for my "prime time" journal, until it was complete, and then I realized: I am ready for prime time, this is it. I'm doing good work and so proud of how far I've come in just a few years. Art has made me its friend I have bonded with it. I think we will be traveling companions for a long time to come.

She's a Regular Balabusta

Summer in the mid-section has been hot, dry, and a little oppressive. Other than a few wild thunderstorms, there has not been much to distinguish one day from the next. The garden mostly languishes without my tender care. A squirt of water is all I can manage. I try to keep the back yard fountain full and flowing for the sake of the birds, but I've spent little time lately tending the beds, enjoying our gazebo, or even cutting bouquets for the house.  The basil plants are liking the weather (at least the ones whose pots are hooked to the automatic watering system), and I need to set aside an hour for turning them into my favorite condiment, pesto.

The last time I picked flowers for the gazebo was in late June. After the vase blew over in four storms in three days, i decided to give up. Maybe it's safe to try again.

One plant that thrives in the heat is this gorgeous portulaca. The "snowball" bush behind it got decimated in the storms. Happens every July, and yet we love it!

I've even given up a standing invitation for water aerobics and/or "noodle" floating in a friend's pool. The first time I did that I wrenched my back from walking backward in the water, and got a rash from the sun. The second time, I got a headache and nausea from too much bobbing. I figure I am not cut out for water action. Instead I have been spending hours curled up in quiet concentration on the couch stitching my reverse applique projects, or at my dining room table, craft knife in hand, carefully cutting stencil after stencil. For the first time in many a summer, I wouldn't dare question the absolute need for air conditioning to keep me sane and productive.

One of the finely detailed stencils I have been cutting. This one is a template for ribbon embroidery.

Beside my obsession with balancing input (food) and output (exercise) "points" and weighing in at my weekly Weight Watcher's meeting, I am lately taken with the back-to-basics desire to simplify my expectations of what life is all about. Maybe the dieting has focused me unnaturally on food and clothing, but there has been a sort of "aha!" return to what is (and has always really been) important to me. While my human relationships with family and friends seem to grow more complicated and distant with the passing years, my relationship with my own life seems to find clarity and ease itself into something I can understand and hold in my hand. There is definitely less regret and longing, and more "just living". I worry less about making my mark or fitting anyone else's expectations of me and surrender to the day. Every day seems to be a new adventure, full of promise, even when the list of activities involves the most mundane of "housewife" activities of cooking, laundry, personal care, or sewing alterations.

Every Saturday (and sometimes Fridays, too) is coffee date with Dave at Starbucks. Lately, less drawing and more doodle journaling is going on. One week the heat made me "prickly", the next we got to try some great new cooling beverages. Like the "Where's Waldo" puzzles, Dave is usually somewhere in the doodle.

The other day as I was pulling a beauteous but simple dessert pudding from the oven, admiring its pockets of bubbling red berry juice amidst the golden dome, a long forgotten word came to mind: balabusta! You, Cheryl, are a balabusta! In case you are sitting there with a perplexed look on your face, this is a Yiddish term often overheard in conversations of my youth, from my mother or grandmother, while commenting on some woman of their acquaintance. It hadn't been a part of my life for so many years that I felt the need to do a little Wiki research. The written definitions and oral explanations on this resource page confirmed my thoughts: this term, basically meaning the female head of house (and there is a male counterpart) is meant, then and now, with no facetiousness or irony, as genuine praise for homemaking well done.

Both clafouti are baked puddings with fruit, eggs, dairy and flour. The top one is made from milk with mostly cherries and some berries. The bottom one gets a slightly different texture from yogurt as the dairy, and mostly strawberries. They are low fat, not too sweet and taste great when reheated slightly. A dash of cream on top never hurts.

Since childhood, cooking, sewing decorating, and entertaining--these have always come easily and added pleasure to my life. But in the late sixties and beyond as I came through college, a first marriage, and the work world, we were fighting to be liberated from gender defined roles and given the choice to have careers outside this "limited" scope of expertise. I felted less inclined at that time to make this my calling, even though I loved those things so well. Now, twenty years after retiring early from a brief teaching career, I realize this was my best career choice after all.

Two views of my first Alabama Chanin garment that is made with a complex cloth. This is stencilled, then reverse appliqued. As a poncho with one point, it can be worn front, back, or side for a variety of looks.

Another stencil design currently being worked in reverse applique to make a tied wrap. The bottom layer that shows through the cuts will be black.

The progression from stenciled to finished took about two weeks.

So with a life partner who joined me at those crossroad years, who is both indulgent and appreciative of my "Martha (Stewart)" tendencies, I am finally settling into who I really enjoy being. This "love of my life" who has had to put up with a steel mill career for most of his life, comes home from a hot, dirty, chaotic day, and puts up with my current dual obsessions of Weight Watchers and Alabama Chanin, never says an unkind word, and actually encourages and helps me with my goals in both. He recently bought me an air brush and compressor to paint my stenciled designs on cloth, and even takes patterns to work to enlarge for tracing.

