Quick Thoughts As "Do It Anyway December" Comes To An End

I followed Roz's guidance for doing a project in December and found it to be useful and productive.  The actual project was an exploration of color by painting apples in acrylic.  This branched into exploring and learning more about value.  Along the way, I also started to do thumbnails and try a bunch of new things such as:

• Painting objects in unrealistic colors.  I was surprised how hard this was to do at first.  I haven't some pretty strong rules in my head about how things should be and I want to bust through them.  
• Using a different colored ground. 
• Copying other people's apple paintings to get some ideas about how to do different brushwork, and 
• a lot more. 

As part of focusing more on values, I pulled together some additional tools and used some new things.  Most of these, I already had, although I did buy the gray and black paint.   

I'm not good at making up backgrounds in my head, so awhile ago I had painted some folders in different colors to use when I set up a still life.  Once I started focusing more on value, I found it extremely useful to painting the folders into neutral or gray scale tones. 

Another thing I discovered (or rediscovered) is that I was never making my lights light enough and I used to shy away from using light backgrounds.   All of this meant that my consumption of titanium white paint has gone way up. 

On December 1, I started out essentially have to start all over again, since I had not been painting.  That was painful. 

Day 2 went a lot better than day 1.

Along the way, I discovered that I'm more interested in learning, so I experimented a lot, rather than getting as caught up in the results or the output. 

The month ended well.  I wasn't trying for that.  It just sort of happened.  I especially like the shape of the green apple. 

I Couldn’t Wait

I finished my latest hat last night. It’s for me and I love it. It’s downstairs soaking in soapy water and will look better once it’s done and dry. It relaxes and flattens everything out. However, I cannot wait to post pictures and have made no attempt to take “good” pictures. 

The first bit of embroidery that I added was the outline of the star above. It’s amazing how much embroidery adds. It can also add a lot of ends to work in, like on the side of the hat above, but if you just work on it a bit at a time it’s worth the effort.  

 

Commitment, Focus, and Follow Through

2020 was a tough year and for much of it, I lacked commitment, focus, and follow through related to creativity, in general, and with drawing and painting, specifically.  Knitting was the bright spot in my life, creatively, and I am so thankful for that.  Knitting was a comfort and I enjoyed playing with color and either re-learning or learning some new techniques.  I'm almost done with my 10th pandemic hat, which I think I'm going to keep.  Here's the most recent one, which I gave to a friend. 

Most of the new knitting techniques came from attending a monthly Zoom classes put on by Sena Klets, a folk costume museum in Riga Latvia.  I attended one today on "Many Color Knitting".  Those Latvian knitters are really something.

I started getting my act together when I took the last session of Roz's class on creating background textures.  I really started getting my act together when I joined her Patreon site and several months later finally got into her Facebook group related to her Patron site.  There were some technical difficulties with Facebook.  I asked Roz to try a few different things and the last one finally worked.  The timing was great because it was right when she rolled out the idea of "Do It Anyway December".  A lot of things clicked for me about how I can and should use projects to focus on and develop skills. 

One of my stumbling blocks has been that I don't know what I don't know.  When I got stuck with a drawing or painting problem, I wasn't sure how to get unstuck. I think if I can adopt Roz's manner of doing projects, along with goal setting and assessments I can be a better captain of my own ship in deciding what I want to learn and how I can get the info, tools, techniques, and so on that I think I need.  

My project for December has been to paint an apple every day in acrylic paint while exploring color options.  It may not seem like much, but I keep bumping up against these color-related rules (and other art-making rules) in my head that aren't real and that I need to confront and make them go away, so I am doing things like painting blue apples. It may not seem like much, but it is helping me confront my internal critic and it's getting me back to creating on a daily basis and I can see small, incremental changes.  

I've also been focusing in a much more effective way on values.  The value finder tool has become my friend.  I purchased some black paint and a premixed gray and have been also working monochromatically.  The biggest surprise is that I started doing thumbnail sketches, which I previously have been afraid of and didn't understand how to do them.  Slowly, I'm learning.  Here's ones from the last two days and, the pen mark on the one on the left shows where I made something a darker value than what it actually was. 

