Second Cover- Gouache and Ink

The second cover completed but shown only in stages. Can’t reveal the finished piece until it’s published in September.

I used gouache for it’s richness of color, washiness similar to water color, and it’s compatibility for canvas board and drying quickly. It had to be finished and photo ready- can’t use oils.

Theme: Sunset Jazz in Frederiksted

. Once a month, the best local jazz performers hold an informal concert as the sun sets on the western end of the island. We bring chairs, blankets, Off, ( what did you think? ), and open ears. Free, and delightful.

I did small studies in a notebook to establish a color story and rescue my watercolor technique from the morgue. The beauty of gouache is that you can water it down or lay it on.

Did a larger sketch to place the key figures and work out details.

Then I hit the canvas board with pen and ink, ready to place the actual colors on the finished piece.

So now you’ve got hair and make-up but you can’t see the dress until the not fat lady at the magazine says ” I’m Singing “.

It’s otherwise  summer torpor,

new puppyitis,

and watching geckos eating mangos.

One more secret confession: I’ve sold a painting that also can’t be revealed as it’s a surprise from the person who bought it to someone who reads this blog.

More fodder for a September post.

Beating an Inanimate Horse

It wasn’t dead until I got my hands and brush on it. Then I really killed it.

The sienna wash sketch seemed a good start. Trying to minimize painting an outline but a horse’s anatomy isn’t familiar to me. Thought I needed some lines for proportion.

And then! And then, with a few deftly and consistently  wrong swabs of a brush, I kept at it until I ruined it.

The horse is full speed ahead, the young man, bareback, barefoot, confident, slender stick in his teeth.

This is the only section that had redemption.

If that.

What started out a steed, ended up looking like the equine version of Carol Channing. Like a carousel horse. With garish make-up and curly mane.

When you start dabbing and poking at it, it’s time to scrape.

Especially after looking at Frank Gardners‘ new painting of a horse called Ben. One brush stroke at a time you can see how he sees color. And the shift from sun to shade. Just go look at this painting and double click to see it close. It is so beautiful.

I don’t have it this week. This might be why.

Our beautiful girl Beamer 1/99-7/09. She was just as she looks. My first dog. And never went anywhere without her football purse. A very sad day.

Or maybe THIS is the reason:

Cute? Yes. Claws like Freddie Kreuger? Times velocity? Plus a lower lip ( not mine ), a moving vehicle ( my husband ), all together equals a trip to the emergency room.

Cliff note version: ( so aptly named if you saw the hill I’m on ): walking above cute dog on our hilly road. Daddy passes in pick up truck, stops, and dog, all 58 pounds of him tried to leap like a Chihuahua through the open window and instead makes contact with Kellys’ lower lip. I see spurts of blood, I hear expletives. I know it can’t be good. He drove with one hand, holding his lip together with the other. I ran home with the dog.

With only two people ahead of us, we thought we’d be a quick in and out. That turned into almost 4 hours.

By 10:30 PM we were back home, 8 stitches later. A double cocktail week- both stirred AND shaken.

Decided to read about art instead- another Gardner- Isabella Stewart Gardner and the world’s largest and most mysterious  art theft.  The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser.

Still, none of this really explains why I don’t have it this week. Does it? Anyone??

These Are a Few of My Fauvorite Things…

” Les Fauves “- The Wild Beasts. A group of modern artists of the early 20th Century. Those wild beasts played with strong color and painterly brush work.

I started this late in the day, outside during the workshop I took here a few weeks ago. The colors reminded me of the Fauvist movement.

I like the top two thirds of the one above this but haven’t found my bliss in the foreground. I’m going to walk away and move on to something new.

Like identifying these vegetables?/gourds?/cucumbers?/ that we carried at the VI Farmers Coop this past weekend.

Since no one was able to really identify it by spelling, it shall forever be known to me as the phonetic vegetable ” Kor-riley”. That’s the best I could extrude from a few local farmers who might have even pronounced it three different ways.

