tisane

The past couple of months have been really good for me. Jason is not working (officially, anyway) and we've been tag-teaming with the kids so we both get some time to work on our myriad projects.

My myriad projects, of course, being the paintings I started before Isla was born. I do this thing where I start like three or four or seven pieces all at once, and they all poke along for a while, then I lose steam or have a baby or pack up and move entirely, and I balk at finishing them.

So.

We're moving again in four weeks, and NOW IS MY TIME. Here's a piece I finished several weeks ago, but haven't posted because the working title -- "B500" -- was just not going to cut it. Naming paintings is harder than it looks. Try it.

But before the name, the evolution:

I started with a collaged background, and went over it with some wash-y gesso and ooh, drips. That's painting with abandon.

Like usual, I wanted to create lots of layers, but have them be transparent enough to show depth and texture.

Then I got a projector! I did some contour drawings on transparency paper and played around with the position of the bones before painting them on. It felt kind of like cheating, but that's what projectors are for. Besides, Andy Warhol did it.

It stayed like that for a while, mainly because I liked the bones too much & didn't want to go over them. Liked them, knew they had to change: my familiar dilemma.

Also familiar, the stage we'll just refer to as "miasma":

I have to mess things up when I can see that I'm protecting something. Most of my pieces get to this point, either "miasma" or "circus." (The commission piece I did in 2008 even had a "massacre at the beach" phase. Oh yeah.) The good thing with this piece was that I was just painting with acrylics, so I didn't feel bad about that step at all. It was a relief, actually.

It was even more of a relief to bring it back:

Most of the time I feel like I'm still exploring what paint can do, and there's something unexpected every time. There's what I can see in my mind, and then there's the inevitable stumbling blocks when I try to manipulate the media.

For this piece I wanted it to look like someone spilled some tea on the canvas.

I was finally getting what I wanted with the layers, so I just wanted to make the bones a little brighter without changing everything else. (There's kind of a lighting discrepancy between the photo above and the one below... I really didn't do anything to the background)

I used a soft pencil to reassert the outline of the bones, then smudged it with water to soften the line. The graphite, together with a little more light paint to solidify the bones, made just the right amount of contrast to focus the piece and finish it up. I'm pleased.

Tisane
18 x 24 inches, acrylic and mixed media on canvas

The bone swooping out and to the left is a rib, and it's articulating with two vertebrae. Stacked like a puzzle, like sculpture.

And the name: Tisane is a lovely word for what is basically herbal tea... but I didn't choose it because I took the tea-spilling idea so seriously. Here's the definition I liked: "an infusion (as of dried herbs) used as a beverage or for medicinal effects.

For years I've been offering up different configurations of bones and flowers as gifts to friends who have suffered injuries, as a sort of charm, or a way to remind them that their bodies are amazing and capable of healing. I know when I'm in pain I get ornery and resentful and impatient; I focus on the discomfort instead of how to take care of myself.

This piece is a reminder, then. A recognition of the body's natural ability to keep itself in right balance.

A visual infusion for medicinal effects.

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cotton simple skirt

My niece just turned five, and I made her this sweet skirt, from Dana at Made's tutorial.


LOVED the cotton plant fabric, should have bought more. Now her mom wants one, too. Guess I'll have to try this pattern next! (Did I mention how much I love Dana? In a totally not-a-weird-stalker-from-the-internet way.)

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spine

Weeks and weeks ago I borrowed a model spine in order to do some drawings for this commission piece I'm working on. It took me forever to get around to doing the sketches, but I'm glad I did because these renderings came out so much better than the ones I'd done from blurry internet photos:

I appreciate these bones even more now that I know how they fit together. Your spine is an amazing piece of sculpture. Go give it a massage.

Here's the first layer of painting I did:

And here's the next layer, looking rather opaque and circus-y next to that nice loose wash above:

I traced the bone sketches in order to position them and transfer them onto the canvases (so the paper you see here won't actually be IN the paintings):

I did some more work on them today, and I'm excited to get pictures up of the next steps, not only because this layer was kind of uhg, but because they're really evolving quickly and starting to get interesting.