I've been writing about all of this a lot, but what I've been writing has fit better into a journal app that I use, called Penzu.  I have multiple journals in this app and the exploration, processing, and journey fits better in the creativity journal I created.  I haven't figured out how the blog fits into all of this.  My guess is that I will post occasionally, because this blog captures the arc of my journey in a different way.

One last thing is that I have spent some time thinking about why do I want to learn to draw and paint?  It is clear to me that having creative outlets is an important aspect of my life, but I've never really answered the question why dry and paint.  While I don't think this is my final answer, here's my best answer as of today. I want to use art to capture everyday objects, moments, and experiences in an uninhibited way as part of staying grounded and present in my life.  

Limited Options

I would like to make more pieces using words cut from political mail that I have received. I want useful nouns and other words that I’m not finding and it’s too hard to build words with individual letters. It’s probably for the best, but I have a tiny bit of regret that all political mail was immediately put into recycling until about 10 days ago. Otherwise, I might have gone off the deep end with this. I like playing with words quite a lot. 

A Good Use Of Election Mail

The background textures class is finishing up and I wanted to finish one piece before it does. Yesterday, I cut out a bunch of words from the pile of election mail, which was heading to the recycling bin, played around, and pulled together some phrases.  I have more words and phrases and might do some more pieces.  

For a lot of the backgrounds, I am just going to do practice drawings on them.

Snow In The Forecast

With the weather forecast showing up to 5 inches of snow tomorrow, it was time to get these ready for another year.

I should have taken a before picture, since these were in sad, sad shape. Actually, they are still in rather sad shape. The fluffy stuff to keep your feet warm is mostly gone and the rest of the insides are quite worn. At least they look fabulous on the outside!!

Still In The Textures Class

I'm still in the Texture's class and have been working on homework. The last set of videos drop tomorrow. 

I also still have cats who like to get in way when I take photos to document my work.

Back To Drawing

I've started drawing, again, and I'm starting with the basics. Hatching and crosshatching continue to baffle me. While it might not be the most exciting goal ever, I am going to focus on this for now, by working on giving volume to a shape and not worrying about the aspects related to convey value. It just does not come naturally to me. Last night, I spent some quality time with an alma papricka pepper from my garden. I sat there and looked at it and tried to think about how to add crosshatching. The proportions are a bit off. The drawing should be wider relative to the height.

Next up might be working on thumbnail sketches.

Knitting Hats During The Pandemic

Throughout the pandemic, I've been more than a little all over the place, doing a bit of this and a bit of that. I've been great at starting various projects, but not so great about finishing any of them and, as I've mentioned before, I've really struggled with keeping my art habit going. Throughout all of this, the one constant source of sanity has been stranded color knitting.

One day, early in the pandemic, I decide that hat knitting was a good way to cultivate some happiness. The plan was to keep it simple. I was not knitting hats for any particular person, so I didn't have to worry about the size or pleasing anyone. Instead, I was just going to knit one hat after another with no regard to how long it took me to finish one. Rather than getting caught up on selecting colors, at first, I started out matching yarn colors to different fabric pieces found in a quilt that a dear friend made for me. It helps that I have an almost endless inventory of my favorite yarn in almost all of the different colors it came in over the years. Sadly, it's been discontinued. While the mix of 50% wool, 25% alpaca and 25% mohair is glorious, there certainly are other good options in worsted weight yarn. For the few colors that I am running low on, I've decided to use 'em up and I'll find a substitute at some future date, if needed. 

I decided that I had the time to experiment more with adding embroidery and I also decided to use motifs in several hats where the yarn floats would be very, very long as an inducement to tackle and relearn the invisible stranding technique that I learned several years ago from Susan Rainey. Finally, I decided that I would knit at least one style of each hat in Kristin Nicholas' patterns for Moroccan Fedoras and Wild and Wooly Headgear. 

Actually, Kristin's influence was behind much of this project, since it was her patterns, her instructions about adding embroidery to knitwear, her discontinued yarn, and finally many motifs from her book, Color By Kristin.