Bitter melon is what it’s known as in Chinese cooking. They sure  were the oddities of the market and despite their curious appearance, no one wanted to buy any. Even the vegetable kindgom has wild beasts, it seems.

Now it looks like we’ll have to monitor the statues too, as this fellow will barely pass the newly enacted Modesty for Statues Statute:

Wild Beasts are everywhere, so keep moving and ducking and painting.

A New Painting using a Limited Palette

Solo 8X10 oil on linen panel

Limited palette consisting of : Yellow Ochre, Cad Red Lt., Phtalo Blue, Titanium White and Mars Black ( didn’t have Ivory Black but living on an island, you learn to substitute ). Minimizing colors is good practice to force yourself to see in a simple way, warm/cool, light/dark. I’m not fond of using black and perhaps Ivory would have been softer than Mars. This was a slight variation of the Zorn Palette which you can read more about on another blog I found here and see what Anders Zorn produced with a minimal use of color here at their website.

What was also limited was the amount of time I gave myself to finish this piece. I toned the canvas first in a drippy wash and went right to work with placing darks and mass- no drawing. Drawing with charcoal first is something I’m used to doing to get the figure in proportion. It also encourages the undesired characteristic of painting by ” filling in the lines ” rather than seeing shapes in relation to each other.

I’m taking another workshop next week, here on St. Croix, and wanted to loosen up before the class begins. I’m pleased with what looks like essence and gesture. Not including the wonky bend in the neck of the guitar. I promised myself that I wasn’t ” going in ” to re-do or do-over or fix it a little. This is it.

I also promised I would wash the cat by hand next time……

Early Holiday Present is Making A Mark

Making A Mark- authored by Katherine Tyrrell. Her stamp appears on many blogrolls that I scour and is often accompanied by high words of praise for her dedication to her art and the business of marketing art. She’s thorough, extremely knowledgeable and ( so unfair ) very talented. Generous with her readers too. You should have her bookmarked if you don’t already.

I’m a little late in responding to  this wonderful recognition on her blog which she posted last week ( See HERE ).

I was nominated twice for her year end “Best of ” Contest. She called for art bloggers to send in nominations for ” The Best Female Portraitist “, and best all around Portfolio.

Sue Smith of Ancient Artist ( in my blogroll at right ) nominated this one of mine for Portfolio:

From this previous post.

August Sun

Look into Sue’s blog for great motivational musings on keeping all the facets of an artists’ life on good speaking terms with each other. She’s not ancient at all. She’s open eyed wise.

The second surprise for me was a nomination by Paulette ( also in my roll ) of Becoming a Renaissance Woman.

Paulette’s use of colored pencil is wonderful. It was a search for roosters on the web that brought her to my blog where she found:

From this previous post and the goose bump story that was its’ narrative.

Thanks Sue, Paulette and Katherine. Really, the mention was  present  enough. The ribbons and bells of the outcome are secondary. What carries heft here is the exposure to fellow artists, and the daily gifts of shared information, support and the variety of creative expression that makes this format  as vital as it is to all of us.

Maybe another post before the new year, maybe just time enough to eat too much cake.

Happy Holidays.

Admitting to Being Power-less!

Omar, the other “O ” man in the news. This one, we didn’t need- the other one we surely do.

This storm turned into a Category 3 hurricane overnight, leaving most of the island without power for a week or more, 40 boats sunken in the harbor, huge mahongany trees fallen over like cardboard cut-outs, over 100 power poles down and a great tip of the humble homburg to Mother Nature.

Had it been a slight shift of 20 miles west, the eye would have been directly over us, but in spite of the above descriptions, he moved fast with a small center and left us after some hours in the middle of the night. It could have been so much worse.

We were prepared, had Coleman lanterns, water, radio, shutters,- spent the entire day before moving furniture and the crap of lifes’ collecting, into the house. Don’t we all have much more than we really use?

