Tag Archives: Drawing

Jun9

Pearl

Posted on June 9, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

“Pearl” 24 x 30 inches. Acrylic on canvas.

“Pearl” began life with the ocean in the background and a house beneath her feet, holding hands with her mother and the painting was to have been called “Pearl’s Mother.” One afternoon I was staring at the unfinished canvas knowing it was all wrong, but couldn’t figure out what to do about it. The parts worked separately, but all together they didn’t say anything. So I took a palette knife and began painting over most of the painting with white paint. The palette knife was a new experience, and I really liked how you could build layers of colors one on top of another! I painted “Pearl” fairly quickly with the palette knife then went back and added details and painted over with the palette knife again until I liked what was happening. The Great Blue Heron in the right upper corner I had already painted in and I left it, and the redwood trees beneath it.

She is holding a eucalyptus branch. I was thinking of the central coast of California, with the redwoods, the eucalyptus trees and the great blue herons, that are glimpsed only occasionally, these days. I used to see them flying very high like great long-legged angels moving across the blue skies.

I preferred Pearl without any hair. I did paint some in, but it took away from the intensity of her gaze and I covered it up. It summarizes her essence more this way. Her very human longing for some unspoken thing hidden behind her eyes. I’m not sure if Pearl is yet a child, or if she rests carefully on that cusp between woman and child.

May30

Journeys,Unknown

Posted on May 30, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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I have finally finished my little handmade recycled book. I’ve called it “Journeys, Unknown.” I used a cardboard box for most of the structure of this book. I cut the box into smaller pieces and soaked those pieces in water and removed the brown paper layers and smoothed them out to dry. Once dry, they were very nice flat heavy weight pieces of paper. I saved them in a drawer for about a year, and then had an idea of how to use them! I’ve used scraps of paper left over from other projects, found objects, leaves, twigs, stones, fabric, and broken crockery.

This is the cover. I made it from a piece of cardboard I cut from a box. The little broken ceramic leaf was a small dish my daughter saved for me after one of her dogs swept it from a table and it broke. She knew, as she said, that I would find a use for it!

The back of the front cover. A mushroom print I made on an old book page a few years ago one hot summer when I lived in Bend. Another daughter and I went to the grocery and bought some large mushrooms and put them on pieces of paper, caps down, and left them for a few days. This was the resulting print! My computer is not processing the colors correctly, but you get the idea!

Page 1 – I shared this previously. A little carved rabbit, probably from some cuckoo clock I think.

Page 2.

Page 3 A. A leaf I saved from my garden several summer’s ago. I save them in a big book of Shakespeare. This one was so thin, I tore it a little when I stuck it down.

Page 3 B. A couple of poplar leaves from Shakespeare. Page 4. A Gelatin print I did using a fossil saved from Fogarty Creek beach in Oregon.

Page 5. My favorite place. The sea. “…the sea whispers a cradlesong”

Overlay leaf for page 6A. I bought these years ago at some dollar store. They were intended to us as a liner on plates for placing cheese upon. They don’t glue down very well, and they don’t take printing on – so I glued the edges into a folded piece of brown paper and will sew them through the brown paper when I bind the book.

Page 6 A. A skeleton leaf my daughter sent me when I lived in Bend. My daughters are always saving small things for me to use in my art. The leaf is so delicate its like a fragment of lace.

Pages 6 B Water over stones.

Page 7. Recycled pieces of fabric, buttons and paper. Darning is so beautiful to me in it’s utilitarian form , practical; but as art as well. “Darning our lives together with thread pilfered from our dreams…”

Page 8. Some scraps from leftover painted paper edges, torn into mountains, sky and foreground.

Page 9. Moths knocking against the screen on a summer night. “The moths have come calling, leaving their silver at the door.”

Page 10 and page 11. “And the moth-hour went from the fields…” w b yeats.

Page 12. Seed pods and birds traveling on their unknown journeys.

Another leaf overlay covers page 13.

Page 13 and page 14 A.

Page 14 B.

Page 14 C .

Page 15. A copy of an old sketch I did and printed onto a piece of bright green vellum.

Page 16. These small journeys we travel without knowing where they may lead us; these journeys that connect us to one another, and to the greater mystery of nature.

Apr16

Small Things of Wonder

Posted on April 16, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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Moths bumping against the screen on a summer night. Seeking the light from indoors. What does it look like to them? Is it a bright star they are mysteriously drawn to?

I’ve been working on another handmade book – a smaller project than the last one. Was thinking about the little moments in-between the spaces of our lives. The small transitory and easily forgotten things we see in a blink and file away to be remembered or forgotten, but none-the-less, recorded by our brains.

This book is made mostly of recycled materials. I used recycled paper from cardboard boxes that I soaked in water until I could strip the paper from the corrugated box sides. Its a really nice heavy brown paper, that takes a lot of water and rubbing and sewing into without buckling or tearing. I’ve had these small pieces saved in a box for the longest time – but I knew I would find a way to use them eventually!