Since I don't like to post pictures of people on this blog, getting a good picture of a hat can be a bit difficult. This morning, I nominated the wooden man on the front porch to be my model. Many moons ago (so many ago that it was before we met), my spouse performed as a juggler and included some other circus and vaudeville skills in his act. The wooden man was his assistant for part of his act. 

The takeaway from trying to set up a simple photo shoot is that I like taking natural pictures better. Trying to set up decent pictures is hard! I wish I would have started earlier in the day, so I had more options in the yard, where much of the greenery is not looking so good, and the decent parts were getting too washed out by the direct sunlight. 

With the help of a fairly cooperative model who didn't move, except for blowing over once in the wind, and needing a lot of adjustment to get the arms to stay up, I got some decent pictures. 

Individually, here are the hats.

I gave away this one before I took a picture. The "price" of the hat was sending me several photos. Like I said earlier, I'm not knitting these for any particular person. For this one, I knit the medium size, but my gauge was a tad tighter. I had to think of someone with the smallest head amongst all of my friends (not the smallest brain, by the way) and I gave it to her. This is a good hat to wear around the house if you are cold. It does not cover the ears. 

MF - close fitting hat

The pillbox hat is probably my favorite shape , so I've done two of them so far. If you want to see the side of the second one, it's in the second group shot above. It's the one to the left. 

MF - pillbox hat 1 - sideview

MF - pillbox hat 1 - top view

MF - pillbox hat 2 - top view

This is another one which turned out on the small side. 

WWHG - easy 4-pointed hat

I used a different quilt for the color inspiration for this one. 

WWHG - flat hat

I brought over the hat collection to a socially-distance event with my hubby's family and told my niece I would make her a hat. I figured she would want to try on the samples and we could figure out which shape she wanted. I had just finished this hat and she decided that she wanted it.

WWHG - stocking hat
 

This bottom "panel" of this one is two layers, so it's a bit more knitting than most of the others. My hubby likes this feature in a hat, so this is the only one that I've made with the intended recipient in mind.

WWHG - spiral decrease hat

For most of the hats, I've been adding embroidery and it really adds a lot. The hats are fine without it, but the embroidery is like the icing on the cake. You don't have to be perfect with your stitches, in fact I think it looks better when there's a little bit of wonkiness to them. Pillbox hat 1 is actually the first hat that I knit and the circles which were knitted in the hat became so much more interesting with the embroidery.  I did not take a close up of that example, but here are several others. 

I'm not done with the project. I still need to knit a Peruvian 4-cornered hat and a mushroom hat. If anyone is keeping track, there also is a beret in one of the patterns. I completed one of those, but gave it to a friend this weekend and I didn't want to be pushy about getting pictures in time for this post. 

I really like the beret, but decided to not block it as a beret. The hat has a nice shape without blocking it into a beret. More importantly, it's like a not-so-close fitting hat, which also covers one's ears. When you live in a cold climate, I think this makes it a better hat.   

Some of these have found homes so far. Some have not. I'm giving them away slowly over time and deriving a lot of enjoyment from that, as well. 

Some Second Layers

 I haven't been writing. I've been off experimenting.

I've been job hunting.

I've also been painting the stairwell and stairwell ceiling (with white on the ceiling and only one color on the walls, in case you are wondering).

I've still never met a bright color that I don't like The following one is actually brighter in person.  The other interesting thing is that the above one is hansa yellow opaque as the first layer with quin magenta on top, while this one reversed the order of the colors. You can also see that I used different techniques, but even so the difference is interesting.

I am toning some of the colors down or at least adding some areas which are more neutralized. This one is actually a first layer.

I am loving the excuse to play with color.  I have made a pledge to myself that these are not precious. They are to be used. I can always make more.

Still On Layer 1

Tomorrow, the first set of videos for working on a second layer drop. That means that I have been doing a lot of first layers. I could seriously post a lot of pictures. It’s been a joy to just play and to play with color. As I start to work on 2nd layers, I will just post my favorite experiment, since the last time I posted.

