It appears to be human nature to procrastinate and avoid the potential dangerous realities that lie ahead. We are certainly guilty of it. One thing we have decided is to get our proverbially acts together on many levels. Today’s job is to prepare for possible evacuation. The fires in Los Angeles make it very clear. And having seen the beginning plumes of the Palisades Fire as it began while sitting in an office, I need to be realistic.
Today has been taking a lot of time for me – Josh is easy enough. I, though, need more to keep my little mind from going nuts. He can put together a backpack of stuff, and I need more than a back pack . . . I need to pack papers and documents, electronics and their attachments, cameras, musical instrument(s), basic art supplies, writing supplies. Inky (our dog) needs food and water. We also have put together our hardly gourmet instant food pack, water. The cars have full gas tanks.
Why these preparations, some of which will be completed later today? The winds are returning over the next two days and so is the possibility we could be burnt out. After spending hours today, I am glad we are doing what we are doing as it would be a terribly slap dash and not well thought out way have to beat a hasty run for safety.
After all the stress of fire and fears of fire, no electricity, setting up a generator, yesterday was just a nice, normal, and pleasantly dull day. The usual daily chores got done, things were cleaned and straightened, the yard cleared of debris. My fig tree is also pruned and ready for its next crop – the first new tips are already pushing their way into the world and bulbs are sending up new growth. Little things like this make for a much better day.
I got to see all this, and then settle onto a patio chair just to look around. With wind and cold, being outside was not much fun, and certainly not a place to sit with pen and ink. With it gone, I could settle and sit, enjoying the warmth of the day. And draw . . . above is a sketch of my dead foxgloves – the leaves are dried and flopping over the edge of the pot, under and over each other, and into the milkweed plants.
A friend gave me a wonderful pen, a cheapie from Amazon. The ink is waterproof, and the tip is fine. The paper I am drawing upon has a bit of tooth, and the result, for me, is wonderful. When lines are drawn more quickly, the ink breaks up and gives texture. The pen point is sharp enough to deliver beautiful dots. In between, the lines are steady and solid. All together, a great drawing experience.
A few years ago, Josh and I spent a number of days in Decorah, Iowa, and there I found a lovely little stationary – art supply store. An inexpensive set of pan paints was available, and I have found it to be perfect for adding color to an ink drawing. The colors are intense but not overly so, and seem to be of a transparency many fine watercolors possess. I have been using it a lot for such pictures. The colors mix together well, and with a light touch with water and brush, these paints (with a bit of help from yours truly) work very well with delicate drawings.
Ink, pen, watercolor on multimedia paper. About 5 x 10 inches.
With the threat of fires and losing our house, I feel a bit crazy. We ordered a generator, but it would be ironic that it gets burnt up and our house. No, our house is not in danger, but it is so scary to be contemplating its loss, as well as realize people have died and lost everything. So, it is as if I have to grab onto life and what I love, from people and pets to things I love to do. Watercolor painting is one of them, and the artist whose work I enjoy the most is that of Canadian watercolor artist Shari Blaukopf. Her colors are fresh and cheerful, her personality soothing and calm, and her mini online workshops are always a pleasure.
So, today, her most recent one: Expressive Triads. In painting, a triad is three colors, all primary, but within that the colors vary. This first one, for her tropical scene, consists of Cobalt Teal, Hansa Yellow, and Organic Vermilion. We begin with mixing color swatches.
She also adds ultramarine blue at times, toward the end, to mix really dark values which can vary depending on how much yellow or vermilion you add to the mix. I normally don’t swatch but today it just seems so important to attention to details and savor them.
From there, a piece of 10×12 paper and a pencil sketch for the general shapes of the scene. This is from a trip Shari took to Florida. She points out the warmth and colors of the scene – yellow clouds, teal sky, grey sky / clouds. As she paints, she explains what she does, colors used, brushes, talking as she paints. She suggested that you watch her video and then paint along after watching it. It is a good idea!
Her first scene – one of three – is this one. Her videos explain each section as she does it. So this scene itself has three sections – the sky, the foliage, and finally details. I don’t want to give away her course details, but suffice it to say she is clear. I learn a lot from watching and then doing. The beauty of her video courses is their clarity and brevity and extremely reasonable pricing. I spent about 2 hours with this first painting – watching and then painting.
While her sky is representation of the tropical skies in Florida, here, in the midst of the fires in LA, this sky makes me think of the conflagrations flooding the news. Palm trees and semi-tropical vegetation is common here, so the yellow clouds and sky mixed with grey make me think of smoke and fire on the horizon. Our sky is clear, and let us hope it stays that way. The above picture is scanned unedited with Epson Scan software.
The above scan is with VueScan and is less intense – especially in the yellows. I wonder if I need to permanently switch the software to VueScan as it seems more accurate, at least with this painting.
Final Touches
Below, some final touch-ups to the painting. I blurred out the bloom in the sky below the upper telephone wire, added shadows to the eaves of the house, and painted in some lines to the trunk of the left side palm tree. Once more, scanned with VueScan.
Watercolor, Arches 140# CP paper, short course by Shari Blaukopf.
