About a month ago, I got an email from Chris Beck, asking me to participate in a Halloween painting challenge along with her, Pablo Villicana Lara, and other artists from around the blogosphere. As Chris is one of my painting crushes, I immediately said yes, and then started freaking out, because holy jack-o-lanterns, people - Chris and Pablo can PAINT. I've seen some of their challenges before, and have loved them.
But - what the heck? I thought I'd give it a go. This image immediately popped into my mind, and as I didn't have a spare skull or a trained crow to help me out, I dug around at the WetCanvas reference library and found a few images that I could put together to come up with this...
Can I Pick Your Brain?
Be sure to head over to Chris' blog to see the whole collection, and pop on over to the rest of the blogs to wish everyone a spooky Halloween, please - I'm sure they'd love to pass out some of their candy early...here's the list:
The first page in my newest Moleskine sketchbook. I can't call it my new sketchbook, because it has been languishing in my purse for a very long time. I took it out occasionally and drew some odd geometric designs on a few pages, but the chickadee is the first non-doodle I've drawn in it.
I'm heading out to pick up camping supplies for the first trip of the year. We haven't had the camper out since September of last year, and everyone is excited at the prospect of a few days in the woods. It's always a nice, quiet retreat away from my self-imposed electronic attachment, and usually seems to signal my getting back into the studio and getting some quality work done. I hope it works this time, as well.
I've got a 4x6 canvas...that's 4 FEET by 6 FEET canvas, by the way...waiting to get put back together and have something painted on it, so the ideas really need to start flowing right away.
I've got a good painting groove going, which is pretty exciting - AND - I'm using acrylics, which I've avoided like the plague for the past few years and they're working really well. These are obviously based on the Sketchbook Project book I worked on at the end of last year. This particular quote made it into the book, although the painting did not.
I've got four different ones finished so far, with plans to do as many as my inspiration allows me, or until I run out of 6x6 inch canvasses, whichever comes first...then, I suppose I'll either order more canvas or move on to something else. Once I have a hefty supply, I'll put them in my painting etsy shop and reopen that dusty little place!
We're off to a tennis carnival today - and to grab the camper to fix the toilet - and to start work on revamping the backyard - and to...well...everything that's been sitting on our to-do list for the winter is going to get started today, pretty much.
I mailed in my Sketchbook Project today. It was hard to let it go. I've become kind of attached to some of the drawings in there, like Spock Frog and this one - Moulin Rouge Elephant. I had to make him hang from the ceiling - it seemed more "Spectacular Spectacular," somehow.
It will get scanned into the collection, and when it's online, I'll give you a link, so you can all go flip through it. Of course, if the tour comes to a city near you, you can go flip through the actual thing.
That's so cool...
This was the first thing on my list of goals for 2011, and I'm ecstatic that I got it done on time. I was a little worried there, for a bit - life had gotten crazy, as it does at the end of a year, and I was afraid that after all that build-up, I was going to crash and burn. But I didn't. I pushed through and in the end, while it changed a bit, it's a completed work.
Hurray!
In other news...
I left my house yesterday, for the first time since Saturday. Holy lord. It was just to run to pick up dog food and people food, but it was like being let out of prison. I'm not going to talk about what was keeping me inside, because I don't want to be that blogger that complains about the s-n-o-w all the time, but I'm still moving to Ecuador, people. This winter thing is just stupid.
Today is sunny and warmER than it has been. (It's not warm...just warmER.) I'm considering putting on all my clothes and standing outside and meditating for like 6 hours, rather than starting on the next item on my goal list for the year, but that wouldn't be too productive, I suppose. Those remaining boxes aren't going to unpack themselves, after all. Although...
I saw recently that a large, nationwide garbage disposal company has these big garbage bag things they'll deliver to your house, for a fee, and then come and pick up and take away, and hey - wouldn't that be easier than unpacking the boxes? Why yes...yes it would!
And ALSO - it's day 14 of No-Restaurant-January, and I'm getting a little antsy. It hasn't been all that hard to do, exactly, but when you eat nothing but your own cooking for an extended period of time, it just seems like everything starts to taste the same. It kind of all tastes like ham.
But that could be because I got a ginormous ham on sale at the grocery and have been using it in every single dish I've cooked for the last week.
I need a fabulous Mexican food specialist to come to my house and make me a beef chimichanga and some cheese sauce.
Quite possibly my favorite line in any movie ever made.
Made even more perfect by a screeching hippopotamus.
Because everything is better with a hippo, people.
You know I'm right.
**********************
I'm traveling tomorrow, so the National Archives and Capitol stories will have to wait until next week...but they are coming, folks...
This quote, from one of my boys' favorite movies, never fails to elicit a hearty guffaw from the troops. Joshua always manages to say it in the most deadpan voice. It's awesome.
It's also awesome that it is one of those things Melinda says with great passion...another of the strange coincidences between us. We may live 1200 miles apart, but our brains are apparently communicating without our knowledge. We spent an hour on the phone picking apart religion, politics and the state of our nation, and strangely agreed on most every topic...something that doesn't happen very often, no matter how much you like a person (hi, Dad!)
It makes me appreciate her all the more...and miss her even more acutely. Sigh.
The movie Forrest Gump will always and forever make me think of my nephew, Jesse. I can remember when he was the age my kids are now, and he would start quoting Forrest...accent and all...sounded just like him.