This one got made when I pressed a clean, dry piece of paper on top of another piece of paper which was dry in some parts, mostly dry in others, and really, really wet elsewhere.

This turned out pretty cool. I may or may not add more to it. 

So the other cool thing to share is a picture from today. 

A Little More Joy

 Given the news of the death of RBG, I am extra glad to have Roz's class. I need color and I need an excuse to play. 

Here are some new experiments with a toothbrush and a spray bottle. I have a tendency to use too much water. At the same time that I was coming to this realization, Roz had a post on her blog about this very subject. 

The first 3 times I played with the toothbrush and spray bottle, I used way too much water. The 4 time worked better. All of these were on 5" x 7" pieces of paper.

The 5th time was even better. I still think I could have waited for the initial marks had dried a bit more and could have used a bit less water from the spray bottle, but that is something to revisit later since tomorrow the videos drop for the 2nd week of class.

Here's one other 1st layer from earlier in the week. When I can be patient and wait for things to dry, sometimes too much water is a good thing. It doesn't show up as well in the photo, but this one has a really cool frosted effect. 

A Little Joy

 I am so glad that I signed up for the last round of Roz Stendahl’s online class called “Textures: Backgrounds for Visual Journaling and Mixed Media”. The class started on Saturday. 

My reaction to the pandemic and the aftermath of the civil unrest stole some part of my creativity. It was coming back slowly and never completely went away thanks to my knitting, but a big part of it has been missing.

In the last several days, I’ve caught myself thinking on more than one occasion, “I wonder what would happen if” in response to thinking about creating a new first layer as part of this week’s homework. It's a good place to be and it makes me feel like that part of me which has been missing is starting to return. 

So far doing a few new first layers each day makes me feel like I am a little kid playing with finger paint.

This is my favorite one so far.  After brushing some paint on damp paper, I used the rare, but very effective art tool, know as a scrap piece of plastic shelf liner from IKEA.

As class continues, my guess is that we will be adding onto our first layers and covering parts of them up. For this one, I will probably keep it "as is". 

Since I liked this one so much, I did a follow up with a rubber stamp I carved several years ago.

One thing I like about this is when I open my sketchbook, I want have this big, white empty piece of paper staring back at me. It got me thinking about my relationship to color, but that is a post for another day!

Picture And Memorabilia Project - Part 2

The first rabbit hole that I fell down involving family pictures and memorabilia relates to my adoptive family.     

Due to a strange parallel or coincidence, I was given the same the opportunity involving my biological roots on my maternal side.  I still can't believe that it happened.  While all of this immediate family has already died, my biological mother's long-time partner is still living and he contacted me at the end of March. Prior to this, I had spoken with him one time and had sent him 1 letter. I left it up to him to decide it he wanted further contact and after several years had passed, I assumed that I would not hear from him.

Imagine my surprise when he called and said that he had pictures that he wanted to send to me. Imagine my bigger surprise when 3 weeks later (on April 18th, mailed 2 days before by priority mail), I received a priority mail box from him filled with all sorts of information about my biological family, including a family scrapbook, a scrapbook of my biological mother's, and a number of pictures. The earliest picture dates back to the 1910s. 

Working with the memorabilia on my adoptive side brought a new level of understanding.  Adding the new information on my maternal biological side brought a new level of groundedness. 

If you are not adopted, it can be hard to truly fathom this. In another interesting coincidence, several weeks after I received the box, there was an article in the paper about a local photographer, who is also an adoptee and who started the Family Resemblance Project back in 2016. The newspaper article was about a book coming out about this project.  Everything on this website for his project and in this article really resonates with me, but the following quote from the article especially nails it for me. 

In the article, he is quoted as saying "I think we’re all pattern-seekers. We so want to see faces in things. We want to see ourselves in other people, and I think it’s because we all want a human connection, whether we admit it or not. And when you can actually see the human connection, I think it makes you happy. I think it gives you peace. Because it’s a visual reminder that we are indeed connected to other people, inextricably." 

