Tindaisies

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.

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

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”

Instinct

Charcoal, carbon and graphite pencil on BFK Rives

As it turns out, the crow’s penchant for bright, shiny objects isn’t to decorate its nest, but rather to stash them away, in case they are food. Crows just happen to notice bright shiny things, the same as we do.

I used this drawing as a means to experiment with texture by using different media. The silver objects were drawn with graphite because graphite has a metallic sheen. Contrast was added to darken the shiny objects with carbon pencil.  The  crow was drawn with lovely, velvety willow charcoal. Again I added graphite to the charcoal to create highlights in the feathers.

It was my intention to make the act of drawing – as well as the choice of media used -  apparent. The strings holding the objects together are unembellished pencil strokes. Oddly enough, those pencil strokes were the most difficult part of the drawing.

See the web gallery of all the souls here

Willow charcoal and graphite pencil on BFK Rives paper

I’ve been enjoying the effect that graphite pencil has on top of charcoal.  Charcoal goes on paper as flat black whereas graphite has a contrasting shimmer.

This series of drawings began as a very controlled experiment:

There are only 4 elements to each drawing that can be altered:

• hands
• face
• the silhouette
• and the folds in the robe

There was a predefined process for drawing each image:

• Each sheet of paper was precut to 4 3/8″ X  5″
• hands and faces were drawn on frisket film and cut out with scissors
• hands and face films were applied to the paper
• silhouette was drawn on the paper and filled in with willow charcoal
• film was removed, face and hand detail drawn with graphite pencil
• folds were drawn in graphite over the robe

The most exciting part of drawing these figures is what happened despite my controlled approach.  Slight variations in head shape, facial features, hand gestures and the shape of the silhoutettes all combined to make very unique, individual “portraits.” It surprised me as each personality took form.

I would like to draw many more of these. I’d be interested to see if a natural shift in the drawings would evolve from the process of repetition, or if recurring types of personality would happen, like human evolution and heredity, or on a smaller scale the party game “telephone” where someone whispers something in another’s ear and around the circle the whipser goes until it has morphed into something different.

If these souls look familiar, they are the small figures in the jars that Lucy Spratch plays with in the ongoing Spratch series

Alphabet Soup

Contour drawing. Pitt artist pen and ink wash on Cougar paper

There is only one line in this drawing. I glanced at the paper once or twice while drawing this image and that was while I drew the perimeter of the bowl to be sure I was not traveling off the paper (which i did).

I decided that one line was appropriate; it spills, flows and is fluid – like soup.  The bowl has a wide brim with roses embossed around its perimeter (they were fun to draw).

Cougar paper is very smooth and bright white. It’s really meant for printing but it takes India ink beautifully and with the art pen I was able to make smooth lines with good control.  It takes a light wash very well, but you have to know exactly how much and where to apply it before the brush hits the paper because  the paper soaks it in like a sponge.

The soup was made by me and was pretty to  look at;  it had a variety of vegetables, chicken breast and of course alphabet pasta.  I was pleased that I had the foresight to take pictures because if I’d decided to draw from the real thing, there would have been none left  by the time I sat down to work   After finishing the drawing , it occured to me that it might have been nice use Yupo paper and wash with a bit of colour.

Daily

Abstract drawing. Symbolic road map. Graphite and Graphitint pencil on BFK Rives paper

I’m not sure if I like this drawing, but I find it interesting because it resembles a hand drawn map.

It began as an exercise in exploring the qualities of graphite pencil. The first mark I made was in the upper right hand area where the beads are, on parallel strings. As I drew lines,  they were like pathways and in fact, my pencil was traveling.  Road blocks, tangled aggressive swirls and a series of jagged triangles happened. Some lines were gentler. The variety reminded me of a course of events throughout a day.

I didn’t plan exactly where the pencil was headed, but the space I arrived at on the paper and the length of time each line took to draw, determined where to put each main event of the day.

• Sleep is a line descending downwards and moves through a series of different stages and dreams that mirror the working day.
• Waking is a spiral that eventually unwinds to meet the world in the morning, as the radio alarm broadcasts the news.
• The commute to work involves taking the right turns and facing traffic jams.
• Work is a 9 to 5 ritual of accomplishing tasks within the framework of the daily schedule.
• The commute home is the exact opposite of the commute to work.
• At bedtime, the day’s events vaporize and float away as they escape the conscious mind.
• Once again you dream of the day’s events.

Keeping a Secret

Abstract, symbolic drawing. Vine charcoal, chalk pastel and graphite pencil on BFK Rives cream paper.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep secrets from climbing out of the dark little place you keep them, like the evils from Pandora’s box. This drawing is my interpretation for this week’s Illustration Friday prompt “Climbing”

Sensing the Moment

Abstract Drawing. Chalk pastel, Conte, graphite pencil, carbon pencil, charcoal and vine charcoal on Canson Mi-Tientes paper

This morning, I closed my eyes in order to still my mind. I wanted to clear it to let the creative process begin, however as I tried I couldn’t empty my mind,  so I began to pay notice to the sensations within and surrounding my body.

I had been reading a book in an armchair, with a cup of hot coffee in my left hand. The coffee cup was hot and caused my fingers to tingle with the pain of the heat, as well as with the comforting warmth.

Swirls and blobs of colour danced across the insides of my eyelids.

The book and its cold glossy pages weighed acoss my lap and I was aware of the groundedness of my body in the chair and of the groundedness of the chair on the floor.

My breathing was soft and rhythmic but it was funny because it seemed to me similar to the way children draw skies at the top of the page and I don’t understand why it felt this way because the source was from my body, rippling upwards into the air like radiating waves. Maybe it was like this because  my breathing was shallow (time to get back into yoga, I guess)

The furnace rumbled deeply in the basement below me and I could feel the vibration.

A computer hard drive hummed across the top of the soft sounds of my breathing and the deep rumble of the furnace.