All you have to do...is listen

I am dancing a jig here (uh, my Irish slang...) as I finished my 2nd painting for the week. Both of these paintings are to be sold as either silent or live auction items for the ACS Bras for the Cause Events this weekend and another fundraisor for the James Albert Foundation which is helping to build schools in Belize.
The painting here started as a watercolor on museum mounted Gessoboard. I stained the sides of this board (to enhance the appearance and preserve the wood), then taped this off to protect the sides. I then did a loose, watercolor painting of an Asian elephant and an imaginary landscape. I had a poem that kept haunting me as I painted this elephant, so decided to write this in the quiet area to the R of the elephant. I then took some Walnut Ink and a calligraphy brush and quickly outlined the elephant to make it 'pop' just a bit. After the painting dried I sprayed the surface with an archival matte spray to help preserve the watercolor on this slick surface. I then went in with encaustic medium and brushed around certain parts of the painting, giving this a dream-like texture and appearance. The last thing was to collage a bit of calligraphy on this baby. The golden, calligraphic symbol stands for 'to listen'. The photos here are deceiving in that the gold pigment I used in the writing does not photograph well. The poem on this painting is from a favorite movie of mine, August Rush:

Listen. Can you hear it? The music! I can hear it everywhere. In the wind... in the air... in the light. It's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do... is listen.

Autumn Morning in Napa

Autumn mornings can be beautiful in Iowa. These farm scenes were taken just west of DM today. The colors and lighting were stellar. I do believe the best lighting may be about an hour even earlier. So, tomorrow or the next AM I am going out in my PJs and lugging a thermos of coffee!

Pthalo, Phthalo, Thalo and Prussian

About this painting- and all of that gorgeous green grass! I learned a lesson about how SCARY pthalo green can be to a watercolor painting. Pthalo green and pthalo or prussian blue are staining, aggressive and 'yes' scary colors! I have those on  my palette as other artists have mentioned they make great darks. However, they have ruined 2 of my paintings this week as NOTHING I did to neutralize these colors worked. Yesterday I spent an hour or so emptying/discarding all of the colors on my palette (including those obnoxious colors) and squeezing out only colors I love and find workable. Time well spent!

Of course, this is NOT the painting - but the photo. The painting will be redrawn and started again (without staining colors!). Perhaps shown in a later blog.

Is this Des Moines?

This week I spent the a couple of afternoons sketching and painting in the Pappajohn Sculpture Gardens downtown Des Moines. I gave plein air painting a good run! The sun and slight wind enjoyed blurring my eyesight and tossing my easel or watercolor board around at times. Totally worth is as I watched and listened to all sorts of people enjoying this public space. I saw everyone from new brides to people enjoying a lunch hour, to kids tossing footballs. Was this Des Moines?!? It sure was! I am thankful for the donation and tax dollars that went into finding/procuring and saving this beautiful area.

Backlit

Curious about this title? I came up with ~a dozen titles for this painting as I painted over the past few days. It could be due to the fact that this is my 3rd version of this composition. The other 2 were a tad less successful. It took some preplanning to decide on the colors, composition and design before I felt comfortable with this.

This beautiful woman was walking down a rural road in Bali last year. I stopped in my tracks when I saw her/this scene from afar, whipped out my camera and wished I could stop time. I only had time to smile at her, then hope she didn't mind as I snapped away. She was obviously working, had a huge load of tropical leaves on her head. The summer sun was behind her, making it appear that this vision was from another place or time. The look on her face as she realized what I was doing will always make me grateful. She beamed. I don't know if what I saw was kindness, compassion, warmth, a friendly smile or tolerance. It doesn't matter. It was a warm, beautiful smile in a bucolic scene. That gesture and her grace warmed my heart.

A Day of Portraits and Models

Day 4. Exhausting. Learned alot. Got frustrated, then poured those feelings out on my watercolor paper and life felt OK again. Drawing figures and portraits with any sense of accuracy is almost impossible unless done daily. Never mind. This act is probably frustrating period. It is also satisfying when an artist does capture a feeling or likeness of the model.

Attached is a portrait that I gave up on, started dropping in all sorts of mudd (professional term in my watercolor world.....), then started painting in vivid colors here and there. Mary (instructor) came by and took my sponge (!) and wiped out areas of highlights. Quite nice result, actually. A few more brush strokes here and there and this is the result.

The top photo is of Mary Whyte, her painting demo and the model that she was painting. An inspiring day.

"Does anybody really know what time it is?"

Spent the AM painting at the Marina. The weather here has been surreal. I have found that September is the perfect month to visit San Francisco. There were 3 boats harbored here that captured me from the start. This photo was taken about 1/2 way through my painting. My painting stopped abruptly as 3 men started lounging on the grass around my easel. They were friendly enough, actually quite chatty, but I became unnerved as one started speaking about stealing the watches from another painter and myself. Well, time to move on to our next venue.....the afternoon found us back in the classroom painting models. I left my watch in my room.