i want to go to palomia

I took the sentence which is the title of this post, divided the words and arranged them into  chunks until each chunk had no meaning. Then I thought about what the combinations of letters represented to me and drew them. I also imagined what Palomia would be like. By the way, Palomia only exists in my imagination, similar to wanting to have Breakfast at Tiffany’s

I was happy with the result because it looks like Palomia is an actual, exotic place that I would like to visit. I wonder what breakfast in Polomia would be like.

The Third Street Sisterhood of Lepidoptera Illlustrators Wash and Wear Bus Tour of Europe

Graphite, chalk pastel and old canceled postage stamps on paper. 8.5 x 11 inches

The sisters  opted for a wash and wear style that would adapt to any climate…. and luckily too, because it was to be a lengthy trip… and in no particular order.

They arrived home looking as fresh as the day they left!

Well, no, this isn’t a true story; this is a page from my sketchbook. Imagine how many butterfly illustrators there would be in one city in order to have a club  for just one street!

I have been spending a fair bit of time working in my sketch book, lately. I have a few sketchbooks, this drawing is in the one that I work out my ideas and problem solve in. This drawing was a rough idea that became more and more embellished.

I cut old cancelled postage stamps and collaged them into the drawing. They were from a rumpled old kraft envelope of doubles I had amassed during my childhood stamp collecting days. Sometimes being a pack rat is a good thing. It felt wrong to cut the stamps up, though… just like how you weren’t supposed to cut into National Geographic magazines or the set of Encyclopedia Britannicas for school projects.

Cracked

I’ve been having fun making found poetry this past week. It’s like collage only using words. The poem written in the above image reads:

cracked
found in the sand
between you and me
contents emptied
forgotten by now

Each line is from its own source, found as a complete phrase in some of my own creative writing, a recipe from a cook book and an instruction manual.

The doll head in the drawing is real. I found it in the garden two autumns ago while picking brussels sprouts. We live in an old farm house and the back of the property must have once been where a previous family  dumped things they no longer wanted. After heavy rains or wind, the soil shifts, revealing household remnants of china and glasss shards, buttons, rusty belt buckles, tarnished coins, tiny medicine bottles, marbles, wheels off toy cars…

The doll’s head was by far the coolest thing I have found yet. I wonder how long she stared at us walking by her before I discovered her. She would have been tiny,  her head is about an inch long; she is wearing a 1920’s flapper hat with a blue stripe on it. She has a mischievous smirk, she is not a classic beauty, but she is exquisite in her own right. I call her Betty.

Adaptation

Symbolic drawing of a bird with human characteristics in a nest made of bricks. Graphite pencil on Canson Mi-Tientes paper

Adapting and being flexible beyond our capabilities results in the loss of the essence of who we are to the point of impossibility.

This image began as two unrelated sketches on the same sheet of paper. I had drawn the sketch of the bird and at some point, I drew a human face on it out of curiosity and whim. The bricks were for another idea I had and suddenly, on my way into the kitchen to make coffee, this image flashed in my minds eye, for no seeming rhyme or reason. I love it when that happens because then all you have to do is put the image down on paper.

Here is the sheet of sketches:

Rough Sketches

Graphite pencil on bond paper

Left: Original drawing and Right: Pancake doll based on drawing

Harold Wideman

Harold is prototype number 2 in my pancake doll project. The first was Alice O’Grady.  Harold is the father in  The Widemans vs the Narrowsmiths (link this) story that I drew three years ago.

Harold went together easier than Alice.  Reasons for this include a rudimentary pattern was already made and a procedure had been established – and the Jeff Beck CD didn’t seem to hurt, either.  =D

Front

Back

The biggest change I made with Harold was opting to embroider his facial features (and the hairy chest) rather than using permanent marker.

I really like the effect of the outlining stitches, they seem more “definite” and appropriate for a sewn object. The lenses in his glasses are painted on the cloth with acrylic paint. I also elected to not sew the limbs at the elbows and knees because that seemed to stiffen them which was opposite to the effect I’d wished for.

The hair was sewn directly into the seam where the front of the head joins the back, exactly like Alice’s hair only much shorter.

Left: Original drawing and Right: Pancake doll based on original drawing

Aunt Lucille

Lucille is the aunt in the infamous Baked Spaghetti Casserole story.  Lucille’s fingers are separated with black thread, in keeping with the quality of the simple line drawings that inspire me to make these dolls. Lucille came together yet easier than Harold, but her hair was a real challenge. Harold Wideman’s and Alice O’Grady’s hair were sewn into the seam that joined the back of the head to the front.