When I think about this quote, it's interesting to me that in the early part of this, I experienced a pivotal moment when I could not see the patterns between my  biological mother's face and my own and I also could see them.  In the very first picture I saw of her, I really wasn't sure if there was a resemblance, but my spouse clearly saw one.  In fact, he had an visceral reaction to the picture.  In one of the next pictures that I saw from one of her college yearbooks (aside - - it's amazing what you can find on the internet), where there's an entire page of pictures of different people organized by name,  my eyes immediately were drawn to her face. Before I looked at the name, I knew that it was her.  I'm not sure it was about resemblance, but some part of me still just knew.

This is another post that I started awhile ago and decided to clean up and post. 

Picture And Memorabilia Project - Part 1

At the start of this extended time of physical distancing, I spent a ton of time with photographs and other family memorabilia when I started a project to scan "my collection". Over time, I have become the family historian and have most of my Dad’s old photos, including ones he acquired when his parents died. I also have the photos from when my mother and father were married and the photos from my brother childhood and mine.  Given my Mom's circumstances, there's virtually nothing from just her side.

Especially with the older stuff, it's not just photos.  I have old letters, ration books from World War II, newspaper clippings, and other things.    

Some time in the 1990s when I received my first batch of old family photos from my Dad, I brought them back with me to a family Thanksgiving. I made my Dad and my Aunt look at all of them and identify who they could.  We documented names on the back of these photos.  

This spring, I started to sort through different pockets of the collection, beginning with the newspaper clippings and other items my stepmother gave to me after my Dad died 13 years ago. I had never looked at any of this. It was all waiting for me in the drawer of a file cabinet in the basement. Once I got started, I started pulling out more and more of the collection which was tucked away in different places.

At some point, I came across a number of pictures which were not documented and contained people that I didn't know, so I reached out to my Aunt.  She is 90 years old, still lives independently, and has a good memory. She's also been stuck at home most of the time like the rest of us and is bored. For several months, I sent her several scanned items each day. 

With her help, I got many more photos identified and also got some background stories from her.  One photo with my Grandmother and a couple I didn't know prompted her to tell me that the couple in the picture were my grandparent's best friends. She told me that this was the same couple that my grandparents called to sit with them after they first received notice from the Army that my Dad had been injured in Europe during World War II. I learned a bunch of things I didn't know, got closer to my Aunt, and gave the both of us something to do.  

For the scanned versions, I've figured out a way to document names and other information in a picture's margins.  It takes a lot of time, so I'm only doing that for some of the collection. I'm saving the scanned photos in a folder out in the cloud and have shared the folder with my family members, so they can access what they want.  I hope someone from the next generation gets interested.

At this point in a rambling post, I feel compelled to share at least one pictures. Out of all the family photos, I'm drawn to this one. It's from July 13, 1919 and my grandparents on my father's side are in this picture.

This grandfather died before I was born and I was not close to this grandmother, but there's something about this photo that makes me feel connected to them.

 

I did a rough draft of this post on May 8th. Today, I decided to finish it and post it. 

When all of the uncertainty and disconnection from people and regular routines first occurred, my own reaction to it surprised me. I had zero capacity to draw or paint. I certainly had time and I also really wanted to, but I just could not. Instead, I found that I had to knit. 

This project also was helpful and needed distraction and I think it was creative in its own way. 

The End Of An Era

My partner and I made the difficult decision to have Dorian Gray put down this morning. 

On July 29, 2002, we brought home two adorable gray kittens, who were approximately 3 months old, from the vet. They were from Wadena MN, where one of the vet's sisters lived. In early July, we had asked to be put on a list to be notified when the clinic had kittens and this was the 2nd time the clinic had called.

The first time they called, the timing was terrible. It was right before we were leaving on vacation. We went to see them anyway. Who wouldn't?  It was a Friday morning of a tough work week for both of us and it was a chance to play with kittens. This was a larger batch of kittens and they were around 2 months old. They were sweet, but the timing was bad and I didn't feel an immediate attachment.