Found objects , leaves, stones, twigs, old pieces of darning…whatever seems right at the moment. I’m sewing the pages together and binding it with cardboard backing. For the backgrounds I’m using mostly watercolors and oil pastels – my two favorite mediums. I’ve only completed a few pages which I’m sharing with you today. I drew the moths on some scrap papers leftover from the last project. I bought the bunny at a flea market – I think its from an old cuckoo clock. He has a nice little red bead for an eye.

The mountains were made from the paint over edges when I made paste papers. They were the papers laying on the work surface to protect the surface from the paint. I’d torn a piece from the edge and folded it down so it was the white torn side against the paste paper over brushing and I thought it looked like mountains. I glued it over the scraps of over brushing, and painted it in blue, purple, and gray. I think it does look like mountains in the background, and strata in the foreground. I outlined the torn edges a little so they would show up more.

I’ve still got more to do – more to color and layer over the brown base.

Apr4

Journal Play

Posted on April 4, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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Now that I’ve finished the artist’s book project – I’ve been cleaning up my studio room, and playing with paint and some fire in my daily art journal (which is rarely daily!) I have a sheet of heavy paper that has strings running through it, and after I finished this profile sketch I decided to cut some holes in a strip of the paper, but the holes were too uniform so I lit a candle and held the hole over the flame for a second to burn the edges – I think it was just what I wanted to happen. Before I did the sketch I had pasted down a bunch of leftover “aged” paper from the book project. I love the brown color. That little face upper left was a paint blob that I had to draw in.

This was the same background, but I painted indigo blue watercolor over it. I used the cutout circles from the strip I burned. I don’t know what kind of paper it is, but I’ve had it forever and now I wish I had more of it, but I’ve no idea what its called. If anyone knows, please let me know. Its a natural color, heavy wt, but soft, and there are vertical and horizontal threads running through it. It burns pretty quickly too!

These pages are 8.5 x 6 inches. Handmade watercolor paper, about 200 lb. Made in India. Its very bumpy so it isn’t very good for drawing, but its very nice for watercolor and gouache. Paint puddles and runs creating interesting patterns. I used oil pastel, pencil and some brown and some blue watercolor for the sketches.

Mar10

Messy Studio and Imaginary Flowers

Posted on March 10, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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New page for the artists book “The Orphan Train”

My studio is a big mess while I work on this project artist book, The Orphan Trains. I’m going to share what a big mess I make when creating – I think because it really does bother me that I can’t maintain some kind of order when I’m creating! I wonder if I had a separate studio that wasn’t an extra bedroom down the hall from my bedroom, would I be less constricted about mess making. I think I probably would!

My work table under seige. The heavy iron/steel thing sitting on the red plaid paper is something I found at an estate sale – it weighs about ten pounds and makes a perfect paper weight to smooth paper or hold until glue sets! I’ve no idea what it was originally intended for, but I use it all the time for weighting down glued pages.

A close up of the paper I’ve been aging for this project. I’ve squirted lemon juice on regular text weight copier paper and baked it in the oven til it reaches the desired aged-ness.

The Dorothy Parker book has nothing to do with this project!

Now for something more fun than messy work tables! Make believe flowers!

I am ready for spring! Dreaming of planting my summer pots and creating my garden, I started to doodle some imaginary flowers that are unlikely to be found in any botanists catalog, or garden wish book. Once I finish the artist book project – I’ll begin to seriously do some gardening!

A strange little kitty – not saying ‘hello’ either – maybe a naughty kitty. I had to redo her eyes with a piece of paper pasted over the old ones. They just looked too naughty! ( journal pages)

Feb19

New project

Posted on February 19, 2013 by 4 Rooms and the Moon

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Putting together a new project! A handmade artist’s book called “Placing Out in America.” I’m using collage, gelatin monoprint, paste paper, old photographs, gel image transfers, and found objects – oil pastels, acrylic, watercolor.

This is about the seventy-five year history of the largest migration of minor children in the history of the world, and its popularly known as the Orphan Trains. The history is astounding in our modern age of child protection laws, privacy, and legal adoption. Children were placed out by the Children’s Aid Society of New York City, and The Foundling Asylum later called the Foundling Hospital of the Sisters of Charity in New York. There was no legal adoption; anyone who wanted to take a child into their home was interviewed and the child was signed over for a period of a 90 day trial, after 90-days if there were no complaints, the child became their legal property. Most children were placed hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their New York City homes into the farm country of rural America.

I am having trouble with the gel image transfers coming away cleanly. I’ve used this technique before with good results, but this time I am not getting such good results – however, I’ve decided to use them as it seems to work okay with this project.

Many of the children were immigrants and had survived the trip to America only to have their parents unable to care for them once they arrived. Poverty, destitution and death left many of the children orphaned. The Children’s Aid Society rounded up children from the streets of New York City from 1853 through 1929 and placed them out to the rural farmlands in America by train.