Darker.
Category: Uncategorized
another camel
I thought the tile pattern was too light and too warm, so I tried this instead:
I might even go darker, or make the background dark gray/black. I don’t have so much of the paper the stencil is made of. How did I make that paper? I think it was some kind of gouache and India ink technique. Perhaps I can find the instructions somewhere.
The model here is Ursula, an avid practitioner of Ashtanga yoga and photography.
I think that soon I’m going to have to break down and paint. It has been a while, and I rarely have time. But I can’t solve everything with pencil, marker and collage. Or can I?
It is torture, these tiny increments of time. I am yearning for uninterrupted hours….
sketches and concepts
It was bath night, and I hadn’t drawn yet so I took my markers and sketchbook into the bathroom and sat on a blue plastic toddler chair.
Hmm, wet curly hair is tricky- especially when the boy won’t sit still for more than a second! The good thing? It forces me to draw from memory a little. Which I don’t like, but it’s an excellent skill nevertheless.
Last fall I took a transfer workshop with artist Anne Krinsky. This inkjet transfer into wet gesso has a few problems.
Here’s a stencil of Ursula in Ustrasana (camel pose). I’ve made a few of these in different patterns to play around with.
This is me thinking outside the box for a moment. I love the tile pattern here. From time to time I wonder why I’m posting all of this information. Some people worry about their ideas being stolen. That’s not a huge worry of mine, especially at this point. So much of an artist’s worth is based on their identity anyway, which can only be built up over time and in relationship to other artists, dealers and curators anyway. Mostly I’m here for the accountability. It’s about showing up and doing what you said you’d do. I like comments too, it’s hard to keep creating in a vacuum. Artists do like attention after all!
Peg in Laguvajrasana
Oops- this post was meant for my yoga blog, so forgive me for the accidental crossposting. ~DS
Peg Mulqueen in Laguvajrasana
This is too much fun. I feel called to name the flaws in the picture, but it occurs to me that if you can’t see them already then I don’t need to help you out there. I think a lot of us do this in yoga too, somebody compliments our backbends and we deflect the compliment by saying “Oh yes, but what was happening on my jumpthrough today I wonder?”
I’m writing a blurb about yoga for church. It’s a bit hilarious I think. I’m a Unitarian Universalist, more or less because they don’t mind people who worship trees as much as anything else. Now I don’t mean that I literally worship trees, but for me the universe is very present in the locus that is a tree. So I walk in the woods a lot. Anyway… I’m writing about yoga for church, which seems harder because I can’t just hit “publish” and wait for the fall out. I have to get up and say it in front of people I know, people I see at school and the supermarket. It has to do with how my practice of yoga contributes to a sense of rebirth and renewal in my life.
For that matter, it’s bring a friend to church week at my little church in Groton, MA. So if you live in the area and would like to come and see what some tree huggers and other folks do on Sunday mornings…. you just have to squeeze in your practice before 10AM. We have a really good choir and, I think, the best minister in the whole world. She makes me cry and always speaks to the inner depths of the human soul.
Peg in Laguvajrasana
Peg’s shirt is bright pink and begged for color. I didn’t have the right marker so I used flesh with a scarlet overlay. Once I have enough sketches I’ll have no more excuses except to start working on panels. How many more sketches is that I wonder? I have the tiny panels I bought to practice on.
Choir Practice and Kapotasana
This is Peg Mulqueen from Washington D.C. She can also be seen in this month’s Yoga Journal! I got a bit carried away working on this and was late picking up one of my kids today.
MFA Boston
Too bad that arm looks a little rubbery, not so attached to the shoulder. We went to the MFA today and they had a marvelous Paper Zoo exhibit Curated by Cliff Ackley. They had a marvelous ink drawing (I think) of a porcupine by Leonard Baskin that both girls got a kick out of drawing and a gorgeous print of trout in the water by Neil Welliver, who I just adore. I didn’t get to draw yesterday so I did two today to make up for it. Vacation week!!! I am having a wicked time making a drawing of my middle daughter into a likeness. In this one I think she looks more like her older cousin.
Ball jar
I love the new suite of gray Pitt markers with the brush tips. I think there needs to be some black, for contrast. I drew this last night after the Light, Wood and Bronze reception for Linda Hoffman and Sue Salem. I didn’t really feel like drawing, but I didn’t feel like going to bed without having drawn at all either. So I cleaned my kitchen, scored and tore a piece of that new hot press rag paper into smaller rectangles, and commenced.
I spoke with Miranda at the reception. She has an amazing website for StudioMothers. I mentioned that there is this aspect of daily drawing, now that I’ve been doing it for a couple of months, in which I don’t start every day as if I’ve never drawn before. The drawing hand, the hand-eye coordination is already primed and ready to go. And this in only 15 minutes a day. Why didn’t I know this before? Even when I was working regularly in my studio I never drew every day. It’s hard to explain what a powerful practice this is, but I’m going to write it up and try.
In Panera
Hmmm… perhaps not my best but had lots of fun at CC Lowell in Worcester and finally settled on some small gessoboard panels (6X6″) to experiment on, a set of pitt pens with brush tips in six shades of gray (used above), and some hot press cotton rag paper, quite costly and and not as white as I wanted. Still… I love selecting art supplies.
Mini Portraits
I bought my daughter a book of drawing exercises for Christmas, which we are revisiting know that her musical is over. One of the exercises is 100 mini portraits. Here are 2 (of mine) from tonight.
Deborah Santoro 