I was at work on a Monday morning when the vet called the second time, she said that she only had 2 kittens this time, but they were both sweeties.  She was tempted to keep the one, which turned out to be Dorian (in fact that was what the vet was going to name her), but she didn't want to split them up.  I immediately called him at work and said I wanted to go look at them at lunch that day. We went and when one gray kitty got placed in his arms and one in mine, I was instantly hooked.  At one point, he turned to me and asked "what do you want to do", which was immediately responded with "I want to take them home".  The follow up question was "when" to which I replied "now". 

We were planning to get kittens and had all of the supplies, including cat carriers,  We did not have the carriers with us, so Daniel got to hold on to two squirmy balls of gray fur on the way home.  

This is the first decent picture I ever took of the both of them way back in 2002. They both grew into those ears.

We lost Ella Phant in September of 2018 and we lost Dorian this morning.

It is the end of an era. 

I loved both of these cats so very, very much. I don't think it takes anything away from Ella, but I wrote in my journal yesterday and have included the following thought as I have told several people today about Dorian.  If someone wrote a book after the very best relationships throughout time between a cat and her person, there would be a chapter in there about Dorian and me.

She was a sweet, sweet, but, also, very reserved cat. She would not smile for the camera. Several early and bad attempts at using a flash when taking her picture resulted in a lifetime of pictures of her scowling. This is not how I picture her in my mind, but this picture makes me smile because it shows her at the extreme end of her scowling and annoyance at being photographed. 

I miss you, my sweet Dorian Gray.

Smug Or Annoyed

 Last week, I met a friend in a park along the St. Croix River on the Wisconsin side for lunch on a picnic table and to paint. It has been a long, long time since I picked up a paint brush. Since then, I’ve painted on average every other day. Drawing has been sporadic. 

I started this on Monday and finished it last night. I like the nose, which I usually overwork, but didn’t this time, and I like the suggestion of the body. Next time, my goal is to not overwork the paint strokes. There was an energy when I stopped on Monday which disappeared by the time I finished.  Also, the light side of the cat should be lighter and brighter colors. 

In the painting, Hammett looks annoyed, while in the source photo it’s more of a mixture of smugness with a dose of mild irritation. 

#368 - Waterfall Legs & Paws - 5” x 7” - paper

The source photo is one I will return to. I like the drape of the legs and paws. In the source photo, the cat  is being held by his person, D. I didn’t want to show the person in the painting, along with the hands and cell phone which was also being held, although I’m not sure the background works.

Drawing Practice

I'm back to drawing. I'm sorry to say that it's not every day, but it is most days. Taking the online class was a good choice. In the last week, I fell behind on the lessons. Class ends this week. I am planning on starting it all over again and going through it more slowly. 

For now, here are several practice sketches of Hammett. When he is sleepy in the afternoon, he is a fantastic model. When he is deep in sleep, he holds poses like these for a long time.

He will hold interesting poses for a short time if I pet him on his tummy when he's sleepy. He goes onto his back with his paws at interesting angles. After that, he will sometimes settle into a pose which I call origami paws. He tucks and folds his paws in delightful ways. 

He's a fluffy guy, so he offers a lot of opportunity to figure out how to capture that in a drawing. 

Respite

I got away this weekend with my sweetie and several friends, who are all taking the physical distancing due to Covid-19 very seriously. Yes, there is some risk, but we took a number of precautions to reduce the risk.

It's a magical place I've had the fortune to visit annual for more than 20 years.

Here are several of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

Mosses and lichens on stone

Lichens on fence

When I got up the first morning, I spent some quality time with this bird.

Later in the day, I spent some quality time with a friend and some other birds in and near a rookery.

I did crop the following one. I'm pointing this out, since I've been trying to better develop my eye and taking the picture that I want to end up with rather than relying on cropping.  Although, I do crop when I am going to paint from a photo. 

I'm still obsessed with hummingbirds. I should have brought the tripod along. Being at full zoom, I got very few crisp, sharp photos.  This is one of the few exceptions. It was when I was first getting set up, so I wasn't actually ready when this charmer showed up, which accounts for the lack of composition. It may sound like complaining, but it's not. It was glorious to be away and to have the luxury of focusing on things like taking good pictures of birds.