Feathers

I took my sketchbook to McGolrick Park in Greenpoint, a few blocks from my place. I had fun sketching feathers.

Cake stands

I've been making cake stands for gifts for a while now. I like girly, vintage plates in pinks and soft greens. I've found a few awesomely odd floral scenes that have been turned into pretty funky pieces. I started making these stands because I always felt sad when I'd find a lovely plate or goblet at a thrift, vintage, or resale shop. I'd think, "Who is going to buy just one?" or, "I want to buy this. But I can't start buying all the pretty dishes I see or else I'll be on Hoarders." So, I started collecting for the purpose of gifting. They are now for sale via commission or at Cleveland's Salty not Sweet boutique. True to my word, I do have a stack or two of pretty plates, but I turn them into cake stands pretty quickly, ensuring I don't become a true cat lady.

Some aren't as much "cake" stands, as they are pretty containers for bracelets or necklaces on a dresser. I also like to construct tiered candy/cookie/cupcake plates.

Perfume Bottles

I've been sketching a lot of perfume bottles. My inclination to draw them reminds me of my favorite thing to draw when I was in kindergarten through first or second grade. Hold on to your hats....I used to love to draw clowns. In fact, because I was always drawing little clown figures, all the adults in my life assumed that I loved clowns and started buying me clown figurines and dolls. This is the confession that really freaks out people: not only did I draw clowns all the time, but I also had a quite extensive clown collection. While I do understand the public's great fear of clowns, I've never found them frightening. The exception being that clown from Poltergeist, but I felt better after stomping on my clown that looked like him.

Series Finished!

 

While trying to sleep on an air mattress in my sister’s spare bedroom in Brooklyn while Hurricane Irene winds howled outside, for only a minute or so I was in a delirious, half awake/half asleep state. Her apartment, in a recently renovated tenement, features a contemporary open floor plan with mostly white walls covered with fuchsia decorations. You don’t often think home décor and fuchsia, so in that near-sleep state my mind wanders to contemplate decorating in pink. I think of just the color pink against a black background, pink matter, not making any discernible shape but just clumping and swirling. Next, there's lime green battling it out with the fuchsia. The individual colored shapes swirl and slowly start to take a new form together, as a mass of complimentary colors, pulsating. Now, I’m thinking of not just pinks and greens fighting for space, but other colors as well. From this, an idea for a new painting series is born, with at least 3 paintings needed to show the progression.

When I got home I started a watercolor that’s sort of 2D representation of what I imagined as a 3D, “origins of the universe” sort of fight (#1 The Fight). I then started to think about a second painting (#2 The Planes) and how things might progress. I introduced planes with colors starting to congeal and make shapes. The third composition progresses to shapes taking recognizable forms and a landscape (#3 The Scene). I maintained the same technique and media throughout: ink and watercolor on Arches Cold Press paper. I mounted the papers, rather than placing mats on top, because I did not want to weigh down or confine the shapes. I needed to stay in step with the concept of the shapes organically coming together. Obstructing the edges of the paper wouldn’t allow the colors, shapes, and eventually objects, from moving. The 3 paintings are pretty big (about 24” x 36”) and are framed (28 ¼" x 40 ¼”).

#1 The Fight

#2 The Planes

#3 The Scene

Silly Little Watercolors

Watercolor and Ink on Paper 11"x14"

For some reason I really love doing these silly little watercolor sketches in the evening. I have a variety of watercolor papers, many of excellent quality. I do use these nice papers, but I also enjoy experimenting with sketching and drawing paper. This particular drawing is done on extremely thin, dry media sketch paper. I've been liking these thin pages because of the way the paint goes on consistently, and the way I'm able to push the color around a bit before it dries. Putting watercolor on paper like this has a similar feeling as painting acrylic or ink on poster board. I wanted the scene to be of winter, use the contrast of black and white to feel sparse. At the same time, I wanted to have fun, and for me that involves color. I closed my eyes and asked myself "what would give value to the scene while incorporating the white and black?" I wanted the tree to pop and stay stark. When I opened my eyes, I knew to use red for the tree and mint green for the sky. This is usually how I make color decisions in situations like this. Consciously, I wasn't sure if the red was meant to be the highlights of the snow or the slick black of a wet bough; I just went with it and figured out along the way that the red created a color mid-ground for the white to be snow and the ink to be the wet bough, accomplishing the black and white scene that wasn't really black and white.

I can’t get over how thin the paper is. I put a scrap page under this sheet so my ultra fine sharpie wouldn't bleed through to the next page. It makes me wonder about its intended purpose; the cover states it is “a light weight sketch paper suited for classroom experimentation, practice of techniques, or quick studies with any dry media.” I thought that my mother had passed on the sketch pad at some point, but when I flipped to the front of the book, I recognize some of the sketches from a still life in a college drawing class. The notebook was meant for compositional sketches of large, time consuming projects on which I would inevitably spend sleep deprived nights. My current use for this sketchbook is such a better use of paper and time.