All this moving took place during the escalating winds in the afternoon before the Hurricane hit, and a deluge of rain that surged down our front steps like a waterfall- my futile attempts at push-brooming and re-directing the flow seemed pointless but there isn’t much you can do to feel like you have any say about what happens.

Then you wait. Light the lanterns, prepare food while you can see and still have electricity, zip up the shutters, give the skittish dog a vet prescribed Valium ( he trembles from rain and thunder- this would have been his undoing ), give the skittish wife a half a Xanax ( if not now, then when?!), stay in your clothes because you never know, and hope for the best.

The ugly part comes the next day with cleaning up what seems monumental. No structural damage to the house, just a lot of fallen trees- we had to chain saw our way up the steps to get to the cars. The winds whip the leaves off of everything and plaster them to the house and the vehicles like Colorforms.

We were a week without power and internet ( blessing? curse? ).

You learn- or perhaps re-learn to appreciate what you have and to see the collective of community – everyone gets or gives a hand, people give away fruit fallen from downed trees, and to its’ credit, our local agencies acted quickly and efficiently.

I witnessed another kind of symbiosis: our other dog, not the skittish one, was post-storm, snoozing on her pillow on the deck when I noticed THIS:

This lizard had been swiping and eating hovering mosquitos that were buzzing around the dog! It didn’t stop there-

I stood no less than 3 feet away while this lizard snapped skeeters off of the dogs’ fur with the cooperative and appreciative consent of the dog.

And still…..

The lizard was totally unfazed by my presence, stayed for a half hour and I believe by the time it left, my dog had purchased a Geico Insurance Policy!

Jailbreak Caterpillars

We’ve had rain. After not having any for almost 2 months. Things come alive again. Things you want to come alive and…well…. other things. From my studio, I noticed a frangiapani tree that was growing unevenly and at that moment had to go out with pruners and do some lopping.

I grabbed the biggest branch, poised the Felcos’ #9 made for lefties and with precision, executed my first cut. Off came this unexpected conglomeration of the most bizarre caterpillar cluster I’d ever seen here. In my hand. Like a bouquet. They’re actually velvety, ( yes, I had to pet one ).

Their coloring is a warning to experienced predators that they are not to be eaten without Rolaids or, worse, the handy phone number of the Poison Control Center. They average between 4-6 inches, lay zillions of eggs on the underside of the leaves, and strip the tree to its’ skeletal remains. The leaves grow back. The caterpillars turn into B-52 moths.

That’s what I call them because although there’s nothing stealth like about them, they’re huge, and have the same wing formation.

Thought it was a sign that I needn’t worry about the shape of the tree. Mother Nature was going to help me take care of that.

And I got to use my new camera ( notice that depth of field?) Or lack of.

This is the rain that poured 4 gorgeous inches of rain on us, spawned the spawning of Jailbreak Caterpillars ( really, officially: Frangianpani Worms ).

Before she became Miss Hurricane Fay, she was this…….

Downsizing

Finding the right home is getting more challenging every day.

Given the size her home should be, do you think the hermit crab looked at this, dejectedly but pragmatically and said, “hmmmm my Fannie, Mae fit into this if I give away a lot of the stuff I haven’t used in years and give up fries and bread with dinner?”

” Before the divorce, my house was the one on the left- now all I’ve got is this tiny studio and no damn privacy”!

These hermit crabs are fascinating to watch. Changing shells is a complex process- I’ve watched one take 45 minutes to pick one in the yard, eek it’s puny, undeveloped body out of it’s former protective covering, take another 45 minutes to use it’s antennae to scope out the insides of its’ perspective new home, and if it finds it unsatisfactory for whatever reason, take another 45 minutes to acclimate back to the previously discarded one.

They remind me of muscle bound guys in the gym- hugely developed upper bodies ( think monstrous biceps and lats ), and legs like chopsticks. Yeah, you know the guy- his name is probably Freddie Mac.