 Most days, even though he has been out in the oppressive heat all day, he still comes home looking forward to a walk after dinner. So we do, and this has kept me on my exercise track, when alone, I would have made excuses. And then we come back to our very pleasant front deck, have a beverage and cool down as the sun casts lengthening shadows, and sinks to a cooler place in the sky. And some nights, after we return to our air conditioned oasis, I proffer a slice of that golden fruit clafouti with a bit of cream on top.

So, am I still striving to become an "artist"? Yes, I am still studying and exploring and practicing in different media. I am letting my imagination wander, I am not taking any of it more seriously than it deserves. I have no real expectations of starting a new career or looking for glory. But "balabusta"--that role in life I joyfully hold in my heart.

Mining for Inspiration

This time last year, after having discovered the world of online art education, I was embarking on my first real creative endeavors to draw and paint. I had joined the Yahoo "Everyday Matters" group, was enrolled in the first Strathmore Artist Papers workshop with Pam Carriker, and was learning for the first time how to work with basic art materials and how to mine my own life and art for even more art inspiration. I had made a first journal page based on the experience of staying in a favorite hotel (go here), and another about dinner at a favorite restaurant (here), and then in Pam's workshop I had learned to combine those elements into something much richer, layered and more fascinating (then here.) Since then my drawing time has produced somewhat more literal interpretations of the favorite bits of my life, but as with my blog, there tends to be a story to bind up the parts.

This January I have been fortunate to spend some quality time under the excellent creative coaching of Traci Bautista. (The first four week class of Strathmore Online Workshops is over in real time, but you can still sign up and work the lessons on your own.) I included the results of week one doodling last time, and now I'd like to show off the rich results of the last three weeks' joyous play.

In week two, we moved into all water based media, and I was able to learn about layering not only with brushed-on paint, but watercolor crayon, pencil and markers as well. The result is a painting that is sheer and glows, and when mined for closeup detail images, displays every bit of the energy and inspiration that went into three non-stop hours of fun.

"We Drank all the Limoncino" is 18 x 24 inches
(all the images from this and last year's class may be found in
 this flikr set.) 

When my Designing Women met for our January creative play day, I decided to take some of the mined detail shots and turn them into something 3-D and practical, and created a pattern for a lidded box inspired by a self-closing tea box I was getting ready to discard. Lined with a coordinated calico print, my art is now ready for gifting or selling.  

Next up was the need for something suitable to inspire a series of pieced and embroidered panels for my ongoing class with Arlee Barr, and her highly textured techniques in surface embellishment. I have been collecting fabric forever, but most recently have started acquiring OOAK hand dyed linen bits from Jackson Art Fabrics and Deb Lacativa. Of course the colorways were highly suitable to the inspiration of my painting, since I long ago learned that my intuitive sense of color mixing will generally yield a consistent palette without much conscious thought. Color is the one area in which I am most confident and happy to experiment.

Nothing purchased. Just pulled from the closet.

This photo shows a detail inspiration shot on the right, and the design starting to form in fabric on the left.

Moving on to a new assignment for workshop weeks three and four, we returned to the use of acrylics and various found items of a household nature to use as texture plates. We were creating backgrounds for what would be fanciful "girly glam" faces a la Traci's style in week four. Here are the three pieces I made in quick succession. Much of the work was done in a finger painting style. My favorite textures came from the sequin waste and the dry walling mesh, although some other useful materials were the cut off end of a plastic basket and a stamp made from rubber bands adhered to sticky back craft foam.

Everything I used minus the hose connector used to stamp
 the large circles above.

We also doodled on newsprint in India ink and a script liner (skinny brush).

Last week we faced the hardest part of the doodle challenge: faces! Although I did an intensive week of faces with Carla Sonheim last summer, well, that was last summer, and I haven't done any since. This was supposed to be totally simple and stylized, but I needed some real glam inspiration. I opened W Magazine to the first ad I saw and this was perfect.

The face and hair area laid in, and several ink doodles secured with  matte gel to use as line inspiration.

After Session I: The facial features were done in watercolor pencil and some overlay of paint, and the rest in basic craft acrylics with various small flat and round brushes. (The colors appear a bit more golden due to the ambient lighting.)

The finished painting (minus varnishing, done later.) The colors were read very true by the scanner. Although Traci's style was to add detail in various markers and pens, and colored pencils, I stayed with the paint and brushes for all of the layering. I did use some metallic gold paint for shimmer.

This happy accident is how the painting scanned when I mistakenly hit "color correct". I love this blue based palette as well, and I expect I will mine this image for all sorts of details to be used down the line in other art and projects. And so goes the inspiration.