Frustration Weekend

This  has been a weekend of arrrrrgh in the studio.   I had started with high hopes, since my cone-flower watercolor attempt had actually inspired me to put down my charcoal and paint.

And I did paint, but the result, though accurate in terms of light and shadow and  was well drawn ended up being , in my estimation, stiff and dead.  I tried another work which was adobe structures against a turquoise sea at sunset and felt so confined, rigid and therefore frustrated that I stomped off to do the dishes that had collected over the afternoon.  At least I knew I could successfully complete that.

One of  my books said that cold press was the only way to go in watercolor.  Maybe that is the problem.  I would like to blame the paper instead of myself.  So we will see. They say the moment one gets excessively critical of what he is doing he gives up.  Hmmmmm.   Well, maybe things will look better tomorrow.

Inks and Hope

Yesterday was a search for new pens and proper ink.  The one think that has discouraged me in the past was that my artwork would actually turn green over time, like a cheap ring, destroying what I had done.  So even though I liked the medium, I dropped it. This time, however, armed with the Internet and my smart phone, I went forth into my community.

Now we are talking small town here (well, maybe medium town).  There are two craft stores and a host of office supply places.  I had done some research and had come up with several names of pens I thought might work: Koh-I-Noor, Rapidograph and (of course!) Prismacolor.  My first stop was at Staples.  For a one aisle arts department, they actually had some nice drawing/drafting pens, but when I checked online, I couldn' t find anything on these particular pens (Staedtler) other than to note that they were not the top pens this manufacturer made.  I made note of them and moved to Hobby Lobby, a few doors down.

There I hit the jackpot.  They had two packs of Prismacolor's premier line which I had read very good reviews on, and so, with reservations (after all, who advertises their ink turns green over time?) I bought them.  It occurred to me also that the greening may have been due to the paper.  It was acid free, but was not what I would call "top of the line".   At any rate, so warned and so armed I took my prize home.

In the evening, I got out the pens.  They were smooth, responsive and easy to use.  I sketched a sparrow with results that heartened me after several months of setbacks and failures.  Maybe I could do this, just in a different way and using a different set of tools.

As Winston Churchill is quoted as saying: "Never, never, never give up!"

Letting Art Speak for Itself

This has been a bit of a frustrating and frustrated time as an artist, and I find myself spending more time at the piano and guitar practicing than in my studio.Concrete encouragement has been a bit thin on the ground, but I find myself back to it this week, although a bit more subdued for now, and ready to bloom where I am planted.  It is a great fault of mine, I think, to overreach with any project, whether it be learning a piece of music or crafting a story or painting a picture .  It can lead to interesting situations, but I think that is about all it lead to; whether something good is actually accomplished is a totally other thing.

Step in, yesterday, in the midst of failed projects, an old book about pen, ink and watercolor.  It reminded me of several things I had forgotten:  that small things can be beautiful and speak of G-d's beauty much better than my own high flown symbolism;  that I love the medium of ink (except for the discoloration--I must get better pens!), and that I need to look at the good I can do here and now, and not worry too much about where it is going.  It is like setting one's self adrift on a boat not knowing where, exactly one will end up and not caring either.

So, beginning again, duly humbled and well aware I have encountered another of my seemingly endless blind spots, I have to wonder how much good I could have done if I'd just looked around and not listened to the voice in my head, telling me I needed a label of what I "do". (In my defense, it IS usually a great icebreaker in social situations and I have used it myself.)  So many pitfalls and so little time.

Off to find some pens with GOOD ink!

Sabbath Blues and Grays

After seeing my husband off to work this morning, I slowly got myself together to get out to the lake.  The sun had been coming  in and out behind the cloud banks; the green in the patches of light was brilliant from the several inches of rain last week.  But I had to go out to see if there were any sailboats on the lake.

I was trying a new park this morning and drove up with my year's pass, only to discover at the gate that my pass was for day use and this was a campground. As I looked in around the gatehouse, I saw it was a very full to overflowing campground, and, this being a weekend, probably not the best place to set up anyway.  I thanked the kind lady and turned around to go to my secondary location, only to find, it too was a camp ground.  By the time all that transpired, the light was gone, the clouds were gone and the morning was gone.

So, I am sitting in my living room wondering why on earth I didn' t get my stuff together last night, pack up the car and just go when he did this morning.  Live and learn they say, but I was also feeling the quiet peacefulness of the day, the slower and less driven rhythm.  After last week, maybe I needed the relaxation more than the painting.  And I did get some scouting done.  Now I know where NOT to go.

