Author: -N-

94. Gift Bag

Today – clean up the house!  I am still trying to get things organized after the repairs and remodels, which means getting rid of junk, boxes, and putting things back into some sort of order.  It is funny how orderliness can equate with mental and emotional serenity.  This messiness seems to be spilling over into painterly messiness and disorganization and directionlessness.  The end of the school year is also to blame.  Thus, something simple, with lines, and perhaps symbolically, something that can contain something else, but is brings new and pleasant surprises – like found in a gift bag.

Freedom!

Sounds grand, doesn’t it?  It’s a heady feeling.  Instead of ending my work day at 6:30, it now ends at 4:30 for the next 2 days, then next week at 3:30, and then after that, 5 weeks off (maybe 4, I haven’t really counted) until I return to work for 2 mornings a week to do a short summer school session of ESL (English as a Second Language) before another 2 off  and then begin my last year of work.  Retirement looms closer and closer, and what is a girl to do?

Practice!

Yeah, I mean that.  Practicing for retirement means finding a meaning and a purpose and a general “raison d’etre” so that life is not a series of TV and aimlessness.  It doesn’t mean finding a second job or a new vocation, it means simply doing things which have value and meaning to me.  Volunteer work?  Maybe.  What kind?  Where?  Why?

I have all sorts of ideas about what I want to do, and this summer, with my free time, I really want to explore things.  LIke a lot of old folks free from the traces of work, travel sounds really good.  Of course, photography and painting and reading.  Exercise – going to the gym – long walks – hiking – socializing – thinking – making – sewing – painting – egads!  My head is exploding!

Lines, Shapes, Shadows

I had to take a day off from painting as my head was swirling.  This seems to happen whenever I do a lot of any one thing.  My brain feels overloaded and I need to do something to break out of it.  Then it settles down with sometimes clarity or a nagging little sense of something different, good but not completed, if that makes any sense.

Today’s focus – this morning in poor light – I decided to look at white space and dark space.  Neither results are spectacular but what I do see is shapes in this pictures.  Corners outlines, curves, straight edges.  I also like the merging and blending and granulations I see.  Other than that?

Bay Area

The “Bay Area” is the area around San Francisco Bay, and includes picturesque places such as San Francisco itself, to across the bay north and east.  It’s a mixture of urban sprawl and older neighborhoods, rich and poor.  I’ve spent time there off and on, and it is always a pleasure.  It’s very different than SoCal, let me tell you!

Direct watercolor is being done here – and proportions are a bear!  It takes time and practice to be able to render things in the correct relationship to each other.  I never learned the “pencil comparison” method – the one where you see the artist hold up his pencil toward the subject matter and then draw on the paper, and then repeat the process.  Given how disproportionate many of my direct watercolors are, I think it will be something to master this summer in my spare time.