He's gifted, that boy.
So, when Jesse suggested this movie quote the other day, I knew it would be among the first I did.
Because he's cute. And I can't resist cute.
Yes. Even though he towers over me and has a child of his own, he's still cute.
This is my favorite leaf page, so far. I love ginkgo leaves, especially in the fall when they turn golden yellow. Absolutely gorgeous shape and color.
*************************************
So. It's Tuesday. It's rainy and cool. I don't want to get out of my pajamas today, but I really need laundry detergent, and while some people go to the grocery in their jammies, I just can't do it, man. I mean seriously - it's one thing to HAVE Tweety Bird pajama bottoms, people...
It's an entirely different thing to wear them to Safeway.
*********************************************
I gained four pounds after the 5K on Saturday. All of them were directly related to the post-race celebration day we had. Bratwurst...burgers...beer...brownies...
So, now I'm completely avoiding foods that start with "B."
Dang. I had bran cereal this morning. That completely blows the diet.
I guess I'll go ahead and have that last brownie in the pan, now.
It's been so much fun trying to match up animals with movie quotes - I don't know why, but this little house sparrow just seemed to scream Jules from Pulp Fiction.
He totally has the attitude. And really...is there anything better than the bad ass attitude of Samuel L. Jackson? I think not.
*****************************
I'm feeling completely inspired by this project, I'll tell you - it's something I've needed...inspiration, that is. I believe these will make it onto fine art paper or canvas and limited edition prints. I can just see a series of them hanging in an office or over a sofa.
Or in a bathroom.
Don't look at me like that. People put art in all kinds of places.
Now I just have decide if I want to use gouache or acrylic or crayons or finger paints. I've been using a lot of gouache lately, but it's so gorgeous, I'm not sure I want to stop.
My mom bought me some mule poop paper a while back. Maybe I'll paint some on that.
Wait a minute. Do you think my mom is trying to tell me something?
My eyes are feeling a bit crossed, and this is only the second page...I've since finished a third and started a fourth, and while it can be a little eye-strain-y, it's a strangely relaxing thing to do while I listen to the television in the evenings with Dr. SmartyPants.
Am I the only one that does that? I rarely actually watch the TV unless it is one of those visually stimulating shows - I listen to the TV while I read or draw or knit. I'm the only one in my house that does it.
It doesn't make me weird or anything, does it?
Nah - I've got plenty of other things that make me weird...
***********************************************
The 5K is tomorrow. I'm trying to figure out a way to run with a camera so I can get a snapshot or two of all of us at the finish line. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather stays pleasant and the the wind is at our backs, okay?
So, there's this thing you may have heard of...it seems to be popping up in all the art blogs I read lately, and now I can't even remember when I first read something about it, except that it was a long time ago and I've just now managed to figure out what to do with it and now I feel completely behind except that I ordered my book ages ago and...
What? You don't know what I'm talking about?
I'm sorry. I'm in a bit of a tizzy.
The thing is The Sketchbook Project - a kind of traveling art show for sketchbooks - and I've decided to participate this year. You can click here for all the information in the world about it, and you still have time to sign up if you want to, which would be awesome and I would totally go check your book out when it comes to the town nearest wherever I happen to be at the time.
No, really - I would. And do you know why?
Because you're awesome. And I love ya.
Yeah. Okay - enough of the sappy stuff...let's talk themes!
In The Sketchbook Project, participants are required to select a theme for their book, although they have complete artistic freedom to interpret that theme in whatever way they will. I chose "Lines and Grids," and so the image above is my first full spread in the sketchbook - a grid of leaves, heavily lined. Every other spread will follow this pattern, but no two leaf spreads will have the same type leaves on them.
Alternating spreads will play on the theme a bit differently.
But you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what that means.
So this is the original sketch for the painting I posted on Thursday - I just transferred it to kraft paper and painted the pink and white parts with gouache, and left the blacks in pencil. I don't know why, but I like this more than the painting with the books. What do you all think?
See - here's what happens...I like to sketch kind of big, so I use a 9x12 pad to do my sketches, then shrink them down on the copier to whatever size fits my painting paper - in this case, the painting of Alice was 5x7, so there's quite a bit of size difference. Then, I get all fiddly and start drawing in individual feather lines - WHICH I LIKE - but sometimes I feel like the freshness of the original sketch gets lost in the process of making a completed painting.
sigh.
One day I'm going to be satisfied with what I do, I think. Really.
Yes. That's right. I haven't forgotten how to draw.
Thank goodness.
I was worried.
Hey - guess what! It's JULY, people. JULY! Holy smokes! Where did the year go? It seems like only yesterday I was constantly griping about the snow! Don't worry, though - I won't be complaining about the heat. I love the heat. I embrace the humidity. I adore sweating.
Well. Maybe adore isn't the right word. I tolerate sweating.
I accept sweating. Then I jump in the pool and I adore the heat once again.
Poor Dr. SmartyPants went to Arizona yesterday, where the temperature looked something like this:
Which is, you know, REALLY hot.
But it's a dry heat.
Aren't you glad you came over today so we could talk about the weather? Have I really sunk so low that this is my only topic of discussion? Lord.
We could talk about my stupid ankles, instead, if you'd like.
OR, we could talk about how excited I am to be leaving for the beach in TWO DAYS!!!
Actually...maybe I should get the laundry done and start packing.
