Laurelines

February in the studio: collecting, dreaming

I've been collecting images this month, fossil images relating to the places I've been to and hope to go to. This is an offshoot of my desire to make artwork with and of the numinous places of my life. I plan to paint and draw with found organic materials, as I've mentioned before. I won't be using fossils themselves, I hasten to say, but will incorporate that imagery somehow into my work, if and however it works out.

I've also been generating lots of images for illustration projects, one of which I finished, but can't share until it is published in April. But I CAN and do keep the leftover bits and pieces and recycle them in the pages of my  journal.

First, though, the drawing below. It's throwback to an old, old theme of mine from my early years of blogging, in which I collected interesting objects found on my walks, brought them home and drew and painted them. As usual, it was the textures and gestures of the objects that captured me.

I have birds! My most recent illustration assignment for Charleston Style & Design centered around singing birds in a cherry tree. I put my cd, A Field Guide to Eastern Bird Songs, on the laptop and played it as I drew. Perfect inspiration!

Here are some of the aforementioned illustration leftovers, pasted on a page in my journal:

Below, more leftovers, from two different projects, appearing together in the pages of my journal.  A happy pairing, I thought:

Below, a spread of the fossil studies I mentioned earlier:

There is something very compelling to me about connecting in my artwork, in any way I can, to the deep energy of the world we stand on. It's that old sweet song... channeling the ch'i.

In a few days, I'll be back in the San Francisco to see my daughter and my dearest friend Kathleen. I'll be sketching there, you can count on it. 

I'll tell you then about the place I've recently added to my plans this year, a country connected to Norway by virtue of the events of the Caledonian Orogeny. What's four million years' separation between friends? I'm beside myself with glee, thinking of the new place!

See you soon!

2014, cutting up and letting go

Two things I learned last year in the studio:

Thing One:

    I am in love with texture, shapes, color... the materiality of my stuff. Seeing brushmarks on board or paper makes me giddy with delight, euphoric. That, and the drive to respond to the chi, the energy that is in and through all things, are the reasons why I paint and draw. It comes to that.

Thing Two:

When I follow my inner prompts, I go places. I know now to stay tuned.... and move aside... when I hear the call of the (inner) wild.

So, having learned all of that:

I'm going to spend the rest of this month playing with paint on big sheets of paper... making all kinds of marks and textures and shapes on page after page.

This will loosen me up and make me happy. The sheets of paper will be used--- maybe, maybe not, who knows how--- as elements in future paintings and illustrations.

See! Look what happened just this morning as I was cleaning up my studio! While filing away old sheets of paper on which I tested colors last year, I really looked at their surfaces for the first time. And picked up my scissors and started cutting. Birds happened. (The big one is maybe 12" across.) A whale happened.

So, cutting up (which also means, in American English, to act in a silly and/or noisy way) and letting go.

Letting go of my need to control. Letting go of foregone conclusions. Is there any art more boring than the same stuff cranked out year after year, where the artist knows exactly what the piece is going to be at the outset? Ugh. 

Of course, I haven't abandoned all need for structure. I'm just minimizing it in my art life.

With another painting show slated for next fall and with, I hope, continued illustration assignments this year, there'll be enough structure in my work days.

Of course, my thinking self is still (mostly) in charge of my wild self. It's a lively pas de deux.  

In 2014, I'll be painting, drawing, writing, cutting up. I'll be using acrylics, inks, pens, pencils, crayons, scissors, glue, and watercolors.

So, from this morning, a watercolor sketch, on pastel paper, of a hyacinth in my studio.  

In 2014, I'll also be traveling (of course) and I'll be starting a secret (for now) drawing project, the idea of which just came to me yesterday!  I'll tell more as the days go on. I'm excited and happy!

Are you coming with?

Sketching at Crook's Corner, again

Well, and eating there, too! Lucky me! Crook's is one of the premiere restaurants of the South. I had their Fresh Figs Bellevue – figs w/ country ham & a mint mustard sauce. It was surprising and delicious and fun.

It was twilight, it was August, there were, of course, pigs. 

I've sketched here often over the years. It's fun to see how the sketches vary. Below are two from several years ago. And there are several more of Crook's here on Laurelines. Could YOU resist that pig's derrière?

  Sketch from 2009

 Sketch from 2007

Sketches from France, more of them!

Oh, these're just my usual subjects: wild boar, elephants and giraffes, giant chandeliers, assorted two-legged creatures...some tamer than others. I would have drawn fountains, but my favorite ones in Paris were all dry, so most of the fun there was missing. (Wish the blog could show the elephant drawing truer to size, but, alas, non. Click on image to get to Flickr and larger sizes!)

Elephant, giraffe, rhino et al in the parade of animals, La Grande Galerie de L'Evolution, Museum Nationale de l'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

Lots of you are familiar with Rick Tulka. My husband and I met him in Paris a couple of years ago and we had a fun lunch with him this time! Here and in the drawing of my daughter below, I used a big fat laundry pencil I bought in Lisbon. It gives a nice, robust line and you can't be finicky with it, which is good.

My daughter, right side of spread:

My daughter, left side of spread:

View across the Lot River, Cahors:

Couldn't resist this *ahem* reconstituted sanglier and friends in a vitrine at les jardins Marqueyssac:

I was wowed by this chandelier at Le Bourbon in Paris:

And not least, but last, our friend Drake, whose deadpan face is a perfect foil for his Rabelaisian sense of humor:

Hope you've enjoyed the sketches!

Next stop: Copenhagen in midNovember, a 20th wedding anniversary celebration. And then put-staying for a very long time.

Goodbye, little pupper

Five years old, more energy than any three other dogs put together, truly gorgeous, with a deliriously happy disposition, she fell in midstride yesterday morning and never got back up. Our Abby.

Turkey sketches, part three!

Gosh, these make me happy, these recent memories put to paper and words. Ephesus is one of the most poignant and magnificent places I have ever seen. To walk the roads and byways of that ancient place of power and beauty would bring tears to your eyes. It did to mine. We sailed one whole day of my trip---and since I was only there for six days that's a lot of sailing-related images! I was so taken with Sedat our driver's stunning profile, I drew him very first thing, in the car, on bumpy roads, quickly! Yet more sketches to come!