And one thing leads to another…

So one day I’m checking a favorite blog called Deep Space Sparkle. I love seeing her colorful ideas for lesson plans to teach art to children. You might think that since I myself teach art to children, that I would love this site for ideas for my own students. But actually, I love the ideas for myself! It’s fun to play, to jog yourself out of any artistic ruts you might be in, and this site gives plenty of ways to do that!

So the featured artist was someone I had never heard of…Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian artist whose work is boldly colorful, abstract, and full of patterns. Something about the raucous color, the shapes and patterns, plus the way Patty (the blog author/teacher) translated his work for children, sparked something for me to give it a go.

All of this percolated for a couple of days, as I thought of how I might like to translate some of it for myself…bold colors could be acrylics or oil pastels, wanted to outline in black (not necessarily a Hundertwasser trait), and definitely wanted to scratch through, like Patty had her kids do…but thought it would be fun to try the scratching through oil pastels, much like we did when we were kids, only with crayons.

So…I swooshed around some watercolor in my sketchbook and let it dry. Then I used the vibrant cray-pas oil pastels on top. The final flourish was to scratch through the pastel. I ended up having tons of fun, the images spilling over so fast, I had three of them in the first go! I’ll share more later!

Blooming Through

On the first day of sitting in My Field and drawing, I glanced down to see one lone morning glory amidst a rather invasive ground cover.  Poised to bloom, it struck me that I am much like that morning glory.  So much of life feels like the dark green invasive ground cover, ever marching on in its relentless to-dos. Busyness can feel like one is struggling to keep one’s head above the fray to breathe, to bloom, to be.  I don’t want to merely survive…I want to bloom!

And it struck me too, that this doing of art, this pushing aside the to-do list of never ending laundry, meal prep, dishes, shuttling, planning, doing, this purposing to sit down and draw is MUCH like pushing aside the thick ground cover, stretching up and breathing, allowing the air to fill, expand, and grow one’s mind and heart in creativity.  When I draw or paint, it feels like blooming.

I’m hoping you have a weekend of blooming through the ground cover!

More Piano Therapy

Though life has been on a crazy busy tilt for some time now, I’m finding I have more drawings than I can keep up with on this blog.  A wonderful problem to have.  So we will take a break from our Field Walk and have a little Piano Therapy today, which I describe here.

This is one of those “just line” drawings that satisfies me WITHOUT the color.  Though I will probably put color to it one day, I like having a black and white version to remember.  My daughter’s piano teacher has a gorgeous outdoor room at the  back of her house.  It is really an oasis for a weary soul, a place to have a respite from the running, a cup o’ tea for the thirsty (or caffeine for the tired, in my case:).

There are two areas to this outdoor room: one is around an outdoor fireplace, with sturdy whicker furniture, rocking chairs, etc. as seen in the black and white drawing. This area here, has a large outdoor table with an umbrella and terrificly comfortable chairs to sit in, sip your tea and enjoy the backyard views.  The first image is of a little table in-between these two areas, perfect for reading a magazine or just gazing into the quiet backyard while piano tunes waft through the air.

A Corner of My Field

I walk up the rise from my house, and this is the first bit of the field you see as you exit our neighborhood.  It’s alive with all kinds of wild weeds and flowers…my absolute favorite kinds! Somehow, tangles of goldenrod and other wild growth really speak to me.  I made a little video (very very UN professional!) so you could hear my field.  You just gotta be here feeling the weather of the day, the sounds of the field to really get a sense of why I’m so in love with this spot. Perhaps my little video will give you a feel for it. There’s always the hope that drawing on-site will actually get these sights and sounds into the drawing.  I’m not sure ’bout that, but I do hope you enjoy!

Click here to view hear it!

A Get-Away

“My Field”, which I’m calling the lovely patch of land at the top of my neighborhood, is probably the best get-away a girl could have. Considering the realities of my life, these are the perks:

*It doesn’t cost ANYTHING!

*I get to stay close to home, close to Maddie at school.

*No packing, planning for the family while I’m gone.

*Plenty of quiet and solitude, except for the birds, crickets, occasional cars going by.

*Lots of fresh air and beautiful views.

*Option to have a mini half-hour get-away or an extended couple-hours stay is flexible and open-ended.

This particular day, the roof was a smidge leaky, but it didn’t dampen the fun! This view is down Silver Dapple Lane with Mr. Whickers farm on the left.  You only see his mailbox though.

More to come in the days to come!

My Field…a beginning

Longing to draw the field at the top of my neighborhood.  Determined to draw it from every angle possible.  Just simple line & wash drawings.  It’s not really “my” field.  It belongs to Mr. Whicker, whose farm sits on the other side of the road from the little field which grows, morphs, and molts it’s wheat a few times a year. I love this field. It was a drizzly day, a couple of weeks ago, when I drew this.

Sitting in a chair, off the side of Silver Dapple Lane which runs down beside my field, doesn’t offer the same viewpoint as I have when standing.  I’m going to have to learn to stand when I draw.  Perhaps next time I will do just that…stand and draw on the same spot in the same direction as this, so you can see more of the field, not just the edges here. So you can see the road, Hastings Hill on the other side of the field, and then the further field and neighborhood beyond that.

Be on the lookout for more Field drawings…I want to show you my field, as if you were with me walking by it, standing next to it, breathing it in.

On a Gray Day

On my walk, this drizzly, murky day, I peered into the gray…there really are colors there! What colors? Just grayed-down versions of blue, green, and purple? No, there are also hints of gold and red too!

I saw in the hedgerow a shock of autumn colors…are they not lovely BECAUSE OF the gray surrounding them? Is life like this too?

Do the vibrant colors bleed into the gray,  making even the murkiness sparkle?

Or is it the other way ’round…does the gray invade and dampen the brilliant color?

A case could be made for both…depending on the day.

On My Stoop

There are times when I take a step back from my drawings, and try to look at them with fresh eyes.  I wonder, what am I drawn to in these drawings?

I seem to be drawing lots and lots of tangly lines these days. The more lines the better.  The more they intersect and criss-cross, the more I can lean into the drawing and hang with it a while.

Do drawings show something of our lives at the time of making them? When there are lots of chaotic lines, does this show the craziness of my everyday life?  When the drawings are a bit wonky or off-kilter, does this reveal the slightly out-of-balance feel of each day crashing in?  Drawings, I believe, both reveal the state of things, AND are a means to make sense of things:  to wrestle the tangly lines into something that makes a bit of sense, and to celebrate the wonky aspects by leaving them be and flourishing them with color.

Here are a couple of quotes I like:

Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality. (Edgar Degas)

Drawing is intimate and reveals exactly where we are, and in a culture that isn’t comfortable with that, it frightens many. You just cannot cheat when you draw. (Sandy Davison)

Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly discover the world. (Frederick Franck)

Draw everywhere and all the time. An artist is a sketchbook with a person attached. (Irwin Greenberg)

Dress in the Mess

The present state of my youngest’s room is, shall we say…a DISASTER! I don’t know how she can find anything! It is truly a picture out of one of my favorite children’s books from when I was a girl…titled The Big Tidy-Up.  Click here for a previous post about this book!