Sledding in the Woods with My Brother

Sledding in the Woods at the Mission with My Brother, colored pencil on paper

We had Flexible Flyers and no fear. We rode our sleds down very narrow trails through the forest that belonged to the Columban Fathers, their mission, in Bellevue, Nebraska. We sledded above ravines, between trees, running first across a great meadow, finally arriving at the destination; an open connection of backyards, a steep hill, a lip (retaining wall) a jump, other kids, short winter afternoons, not caring about uphill home, or wet feet, or a bloody nose, or anything.

Little Cow and Willow Tree

This year I had planned to set up a table at the Descanso Fall Arts and Crafts Fair. Thursday (because I teach Fridays and Saturdays)  I loaded all my paintings into the car along with the trappings of my neophyte traveling show. I needed a painting for the raffle so I decided to put up this one, mostly because just don't like it. I learned a lot from painting it, but it just doesn't work to me at all. In fact, I have to grit my teeth to look at it.

Other people do like it, and it is absolutely a scene of Descanso, one particular very special tree in Descanso Meadow.

As it happened, I stayed at school in San Ysidro this morning longer than I thought I would to help students who needed it. That was my first obligation. Then I had to run necessary errands on the way home, so by the time I got on the road really to Descanso, I decided not even to bother with the fair or setting up my stuff. I'd only be there an hour and a half and godnew the dogs had been in the house already five hours.

But, at the last minute I turned up to the Town Hall, parked right in front, got the painting out of my trunk and took it inside. Lisa, the woman running the kitchen and watching over the raffle items took it and started to set it up, "Do you have cards, Martha, I could put out with it in case someone's interested?"

Well, since I was running on impulse, I'd left my wallet -- with my cards in it -- in the trunk. I ran out to get them, not gone three minutes. I got back to learn someone wanted to buy the painting outright without waiting for the raffle! $75 donation to the Descanso Town Hall just like that and (to me the best part) someone loved that painting with its little cow so much she didn't want to take any chances.

The Artist in Her Studio

Rembrandt, The Artist in His Studio, 24.8 x 31.7, oil on canvas

Me, Favorite Painting So Far, 16 x 20, oil on Ampersand Gessobord

I was never a fan of Rembrandt (I am now) until I saw Simon Schama's The Power of Art series and the segment on Rembrandt began with this painting. I loved it. This young artist, Rembrandt in his 20s, stands back from the power of a white canvas that radiates light; inspiration. I loved the idea that the empty canvas was not the "enemy" as the "white page" was portrayed by Hemingway ("Oh, poor me, I'm an artist") but as something really great, a "light bringer."

When I went to Italy in 2004, I spent a couple of nights in Munich. The first night after I arrived (in the morning) I literally fell asleep without knowing it. I woke up some time later the window was open and light from an Indian restaurant down the street was coming through the window into my otherwise dark room. I decided I wanted to paint the scene since I haven't tried any figures at all since I started this painting thing, except for the figures on the thangka I did FIRST in 2009.

As I painted on the Ampersand Gessobord I experimented with colors. I used Alizarin crimson because it's so beautiful, but it's also intense and transparent. I also used Indian Yellow, same reasons, and Ultramarine Blue, same reasons. I used a new kind of black that Gamblin has come up with, Chromatic Black, and liked it. It doesn't act like "black" and take over everything; it just wanted to join in and help, and did beautifully. I used Gamblin's Zinc white, for the most part, but then Titanium white for highlights.

Then in the midst of painting this I realized WHAT I was painting (besides wanting to play with colors and remember that moment and paint a figure). When I left Munich I was heading to Verona where I was looking for anything I could to help me imagine the world of one of the characters of Martin of Gfenn. I was going to study Italian, follow Goethe and look at paintings. I would say now (and I realized as I worked on this painting) I was looking for inspiration in the outside world.

As I painted I realized I was painting the opposite of Rembrandt's painting. He is in a studio, looking at a canvas. There are no visible windows and the light comes from the canvas. He's active, attentive. In my painting, the artist is konked out, one could say passive, but I'm not sure sleep this intense is passive. That was hard-core, give-it-all-you-got sleeping. Realizing I was painting inspiration, which was coming through the window from the outside world, I decided to use gold leaf on  the wall above the subject's head. Ultimately, I didn't. I used Gamblin's gold paint which worked better and looked better to me than the cheezey coppery fake gold leaf I had ordered. I can use it for something else. The Gamblin gold is bronze particles but mixes beautifully with the Indian yellow for a more intense "gold" and it's shiny.

