Curing A Craving and Natural Medicine

I am craving mushrooms. I would sell half of my clothes right now for a hefty basket of chanterelles. They sound SO good. Its high fall here and sometimes warm and sunny and sometimes so blustery and chilly that I think I might be foolhardy leaving the potted fig outdoors at this point. We are getting a decent amount of rain and so it seems like perfect mushrooming weather. I have only to get out there and hunt them up! It doesn't help that the day before yesterday I found a giant puffball with the kids and brought it home, only to find out that it was too mature to be any good for eating once I cut it open. Off to woods! I can tell you what we will be doing once the kids are up from nap. Time for a mama hike.

The leaves are getting really beautiful here, the maples are amazingly red some places and a firey orange in others, the ash trees all the color of good egg yolks. There is a maple at the top of the hill with a big mangled limb like a crooked elbow that points towards the hospital and gets redder every day, almost like its a warning sign in nature. Makes me want those mushrooms all the more, having trees waving warning signs at me about taking care of my health.

Am still enjoying Eating On The Wild Side, its so full of information and details that I have to put it down for a minute and verbally comb through the recommendations with A or my sister to put it all in perspective and consider it all. Interesting to think about all the little tweaks that we can make to our eating and our food supply to maximize the good that's out there in The Big Medicine Cabinet of the outdoors. I firmly believe that food is our best medicine and that most of our health problems today are caused by bad eating. Next on my list is The Jungle Effect which talks about looking at your family tree ethnically for hints about how to eat well for your own personal pleasure and wellness. I have been thinking about that a lot for a couple of years but had no idea that someone had actually written a book on the subject. Will report back when I can tell you something about my opinion.

I would love to look into essential oils and teas a little more. I use them a tiny bit. I have Tea Tree around for disinfection, Garlic Oil for ear aches, Clove Oil for pain relief, Peppermint Oil and tea for headaches and nausea, Licourice Tea for sore throats, Plantain Oil for skin problems, Nettle Tea for immune boosting and asthma. But that's it. Anybody care to share their favorite oil or tea for a specific ailment? I would kind of love to have a Natural Medicine Cabinet for winter.

Eyeball Color Theories

My sister brought the above book home from the library. We are now obsessed and up to our eyeballs in visual self-analysis. Its one of those "find your colors" kinds of guides and since I have spent years working on figuring out what colors I should wear and yet still feel a little befuddled....my appetite is handily whetted.

So confusing trying to sort out all the pieces and make sense of it. So much of color is psychology and meaning, personal taste layered on top of actual objective reality. For years I hated the colors orange and teal (I can't even remember why....I was insane.) and now I have trouble accepting colors like mauve and beige but I think its mostly about ideas and stories I tell myself about the colors.

My sister Foxy and I....plus a photo-bombing baby! She has my un-bleached, natural hair color.

I think I am a Summer or a Spring but its hard for my to sort out the cool and warm color bits. I wish in some ways we were still in the 80's when it was trendy to have your "colors done" and come away with a purse pocket swatch for handy referencing.

My sister Lockbox and I....similar but not exactly the same.

We are reading all kinds of cool things though....examine your eyes in detail and notice all the colors in them: the darkest colors, the rays, the softest muted shades, take a look at the veins in your wrists and look for shades of blue, green and purple, and take notes on the colors you blush when pinched and the darkest and lightest colors in your hair. So fun noticing the details of yourself! The artist in me loves these assignments. This is the nature of being a painter...not seeing "blue" skies but noticing that sometimes the sky is purple and sand and aquamarine but almost never just "blue." Real observing. Its a Buddhist kind of fashion assignment really. Being in The Now, truly present and fully aware.

Detail of my multi-colored eyes.

May there be clarity! May there be fresh green knowledge! May there be in my future a cashmere sweater in the perfect shade!

Peek In My Portfolio

It's been quite a while since I talked about my painting, but don't worry, that's not because I've quit! It's just because summer is insane and I forget to share. I am also having a little bit a lull right now because our painting group is on a kind of holiday for a few weeks but I fully expect to continue painting as soon as I get the chance. I thought I'd do a little bit of painting outside of our meetings while we were all adjourned but I am amazed to discover that I have done none. Zip. Ah well...I'm growing big juicy tomatoes and thinking fondly of my brushes.
Here's the latest stuff I've painted, right before our recent break.

