The Doldrums!

 Along about mid-January

and on through most of February, I usually find myself in the doldrums.  Doldrums. That's a great word.  It's an old maritime expression that I remember finding in a pirate story when I was quite young.

         *  Doldrums: an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds *

The stock market hijacked the word to mean "a period of inactivity" but I prefer the old version used by sailors.  At any rate, I think I'm in the Doldrums, the calm between the storms of inspiration.  And so, I let my thoughts run to the sea, where I'm always renewed.

We go to the beach a couple times a year,

and one of my favorite things to do is

"Beach Squiggles." 

Squiggle! Now there's another good word.  I commandeered the word and the activity from a Kindergarten teacher who used to give her charges a sheet of paper with a line, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, straight or curved, and tell them to make a picture incorporating that line.  You could almost hear those 5-year-old wheels turning as imaginations fired.  What wonderful creations! 

Part of my travel accoutrements,

paraphernalia, 

trappings

odds and ends,

 is a small travel palette with pan colors, a few brushes and a 4x6 watercolor block.  First, I make a squiggle and then I paint, quickly, almost automatically, just having fun,

  I think, often, the hardest part of a painting is making that first mark on the paper or canvas.  It's almost like how when you get a new car, it always seems to run better after it gets that first ding. After I make that first mark it's easier to paint. 

"Beach Chairs" above is one such Squiggle.  Just after I drew a pencil line (look closely, you can see it) across the upper third of the paper, people came and put two chairs down in the sand in front of me.  I painted them in with a small brush, and when I got inside, I drew around them with a fine point pen. I like this simple little picture.  It makes me happy.

And there was a little boy wrestling with a float that kept trying to get away from him. It dashed and danced on the surf like it was a living thing and he held on like a character from Hemmingway.

A small girl shaking sand off a towel that threatens to wrap itself around her as if to protect her from the elements, far, far away from the midwinter doldrums.

Beach Squiggles!

Hope you enjoy them!

Carole

Midwinter Blues (and Greens) Part 2

 It seems whenever I have a few minutes to paint,

I tend to paint evergreens.  These pages from my sketchbook are just that, moments when I only had 15 minutes to paint and decided to try something different. and what better subject to practice on than trees. Besides, evergreens teach us a good lesson: Never give up!  No matter how old, or tired or broken, tattered or torn, they always look towards heaven.  They are always pointing upward, as though they are trying to reach for the stars.

I had several blank pages at the end of a well-used watercolor journal. One of them, I spattered with a toothbrush full of masking fluid. The other two, I stamped with white acrylic snowflakes. 

The one to the left, with the splattered masking fluid is the more spontaneous of the three.  Trees painted quickly, passionately, then, wetting the background around the still-wet trees and dropping in all the colors used to make the greens and cleaning my brush in the foreground snow.  I love this little painting.  It's as exuberant as I felt when I painted it! 



This second one, had a bit more acrylic snowflake than I had wanted but I still like it.  I sprinkled it with a mix of kosher and fine sea salt to get the blooms in the sky.  I like the way I don't know what I've got until I get it.  It's great fun to see what will happen.  White acrylic or mask doesn't show up very well on white paper, so it's always a surprise when color is applied.  And the same with salt.  Kosher salt leaves big blossoms and sea salt makes tiny white sparkles, depending upon how wet the paint is when it's sprinkled.  It's all a crap-shoot!  What you see is not always what you get! 

This third one, a little more studied than the others, has hardly any snowflakes at all, and no salt.  I was just sort of cleaning the stamp on this page, so not much paint transferred, but there's still a little, just a whisper of a large snowflake in the upper right sky. It's simple, it came together quickly and easily. No effort. It has it's faults, but the little trees reach toward heaven like all evergreens.

When I am looking through magazines and books for inspiration I'm always drawn to the scenes with grand expanses of white snow, clear blue skies and deep, dark pines.  To me they embody the clean, purity of winter more-so than anything else. 

