One of my young students happily presented a picture she did and reported that she spent 20 hours on it. My first thought was, 'sure, 20 hours,' but when I looked at it, I knew she was right! Here it is in all its gorgeousness. I put it in vertically even though it's a horizontal piece so you can get a bigger pic to see the details closely. She's making color copies and selling each one for a buck a piece. If you want one to contribute to your own personal happiness and purchase one, let me know and I'll get it for you. :)
Well, not too long ago I went to a smaller vehicle. This is the first time in many years that I haven't driven a van! However, I'm still packing it in. Here's my hatchback opened... the pumpkins aren't normal carting-around faire, but the rest is.
Since I put that delightful video of Wayne Thiebaud below, here's one of his ice cream cone pics that I love. He accidentally developed the bright outlines, went with it, and it turned out to be a very good thing.
Hola Amigos,
Here's a picture of the new woodcut I'm working on. A few weeks ago I was casting around for an idea and just happened to drive by the dragon fountains on the east side of Lake Woodlands. I fired off ten or so pictures and went home and did some sketching. After transferring my sketch to the wood, I - oh, I have to say it - dug in. Here's how it looks so far...
Love this guy. I told my kids about him in my art classes this week, and for the rest of you - enjoy! Thiebaud was born in 1920 and is still alive.
A few of his quotes below:
Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it’s mucked up with all kinds of meanings.There’s the art of plumbing, there’s the art of almost anything that you can say.My own sense of it is that it means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement.It’s not delivered like the morning paper, it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.
The more I drew, the more I improved.
Painting is life for me.It is a kind of miracle.
Find something you want to paint.Something you really love.
Almost everything I’ve done I’ll go back to and do again.
You have to take some chances.
Wanting to rise above the ordinary, Wayne Thiebaud said: ‘I tried to steal every kind of idea – Western, Eastern – and the use of everything I could think of.Size differences, color differences… exaggeration.’
I try to find things to paint which I feel have been overlooked.
What I couldn’t get over was that all the illustrators and commercial artists I admired most were crazy about the old masters.
This weekend we had the Market Street Art Fair. The Woodlands Art League set up in the center of the square and exhibited many of our pieces. I took this one, which I named 'Deep Woods.' Pretty early on in the day, we sold it. Hooray! Turned out that it ended up being the only piece anyone in our gallery sold that day.
Deep Woods is another of my liquid acrylics on YUPO. I layered the background with lots of blues, greens, turquoises and iridescents, giving it a feeling of depth. On top of that I painted in the tree, and added the final layer, some subtle gold texturing. For this I used a root beer leaf from my garden, painting the gold onto the leaf and transfering it that way.
Sold another painting yesterday; this was one of my woodblock series. With these, I paint a multi-layered background, and then paint my woodblock and lay down a print on top. Just got back from the gallery, where I replaced the sold one. This particular woodblock took me about 40 hours to carve. Note the places where you can see some of the wood grain showing through for interest. It's a good day!
By the way, carvers usually use 'basswood.' Much of the wood sold to woodcarvers is this basswood, which is known for its nice smooth grain and not a lot of knot holes. What basswood actually is is linden wood from linden trees! I was delighted to learn this as linden trees are one of my favorites. Growing in colder climes, they are beautifully-shaped hardwood trees that have many pendant white flowers dangling down from one spot. If you are so lucky as to stand under a linden when it's in bloom, you can look up and see millions of flowers reaching down toward you and experience the heady, intoxicating fragrance they put off. You'll get a show as well, because bees are attracted too the flowers and you'll likely see as many bees as blooms! Ahhh... I can almost smell them now.
I was lucky enough at one point in my life to be able to purchase linden perfume, which is now no longer made. I carefully used my cherished bottle to extend it as long as possible. One day I went upstairs to find that my young son had sprayed out the entire bottle, which, until that point, was about 70% full! Oh, well.
