Costco Lady

When I came out of Costco last Sunday, I saw this lady sitting on the bumper of a van, reading the newspaper whiling away the time, waiting for someone who probably “just ran in” to the huge store. What attracted my attention at first, was her patience; then, I noticed that the sprig of leaves on her hat exactly matched the color of the van. I loved the shape and color of her hat and how the hat highlighted the colors of her floral skirt. I knew that I would have to try to draw her and that would require taking a photo.

Uh oh, I thought. Courtesy would require that I ask her permission before photographing her. I knew, however, that if I did that, I would lose the picture to self-consciousness. So, I “stole” the photo with the 3x telefoto lens on my digital camera as I drove out of the parking lot. Dear lady, wherever you are in the desert, I apologize for my rudeness; I hope you would be appeased by knowing that I found you lovely enough to paint.

Derwent inktense pencils with water in Canson sketchbook. I am not happy with how I used the pencils and with how the paper reacted when wet. I look at the talented watercolor artists who post to the Everyday Matters blog and love the simplicity of their watercolors. I always end up opting for too much detail and ruin the feel of water color. I will have to try to do some drawings and just apply a light wash for color. When I use the Inktense again, I will try another surface.

Favorite Chair

This is my favorite chair. It wasn’t expensive, only $35. I saw it in a CHOC (Children’s Hospital of Orange County) Thrift Store about 3 years ago and knew at first sight that, although it was a little frayed around the edges of the arms, it was the chair for me. When I turned it over, I discovered that it was a hard-wood framed, down-stuffed chair from a premium furniture manufacturer. And it was comfortable! I could picture myself spending hours reading in it in my desert home. I resolved a long time ago to only have furniture and “things” that “spoke” to me–this chair speaks “home” to me.

Alas, I’m not living in my desert home–but my chair is. I visit it now and then and try to spend a little time sitting in it. People who rent the house love this chair and comment on how comfortable it is.

Koh-i-noor and Derwent Drawing Pencils. Colors blended with blending stubs and Splenda blending pencil in Canson notebook on ecru paper. The Koh-i-noor woodless pencils are my favorite implements for the vibrancy of their color and for the ease and smoothness with which they blend. The picture is fixed with Krylon spray fixative to protect the pencil from smearing.

I bought a new computer with the Windows Vista Operating System. The scanner that worked beautifully with my former computer that ran on Windows XP does not work with Vista. Instead, I used the digital camera (7.1 megapixels) to photograph my picture; the flash reflecting on the fixed surface of the artwork may have caused glare.

Buster’s? Or Someplace Like It

Sitting in the doctor’s waiting room the other day, I realized that it had been awhile since I’d done any drawing. I dug my Canson notebook and a Uniball gel pen out of my purse and decided to draw. I’ve wanted to draw a coffeehouse based on Buster’s in South Pasaden, for quite a while, so decided to tackle that. Buster’s is characterized by a colorful linoleum floor and colorful walls displaying local art. When I used to go to Buster’s more frequently during the year I lived in Pasadena, I used to wonder if, during the renovations for the coffeehouse, someone actually ordered multi-colored tiles, or if the plan was to save money on flooring by buying end-lots left over from other jobs. . .hmmm, I still wonder.

This is what I came up with. I used Koh-i-noor woodless pencils to add color. I love their soft, waxy feel and the deep pigments which blend nicely. I used a Splenda blending pencil. On ecru paper in a Canson sketchbook.

Time to Play Again

I’m reading a book about aging, The Girls with Grandmother Faces by Frances Weaver. The book isn’t about getting “old”; it’s about aging, something that happens to us from the day we are born.

I am retired now. Not to say that I don’t work, I do. I work on painting the house inside and out; I work on landscaping and maintaining the yard; I work at maintaining my other house and wondering whether the expenditure of effort and money is balanced by the fact of simply having “my own” house that I don’t live in.

My retirement came as a shock to me. I had planned to retire in several years, but not just now. I had planned financially for retirement day, but I was still emotionally attached to my work and I identified with my “mission” in life, which, coincidentally, had provided me with a decent living.

I’m finally beginning to adapt to being retired. I’ve realized that now I can do, and learn, all those things that I’ve had to put off for lack of time. I’m only half way through The Girls, but I’ve picked out some recurring themes:

• choices
• decisions
• energy
• imagination
• serenity (to accept the things we cannot change)
• recycle (make ourselves into something new)
• options
• learning

I like the idea of “imagination”. If we don’t imagine ourselves any different tomorrow than we are today, if we don’t imagine that our aging will be any different from our grandmothers’ aging, if we refuse to take risks and to make changes and then accept the results of our choices, then we will become our grandmothers. We will continue to do–and to repeat–what we already know.

I know that I have a lot I want to do. I do not see myself living in one house for the rest of my life. I have moved several times in the last 10 years, and I know I will move again at some point.Today I wrote to a friend who just bought a new house, that I love the excitement and the challenge of moving. I love to try living in different types of housing: I lived in a house in the suburbs for 20 years; then I moved to a condo in an urban area; then I moved to an apartment in another, but more urbane and cosmopolitan, urban neighborhood. I’ve lived briefly in a manufactured home in the desert, and now I am living in a house in a resort-type environment. I have yet to live in a cabin, a Victorian house, a dormitory, a yurt, senior housing, or in the mountains, or on a farm. I still have all those places to live before I am 100.