Winter is a time of wonder, time for the Earth and all her creatures to rest, to hibernate, to snuggle down, dream, ponder, renew.  There is nothing more cleansing to the soul than breathing the clean, frost-laden air of a winter's day. 

I hear folks say they don't like winter.  I used to be one of them. No more.  I cherish these days to contemplate, to imagine, to plan, to revive, to watch, to appreciate the difference. Spring, Summer and Fall run together seamlessly. I hardly notice when one changes to the other, but Winter, oh, Winter charges in and settles in and waits, and then, one day, just as suddenly, leaves. And we are refurbished. And we begin again. But the evergreens, the pines, the firs and cedars, the hemlocks and hollies, they remain, unchanged, eternal, the Sentinels of the Forest, quietly, with great dignity, bringing their message.

Carole

                                                                                                                                                                              

A Creative Mess is Better than Tidy Idleness!

Someone asked me why I changed the name of my blog. 
It's from a wooden plaque my mother kept hanging in her workroom.  It was her justification, I suppose, for being more involved with her artwork than her housework.  At one time or another, she did everything except paint pictures. 

As a young mother,
she always had some project in the works and it was commonplace to find her elbow-deep in wood shavings, fabric or clay. In later years, she began making and selling porcelain reproductions of antique dolls: Bye-los, Dream Babies, Armand Marseille little girl dolls, and many others, completely by hand. She poured porcelain slip, fired, painted, assembled, stuffed bodies, sewed clothes and even tatted lace for them. The only parts she didn't make were the wigs, the shoes and the eyes.
She did a little catering as well. My brothers and I helped make thousands of canapés and watched wedding cakes and hand-dipped chocolates grow out of the chaos that was our kitchen.  She was always busy creating something. 

As the years caught up with her and her thinking became

clouded, she turned back to the needlework she had learned as a girl, embroidery, knitting and crocheting. She crocheted quite a few lap robes, she called them, to cover one's legs while watching tv  and donated them to a nursing home.  After a while, she began losing her way and she would forget to increase, or neglect to make a corner, and the lap robes took on a very different shape. 
I came to see her one day and asked what she was making.  She held it up, looked at it and said "It started out to be a lap robe, but it looks more like a watermelon cover. Do you need a watermelon cover?" 

She was a witty, intelligent, creative woman who told me once

never to strive for perfection.  Of arts and crafts, she said
"It's a thing's imperfections that give it it's charm."  

She is why I consider myself a proud member of the "Not Too Crooked" School of Art. A creative mess is way more fun than floors you can eat from!

Lord, how I miss my mama!

Carole

ps. The painting above is a half sheet watercolor inspired by a photo I took of some fruit and wine on a shelf at a window.  It's not too crooked and not for sale.

Midwinter Blues (and Greens)

I always think of January as being 'way down in the winter' but in reality, we're only just a little way into winter since winter officially begins just before Christmas.  So we won't actually be  'way down in the winter until late February or early March. 

Around Christmas,

I always think about painting evergreens.  I think, like most of us, I tend to want to paint pines as triangles, like Christmas trees that have been carefully pruned and shaped to the perfect Christmas tree form.  It's stuck in our heads from Kindergarten, triangle trees with five-pointed stars, holly leaves with exactly 3 berries.  We have been trained.  And we remember our training.  And it is so, so difficult to make ourselves break out of that box.  This painting of evergreens and snow is one of my favorites.  I painted it several years ago after a week-long watercolor workshop with Sterling Edwards.  He made us think about how evergreens grow, how, if the top is broken off, the second branch will take over the top position and the tree will always maintain it's pointed shape.  Yes, they do exhibit a rather rough triangular shape, but ragged, uneven, with gaps between the branches, places where other trees have interfered with growth or deer have nibbled away the lower branches. Life has just happened.