Plein Aire Weekend

There is rain threatening on Sunday.  I keep hearing the weatherman say a "massive storm" is headed in our direciton with all of the threats that come to a springtime in Texas.  I had thought to go out today, and indeed, the skyscape had many cool moments of eerie, majestic and awe-inspiring clouds billowing up in all directions.  it is amazing what G-d does with a little dust, water and sunlight.

But the clouds also sent me to housework (boo) and books (yes!). I had already doen a landscape on a cloudy day but was thirsting for a bit more strong light and shadow to make a more interesting landscape.

Or skyscape.  Texas drama is usually more in the air than on the ground/

On Reflecting on Interconnectedness

Before I begin my reflection on a homily I heard this morning, first let me say that I am one of those people whose religion was twisted hard by the past--not the distant past, but the past of my grandparents and my mother.  My grandparents were Jews born outside of Kiev but ending up in the United States by way of Lithuania and Canada;  my mother did not remain Jewish but converted to Christianity as a young adult.  I was raised Christian, but, oddly with Jewish overtones.

This dichotomy, this pull in two directions has been with me all of my life. As a child, I could not understand why I and my family were different from my classmates; as an adult, I found my heritage impossible then irresistible to avoid.  Now, I am in an uneasy, if not unsteady truce between Judaism and Chrisitanity which mostly enriches my life, but sometime causes me trouble.

That was the case of the homily this morning.  I have, of late, been struggling with the idea of justice.  If there is anything the present age seems to hate it is stopping evil with anything more than persuasion;  I find this at best ineffectual and at worst, a sort of appeasement which leads evil to become bolder and good to uneasily look the other way as if giving silent assent.  This, of course, for any Jew has reverberations of the reaction of the common German to "discovering" that his Jewish neighbors were disappearing into the ovens of Auschwitz. So, some causes now, just as then, are okay to discuss if not yell at the top of one's lungs. It is not that there was no cause either then or now;  it was that  some issues are the cause du jour (voter ID as racism) and others are not spoken of by anyone (firebombing of a synagogue in New Jersery a month or so ago).

Enter today's homily.  It was based the verse "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Father talked at length of how we were all of the same family of man. We were descended from Adam.  Therefore, I am not only related to those in my family as we commonly think of it; no, I am related to those who are far away, who speak different languages and practice different cultures and religions.  Some of these people may irritate me  and some I irritate.  "And," Father said, warming to his theme," You are even related to Hitler and Stalin. We are all part of the hunan family."

Undoubtedly,but I was still aghast. I might in some far away siense be related to them as part of the human family, but to say let's kumbya with the dictators who so were so driven to eradicate every Jew on the planet was a step too far.  Exactly where does evil enter into that equation? Is there not evil for which men are truly culpable?  Why are we so  slow to say that anyone deserves hell?

Is it wrong to say evil is evil? Is it so bad to believe I am related to Hitler in that we both harken from Noah, but that is where the connectedness ceases?  Do the children of light have anything at all to do with the children of darkness?  I think not.

Update on Palette Experiment

Well, after a semi-disasterous week of one majorly bad thing after another (I wasn't the only one either--was it some infrasonar storm?  A full moon?), I finally got to try the idea I had read about on location.

The idea was that after the thumbnail is drawn and the values shaded in, that I should try to mix all my colors first then apply them to the canvas.

For the most part it gave me a successful piece which I think was closer to the real colors of nature than I had heretofore been able to do.  And it helped me to see the colors more clearly.  I had thought the small stream had a rosy tint in it from the cloudy sky, but my mind kept arguing with what I was seeing.  Rose?, my mind said, incredulously.  How can that be?  You know that rose is only found at dawn and dusk.  Nevertheless, I decided to go ahead and mix the color carefully and infuse some rose into my mix. And did you know, that water was rose and the sky, too!  That taught me to believe my eyes and not what my brain was telliing me was "impossible".

The problem with this way of doing things was that I was slow and by the time I had gotten the rosy water color all done, the light was changiung.  I decided not to let that bother me, though and went ahead as if the light hadn' t changed;  I figured it was close, even if not right on, and I can always check and correct before applying it. Plus, I wll get faster with practice.

Then I figured out was that my brushes, especially the small flats will need to be replaced.  Unfortunately.

Finally, I discovered that an underpainting can really give the picture a special glow.