Seven Days in the Art World

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A couple of years ago I began calling myself an artist and it felt so right. Friends even said, "We knew that. What took you so long?"
One thing in my way might have been the pomp of the sanctified -- those who live in the Art World, a gated community.
Sarah Thornton, an art anthropologist who seems to enjoy her element, tells what it's like in there -- it has a bit of beauty, but mostly smells like lust and looks like novelty, and screams excessively loud. So shrill it keeps out the pitiful rest of us. I enjoyed the book.


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Working small with watercolor

Leslie gave a great mini-workshop on watercolor last month, and she got me thinking ... There's something, well, watery, about the paint that I don't like ...  but ...  maybe I just don't understand how to use it. But I can splash around, and that's what I did last week. I used metallic paint and Setacolor pabeo gold glitter finish, which turned some into 4" x 6" Christmas cards. Fun.

Lebkuchen, step one: Candied orange peel

Candied orange peel
good by itself,
dipped in chocolate.
or flavoring lbekuchen

Can't help myself -- I've just got to bake lebkuchen, a traditional German cookie, for Christmas. Yesterday I took the first step -- candied orange peel. I used a slightly different recipe from the one I posted a couple years ago. Right off, I can't really tell the difference, except this one is a little easier. Most of this will go in the cookies, and any peel left over will get dipped in melted Belgian chocolate. Truly, that is as delicious as the lebkuchen. But Christmas will not happen without lebkuchen.

Candied orange peel

2 large oranges (I used navel oranges, and I used three, since they weren't that big.)
4 C. sugar, divided
3 C. water

Cut 1/4 inch from the top and bottom of the oranges. Cut the peel down to the flesh in half, then in half again. Remove the peel, pith and all.  You will have four pieces per orange. Cut each into quarter-inch-wide strips. Cook the peel in boiling water for 15 minutes. Drain it, then rinse it and drain it again.

Bring 3 cups of sugar and 3 cups of water to a boil and cook it until the sugar dissolves. This won't take long. Put the peel in and boil it again. Reduce the heat and let it simmer until the peel is soft; 45 minutes worked fine for me.

Drain the peel. Put a cup of sugar onto a rimmed baking sheet. (I use the large crystals that you can find in the baking department of fancier grocery stores. It adds crunch. This time I didn't have quite enough, so I mixed it with regular sugar.) Toss the peel in the sugar. The peel will be limp, but don't worry.

Transfer the peel to a sheet of foil. Make sure it is not bunched up. Each strip of peel should have a little air around it. Let it stand until dry. This could take two days, depending.

Drawing birds with charcoal

Tawny frogmouth owl

Owl

Osprey

Drawing more

It's kind of horrible, drawing your own face. 

I will never stop drawing faces.

But I've heard it's even more satisfying to draw the complete person.

Here's #1 of 100 bodies, above, and #2 and #3, below.

100 Faces

Well, I've drawn, painted, scratched 100 faces, and am just beginning. This sweetheart is number 90-something. I followed Jane Davenport's online class, The Whimsical Face, in which she demonstrates front, side, and profile faces, in her own fanciful style. 

Draw oval with colored pencil

Divide into quarters

Place eyes, nose (a circle), top lip (looks like mustache)

Slanted lines extend eyes

Iris is circular

Small curve denotes bottom lip

Background from torn tissue paper,

adhered with Liquitex matte medium

Rose cheeks, flesh color skin, hair is gesso

Bottom of nose curves

Chin, temple indentations

Lips

Top lip is darker

Highlights on bottom lip, bridge of nose, brow bone

Shadow at side of nose, eyes, under chin

Eyes have color and shadow

Pupil and hair to be added

Bicycles at the beach

Together
29" x 24"

I love a photo Gretchen sent me of 2 bicycles parked at Morgan House in Dublin, Ohio. The lines were complex and the bikes seemed almost human. It inspired these bikes at the beach. Here's my progress.