This morning,

before life had a chance to intervene, I opened a little box of Williamsburg iridescent oil paints that were given to me at the Art Box.  Delicate shades of Iridescent Blue, Iridescent Gold and Iridescent Pearl and with a touch of Winsor viridian and cobalt blue and a bit of Indian red, this ragged little tree sort of grew.  It's just a little 3 x 4 canvas, and  I used too much medium and a tiny flat sable brush. But it was fun. And it is art.  And I have started my day on an encouraging note.  I think it's important to begin each day with something meaningful, be it a prayer, an almost perfect omelet, or a tiny painting of a snow-tipped evergreen.

Carole

Derailed!

A week at the beach is supposed to recharge and renew and sort of re- everything.  I usually spend days on the sand with a small block of watercolor paper and a tiny travel paint box and make "Beach Squiggles."  This year that just didn't happen.  So much for making art everyday.  About the most artistic thing I did this trip was to layer yogurt, blueberries, honey and bran buds into a compote and eat it for breakfast.  Talk about lazy!  Most times when we get home, I need 2 days to rest up from the vacation.  This year was different.  I needed to get home and get back to work.  Just too much of doing nothing. Not that I was bored. I just couldn't make myself paint. Oh, I tried. Just couldn't make it work.

We did go a museum and look at a lot of Asian art, and way more Baroque art than I ever thought I would see. We saw lots of different architecture, pastel colored tropical houses with tile roofs, a gazillion boats and  a squirrel chasing a man around a walking path.  Hubs and I went to Tampa where he lived as a very young man and were able to locate the place he lived so many years ago. Nostalgic. We shopped.(And returned)  We slept.(In the afternoon)  We played cards. (I think he let me win) We ate. (Too much) We decided after 5 days we didn't want anymore seafood and went out for pizza.  We laughed that they knew what a red-eye was but you couldn't find a Guinness. 

Sometimes, a time away makes you realize what is holding you back from something you want and how to fix it.  I realized that my new studio arrangement has no good light and that may be the reason I'm having such a hard time getting motivated to paint.  I think I've figured out a solution.  Now all I need to do is unpack, do laundry, make yogurt, change the sheets, reassure my cats that I'm not gonna abandon them again, and try to think of something for dinner.  My daily painting commitment has definitely been temporarily derailed. However, I'll get it back on track. Just as soon as I finish my nap.

Carole

Salt and Snowflakes

I said daily painting was a monumental task and it's only taken one day to prove myself right!  Some days it's almost impossible to find an hour to devote to art.  Some days it takes more time to center myself and decide on a subject than to actually work.  Some days I'm just too busy. Some days I'm just too lazy.

Some days the things I want to try are more than a one-step process.  Yesterday, I decided to experiment with salt and a rubber stamp dipped in acrylic paint.  I found a large rubber stamp with lots of sizes of snowflakes.   At first, I tried painting the acrylic onto the snowflakes with a brush, then stamping them on 1/16th sheet of 140 lb paper.  paper. The picture top left is that one.  I didn't really like the effect, thought the snowflakes were too heavy. Not really crazy about the colors, either, but that is neither here nor there.  I can work out a color scheme I like later.  The one in the center is a quarter sheet and here I put titanium white acrylic into a dish, added a little water and dipped the stamp. I like the more delicate appearance of the snowflakes, but there are just too many of them. This is a quarter sheet of the same paper. 


The right pic, I love the colors.  Here, I like the salt effect but didn't use  enough acrylic.  You can barely see the suggestion of a snowflake in the center right below where the green and blue meet.  I do like this one best. 

These are more time consuming than what I usually like to do.  First the acrylic needs to be stamped and allowed to dry.  Then the paper needs to be wet thoroughly and pigment dropped in, the paper manipulated to allow the colors to blend, then a mixture of fine sea salt and kosher salt sprinkled on, then allowed to dry.  There is a technique I've read about where you make a 50/50 mix of water and Epsom salts and wash the painting with it after it dries.  I'm anxious to try that. That will make this a 3 day project rather than 2 days.

At any rate, it's been a fun project and a learning experience. One day,  the quarter sheet will be cut into 4 pieces and all of them attached to prefolded cardstock and you may receive one next Christmas.  Waste not want not.

Carole