I think I'm getting better at trusting the process of painting -- of constantly tipping things into and out of balance, and back again -- but it still usually feels like jumping into the deep end. You trust you'll come bobbing back up to the surface eventually, right?

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wrap-tie summer shirt

I designed a little wrap-front summer top for Isla. I started at the drawing board with a sketch and everything. Here's the finished piece:


The only catch was making it reversible. I ended up top-stitching the arm-hole seams, because I couldn't figure out another way to do it. This is where it would be helpful to have a pattern. Or, you know, be trained or something.


Navy and white polka-dot fabric: thrifted, a repurposed placemat. That's what I like about making clothes for little ones... you don't need a lot of fabric. You can repurpose almost anything.


Sweetie sweet sweet.


Excuse me, I need to go nibble on tender babylegs now.

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smarter than a 3-year-old

"What street are we on, mama?"
"Division."
"What does Division mean?"
"It means, uh... okay... divide? Let's see... if you break something? Ummm... You have a whole thing, and you break it... No. Okay, like, to cut. When you cut a big thing into smaller things. Does that make sense?"
"No."
"Like if you have a peanut-butter sandwich and you cut it in half. You divide it in half. You... uh, you did division."
"That's silly."

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there is a design

Now I'm going to reach even farther back, to a piece I started in 2008. At that time I had considered this finished:

Tidy Little Boring Collage

But as it sat on my art table, leaning against the wall with other projects in various states of completion, I realized I was not excited about it at all. There was no sparkle in its eye. But it had potential! So I decided to mess it up.

I swished some paint on the surface, over the hand, to busy it up a bit and incorporate it into the piece -- I didn't like how it was just sitting on top, all pristine and static. When that dried, I scribbled "You could choose anything" on it, because I was feeling loose-ended and sometimes it's the vastness of available choices that stops me from starting.

Then I blocked out most of the detail from the collage and kept daubing paint here and there on the hand until I felt like it was interesting but not too "done."

Finally, I covered up the little silver pieces at the top with blue, and drew lines like little strings that the fingers are pulling.


The original title was "There is a Design," because of the sewing pattern paper I'd used in the collage. I still like the title -- maybe even more now because it perfectly contradicts my handwritten assertion of free will. Perhaps it's a painting for an agnostic.

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in between bones

When the paints are out, no canvas is spared. And oh, the paints are OUT.

I started a bunch of pieces back in December of 2009, and didn't make any significant progress until almost a year later. I quaintly told you to "stay tuned" -- are you still tuned? Breath bated? I know, you haven't been able to sleep.

Less than a year since we left off, our hero looked like this:


I like the composition, and I like the movement of the brush-strokes, but it needed some serious changes. These first few layers have been acrylic paint, and I wanted to shift gears to oil. When I do that, I have to stop protecting what I like about the last layer. Like Annie Dillard says, you have to be willing to take out the bearing wall.

So this felt kind of risky, but I think it clarified things a bit. And now it's ready to be simplified even more... hopefully sooner than 2012! But you never know!


Here's another one in the works, from the same time. It was going to be another bone piece, but so far it hasn't decided what it wants. I started with the same wash-y yellows and browns:


Then collaged in some tissue/pattern paper and made a few hesitant swipes of blue and scratchings of charcoal.


I always want a really exciting layered background, but I clam up after the first layer and get scared to just attack it. I want to be bold, but I'm reluctant to make bold moves. I must move past this.

It's easier to move this one to oils, since there's no real subject yet. It's so nice to see the depth and softness of the oil paints... acrylics just can't compare.


It's kind of interesting to me that I'm doing all these variations on the same theme, with the same color combinations. I used to bemoan the fact that there was no consistency in my art -- it turns out all I have to do is paint the same things over and over. Truly, I did not know this.

I also didn't know it would take YEARS for some paintings to evolve. But I figure I'm doing pretty good, what with the two kids and the two moves. I hope I look back on this time and marvel that I was doing anything creative at all, besides making pudding.

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