Part of the Grand Teton Range, I forget which peak.

This painting and the next three I painted while were on our family vacation this summer out at Yellowstone. I took my brush roll, my paintbox and a small portable watercolor block and painted using a little water in a soda bottle with a cap, whenever the group (we were with a family reunion) had a moment of downtime. It worked beautifully and was really exhilerating, some of the first in-situ work I've done. Another great thing about it was that it forced me to work quickly. I tend to get really caught up in all the slow, picky details of paintings and sometimes overwork things as a result. I'd like to become more quick and suggestive. These paintings were step in that direction.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at this lake and I painted while everyone else finished eating after I was done.

This tree was outside my cabin window and I sat at a desk and painted it one morning while the sun got warm and bright.

This IS the cabin window. Really hard to paint the fog on the windows, the light in the drapes and the shape of the log walls.

This is right around the corner from our house, I stopped the car to look at these amazing tree full of red berries a couple of times before I realized that I needed to paint them.

The above painting was another realy fun experiment in "looseness" as an artist. I worked on all those houses and the stone wall and the angles and geometry and then I took my brush with that bulls-eye red paint and I splattered the berries on those trees! EEP! It was kind of scary and super fun and it just happened to work.

This is one of my really classic-style landscapes. This wonderful tree arches over the little harbor on the lake where my in-laws live.

This painting was really fun too, kind of classic and I really struggled to make it feel like it had depth instead of just feeling flat. I love the colors...that bang of orange on the kayak and all that grey-blue next to it with the sun hitting all those gold/greens at the top. This painting feels like a moment I want to be in.

I love how this painting turned out. The glass jars, 3D effect of all those rows and the peach slices floating inside the containers as well as the metallic lids were a huge challenge but also a major triumph.

 Just as I was starting the canned peaches painting above, and just finishing the apricots in a bucket, below, a fellow painter friend wandered past and casually noted that they were companion works. How funny is it that here I was, painting this golden fruit sequentially and I hadn't even noticed that they "went together." Interesting the themes that develop.

This frame is a sort of goldy-orange metal frame, sleek and simple to counter-balance the sort of country feel of the painting and help it stay more versitile while playing on the same color themes. Love that gold ring of matting he put around the painting.

And now a little framing report. I have a wonderful, creative, kind and very expensive framer. I love, love, love his work but I seriously need to start selling some stuff to afford suiting up many more of my pieces. I thought I'd show you how a few of my most recent paintings ended up looking when he'd had his turn with them.

This painting was framed in a deep shadow-box style frame, and would look great with a small light shining on it to make the sunset scene glow. The colors washed out funny here but you get a view of the thick, chunky frame.

Here's how the painting actually looks. Pretty cool, eh?

And then this last one, which is now actually hanging on the wall in my kitchen! Hooray! I was surprised but pleased when he framed it in a big thick white frame. It's a bit hard to see on the white wall but it is a lovely maybe inch and half to two inch thick edge, and the matting is a big thick white cut on an angle around the painting. He made a pretty small little floral watercolor that could have felt like an afterthough into a much more dramatic, weighty piece.

So, that's what I've got at the moment. I can't wait to update again soon. I hope I'll have all kinds of lovely things to share in two shakes. This whole "taking breaks" thing is getting to me.

Related articles

• Jenny Lake Watercolor on Masa (bethparkerart.wordpress.com)
• 70 Fantastical Watercolor Features - From Bleeding Color Silhouettes to Smeared Pigment Prints (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Looking for inspiration? (felipenerimartinez.wordpress.com)
• Eric Christensen - watercolors (treebeard31.wordpress.com)

Poetry Friday: A Color Poem

Happy Poetry Friday! Am feeling a little poetically dry today so I made use of this poetry form to write a little fill-in-the-blank poem about color. Looking through my photos suggested the color I should work on should be orange so I gave it a go.

The form basically works you through how the color you select comes through all five senses. How would it sound? How would it taste? Etc. Kind of a fun exercise. I was the most stumped by how orange sounded.

I have historically had very little to do with this color as I can't wear it super easily but it does suddenly seem relevant and somehow lighthearted.

I'm going to paint our bedroom a soft glowy orange and the kid bath on our second floor will eventually be a bright corally shade. It is the age of citrus. My inner 1970's inhabitant is jubilant, I'm sure; goldenrod the herald of the era returns.

