Resolutions

Reading the discussion over at decor8 about taking action toward your goals has made me realize that I might have a little bit of knowledge that could be useful to other people.  Being in school until recently made it easy to help people out in, say, digital art classes when they were having some issue in Photoshop.  But the ol' WWW can spread that know-how around in a much more efficient way.  

I know that there are much better sewers, gardeners, artists, and tutorial writers out there, but what if I just add things in occasionally in a simple, project-based way?  I know that helps me out when I'm trying to learn something new.  I never remember how to do something unless I've needed to do it for a certain project.  You can tell me 84 times how to make a clipping mask in PS but until I've wanted that particular result, it doesn't mean anything to me.

Anyway, I think I would enjoy at least documenting my projects in a more organized, start-to-finish way for my own benefit, so I'll try it and see how it goes.

Moss and lichens

I've been admiring how mossy, fern-y, and lichen-y (those are totally real words) everything is on this side of the state.  The trees are all bare right now but they have enough mosses and things growing on them that they still look dressed up.  These mosses are growing on a massive old stump behind our house.  It has a small tree growing out the top, some sort of shrub, ferns, and all these tiny things growing on it.  Back where it's dry, a stump mostly just looks like a stump, not a miniature forest.

Ok, that's enough pixels for right now.

I was on a digital binge for the last several days.  I kept getting ideas that I wanted to try..."I'll scan this thing here, then I can make that" and so forth.  Something about working at my computer too much makes me want to pull out some brushes and paint and use my hands, so I think this is the end of the digital and drawn pieces for the moment.

Dotted lines (or are these dashed lines?) are so interesting.  They can instruct (cut here) or show the hidden part of something in a diagram.  Or they show where to draw the top of the lowercase letters when you're learning how to write.  And they remind me of hand sewing, too.  What more can you want from a line?

Roses again

Another new piece...drawn, scanned, colored, collaged, etc.  

I tend to start drawing in my sketchbook without thinking too much about why I'm drawn to a particular subject or image.  Once I'm going back through my recent sketches for something to work from, I give a little more thought to what it is that caught my attention.  For example, the subject of gardening in general is really interesting to me right now--planting and transplanting, pruning away something to make a stronger plant or a better flower.  I feel like moving away from where I grew up is making all these things resonate for me at the moment.

As far as why I want to draw and work with roses the past few weeks, I think that's more specifically about leaving my roses in the old garden.  I'll start a new rose garden here and I'm starting to look for places I can buy the roses I planted before.  It's still sad to leave them there, of course.

Side note:  I prefer to grow old-fashioned or old-fashioned looking roses.  However, I think the modern shaped roses read better as line drawings, as here.

Goodbye to the garden

When we went back to the old house this weekend to pick up the last of our stuff, this is what it looked like outside.  I think it might make it easier to say goodbye to a garden when it's under a foot of solid ice than if it were in mid-June bloom.  This winter has been completely horrible--you can see a where some of the tree branches broke off from all the snow.

I realized after writing about how much I like white translucent frosted surfaces to draw and paint on that the new light I installed above the dining table is, well, you know.  I wired this myself and I think my first electrical project turned out quite well.

Working away

The studio is inching ever closer to being properly usable.  Our movers helpfully left our vacuum at the old house, so after we go back and get the last of our stuff this weekend I can vacuum all the dust and pencil shavings out of my flat file and get it organized.  If the studio ever strikes me as looking good enough to take a picture of, I will, but for now it's still kind of a travesty.

I did, however, actually sit in my studio at the table and paint last night.  Not at the dining room table, or on my lap somewhere else, but really and truly in the studio.  I'm not even sure how long I was there--at least a few hours--but it felt like no time at all.  When we chose this house, I was hoping the studio would be a place I would feel productive.  So far, even with a bit of clutter still seeking a permanent home, it does.  My old studio room was so small as to be almost unusable once I had all my supplies in it.  I would end up doing prep work in there and then bring my actual work out to the kitchen table.  It's a lot easier to get distracted out in the main part of the house.

Now I have a room with everything in it, including my easel and table set up plus the flat file (which takes up a fair amount of real estate on the floor) and I can still walk around everything.  I feel pretty spoiled.

Progress report; or, works in progress

I'm trying to remember to scan more of my drawings before I paint over them.  Then I have more options to do something else later, without having to redraw an image.

Still playing with Yupo, which if you don't know is a "paper" made of plastic.  I can't get enough of frosted translucent surfaces...I went from colored pencil on frosted Mylar to Yupo.  These two drawings are on a slightly heavier weight Yupo than the previous images.  It seems to grab more of the graphite and requires an even lighter touch to get a nice variation in the line quality.  I'm still working out how to approach it.  I would have thought that, being plastic, the surfaces of the two different weights would be identical, but that the lighter weight would be more transparent.  But it seems like the actual surfaces feel a little different, too.  

I suppose it doesn't matter too much.  I treat pretty much every piece as an experiment anyway.