We were without electricity for two days. We lost a lot of perishables and frozen food in that time period, so I dumped it all and went shopping for a few days’s supply, fresh and dried and canned. We ordered a generator to Josh’s specs that should arrive Monday, but who knows. We need a generator as I think things are not going to improve, and we have put off getting one long enough – I’m cheap. Travel along major roadways is doing okay, but with the winds picking up, who knows what will happen.
So, I got to play with money!
Meanwhile, there are many people who are still with electricity well into Day 5 – and it looks like another 5-6 days of winds are still ahead. Until the winds die down, I am not stocking up with a lot of food – enough for 3-5 days, but with trips to the market as needed. Rather, I am trying to lay in a few things we need – want – to make life more comfortable. One thing is a manual coffee grinder – we use whole beans. Another is a power charger for our phones – 70% charge in an hour seems like a good thing to me. While we ordered a generator, we don’t know when it will arrive, as well as we don’t know when the electricity will be shut off.
No electric lights, only flashlights and battery-powered lanterns. Two days of how to live without the computer, TV, cell phone, oven, or refrigerator.
Our house tends toward being dark, depending on the time of day, so I moved around the house as well as in and out depending on the wind and temperature. For awhile I went to the community center and charged things, drove around and got a pastry and some coffee, as well went shopping a bit.
At home, I pulled out my hand crank Singer 99 sewing machine from the 40s or 50s, and flannel that I couldn’t iron because of no electricity. I started some jammy pants out of a gaudy flannel print, and had a bit of fun. The flannel is wrinkled and rather messy, but they are only jammy pants and who cares? Lay the fabric out, cut out the pattern, and sew away! I decided to do French seams as flannel ravels, and am about halfway done. More on that project later today.
I have made a lot of these jammy pants for winter pajamas. The pattern is now perfected in size and length, and my wardrobe of jammy pants is a bit crowded now. I am looking to lighter weight fabric for summer, but I may stick to nightgowns then for sewing projects. Cotton jammy pants below . . . I’ll have a star-studded derriere!
And then outside . . . when the wind calmed down, the day was warm – about 74F. My garden is rather dreary, but with the warm weather lavender is blooming and a succulent has sent up the most outrageous stalks with flowers. It’s a strange plant, but fun to draw. The flowers, a pale red-orange clusters of bells and the leaves are fat, spiky, and green with black.
I drew them late in the afternoon as the sun was going down with a waterproof ink pen on some watercolor paper. The results were to my liking quite a bit!
I may add some wash to the ink, but for now I like the complexity of the drawing. Since I really like the drawing and did not know if the ink would bleed if I used a watercolor wash, I decided to draw a llama tape measure sitting on my desk. The llama’s tail pulls out and goes back in when you squeeze the critter’s sides. My MIL, Judy, gave it to me, and it cracks me up whenever I use it, which is quite a bit more often than I thought I ever would. He’s not easy to lose, either . . .
His backside needs some of his fur glued back in place – another thing to do!
The completed llama. Below is the painted llama. I like llamas, and silly poems about them, too.
So, I spent my 2 days in the Land of No Electricity drawing, sewing, reading, and mucking about. Yesterday and today I helped the economy.
And now, the silly llama poem, thanks to my fave, Ogden Nash:
Fires are raging to the south of us, in Los Angeles county. I am in the county just north, Ventura. We had fires here that burnt out a lot of the areas with which I am familiar. Several years ago my in-laws were evacuated and showed up on our doorstep at 1:00 a.m. Josh’s brother’s family were evacuated from their canyon and are now back home, but areas around them are devastated and many people they know are homeless, having lost everything. If we didn’t have family here, or Josh wasn’t restricted by work where he can live, we would be long gone as I am so sick of this. It is only going to get worse, IMO.
That said, the local electric company, SCE, turned off our electricity to help prevent downed power lines – if they happen – from sparking and setting off fires. These are called “PSPS” shut-offs – public safety power shut-off or shutdown.
It’s a smart thing to do as down lines in a dry, dry area are often responsible for fires. One of our current fires is apparently the work of an arsonist – beyond my comprehension.
We had no electricity for 2 days, and while it wasn’t especially hard on me as there is a lot I do without the need of electricity except for light, Josh wasn’t able to work or play very much. Sleep from stress is difficult for all of us – the back of the brain and the ear are tuned to hear alarms of all sorts. The electricity was shut off in the middle of the night, and last night turned back on.
This was a bit of a financial loss in terms of food. 2 days without electricity means lost frozen food and fresh. Luckily, food is still in the area – we have 6 grocery stores nearby – and roads and transport are not down or blocked. Hot water continued throughout the 2 days. Gas for cooking and heating water, thankfully, but not for heat as the furnace requires electricity to start up. Here in CA where we are, cold nights exist but are not as if we were in upstate NY without electricity or oil to burn in the dead of a winter’s blizzard.
The winds are expected to pick up again, and I expect fires are going to continue to start or burn unabated. We are going to find a generator so we can have some electricity to keep from losing perishables and have access to phones and such in times of emergency. Meanwhile, all we can do is hunker down, or when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. Or:
What else can you do? Life is so fragile but in times of safety and comfort, we forget it so easily.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 