Drawing
Gretchen's bikes
my beach

Figuring out the background

Love the lace-- but not here

The fence and sand are monochrome, but not really

Black tires stood out, added action

Eventually I exchanged the black tires for slightly more subdued fabric

Some things I learned in October

Here's stuff that has stuck in the sieve of my mind from what I read and heard in October.

words and names I like:
unhelpful

Cosmic dust

Iggy Azalea

When I take pictures I think about nothing.  -- issei Suda
The average teenager has already amassed years of daily, if not hourly communication skills, shared thoughts,
Piney Z bridge, Tallahassee --133-foot, prefabricated box truss, weathering steel bridge, the northern walkway takes visitors 130 feet back down to solid ground.
"Every novelist ought to invent his own technique, that is the fact of the matter." Francois Mauriac
YouTube: place where creative anarchy pursued viral magic." David Carr NYT

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once." F. Neitzsche

Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal ...

"Just because things aren’t going as planned doesn’t mean they are going poorly."  -- Artist Jesse Reno

"Prose — words in their best order; Poetry — the best words in the best order..." STColeridge

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." And, "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it" PICASSO

"... if you’re not willing to take big risks and try daring experiments, what is the point? "Dr. Laurie Glimcher

He wanted to astonish Paris with an apple (about Cezanne)

"to define me is to negate me." Kierkegaard

"There is enough of heaven in a hedgerow, and enough of hell in the perfidy of man.” Clive James

100 faces

83/100
100 faces project
(Ouch! There's a pin in his forehead.)

Drawing a face is, to me, an accomplishment, but drawing a likeness of someone is a real challenge.

Practice, practice, practice! I'm loving it.  Some hints I'm trying to apply: look for the tilt of the smile, the length of the nose, the shape of the jaw, and little lines and marks that make each face unique. 

Earth, Fire, Water, Air

Earth, Fire, Water, Air by Mary Hoffman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have loved this book ever since I taught elementary school; telling the story of existence through the elements makes it somehow unifying, and Jane Ray's art reveals eternity in tiny pieces. I bought it for 1 cent on Amazon, and I'm going to keep it forever.


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Watching the Impressionists

The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sue Roe views the Impressionists as you might observe a flock of birds -- individuals, yet often interdependent as they struggled to redefine art. Roe''s binoculars don't let us get too close; we end up taking notes on quirks that differentiate these remarkable souls. I'm the nosy type and am glad to know the artists' problems, families, and inclinations as a reflection of their time and place, But it was kind of boring, a trudge through time behind a flock of artists who together altered our vision.


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Large life

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Catherine started with ambition and intelligence. Fate and a scheming mother landed her a rather creepy husband, who was destined for the Russian throne. He preferred his dogs, so Catherine had lots of time to read and embrace the ideas of the Enlightenment. Eventually Empress Elizabeth died, as did Catherine's husband, and Russia toppled her way. From then on I needed a map as I read. I especially liked learning about Crimea. Catherine wrote and wrote, so there are lots of quotes. Robert Massie tells a smooth and sympathetic story of a magnificent life.(less)


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Notebook: Kind of real

I draw faces, but they don't resemble actual persons. That is, until I drew the poet Carolyn Kizer. This kind of looks like a photograph published after her recent death.

Kind of Dick Cheney
I drew it while watching TV

Kind of Clark, above and below

Notebook

At Mass Saturday I sat behind a man with a head so linear, so taut, that I had to draw it. I saw the back of him only; even his ears were muscular. Oh, well, I had no paper or pencil. I must try to draw him from memory. Now, don't ask me if I also remember the readings or the sermon, because I was mostly paying attention to the lines in the faces around me. I have found a place where people sit still.

Halfway to 100 faces

When I told myself I'd draw 100 faces, I thought maybe yes, maybe no. But it turns out I love the landscape of faces, and am already past drawing 50 of them. It's fun.

