Arrangement In Red

November is such a lovely month. The air is crisp and scented with burnt leaves and the first wood fires of the season. Winter coats are being dug out of the closest along with gloves, scarves and hats. Everything about November reminds me of jewel toned velvet. It is a time of year that also reminds me to have an attitude of gratitude. I do have so much to be grateful for. Arrangement in Red is a still life painting of some of my favorite objects. The red walls are of my kitchen and the cream and red toile that graces the table for special occasions. The pewter teapot the remnant of a Spring day I spent with one of my daughters. The serving spoons were a wedding gift from dear friends. The sweet red onion and little potatoes are ingredients in so many meals shared with others. My home is graced by family and friends. My table is set with blessings.

Another Day, Another Sketch

Sundays at our house have a special texture to them. After church, it's Prairie Home Companion on the radio. Sometimes we go out for brunch, other times we have big Sunday dinner in the afternoon. It is always social. In the evening it is curling up in a favorite wing back chair to watch Masterpiece on PBS. This night I had my sketchbook in hand as I watched a mystery. Couldn't help but think that sketching a scene is like solving a detective's puzzle. Each line or shape is a clue that leads you to the next clue until you have the full picture.

( Sketchbook copy reads: The two yellow chairs in my breakfast room are my homage to Monet's yellow dining room at Giverny. These chairs were castoffs that I found languishing next to a garbage can. Originally they were in my daughter's room. After she left home they made their way to the breakfast table after a fresh coat of paint. The seats are covered in a cream and black toile. Curled up in napping position is my dog, Cassatt. It is Sunday evening. I am sketching while watching a mystery. )

Kerrytown Sketchbook

The copy in the Moleskine reads as follows: Kerrytown is a Market place in the old section of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Fresh fish, wine, breads, vegetables & fruit are being sold in the stalls of the indoor market. It is Saturday so the Farmers' Market is in full swing just beyond the windows. I have found a table with enough space for a latte & my sketchbook. I am looking into a sea of red. Apples- all of which are perfumed by their freshness. I spend this rainy afternoon drawing & painting the scene.

In Praise of Moleskine

If I had to rush out of a burning building, I would be clutching my Moleskine sketchbook. It goes everywhere with me. Then there's the Moleskine notebook that I use for my journaling. Moleskines are nothing new, they've been around for a couple hundred years. A favorite of artists and writers, because they are relatively cheap. They are ever so portable, coming in a myriad of sizes, shapes, some with lines, squares or even blank. In the recent past the last of the Moleskine makers closed their doors, but like the Phoenix rising from its ashes, they are being manufactured again. The little black notebooks are easy to find. I buy mine at one of the large booksellers. After all, when you have an idea, you need a place to keep it.

"The Gibbes"

As an artist, I take a lot of pictures. Most of these pictures make little sense to anyone else. I think of them as reference photos. I was in Charleston, South Carolina and my aesthetic radar was having a wonderful time. Reacting to the architecture of a large white Victorian era building, I began taking pictures. Instead of taking one picture of a place, I like to take a series and then piece them together. The perspective is often a bit wonky, but the end result has a kind of energy to it. The resulting image always seems truer to how I experienced the place or subject. "The Gibbes" is one of those photo collages. This time I printed the images on aluminum foil. I juxtaposed elements of vintage elegance against the building blocks of creating art: color, line and shape. The resulting piece is intentionally whimsical and recalls for me that sultry Spring afternoon.

The Mad Scientist Struggles On

Ah, struggle, it is said to be beneficial to the human condition. I continue to be the recipient of these benefits. "Flora", a painting done in 1640, haunts my progress. Although, I did myself a big favor when I printed "Flora" this time, I made four copies. Thought I'd give myself four times the wiggle room. Oh and do I ever need it. Now printing an image on foil is pretty easy. Manipulating the resulting image into a collage or painting is an entirely different thing. I am just blowing through my "extras". But I do struggle on never knowing what's going to happen. This is both the blessing and the curse of working with an experimental media or technique. I'm in the grumbling, stumbling dogged pursuit phase. For every step forward, it seems like I'm taking two steps back. Even when I don't get the results that I want, I discover techniques that may prove useful in the future. That's if I can reproduce the effect. I'm not sure why something works one time and not necessarily another time. Is it humidity? Or is it dependant on the phases of the moon or a magic incantation that I've yet to learn? Maybe it's serendipity. Doesn't matter because I'm in this to the finish. So I'm going to put on my lucky socks and mumble an incantation or two. Wish me luck.

Failure = Success

I have already confessed to being overly fond of things that sparkle, glint or shine. So it was a given I would just have to try printing images on foil. Besides, it's pretty easy to do and ever so affordable. I use generic aluminum foil from the grocery store and coat it with Golden's Digital Ground Clear (Gloss). Cut it to fit on a piece of computer paper, taping it on two sides with blue painter's tape. Most important is taping the leading edge, keeping everything as smooth as possible. Less critical is the taping of one of the long sides. Now I'd like to say- just pop it into the printer and click on print, but there is this moment of sanity when you ask yourself why you're putting this in your new printer while remembering just how much it cost. So it was with sweaty palms and whispered prayer that I gently placed my prepped foil into the feed slot. I stood there listening to the most frightening crunching, crinkling sounds, but out it came in fine shape. I actually did five that day. One hung up at the very end without damaging the image, one had a skip in an interesting place, two were perfect and the last one, well...was a minor disaster. It hung up at the beginning and was munched up by the printer. It was the last one and by then I had relaxed and exhaled. My super duper printer disengages when you cut the power and has doors to reach through and lift out whatever gets stuck. I reprinted that image and it, too, was perfect. The images have a tin type look to them, but in full color.

The mad scientist in me started looking around for other applications for my new found skill set. I've been working on a piece that has a tulip as it's focal point, but it is actually about the great tulip investment bubble. In my research I stumbled across a painting done at the time, FLORA. (Note the two faced woman on the right.) Since the image was in public domain, I downloaded and sized the image to suit my composition. I had prepared and fixed it making it ready to be incorporated into my painting. But first I thought I'd use a rubber stamp buttered with acrylic paint over top of it. When I lifted the stamp it pulled away part of the image. Oh how I fussed. I felt like a child whose lollipop had just been snatched out of her sticky fingers. About an hour later, when the wailing and gnashing of teeth abated, I realized that if I had glued it to the painting and then it failed that would be far worse. Decided to go to the coffee shop. On the way out the door, I grabbed my journal and a folder full of Golden product information. While sipping my consolation latte, I found that I needed to use a spray varnish to fix the image and not the workable fix that I had used. Alleluia!!! Okay, this will work for me! I kept reading and saw another technique... baked skins.( Future post ) Needless to say I'm seeing yet more opportunities. All of which should be tested out before affixing to anything. Although it started out being a disaster it ended up being like Christmas.