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Sketchbook #046Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Snowflake Rosette

Here's a tiny oil sketch in the calendar series. I have this wonderful book I bought years ago called "Fabrics" by Caroline Lebeau with great close-up reference photos of beautiful fabrics, trim and tassels. This tiny snowflake rosette was one of a series of French passementerie which are small intricate button-like trim pieces added to drapes and upholstery.

At the time red and green were still very strong demands for holiday, something that is finally giving way a bit (yeah!). Here I was trying to take the red in to a more coral/salmon and grey color palette. A color way I still really like.

Sometimes it's nice to revisit these tiny things as they remind me of rich past ideas, or re-inspire me on new paths I've taken in the interim. The juxtapositions sometimes bring wonderful unexpected results that I wouldn't have come to otherwise.





Sketchbook #045Monday, December 05, 2011
No Other Way But My Own

Here is a notebook cover I painted awhile back to house notes from classes I've taken. It's on a scrapbook album I gessoed then covered the edges in black tape for protection.

The words came to me as I was painting, a reminder to me that we all have our own unique road that is just for us, and to listen closely to that singular voice inside.

Listen to your own voice today, embrace your specialness : )





Sketchbook #044Monday, November 28, 2011
Poetry and Talismans

I started this journal several years ago and have kept mostly calligraphic sorts of things inside. I really like the double sided front cover while the pages attach from either side too.

I love starting a new journal, it's such a fresh feeling filled with creative possibility. They always need a nice cover first. Making the cover is a ritual I love. It gets my head in a good place, a contemplative space. I become ready to reveal something to myself from a more organic part of myself that only comes through making imagery.

For this cover I bored holes in the front and attached brass beads with black waxed linen thread, it was bear. I ran tiny black beads on a wire down the front and attached an antique tiny bell which attached to the grommet and tag with the passion flower photograph. It was all an experiment, but I really like how it turned out. I think I like the gold paint over the black cover the best. I love when things look ethereal.

It's been pretty ethereal outside too all day, grey ghostly clouds and misty, ah I love a good moody day : )

Happy Monday.





Sketchbook #043Monday, November 21, 2011
Purple Plum

Here's a luscious little sketch I did for a calender idea on food. I still love this one, it inspires me whenever I look at it and makes me want to paint!

Have a happy week everyone and safe travels to your holiday destinations : )





Sketchbook #042Monday, November 14, 2011
High School Painting

I decided to post a section of an unfinished painting I did when I was in high school. The entire painting is in acrylic on a 36" square canvas.

At the time I was enamored with Norman Rockwell and his series of collections of different peoples' faces. Meanwhile the art I saw in my mother's women's magazines were 70's collage-style painted illustrations, so I decided to combine the two. I could never make the whole composition work and eventually gave up on it as a finished project. But I still really like the little girl's face. I think it's the reason I hung on to this for so long.

I worked from a photograph of her I'd found in TV guide or something. The other woman to the left in the hat is from a Vermeer print I'd gotten at the National Gallery, and the woman at the bottom is from an illustration in a women's magazine. It was at a point when I was figuring out how to paint, how to use acrylics, which were pretty basic back then, how to work with composition, and the difference between rendering a photograph and coming up with your own idea by copying both fine art and illustration. I was trying it all and all in one painting : )

As I look at it now I see myself at 16 or 17 trying to understand art, while being proud of what I could at least render back then. It was and still is I think a delicate dance between growing and trying new things, while also having enough small successes to boost you forward so you can start the cycle all over again.





Sketchbook #041Monday, November 07, 2011
Amber Beads

Here is another tiny oil sketch for a calendar series. These are some amber/green synthetic beads I found at an antique mall several years ago. I have them hanging in my studio with an old decorative cross.

They're strung with red thick string and have a red tassel. There's just something magical about them that I've always loved. I thought I'd eventually take them apart and use them in some jewelry, but so far I like them better hanging around all together in the studio.

The sketch shows them on several old and aged pieces of rug or tapestry along with some handwriting. I was going to enjoy painting the background probably more than the beads themselves.





Sketchbook #040Monday, October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween!

Well the magical day is here when the veil is thinned between worlds, and tiny goblins weave through the streets collecting their treats.

It's also my sister Erika's birthday! Happy day sweetie pie : )

Happy Haunting everyone!





Sketchbook #039Monday, October 24, 2011
Candy Corn

It's that time of year. I was in the grocery store last night and one look down the candy aisle was nothing but orange, similar to the color carnage of the Barbie aisle in other stores, nothing but pink : )

Colors can have such loaded meanings and associations, sometimes I really have to try and erase those ideas to get to a good place when I'm working. I mean you can think candy corn and Barbie, but orange and pink can bring ideas of Morocca and East India too, which is a lot more exciting for me now. But I gotta say when I was 5, I would've been in an entirely different state of mind : )

Here's a tiny little oil sketch from the food calendar series.

Hope it brings good memories.





Sketchbook #038Monday, October 17, 2011
Reminder

I'm happy anywhere if I have a pencil and paper. I can easily get lost just drawing. I'd forgotten that. These pencil drawings of shells and foliage came from an old thick, almost bible-like moleskin with graph paper through out. I have diary entries and old tiny polaroids (I've heard they're starting to make them again!) stashed in there along with doilies, candy wrappers, ticket stubs from my favorite museum shows, and stickers. That's as sentimental as I get, it's more of an OCD record keeping, but it still grounds me in a weird way. Seeing this reminded me that I should begin carrying a journal/sketchbook with me again.

I used to journal quite a bit, writing a lot about my ideas for work, drawing cerebral things in pen and ink, while also just sketching the flotsam and jetsam of life. Keeping a journal has ebbed and flowed throughout my adult life. In the last several years I've done so, but only occasionally. Now it feels like I need to do it again with some regularity, there's something out there that needs discovered, or interestingly enough recovered again.

That's the great thing about journals, they root you, remind you where you've been, and can sometimes if you pay close attention, give clues to where you're going.





Sketchbook #037Monday, October 10, 2011
Dried Sedum and Rose Hips

Fall is really coming full on now, leaves are everywhere! Here is small oil sketch of a dried yellow flower, as I remember to be either goldenrod or a sedum of some kind, and some rose hips I'd cut from my old climbing rose I had on my fence back in Saint Louis.

I just love the warm fall colors, this greeny-brown with the golds and reds, they're so nurturing, especially it seems, at this time of year.

Have a great week everyone.