City Hall Watercolor Show

I like messy art (the good kind of messy), and that includes watercolor. 

Here are some of my favorites from the juried show of 37 artists in Florida and Georgia now at City Hall.
Now you know my bias, but you'll find work in many styles. Enjoy it all 8-5:30 Mon.-Fri. on the second floor of City Hall, 300 S. Adams St. The show runs through Nov. 3.

Hidden Water
Nina Allen Freeman

detail
Painting on the Old Fishing Boat
Lee Albion

The Enchantment
Lynne Kroll

Art with fiber references at FSU Tallahassee International

Summer
Marie Bergstedt of San Francisco
2 pieces (52" x 16"  -- right --  and 40" x 12 1/2")
mixed media relief
(lots of buttons)

If you want a look at what's happening in art now, see the 29th Annual Tallahassee International juried competition at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts. There's work of artists from around the country and a couple from Canada, including video, amorphous sculpture, photography, painting, and more. A few works used fiber. Hurry, because it closes Oct. 5.

Summer, details
above and below

Adhesive Bandages
Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido of Morehead, Kentucky
10" x 20"
hand-dyed and folded organza hand-stitched to linen, digital photography and manipulated Cuban government document and heat-transfer printing

September Sieve

I love being bombarded with information. But then ... how to absorb? how to organize? When to cry stop?

I used to have journals made of paper, but not now. Last month whenever a word or idea or quote struck me I copied it into the day in i-cal. That's them, below. Perhaps they make no sense, but that is how my attention works. Many are from the NYTimes, Art Daily, and other art sites. Quotation marks and references are scant. But they all went into the sieve that is my mind, and some will stick. Maybe you can have fun with this technique too.

• Line. artists may work with line to precisely render contours or as calligraphy on the drawing’s surface; apply touch to build tonal values or erase edges; and use traced marks to suggest elements of an imagined topography.
• Indeed, I am not sure that I can grow as an artist until I can bring myself to accept that I am one. -- Anne Truitt, sculptor
• Marlene Dumas (Cape Town, South Africa, 1953) is considered one of the most significant and influential painters working today. Her emotionally charged paintings and drawings address existentialist themes such as eroticism, grief and shame while frequently referencing art-historical motifs and current political issues. Her work also reflects on new possibilities meanings that painting can still have today, in an era dominated by visual culture.   artdaily.com
• should stop hiding who I am for fear of shocking people. He says the best way to stand up for my principles is to actually live by them. (don't remember where I read this ... )
• Lilt and Twinkle
• painting-as-writing (or, as the Abstract Expressionist progenitor John Graham called it, “écriture.”)
• unhelpful
• “We can approach our lives as artists, each and every one of us,” he said. “It’s a choice people have. You don’t have to make houses the way people always have. If you choose to, you can make every action a creative act.”  Rick Lowe
• finding my own voice came as a result of practice, focus, solitary work, and devoting myself to themes that captured my heart.  --  (not me, someone said this and I love it.)
• What vegetable couldn’t use a blast of garlic and ginger and a hot pepper or two?
• If a woman wants to do substantive work of any kind, she’s going to be criticized. Education is about growing bolder and larger.
• When I take pictures I think about nothing.  -- Issei Suda

Drawing

Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists by Carla Sonheim is making me love to draw. Other drawing books are a yawn. This one gives me energy.  I seem to be working away at Sonheim's ideas at a rate of about four a week. I've promised myself to draw 100 faces (three so far). Of course, one of the reasons I love this approach is that there don't seem to be any rules. 

Dog, Picasso-style

Faces in ink, watercolor, marker and colored pencil
based on magazine pictures

People I know who wouldn't recognize themselves here
pencil and marker
based on photos

Green mornings

Twice a week my mornings are quiet and green -- Come see what I mean:

Starting

To the right and to the left

American water lilies

View from the wooden lookout
Late-morning shadows are of the gentle hillside to the east

Zing! waits for me to catch up

Near the end