Sunday, April 26, 2015

Doodle Bug


Once upon a time, decades ago, I used to play around in my sketchbook with fantasy bugs.  Last night I was trying out different ways of using my new rubber texture sheets (designed for silver clay impressions [cool tools], but repurposed for printing nicely), using a page from my pigment spill experiments that I wasn't as thrilled with.  I am liking the result, but it wasn't congealing in my mind as a "thing".  So this morning I poured a hot cup of tea, curled up and stared at the page. One of the print patterns began to look like a beetle's back.  Do you see it too?

Monday, April 20, 2015

Port Gamble's Fave Wedding Spot


This was the first sketch of the day on Saturday, Port Gamble Sketchout.  I ended up making it my own, didn't want a greeting card image, so I liberated the clouds.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

A Proper Sketchout In Port Gamble


A number of us in our Pacific Northwest Sketchers group gathered in Port Gamble yesterday to hang out, enjoy each other's company, eat, and sketch.  This was actually my second sketch of the day.  After lunch I wandered up the hill to the cemetery.  These three stones seemed like a stage setting for a play I arrived 128 years too late to see.  

Monday, April 13, 2015

Morning Light, Texture Study


Often when I am seized with an idea, the world needs to clear a path to my materials, fast.  I am Wile E. Coyote, scorching a Light Speed trail to the horizon, in pursuit of those implements that will support that vision the fastest.  Often with disastrous results; chairs tipped over, bruises on shins, cats run for cover, jars of pens and brushes scattered.  I don't even stop to pick up my common sense on the way.

I've been entertaining vague ideas of incorporating stamping and textural stencil work into some of my illustrations and paintings this last week, and this afternoon the "thing" popped clearly into my head.  No purchase necessary, I would go raid the sculpture studio (again) for the rubber texture molds I've created in multiples for my Precious Metal Clay jewelry a few years ago.  Some of the flatter ones will make great stamps!  Leaves, fabric, orange skin, carved cross-hatching, etc.

Funny thing, though.  Often the engineering side of my brain forgot to email the creative side that we'd be meeting at the drafting table with paints and inks.  I showed up with tools, but no mental image.  All I saw in my mind was a series of wedges, green and gold, that stretched to the horizon.  So I invented, quickly, a sketch that could incorporate it.  After I stamped textures on the paper impatiently.  Maybe in my next lifetime, all those parts and pieces of creativity will play nicely together.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Joyful Dancer


Another day, another paint blob.  Last night I tried out my new No. 16 Squirrel Mop from Rosemary and Company in the UK.  Each brush hand made.  It's fantastic, and holds a huge amount of wet in it's belly.  This one right away begged to be a dancer.  With a vibrant blue scarf.  

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

The Animal Cuddler


This was a recent exercise in random paint blots and bleeds that I "found" an image in and went with it.  Very enjoyable.  I do love this technique.  Relaxing, playful, surprising!  And now that I have my new, large, handmade Squirrel mop brush from Rosemary and Company, it will be easier and more effective to work this sort of thing.