Descanso Falls in December

18 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

Cornflowers

Cornflowers in My Garden

This is a small (8 x 10) oil on a deep-cradle (1 1/2 inch) Ampersand gesso board so it doesn't need to be framed. It was incredibly fun to paint. These are some of the few flowers in my garden that the gophers are not interested in! I was a bit worried about the colors as I was painting, but a bee came into the shed as I was working and hovered over the flowers in the painting. Risky for her, but solid confirmation for me!

Also impressionism is a combination of painting wet into wet paint and not wearing ones glasses. Impatience, color, myopia.

Thus It Was

 Gamblin Artist's Oils blends all their leftover paint together into a conglomeration of colors they call "Torrit Gray." They offer a challenge to artists to paint only in that gray, black and white. I gave it a shot this week. This is an illustration of a poem by Dag Hammarskjöld's poem, "Thus It Was."

If I get up the guts to enter the contest, and if I were to win, it would be a substantial amount of art material. This is 8 x 10 on Ampersand gesso board. 



Thus It Was 

I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation.

Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.

The Three Graces

It's 8 x 10 water media in a silver frame and the colors are a LOT prettier in real life!

This is actually a painting of a little girl spinning around in the yard on a perfect summer day. I don't know where the idea came from but it was a persistent image so I sketched it some time ago and tried painting it today. I used Ampersand claybord but I am not sure I understand how this surface can be best used. I'll keep playing around with it.

Blood Oranges and Not

Indoor natural light with flash

Oranges, 5 x 7 Watercolor and Aquarelle Pencils on Ampersand Aquabord
Outdoor natural light

Try Again Another Day!

Interesting discovery today. I was attempting a watercolor of the mock crab blossoms currently in bloom. The painting did not work.

Last week I was attempting a watercolor of a planting of petunias. That didn't work.

These two paintings didn't work for the same reason. I realized today that when I photograph something I want to paint I use the lens to compose a painting, to fill a rectangle. When I paint from life, I paint exactly what I see in front of me because that's what painting from photo sketches has taught me to do. Today I was painting a life-size version of the mock crab blossoms in front of me; last week I was painting a life-size version of petunias. I made no effort to "compose" a painting used to having that work already accomplished when I start to paint -- THAT must be one of the challenges of "plein air" painting (god I find that term pretentious but I imagine it isn't). Fortunately, with the Ampersand aquabord, I can just wash failure right off the surface!

Watercolor!

"Ilia, do we paint light to dark or dark to light?" "Yes, that's the question."

Caran d'Ache Aquarelle Pencils on Ampersand Aquaboard, 5 x 7

Just tried using the Ampersand Aquaboard for the first time. It is a lovely surface but the painting didn't come out as well as I wished. I had forgotten the different rules of water colors and how forgiving and "squishy" oil is. Anyway, first shot on the Aquaboard and first time with a "real" watercolor in quite a while. I think I won't give up yet!

Pretty Copper Frame for the Berkeley Pit Mine!

On and Off

I haven't posted in a while and haven't painted in a while. After the little show/arts and crafts fair I wasn't in a mood, though I've done a couple small paintings they both suck and I am not sure why I did them; just to do them, I guess, which is perfectly fine.

From time to time I read something someone has to say about painting, and I realize that thinking about painting in that way doesn't make me want to paint. I find this kind of thinking, knowing, takes my joy away. Not words, color and a surface and a question and something to see.

Why? What is painting to me that makes it different? I don't know. Writing is a more disciplined combination of inspiration and craft; teaching is craft mixed with a tincture of inspiration. Dealing with the details of life, paying bills, registering the car, dealing with taxes is craft and nothing else. I think painting is, for me the OPPOSITE end of what appears to be a continuum. Painting is craft learned through joy just as dealing with everyday annoyances is joy (relief?) acquired through craft.

Entering a Contest!

Willow Leaves Sold

I decided to take the advice of Phebe Burnham, an artist (and great lady!) I met at the Descanso Arts and Crafts Fair and enter paintings in a juried contest in Balboa Park, in Spanish Village. I remember so many late Sunday afternoons after going to the zoo when I would wander through the little studios that make up Spanish Village. It's a "mini" neighborhood, a collection of smaller than normal houses built during WWII to fool the Japanese into thinking they were actually higher up in the air than they were. This would have made them easier targets for guys on the ground to hit. San Diego at that time must have been amazing looking, covered in camouflage nets with neighborhoods painted on them and a few of these scaled down neighborhoods to add to the illusion.




Yesterday I mailed in my entry fee. I plan to enter two paintings in the 1 foot show and one in the normal show because the frame on that painting disqualifies it from the one-foot show. We take our paintings down there on March 1; they are judged in "real life" not from an electronic submission, and the reception for the winners is March 4.

Berkeley Pit Mine - reframed in copper

Guatay Mountain in April