An Instagram Photo

Frazier Valley in the fall...

Finished Painting

"With Folded Hands"

Finally finished this piece. It's been floating around the studio for eight or nine months, first as a sketch in my sketchbook, then as a shaded sketch on a large piece of watercolor paper, and then as a partially painted piece.

I like her.

Did this piece for the "Twenty Minute Challenge"--you can find it here.

Love love love working like this--no time to think or agonize or get it perfect--my handy dandy hairdryer was awfully, well, handy, for drying the paint. I left time at the end for colored pencils, charcoal, and a white Sharpie Poster Paint marker.

The whole concept of perfection really bugs me. We emphasize it so much in the schools, especially in regard to art and writing. Don't get me wrong, public writing needs to be perfect, and you want to be happy with your art before you send it out into the world--but in emphasizing perfection throughout the entire writing and painting process, we create children who think they can't write and can't paint/draw/create art.

In the beginning stages, all creation is about experimentation and expression. Finetuning and chasing that elusive beast, perfection, comes much later.

I'm Learning to Knit!

Jenny modeling the brioche stitch headband.

Happy girl modeling one of my favorite hats!

I actually taught myself to knit a couple of years ago. I learned how to crochet when I was a little girl, but my grandma and aunts had trouble teaching me to knit (maybe because I'm a leftie?) A couple of years ago I got kind of ticked off at myself, thinking "If everyone else can learn to knit, surely I can, too!" So I learned to do the basic knit stitch and made a few scarves.

Fast forward to this summer: my son's girlfriend wanted to learn to crochet so she could make some booties for her new little sister. I got all my knitting/crocheting stuff out, and once I'd showed her how to crochet and she was working on her booties, I picked up the knitting needles and started messing around. Then I bought Amanda Keeys' wonderful book on knitting hats for babies (see the sidebar), and I was off and running. 

Let me explain something I've discovered about myself: I don't like not knowing how to do something. I will grit my teeth and do something over and over again until I figure it out. Not sure whether this is stupidity or persistence, but it's served me well in the last ten years.

Once my dad wasn't doing as well, I felt more obliged to stay in the house, rather than spending my days down in the studio, thus the long break from blogging and painting, etc.. Knitting to the rescue! It's something I can do up at the house, during the day and in the evenings when everyone's watching tv. So in the past few months I've been knitting up a storm. I've made a small stack of newborn hats for the local hospital to put on the new babies for their trip home, and I've made hats and headbands for my own girls. I'm doing some of my own patterns now, and I'm thinking I'll start putting up some of my knitted pieces in my Etsy shop.  I'm hunting for a baby to model some of the baby hats, but luckily I have a lovely preteen model right here in the family!

My ATC's

My ATC's, a set on Flickr.

A Find...

I've been browsing Abebooks for the past few months, looking for falling-apart, pre-1922 books that I can use in my art. It's a great way to buy used books--I've had lots of success purchasing out-of-print books for my dad at very reasonable prices.I'm especially interested in dictionaries since I'm kind of a 'word person,' and 19th century dictionaries are fun to read, coming as they did before the advent of the truly modern dictionary. Many of them use a form of the word they are defining in the definition (and that's a big no-no, as we all remember from sixth grade vocabulary tests!)

A couple of months ago, while browsing, I found a German Lexicon that was published in 1751! It had been damaged in a fire at some point, but the man who had it was actually using it as a reference book. He'd found an undamaged copy, and was about to chuck this one into the recycling bin, but decided someone else might want it. I got it for a dollar plus the cost of shipping!

It's not in great shape (obviously, since it's TWO HUNDRED FIFTY years old). Some of the sections are loose and the cover boards are plain boards with no leather or cloth covering them.  The paper is amazing; more like fabric than paper, actually. The pages are foxed, and a bookworm drilled through a section of it at some point, as you can see below. But its age and condition are part of what make it so fascinating and lovely.

Keep That Pencil Moving!

A continuous-line drawing from yesterday. Here's what I find most useful and intriguing about this:
1) there's a complete lack of expectation about these--it's an exercise, not intended to be a finished product--and for someone like me, who struggles to let go and just make art, this is huge.
2) these make me focus on shapes rather than line. I can see the planes in the face--