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.