Category: Blitherings

A Message from the “Officially” Fallen

It’s official:  two fractures, neither of which is especially serious.  More uncomfortable than anything, and inconvenient.  I have a splint for the middle finger, where I have a chip fracture on the joint above the knuckle.  The wrist fracture is a bigger, non-displaced chip fracture on the distal radius – the bone just below the thumb.    I have a removable splint for each, rather than a cast.  This will make bathing much easier.

I can function much better in this new and stylish black splint, even drive and draw and hold a brush.  I go back on the 24th for follow-up.  Overall, 4 to 6 week healing time.

The Fallen

 

Take a dog. Take a turn.  Trip over dog.  Fall forward.  Fall onto your back after hitting the sewing table with your right hand.

Probable broken middle finger on right hand and a broken right wrist, per the local urgent care, but best go see a hand specialist Monday or so, to confirm or deny.

I am right-handed.

Happy Easter!

Thursday Morning

This has been quite a week or so.  I am so glad I get the next ten days off from work, starting at 5 p.m. tonight.  I am just about done in!

You could say it began two weeks ago.  A pipe broke under the shower pan in the master bathroom.  Three days later, half the carpet in the bedroom is gone, the shower stall is destroyed, and the leak is fixed.  Now all that remains is arguing with the insurance company, choosing tile for the bathroom, ordering tile for the bathroom, ordering flooring for bathroom and back third of the house, painting the bathrooms and bedroom, and installing new vanities, possibly one or two new toilets, new mirrors, and new lighting in the bathrooms.  Maybe it will be done by the end of April.  The other half is going bonkers with all the estimates and people coming and going.  Besides that, I had a 3-day painting workshop (yay!), a nasty cold and flu, and now Josh has the cold.

So, what is going to happen during the break?  A few appointments.  Lots of art if I am lucky.  Lots of photography, too.  Choices being made for tile and paint – the flooring is already chosen – and writing big checks for all this stuff.  And researching what “contiguous” means in context of California insurance law – but that is another story!

And, of course, organizing all the bits and pieces of my life that have fallen apart over the last few weeks.  I never realized how disorganization is like a perpetual motion machine – it is entropy at its worst!

Once Waitlisted Weekend Watercolor Workshop

How’s that for a few Ws or so?

This past weekend I spent immersed in painting and drawing and sketching, all focused on watercolor.  This lucky girl got in after being waitlisted to a workshop with Brenda Swenson, an excellent watercolorist, and as it turns out, a very good teacher.  Three days of organized to increasingly looser structure was perfect.

Day 1 began with continuous contour line drawing and lost edges.  At first I got it – and then didn’t – and then did again.  These drawings then led to watercolors using lost edges to blur and bleed color into color – wet working with deliberate movement of color.  This helps with reflected light.  The mind fills in what the brush does not.

From there, on the second day, we moved into landscapes from photographs, all of which were provided by Brenda, and from which all the landscapes in this post are derived from.  For some reason I couldn’t seem to think straight – I was restless and goofy and my mind was all over the place.  Somehow, I managed to survive and produce a few pictures of value.  The still lives I did sucked.  Structure of the day, if I recall, along with the first was draw, format, paint.  Formatting was finding a border for the image, where edges might break out of the line, and give an interesting look to the painting.  Good graphics!

And on the third day, structure loosened.  The focus was on painting vignettes.  A vignette, I knew, had white around the borders of a painting – a piece of a painting.  Brenda put it into a different perspective, on which I never had heard of – cruciform.  Don’t touch the corners with paint, touch one or all of the 4 edges of the picture’s ostensible borders, and focus on how the shape – the negative space of the corners – looks in relationship to all the other.

Lessons each day, thoughts for each day.  If I get another chance to attend here workshop, I will – if you get a chance, do it!

Now, a few things done during the workshop . . . click on a picture to see them bigger!

Ink, Color, Paper

For some time now I have been practicing “urban sketching,” which is a fun way to record what you see around you.  Sit down, have a cup of coffee, take out the ink, color, and paper.  Go to a park, visit a zoo.  The world is around you!

Ink and wash in Stillman & Birn sketchbook. Light washes are more successful than heavy washes as far as I can tell.

Part of the process of this style of sketching is to realize the essentials of what you see in front of you.  It is a good way to evaluate and decide what to keep, what to discard.  By the same token, you learn about your materials.  To me, one of the most important elements is the paper – how it responds, how it reacts.  After a bit, paper becomes like an old friend – you know its nuances, when it’s in a good mood, when you are having difficulties.  And, like people, you find you like some paper better than others.

Painted with multiple glazes in a Hand Book. There is some blooming, which can be annoying, but the paper holds up well to repeated washes.

I’ve picked up a number of sketchbooks, many with heavy paper to handle watercolors and ink.  Handling a wash is critical.  However, learning what a paper can and cannot do is also important, and part of that is just using it.

The Pentalic sketchbook holds up really well to repeated wetting. The sky is a good example of this – I went in about 5 times, just because I could, to see how it worked. There isn’t too much blooming with this paper. As well, the paper has a pleasant texture. Both wet-in-wet and dry brush work on this paper. I painted all of this with a flat water brush to get a sense of how to use it more successfully than I have in the past. Ink is both Carbon Ink and pigmented markers.

To date, I have a Stillman & Birn, Hand Book and Pentalic watercolor sketchbooks.  Stillman & Birn doesn’t respond quite like I would like it to for wet washes, but it holds lines well.  I need to practice with it more to get a sense of its personality.  Hand Book seems to have better wash-handling qualities.  Pentalic, so far, appears to be the best.  I also have decided I like spiral bound vs. signatures.