There’s Been a Mistake……

The perfect way to announce an uh-oh moment. And no pronoun usage to denote blame.

August 5, 1948

I didn’t make a mistake, HE didn’t make a mistake, THEY didn’t make a mistake, but somehow, a mistake has been made.

This handy phrase comes from Michele, friend for life and therapist fantastico. So no one made a mistake, and yet, this is the unavoidable reality of the birthday I was not so keen on having.

Until I encountered this shop window in NY last month and thought- ” who cares what number the age is, as long as the goddess of Props is working overtime for my amusement, that’s all that matters “. And wasn’t this the perfect prop?

Photo, of Miss 60 – thanks, Judy.

It’s an oddity, being the age that only your mother was. And now it’s you. Look at the disparity of company I’m in:

President George Bush is one of many baby boomers hitting the age of 60. Some other boomers turning 60 this year include Dolly Parton, Donald Trump, Diane Keaton, Suzanne Somers, Reggie Jackson, Cher and Jimmy Buffett.

What a contrast – Cher, Dolly, me and Dubya. Don’t you feel a sequel to Nine to Five in the cooker?

It happens- you pass a store window, look at your reflection and think- “Crap, I really DO need Botox!”

But the rest of me looks pretty good, right?

Wasn’t i just the wise cracking 7th grader, who, when asked in English class, ” Does anyone know who wrote A Farewell to Arms “?, there seemed only one correct answer to this budding artist?? ” Venus de Milo”, I said.

I didn’t get a note home for irascibility, just a partially stifled guffaw from Mr. Lichtenstein, the teacher. And an appreciation of art AND English.

A lesson early in life: humor is a passport.

Now it’s serious stuff, the daily concerns of metabolism, exercise, favorite jeans that feel, well, like there’s been a mistake…..

So AARP mail that would be fireplace fodder if I had one, who cares? I get discounts to movies, for groceries, art supplies, my gym and on occasion, still get a cheesy, smarmy, obviously pathetic comment from the guys in the car wash that want to know if I’m 35 cause ” You be lookin’ fine”.

No, silly boys, you’re way off.

I’m feeling so good now that it’s as though I’m….

Thirty five, are they nuts??*%)#

My gift to you is the very funny and short Birthday Video from Joe Cocker- yes, please sing along and don’t stop too soon- it gets better as it goes:

My Exit Strategy from NYC

You can’t just leave here. You have to have a plan and consider- did I do enough?

There’s never enough time to spend with family but I managed to see as much of my wonderful son as I could, without running out of things to say and appearing like a sentimental mother. Even though I am.

My dear friend Judy provided culture, comforts, laughs, a cat and a dog to fill the sucking void of leaving mine for all this time. She is across the street from another famous landmark- The Flatiron Building.

How’s this for the quintessential view of NY as I woke up in the morning?

Still one of the grandest icons of architecture and embedded in our collective psyche regardless of what version of King Kong you grew up with.

After all the falling cranes perched perilously on top of yet more glass skyscraper sliver buildings, it’s not hard to be pulled in by sights that remind you how long the history of this city is.

I came across this old Sephardic cemetery on West 21st Street, sandwiched in between two modern buildings. It’s the origin of the oldest , only Jewish congregation in NY, dating back to 1654 at another site. Read about it’s history here.

And another view-

This lovely gentleman of British inflection and endless energy, demonstrates how to peel carrots, potatoes, vegetables of all varieties, with a Swiss made ( meaning the opposite of made in China ) $5 peeler. The peeler is almost as enchanting as this fellow. We bought 2.

If you were a knitter, wouldn’t you want to buy your hand dyed yarn from this vendor?

Van Gogh could have survived nicely here, given the displays of flowers.

Maybe it’s this image that reminds me that no matter how many shops, restaurants, big deals, limos, fabulousness, grandiosity and excess you experience here, what it all comes down to is this:

My grandmother was always right.

I’ll be back home to St. Croix tonight, feeling wealthy in so many ways.