I know that everything I do is colored by how I choose to perceive the outcome.

Marion

While I was away in Vt, I began a portrait of my friend, Noreen’s, mother, Marion. Marion passed away several years ago, but I was lucky enough to get to know her well and to be with her and Noreen as Marion passed through the various stages of Alzheimers. I drew the portrait from a photo I took of Marion and her friend, Hilda. Both Hilda and Marion were then in the middle stages of their disease, although Hilda was slightly more progressed than Marion. Hilda lived in an assisted living facility and we were just getting Marion ready to move to that same facility. We were happy that she would have her friend Hilda just down the hall.

Colored pencil in Canson notebook on cream colored paper.

Imported from theredstonechronicles.blogspot.com

Creativity

I drew this picture of my granddaughter from a photo taken on Thanksgiving Day 2006 when she was 6 months old. I used colored pencils on cream colored paper in a cahier notebook. The pencils are a new set that were included in a “palette” or pencil case that zips open to display an array of pencils arranged by color and shade. Although they are no-name pencils, I like their feel as I draw with them and they blend pretty well with a stump. The point on the “flesh”-toned pencil broke frequently though; now, that is the shortest pencil in the palette–usually a distinction reserved for my black pencil.

I’ve done a few portraits now, all in colored pencil. When I started drawing, I didn’t plan to do portraits; I was fascinated by line–especially in old buildings, and I intended to focus on drawing architecture. My first attempts at drawing portraits were merely “flings” at fun and challenges to myself to see if I could draw mouths and capture the life in my subjects eyes. I’m discovering, though, that I do love doing the portraits.I’m going to a family reunion next week in VT. I’m hoping to get some good candid photos of my family–especially of those of us who have been graced with “character” lines on our faces. I’ve been acquiring a collection of drawing pads and notebooks thinking that I would like to dedicate each to a particular subject. Perhaps I’ll be able to fill a notebook with portraits. . . .

Imported from theredstonechronicles.blogspot.com

Bathing

>My project over the last two days has been to add color to pencil drawings that I started a while back and that have been sitting unfinished in my sketchbook. I’ve been using watercolor pencil, watercolor paints and various types of paper and have been with experimenting with the properties of each.

I also collected the pictures that I had done in the past from their various hiding places, in drawers and boxes and among various sketchbooks. I realized,then, that there was no way to track (and analyze, of course) any improvement or change in how and what I was drawing, so I scanned everything that I’ve drawn to date and uploaded the pictures to a file on my computer.

Despite my analytic temperament, there is something that makes me feel somewhat bohemian and adventurous when adding color to drawings. I always feel apprehensive when I begin a picture, even if it is in pencil; and then, even more apprehensive as I add ink and color (Oh my god, what if I ruin what I’ve already done)–but then, I just get into the color.

 

That is what happened with Bathing. I drew the pencil outline of it several months ago after watching a friend dry herself with a towel. Never having attempted to draw an entire body before, I was nervous–but as the body flowed from my pencil, I remember thinking of how wonderful it would be to take a dip in a pond under the light of a full moon, wonder if the shimmer on the surface of the pond was from the water or from the moon above, and ponder on the mystical qualities of the solitude and the light of night. I pictured a body glowing with the white of the moonlight. Later, as I added color, with water color pencils, then a clear wash to blend the pencil colors, and finally with watercolor paint, I felt my strokes getting larger and larger as I fell deeper and deeper into the picture and could feel the water dripping from my hair, the softness of the towel on my body, and the silence of the moonlit evening . . . .

Imported from geocities.com/c.redstone August 7, 2007–first attempt at blogging

The Adventure Is in the Journey. . .

Waking up each day presents me with the opportunity to decide how I am going to perceive what I see on the other side of the door. Perception is reality and so, I can create my own reality. Every choice I make is the creation of a new reality.

Living in the peacefulness of the desert environment allowed me to decide to experience the excitement of color. Without being overwhelmed by the cacaphony and hysteria of city life, I can see the subtle color in what others would call a hot, drab, lifeless environment. What could be more beautiful than the kalidascope of colors that are the Chocolate Mountains at sunset? What can be more surprising than barely seeing the many-shaded green and brown lizard as it skitters away when my foot shifts the rock under which it was dozing?

My eyes are now seeing true color. I was surprised one day after I had painted the back wall, to look through some watercolors I had done over a year ago and find that in the watercolor, I had painted the back concrete wall purple–during the landscaping, I painted it a cool, cornflower blue.

While we were relandscaping, we decided that we also needed to paint the house. Most houses in the desert are some shade of earth-tone beige. The house is a mid-century modern, flat-roofed home and its previous earth tones did little to enhance its presence. We wanted a color that would contrast with the earth and draw attention to the bright yellows and hot pinks of the new native plants we had planted in the yard. We spent many evenings sitting in the backyard and gazing at the mountains and the sunset sky beyond the house, and finally, we chose to paint the house in sky-tones. We chose corn-flower blue, silver and white.

The house is now transformed by color. And I see vibrant color everywhere I go.

I have decided that since I have painted all the inside and outside walls of the house, that I now must turn my re-discovered love of color to paper. When I was a child I loved to draw; I learned what I know now of color from our box of Crayola 64. Now, in this next chapter of my life, I will return to the colors and practice what I always loved to do, but that which I always had, until now, to put aside in order to study and to accomplish things that would make me a “success”.

In this blog, I will write about my new reality and will share my adventure with color.