Shades Of Citrus Season

Orange
A snapping bonfire
Curving sickle slices of canteloupe
The pricked ears of a fox
The lyric gush of cider from the jug
The caramel thrum of a cello
The sizzing sputter a sparkler makes
Nose tweaking ginger, grated fresh
A latte heavily sprinkled with cinnamon
Braised meat falling richly off the bone
The electric zap of midwinter static
The shush of cross country skiis
Th rattle of dried beans, poured through the fingers
Orange can swirl richly or zip, by turns.

Check out the Poetry Friday roundup over at Madigan Reads.

Related articles

• "The Color Orange" (itsinfoworld.wordpress.com)
• Color In Design: Orange (blogs.sitepoint.com)

Old Clothes As Rainbows

Always good to share the genius of another artists work with the world. Spring seems like the time to be celebrating this French sculptor, Alain Guerra who is scattering the world with a blazing spectrum of color using, old clothes...of all things!

Image by VernissageTV Didier Didier via Flickr

I would never have dreamed up the stuff he's created...it's surreal beauty of the first order. Do click through and take a good gander around. Bonus points for you if you speak French (I do not).

Image by Duc C. Nguyên via Flickr

Maybe some of you can get the language conversion feature on this website to work for you. I couldn't see to get it to stay on the page I wanted once I asked it to translate so I just enjoyed the works en Francais. Good thing this kind of expression communicates so well in any language. Click this link and see for yourself, art is the great unifier. Art and tears and laughter.

The First Day of Spring!

In honor of the first full day of spring, a few local florals.
Love to see that blazing color showing up again. Shades of grey are all very well for pencils in my evening class ,but wow, do I love me some zip in real life. Nothing like a good blazing-monarch purple crocus with those absurdly neon stamens to wake you right up, eh?

I thought I'd leave you with a lovely snippet from "The First Spring Day" by Christina Rosetti.

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing, robin, sing;
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

(read the rest of it here)

Congratulations all, technically, you've survived winter!

Pencil Drawing

Image by vancouverfilmschool via Flickr

Somebody asked recently to hear and see more about the drawing class A and I are taking together on Monday nights so, I thought I'd give an update. I am still really, really enjoying the class although I have been frustrated a couple of times now in the process of drawing. I know that charcoal is a really hard medium for me to work in...so strong and permanent and messy and so little flexibility in value. I know that I overdue my piece just as easily with drawing as I do with painting. I wish art came with turkey timers that popped up when the piece was at an ideal stopping point. It is so easy for me to just adjust and adjust and adjust and pretty soon I have adjusted what was a beautiful drawing into oblivion. Bah!

I think our teacher is a super lovely soul and I like her non-interventionist style quite well but I do think it would be fun to try taking for somebody more directive and see what that felt like. I like feedback and pointers and while she is very encouraging and open I am not sure how much this class is molding or directing my abilities. I struggle with this not nearly as violently as some of my classmates. It is amusing to listen in on certain students ardently suggesting that she might use more diagrams or give more statistical breakdowns or evaluate our work more stringently. Some people simply go into fits when asked to draw what they see and not criticize the life out of every stroke their pencils create.

The stuff I'm sharing is my favorite out of the produce from the course...there are of course several more clumsy pieces, nobody get the idea that I'm some sort of wizardly, mad drawing genius. I am ridiculously human, truly. I am surprised that after years of being nervous about color and concentrating on black and white art production....I am now struggling to go back into the simple world of black and white.

In some ways I think it is easier to portray something using color because some little bits of a scene are suggestible just by the shade of  green or red or whatever it may be whereas with no colors you must lean only on clean lines and honest shading. So much trickier after all.

Related articles

• Drawing the portrait: Week 4 (mockingbirdsatmidnight.wordpress.com)
• Drawing the portrait: Week 3 (mockingbirdsatmidnight.wordpress.com)
• Charcoal portraits: lessons learned (mockingbirdsatmidnight.wordpress.com)
• Lesson One Examples (thisisnotanegg.wordpress.com)
• Dia de la Abby #35: Charcoal Skull (skulladay.blogspot.com)
• Random Thoughts on Art School (myrubyshoes.com)
• Sketchuary (drumrider.wordpress.com)