Back

With Lucille, because her beehive hairdo is piled on top of her head, the back would have been bare, which I found unacceptably odd. Four tries later, I arrived at a very simple solution.

Aunt Lucille's Baked Spaghetti Casserole

Here is the baked spaghetti casserole. I used variegated orange embroidery thread for the spaghetti and liked the glossy quality to the thread because it looks convincing enough to make around the mouth turn orange, as greasy spaghetti will do.

Hmmmm…..

Harold and Lucille and the Baked Spaghetti Casserole...

Here they are, together. The unfortunate thing is, Harold looks exceedingly uncomfortable. Is it because he has succumbed to the wiles of Aunt Lucille and is worried about Mrs Wideman finding out, or is it because he is worried he will be offered some of the Baked Spaghetti Casserole?

Maybe I should make Mrs Wideman next …!

Pride Takes the Stage

Here stands pride.

This is a simple little drawing that is perhaps a bit too humble for its subject. What I should have done was to have paid enormous amounts of money to have it plastered on a billboard so I could go about puffed out with pride about my drawing and how everyone will get to see it as they drive by.

No? Well, everyone knows form should follow function… this could be life imitating art, see?

Anyway.

Pride is puffed with hot air.  It puts on its best show. It precariously perches on the edge of its stage, filled with pretention that belies its vulnerability. This is a pretty negative image of pride.

Is pride a sin or virtue? It can be both.  In it’s best light, pride is the reward for a job well done.  When it becomes inflated with unfounded self worth, it becomes irritatingly obvious to all but the one who is proud.

This is my drawing for the Illustration Friday prompt, “Theater”

Solomon Grundy

Where does the time go? Why does it seem the older we get, the faster time flies? The weeks zip by in a blink. I design a quarterly publication, three months pass by and before I know it, I am in meetings again.  I had my first meeting for the summer issue, today. As if that’s not enough, I’m staring at another approaching birthday in the upcoming week, in fact, I know a number of people whose birthdays are in April, but now I’m prattling – just practicing for my old age (which is how many quarterlies away)?

Solomon Grundy’s  entire life blows by in one short week.  The verse is  a 19th century nursery rhyme and each day represents the Seven Ages of Man. I admit, I like the Sesame Street version better:  poor Solomon Grundy washes a part of his left side each day and at the end of the week, only half of him is clean.

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end
Of Solomon Grundy

This is my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday prompt “Fleeting”

Waiting

Abstract, symbolic drawing. Willow charcoal, graphite, chalk pastel, conte, red ink, rubber stamp ink and collaged papers on Canson Mi-Teintes paper

Waiting to hear important news, whether good or bad and the patience it takes, can be difficult. We listen for the phone, check email …

If the news is very significant, the day’s main thrust becomes weakened. For me, I shoot off in other directions, rather than attempt a solid day’s work. Sometimes even the off shoots don’t see completion. As a result, dishes may be half done in the sink, but the computer is totally defragged, disk checked, updated, scanned for viruses and spyware and backed up. Yet more new ideas for bodies of drawings become sketched and written about until the ideas are flogged to death. Small freelance jobs are completed slowly, punctuated by wandering over to peer out the window and musing to myself.

So, pockets of little tasks get  done, more or less, while skirting around the perimeter of waiting. You have no idea how long the waiting will extend, when you are in the middle of it. And the little pockets of tasks become mish-mashed together where there is room for them.

The little arrows around the black mass of waiting are cut from a 1930’s United Church Hymnary that I stumbled across last month. On each of the arrows is the word “Missions.”  I liked the typeface of the word “Missions” and in multiples, the noun became an action, almost like animation.

In case you’re wondering, by the time I completed this drawing I was no longer waiting

Cinnamon Buns

Chalk pastel, graphite and Conte  pencils on Winsor and Newton 90 lb hot press watercolour paper

It began last Sunday after I baked a pan of cinnamon buns. I’m always amused at the willy nilly spirals that form from the dough and the over all effect when they are bunched together in the pan.
Then, on Thursday, I read in the news about an Artist fined over inflatable artwork that killed 2. As tragic as that was, the story got me thinking about monumental art work such as that of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and then Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.

I was back to spirals. It got me thinking about cinnamon buns again. No, I didn’t bake another pan, I drew pictures instead:

Spirals - To each their own

Chalk pastel and graphite on Canson Mi-Tientes paper

Eddies - Chain of events

Chalk pastel and graphite on Canson Mi-Tientes paper

Jetties - Cause and effect

Chalk pastel and graphite on Canson Mi-Tientes paper