I brought a few unfinished paintings from home and have begun to work on them. Yesterday, I found a 16 x 20 acrylic that I had begun of a restaurant in Bath, England called Moon and Sixpence. I had textured it before I drew the building in place,. Although I had taken the photo in daytime, with a name like that, I had to make it a night scene, didn’t I? So the moon could play a part. Then I had done rubbings of pence which I had glued down randomly. I lightly touched them up with black acrylic so that the design would show. I darkened the windows, added a shadowed or darkened side of the building next door, and did a preliminary painting of a girl sitting with her bicycle by it. I am really liking it, the colors, the mood, the abstractness of everything. When the girl and bike are done…,.I may do them in colored pencil…it will be done. I wish I had a frame for it.
Also this week I wrote an article for our Coronado Scribe’s proposed book, called A Magical Island, telling why I moved here. Everyone liked it and thinks the book needed this description of the island. I rewrote the poem, Gold! for the book. A productive week. Today I walked around the hotel, checking out a few more facts for the piece.
I have been working on a vertical 15 x 30 watercolor on Crescent hot press board.. It is one I began in 1999 and now it is 2013! I did a similar one in a Michael Atkinson class in the Loveland Academy then. It was very successful but I don’t have it any more. He gets his rich blue skies by layering three shades of blue, Antwerp one of them. I enlarged the lake in the canyon, added shadows, made minor adjustments in the rocks. I and satisfied except for the ridge that the shepherd is standing on. Today Karen is coming to paint. I will start something else. I spent much of yesterday reworking the poem I wrote about the gold dust that washes ashore on the beach here. Kelly spent the night. I think I will join him in an early morning walk on the beach. I will take another look at that gold!
February 28
Last week when my new art friend came, she was finishing an acrylic painting for a friend of a water lily garden. I painted in Bob Burridge’s style of acrylic on gesso…3 pears on a table. Yesterday I sat down with it and wrote a recipe in ever changing colors prisma Colors In the black background. The recipe was for a pear tarte. Today I painted a red tree with blue back ground, similar to what I gave Erin. I showed her my travel journal of London, since England is her favorite country, one she writes about and paints. I love England, too, and France, and Nebraska, and Colorado and the Pacific Northwest, and California now….I have been printing black and white patterns in preparation for doing fashion designs. That is next….I never get much done when I paint with someone else, because I talk. I get things done at workshops tho because everyone is just thinking about working and not talking..
February 21
I will have more to say after today. I have asked a brand new friend over to paint with me today. She is new in town too and has lost her art connections from her home town of Sacramento. We need to start anew support group. I have been focussing on painting my own paper on tissue and deli paper, a la Anne Bagby, but will put both at away for today. My new friend will be painting in acrylic so I will get out my supplies for doing the Bob Burridge style on gesso end watercolor paper. I have ordered his Acryla paints since I had used the ones I began with completely. I like the intense pencils he introduced us to, the ones who turn into a permanent ink after dampening. On Monday I took the ferry across the eBay to Seaport Village and spent over an hour drawing and then watercoloring the inside of the Upstart Crow Bookstore. Before I left I selected a heavy fashion magazine. I took it to Harbor House restaurant and over lunch I tore out figures that might lend themselves to designing outfits using the the handmade stamped tissues for another day.
Continued…
Was a childhood “friend”. I had memorized all his poems, so his biography is of interest. I had written earlier, but it didn’t show up here, that I ordered the September 2001 issue if Somerset a studio because I remembered Anne Bagby’s Italian Clowns in that issue. It has arrived. I am eager to create more textured printed papers to work with in collage. Yesterday at The Coronado Scribes there was time for me to read my story about my crazy friend and her adventures and my new poem about yoga on the beach by the Hotel del. it makes me happy to hear people laugh in the right places when I read what I intended to be humor. I got belly laughs. Today is a lovely day. I have been taking pictures of the bells over the entrance if my Mission de Coronado home, circa 1913. The sun is shining on the yellow flowering vine that climbs to the bell on the fountain. Calla lilies have burst into bloom outside my painting room window. The rounded Camilla tree is in bloom as well as my fuchsia ice plant bush. It is colorful. Time Warner just came to hook up a box so I have more channels and a TV guide. Technology! It looks to be a good day!
February 13, 2014
The. Magazine came already and it is just as I remembered it. I plan to create another stack of paintEd papers today. I am still ready the fictional biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, under a “Wide and Starry Sky, dig my grave and let me lie…” I have always been fascinated by the lives of real people, and Stevenson
Week two, January 31, 2014
This week I have written many short sketches in the life of a crazy fun friend. Her life is like no other. It occurs to me that her life would make a good sit com. Does anyone have an idea of anyone with influence that I could present the idea to? I mean, how many people to you know who cook a canned ham in the can, unopened? Or cook the Thanksgiving ham decorated with cloves and pineapple and cherries while forgetting to remove the plastic wrapping. And one of my favorites…she thought the white wine punch too plain so she added green food color…so much that for the rest of the evening the guests conversed with bright green teeth and lips!
I am excited about trying some Anne Bagby type collages. I have admired her work for years. It was a revolution to me when I learned she used stamps or stencils to create a wallpaper look in her still life’s. all along I had been painstakingly painting the wallpaper in my cupboard painting by hand. As whenever trying someone else’s technique, soon it takes a left turn and all of a sudden it combines with your own ideas and becomes your own. I had one of Bagby’s CDs and a friend had the other, so we exchanged. Collage is a freeing technique, really the most fun of all medias. I look forward to what will come of this adventure. I finished the watercolor I began of the boats in Glorietta
I begin…
This is a first for me…writing a blog. But why not? I keep a running journal daily and have for years. I am an admirer of Danny Gregory and have signed up for his upcoming Sketchbook Skool on Word Press, which offers a blog site. I write poetry and human interests stories, many for my home town paper. And I paint, in many mediums. Yesterday I began a watercolor of boats in Glorietta Bay, down the street from me in Coronado, California. The weather here is mild, and I realize much of the country is suffering with frigid temps and snow. I know what cold is, being a native Nebraskan. I have started to write a piece on the mis-adventures of a good friend back home. Life is good.
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